"Immersion in the life of the world, a willingness to be inhabited by and to speak for others, including those beyond the realm of the human, these are the practices not just of the bodhisattva but of the writer." --Jane Hirshfield

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Turn Off Your TV Day

I propose a Turn-Off-Your-TV-Day in honor of Kurt Vonnegut, and all writers living dead and aspiring. Here is a quote,
"The first story I sold to the Saturday Evening Post, I came home from work, and I had an upright piano inside the front door, and on the music stand of the piano, with a candle on either side of it, was a check for $1,500. General Electric was then paying me $5,000 a year. I had a wife and two kids. My goodness, I thought, this is interesting. Then television, with no malice whatsoever--just a better buy for advertisers--knocked the magazines out of business."
Hear that? I doubt that our best efforts could bring back the golden age of magazines, but that quote should make aspiring writers squirm a little as they settle down to watch the Sopranos.

Let's pick a date.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

An anniversary date? How about the one-month anniversary of his death? May 11.

Zen of Writing said...

Funny, but since I don't have cable any more, I notice I have much more free time, instead of feeling like I have none. I can still turn off the DVD player for that day, though.