Something to offend

“Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I loved to smell them when I was a boy. Lord, there were a lot of lovely books once, before we let them go.” 
― Ray Bradbury

Hello folks,

I borrowed this from Jeff Goins Blog, 

Jeff Goins via aweber.com 

A couple years ago, when I was still working for a nonprofit organization, I shared on this blog a story about an orphanage in Haiti that had a dire need. Action was required, and people responded.

In fact, so many people raised their voices in a week that the Haitian government had to do something. 10,000 people banned together via social media, with no other tools to work with than their words — and they made a difference.

A virtual mob of people who wouldn’t keep quiet about injustice shut down a corrupt orphanage that was trafficking little children, selling them into slavery. It made national and international news.

And it made me believe in the power of words again.

Friends who worked for aid groups in the developing world all told me the same thing: “This doesn’t happen.” Not in a week. Not even in a month. What made the difference was the fact that so many spoke up, saying this was not okay.

The conclusion we all should make

Words make a difference. Talk isn’t cheap. Your message matters. And something terrible happens when you don’t speak up. That’s what I’m trying to say here.

Many of us have heard this quote by Edmund Burke:

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

So if you want evil to continue in the world, if you want to see the status quo spread, shut up. Don’t say a word. And don’t give your writing the significance it deserves.

Continue apologizing for your work and downplaying your gifts, but whatever you do, don’t speak. Because when you do, things change. And who wants, or needs, that?

May you, in spite of your fears and apprehensions, believe that your words do matter. And that someone, somewhere, needs to hear them.

Take Heart

I love you guys.

Here you are reading me, and I thought I was a voice lost in the wilderness. so, to you other writers--gosh I feel I have a  kinship with you--here is something that will warm your cockles. 

Take heart.

From  Ray Bradbury:

"Starting  when I was fifteen I began to send short stories to magazines like Esquire, and they, very promptly, sent them back two days before they got them!

"I have several walls in several rooms of my house covered with the snowstorm of rejections, but they didn’t realize what a strong person I was; I persevered and wrote a thousand more dreadful short stories, which were rejected in turn.

"Then, during the late forties, I actually began to sell short stories and accomplished some sort of deliverance from snowstorms in my fourth decade. But even today, my latest books of short stories contain at least seven stories that were rejected by every magazine in the United States and also in Sweden! So … take heart from this. The blizzard doesn’t last forever; it just seems so

Zen in the Art of Writing: