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Where to look if you’ve lost your mind?

Bernard Malamud

First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to re-form it….
BERNARD MALAMUD

Book Firsts Ideas
As long as a man stays alive he can’t tell what chances will pop up next. But a dead man signs no checks.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Long Men Perseverance
Writers who can’t invent stories often substitute style for narrative. They remind me of the painter who couldn’t paint people, so he painted chairs.
BERNARD MALAMUD

People Stories Style
A man had to learn, it was his nature.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Learning Men Nature
Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Boring Live Mode Writing
The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Baseball Mythology Quality
It was all those biographies in me yelling, ‘We want out. We want to tell you what we’ve done to you.’
BERNARD MALAMUD

Biography Done Want Yelling
A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Reading Surprise Worth
Charity you can give even when you haven’t got.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Charity Giving Havens
Overnight business could go down enough to hurt; yet as a rule it slowly recovered-sometimes it seemed to take forever-went up, not high enough to be really up, only not down.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Down Forever Hurt Obstacles Overnight
Those who write about life, reflect about life. you see in others who you are.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Who You Are Writing
How one works, assuming he’s disciplined, doesn’t matter.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Assuming Discipline Matter Works
You see in others who you are.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Identity Who You Are
It’s one thing for a man not to know, not to have learned; it’s another not to be able to live by what one does know.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Diversity Justice Know Learn Men
And if at all possible, give order to; but one must not withdraw from the task if he has some small things to offer – he does so at the risk of diminishing his humanity.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Diminishing Humanity Small Some Withdraw
The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ideas Moving Writing

Where to look if you’ve lost your mind?

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Where to look if you’ve lost your mind?

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