sharing my love of books with you

Category: Bookish Thoughts (Page 1 of 33)

Do Something Hard

I have been neglecting this blog for several weeks, but I assure you, I am still writing. A few weeks ago, I dreamed up the premise to a novel (almost literally, for the characters came to me in the almost-dreaming state just before I fully succumbed to sleep). Since then, I have spent most of my free time writing fiction, researching the portion of history I want to write about, and pinning a multitude of writing tips to my Pinterest wall.

Sadly, I have not done a lot of reading. I did listen to The Scarlet Pimpernel again – and watched the movie too. I also listened to Cousin Phyllis by Elizabeth Gaskell. And I started two books – an audio version of Persuasion by Jane Austin and the novel The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. I’m not done with those, but I suppose I have done a little reading.

But mostly I’ve been writing and neglecting this blog.

Which brings me to why I am writing this post. You already saw the title: “Do Something Hard”. For me, that has been committing to writing every day and determining to finishing the story I started. I took a week off (of writing) because I felt like I was at a dead end. I used that time to rest my brain and find more writing tips. When I picked back up, I used those tips and have seen good progress come from it.

Several years ago, I did another hard thing. I determined to read Les Miserables by Victor Hugo all the way through, unabridged. Hugo is a hard author to read. He spends pages on scenes and backstories that make you wonder how they could possibly tie into the story. For example, in the volume I read, there were forty pages on the Battle of Waterloo. Good stuff, but why? I kept thinking – until I reached the end of those forty pages and found the connection. Wow. It took me exactly six months to finish Les Miserables. When I finished it, I felt like I had lost friends. I kept reliving my favorite scenes and talking about them to anyone who would listen. It was the hardest book I’ve ever read, and it was totally worth it.

So, what hard book is on your shelf? Pick it up; determine to finish it, no matter how long it takes.

Do you have a story in your head? Write it down. Put it on paper before you forget. Determine to tell your story, no matter how long it takes you to finish it.

Sure, you’re busy. So am I. I’m writing my novel on lunch breaks and late at night. Tolkien went to war. Anna Sewell was bedridden and died young, never knowing how dearly the world would love her one novel, Black Beauty. You may not have tomorrow, or you may have a thousand tomorrows. It doesn’t matter until you determine to do that hard thing.

Paint a picture. Join a choir. Learn an instrument. Audition for a play.

Don’t worry about how long it will take or how tiring it is. It took Hugo sixteen years to write Les Miserables. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit in less than three years, then it took him twelve more years to write The Lord of the Rings. But both finished, and both are loved by the world for their works.

Your reward may not be world renown, but you can still have the reward of knowing you did something hard, and you finished it.

And so I say again: Do something hard.

Oracular

Oracular – uttering oracles; having the nature of an oracle (a divine announcement)

“Patience!” whispered the oaks from oracular caverns of darkness:

And, from the moonlit meadow, a sigh responded, “Tomorrow!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline

Cidevant

Cidevant – former, recent, previous

“Much they marvelled to see the wealth of the cidevant blacksmith,

All his domains and his herds, and his patriarchal demeanor.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline

Tholes

Thole – a pin, or either of a pair of pins, made of metal or wood and set vertically in the gunwale of a boat to serve as a fulcrum for an oar

“After the sound of their oars on the tholes had died in the distance…”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline

Tenebrous

Tenebrous – dark, gloomy, obscure

“Over their heads the towering and tenebrous boughs of the cypress

Met in a dusky arch, and trailing mosses in mid-air

Waved like banners that hang on the walls of ancient cathedrals.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline

Cumbrous

Cumbrous – cumbersome

“It was the month of May. Far down the Beautiful River,

Past the Ohio shore and past the mouth of the Wabash,

Into the golden stream of the broad and swift Mississippi,

Floated a cumbrous boat, that was rowed by Acadian boatmen.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline

Longfellow on Mocking-bird Songs

“Then from a neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers,
Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o’er the water,
Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music,
That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen.
Plaintive at first were the tones, and sad; then soaring to madness
Seemed they to follow or guide the revel of frenzied Bacchantes.
Single notes were then heard, in sorrowful, low lamentation;
Till, having gathered them all, he hung them abroad in derision,
As when, after a storm, a gust of wind through the tree-tops
Shakes down the rattling rain in a crystal shower on the branches.”

Henry Waldsworth Longfellow, Evangeline

Father Felician on Affection

“Thereupon the priest, her friend and father-confessor,

Said, with a smile, “O daughter! thy God thus speaketh within thee!

Talk not of wasted affection, affection never was wasted;

If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, returning

Back to their springs, like the rain, shall fill them full of refreshment;

That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain,

Patience; accomplish thy labor; accomplish thy work of affection!

Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike.

Purified, strengthened, perfected, and rendered more worthy of heaven!”

Father Felician to Evangeline, in Evangeline, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Gleeds

Gleeds – a glowing coal

“Then as the wind seized the gleeds and the burning thatch, and, uplifting,

Whirled them aloft through the air, at once from a hundred house-tops

Started the sheeted smoke with flashes of flame intermingled.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline

Refluent

Refluent – flowing back, ebbing as the tide

“Half the task was not done when the sun went down, and the twilight

Deepened and darkened around; and in haste the refluent ocean

Fled away from the shore, and left the line of the sand-beach

Covered with waifs of the tide, with kelp and the slippery seaweed.

Henry wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline
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