Art is the big YES!

"Much of our lives involves the word 'NO.' In school we are mostly told, 'Don't do it this way. Do it that way.' But art is the big yes. In art, you get a chance to make something where there was nothing." Marvin Bell

As a poet, Marvin Bell understood the true allure of any creative activity.When we write or paint or compose a new piece of music we break free of the limitations of the physical world. We enlarge and enrich the realm of human experience and human knowledge. Every time you sit down to write, you are saying "YES" to the creative spirit of the universe.

Thanks for reading

Jim Busch

Great book for writers.

I love the book shelf at the Goodwill store. Not only do I save a few bucks, which is near and dear to my skinflint heart, but I also encounter books that I would never know otherwise. Recently I discovered a copy of Letters to a young novelist by Mario Vargas Llosa. I've long been a fan of Rilke's Letters to a young poet but this book is almost as good as its namesake.

This book expresses the author's views on the craft of fiction which he illustrates with examples from a wide range of classic and contemporary novels. Llosa believes that authors are inherently rebels. That writers rebel against a reality that we don't accept by creating an alternate reality of our own. Another image likens an author's burning desire to write to a tapeworm. True writers constantly need to write to feed the "tapeworm" eating at our insides.

This book is available at Amazon and other sources. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in writing.

Keep the words and your creative juices flowing.

Jim Busch