Tuesday, June 13, 2006

"Work Worth Doing"

One, there will never be an adventure story finer than "Treasure Island". Two, Stevenson's thoughts on the art of writing are worth reading again and again.

"Man is imperfect; yet, in his literature, he must express himself and his own views and preferences; for to do anything else is to do a far more perilous thing than to risk being immoral: it is to be sure of being untrue". To ape a sentiment, even a good one, is to travesty a sentiment; that will not be helpful. To conceal a sentiment, if you are sure you hold it, is to take a liberty with truth ...

"Here, then, is work worth doing and worth trying to do well. And so, if I were minded to welcome any great accession to our trade, it should not be from any reason of a higher wage, but because it was a trade which was useful in a very great and in a very high degree"

The Art of Writing. (link to Gutenberg.org)

2 comments:

neha vish said...

Ah! So anxious to make sure that the previous post wasn't the first a new-comer would see?

ROTFL.

km said...

Neha Vish, meet chullu bhar paani. Now stop ROTFLing and record some poetry.