All writing is discipline, but screenwriting is a drill sergeant.
Robert MckeeRead
We rarely know where we are going; writing is a discovery.
Interpretation
Writing helps us uncover our thoughts and direction in life.
This quote suggests that much of our journey in life is uncertain, and through the act of writing, we can explore and discover our true selves and our paths. Writing serves as a tool for introspection and revelation, allowing us to articulate and understand the complexities of our thoughts and feelings as we navigate the unknown.
In practice
In a writing workshop, to encourage participants, one might say, 'Remember, we rarely know where we are going; writing is a discovery.'
All writing is discipline, but screenwriting is a drill sergeant.
Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.
Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.
Good story' means something worth telling that the world wants to hear. Finding this is your lonely task...But the love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world driven by your passion, courage, and creative gifts is still not enough. Your goal must be a good story well told.
Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.
Whereas life separates meaning from emotion, art unites them. Story is an instrument by which you create such epiphanies at will, the phenomenon known as aesthetic emotion...Life on its own, without art to shape it, leaves you in confusion and chaos, but aesthetic emotion harmonizes what you know with what you feel to give you a heightened awareness and a sureness of your place in reality.
I was destined to work with dying patients. I had no choice when I encountered my first AIDS patient. I felt called to travel some 250,000 miles each year to hold workshops that helped people cope with the most painful aspects of life, death and the transition between the two.
Read a little. Meditate more. Think of God all the time.
I find that many Christians are in trouble about the future; they think they will not have grace enough to die by. It is much more important that we should have grace enough to live by. It seems to me that death is of very little importance in the meantime. When the dying hour comes, there will be dying grace; but you do not require dying grace to live by.
My chief study all my life has been to lighten misfortunes and multiply pleasures, as far as human nature can.
Instead of 'watching the thinker,' you can also create a gap in the mind stream simply by directing the focus of your attention into the Now. Just become intensely conscious of the present moment. This is a deeply satisfying thing to do. In this way, you draw consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation.
I no longer agree to treat myself with disrespect. Every time a self-critical thought comes to mind, I will forgive the Judge and follow this comment with words of praise, self-acceptance, and love.
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