Discover Something New Everyday: The Challenge
This is a story I've told many times before:
Writer James Still, the author of classics like River of Earth and The Wolfpen Poems, was in his early 90s when I, a boy in my mid-twenties who didn't know anything about anything, asked him a naive and earnest question: "How can I become a better writer?" Mr. Still thought about it for a long time, then looked just past me with his haunting eyes. "Discover something new everyday," he said.
I've made a conscious effort to try and do that ever since, and it's an exercise that has changed my life.
So, with that in mind, I'm going to try my best to post a new discovering here everyday for the next month. If I'm able to do it, I might try for another month, and another. I'm not always near a computer so if that's the case then I might miss a day or two. I'm not going to devote myself to it so much that it kills my own writing day, and I'm not going to let it take over my life a la Julie and Julia. But I am going to try my best to post a new discovery every day, and I hope that you will join me in doing the same. Even if you can't post a comment to my blog saying what you've discovered then you can do it for yourself. In a notebook, a journal, a wipe-off board, in your head.
The main thing is to discover, so that's what we're setting out to do.
Comments
By the way, I studied both you and James Still in an Appalachian Literature class taught by the late Danny Miller which basically changed my writing life. I didn't know that you had known him.
Funny how things connect together.