Story Institute Imagine, Enhance, & Grow Your Stories

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Are you writing about what you dream or do you dream of writing…decide and tell your story…
 
Featured Quote:
“All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.”
William Faulkner
 
Featured Poems:
There is No Frigate Like a Book
By: Emily Dickinson
 
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

Poems from our forums and relationships found…
 
Featured Quotes:
“A single rose can be my garden… a single friend, my world.”
Leo Buscaglia
 
“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
Marcel Proust
  
Featured Poem: One Word Is Too Often Profaned
By: Percy Bysshe Shelley
 
One word is too often profaned
For me to profane it;
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother;
And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.
 
I can give not what men call love;
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the heavens reject not,
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?

Choices for you and choices for your characters…End where you began but make it a good one…   Feature Quote: “The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.” Frank Lloyd Wright   Featured Poem:Traveling Through the Dark By: William Stafford   Traveling through the dark [...]

More podcasts and thoughts to get your writing moving and your creativity flowing…John shares a one last handful of his favorite audio inspirations…
 
Featured Quotes:
A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.
By: Robert Frost
 
A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
By: Robert Frost
  
John shares some more of his favorite podcasts that help inspire and influence him.  
 
Check out these great shows and sites:

Podcasts and thoughts to get your writing moving and your creativity flowing…John shares a handful of his favorite audio inspirations…
 
Featured Quote:
Belief, by definition is an assent to a proposition. It is any cognitive content that is held true. It is some expression or a vague idea in which some confidence is placed. Thus, it defines some sort of an agreement with the world view. It may be unproven assertion based on some of the fundamental assumptions. Belief is a form of judging something to be true, intermediate between mere opinion and certain knowledge. To believe something in this sense is to judge that it is true by virtue of “a ground that is objectively insufficient but subjectively sufficient”; in mere opinion neither is sufficient, in knowledge both conditions are met.Myths which are believed in tend to become true.
 
By: George Orwell
   
John shares some of his favorite podcasts that help inspire and influence him. 

Do you believe in your characters? OK, but do you have faith in your characters to live beyond the time you put them on paper? Is there a difference? Listen and engage in the writing prompts.
 
Featured Quote:
Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.
Edith Hamilton
 
Inspiration for this week’s conversation:
Six Characters in Search of an Author is the most famous and celebrated play by the Italian writer Luigi Pirandello
  
Featured Poem: The Computation
By: John Donne
 
FOR my first twenty years, since yesterday,
I scarce believed thou couldst be gone away ;
For forty more I fed on favours past,
And forty on hopes that thou wouldst they might last ;
Tears drown`d one hundred, and sighs blew out two ;
A thousand, I did neither think nor do,
Or not divide, all being one thought of you ;
Or in a thousand more, forgot that too.
Yet call not this long life ; but think that I
Am, by being dead, immortal ; can ghosts die ?

John releases some inner voices…what do you release in your writing…
 
If you are an author in search of readers or have comments about our show, contact us:
ramblingverser@storyinstitute.com
615-431-WRIT (9748)
  
This week’s episode was brought to you by Enchanted Travel Tales (www.enchantedtraveltales.com), bringing travel, magic, and fun to your holidays.
  
Featured Quotes:
“Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.”
Henry Miller
 
“Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.”
William Shakespeare
  
Featured Poem:
“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”
By: William Wordsworth
 
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

A look at a better story driven character and your connection as a writer…
  
If you are an author in search of readers or have comments about our show, contact us:
ramblingverser@storyinstitute.com
615-431-WRIT (9748)
  
This week’s episode was brought to you by Enchanted Travel Tales (www.enchantedtraveltales.com), bringing travel, magic, and fun to your holidays.
  
Featured Quote:
“Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.”
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 – 1930), (Sherlock Holmes) Valley of Fear, 1915
  
Featured Short Story:
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Adventure 4 – The Boscombe Valley Mystery
By: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
 
We were seated at breakfast one morning, my wife and I, when the maid brought in a telegram. It was from Sherlock Holmes and ran in this way:
Have you a couple of days to spare? Have just been wired for from the west of England in connection with Boscombe Valley tragedy. Shall be glad if you will come with me. Air and scenery perfect. Leave Paddington by the 11:15.
“What do you say, dear?” said my wife, looking across at me. “Will you go?”
“I really don’t know what to say. I have a fairly long list at present.”

Grab that paper and write…a newspaper that is…

“If you watch a game, it’s fun. If you play at it, it’s recreation. If you work at it, it’s golf.”
~ Bob Hope

Headlines to help you with thoughts, ideas a provide realistic writing prompts:

“Run over on a Florida beach: can’t Americans walk anywhere at all?”

“No Flat for Cats”

“App Tells You Whether Your Date is a ‘Keeper’ or ‘Crazy’”

“Talking about a stinky subject”

Look up these headlines, of merely use them to help you come up with subjects for your storylines. What direction will you choose? Have you found other stories out there? Share them here or elsewhere, but write and enjoy.

Connecting Your Storyline with Your Storyline…    If you are an author in search of readers or have comments about our show, contact us: ramblingverser@storyinstitute.com 615-431-WRIT (9748)    This week’s episode was brought to you by Enchanted Travel Tales (www.enchantedtraveltales.com), bringing travel, magic, and fun to your holidays.    Featured Quotes: “Play is often talked [...]

Reflect on your Knowledge and Imagine a new world…oh yeah, and write about it…    Featured Quote: “I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.”    “Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.” ~Immanuel Kant     Featured Poem: Ode on a Grecian Urn ~ John Keats    [...]

Childhood connections or Nada…Your path defined by you, the poet, writer, creator… Featured Quote: “I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, [...]

Style and Story – Has the muse moved…Or, is man really a friend of the vultures… Featured Quote: “Poetry is simply literature reduced to the essence of its active principle. It is purged of idols of every kind, of realistic illusions, of any conceivable equivocation between the language of “truth” and the language of “creation.” [...]

Time Back from Beyond…New focus and new writing prompts… Quote of the week: “I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning.” ~ Samuel Beckett Short Story Focus and Topic: “The Open Boat” ~ Stephen [...]

Alive © 2009 Cacy Ann Minter I didn’t know where I was when I woke up. I was aware of a pressing sensation on my chest, but couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. I tried to look around and realized my field of vision was limited to the area directly in front of [...]