He gripped the pen like a marlinspike.
– said of Jack London
The Discover What Matters™ blog by Charles Carlson fuses several traditions: Zen teachings, nature writing and cultural criticism—all of which place a heavy emphasis on truth, a no-nonsense sensibility and a love of language. Like any good voyage of discovery the blog covers a wide range of subjects affecting modern life: spirituality, ethics, family, work, relationships, language and more.
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Writing
The first thing I’d tell aspiring writers: don’t mess with the mystery. Don’t listen to teachers who try too hard to explain, don’t read books that give in-depth advice on sentence structure and word choice. You’ll just end up writing like everyone else. Listen to your own voice. Be a visionary. Take chances. Jump off cliffs. Land with a splat. Fail. Pick yourself up again like Wily Coyote after being flattened by the falling anvil…
On the occasion of Valentine's Day, I thought I'd share one of the most popular chapters from my book, Passage to Nirvana. It's a short chapter; doesn't take more than a minute to read. It's almost more of a prose poem. The chapter is about both the word and the reality, and is titled simply, “Love.”
How does our worldview change as we age? I pondered that question this week as the news broke that HarperCollins would be publishing a new book by Harper Lee, the author of *To Kill a Mockingbird.* The story interested me for several reasons: first the fact that it was such a huge story; as a writer I'm always gratified to see the general public get so passionate about books. The top trending tweets for several days had the keywords "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Harper Lee."
I woke up this morning pondering the question: “What does it mean to be super?” Today is the day of the big game, the Super Bowl, which is really more than a big football game. It is a cultural ritual, a national holiday of sorts, a ceremony and celebration of all that is American: big, brash, bold and, well, super.
Superman was, after all, the invention of an American mind, as is super-sized food portions (MacDonalds), and supermodels...
