Break Through Writer's Block by Living Your Own Fantasy
- Published in a_journal
Snow swirled by the window and an empty fireplace taunted my blue fingers as I sat in the parlor of Lednice Castle, in the Czech Republic, listening to the tap, tap, tap of inspiration seeping from my soul into my brain.
My first novel was coming. Although a published travel writer, I hadn't ventured into serious novel writing before. A lucky break - meaning a boyfriend with a job on a movie set, filmed on location at Lednice Castle - led to my imagination being plunged into a ready-made atmosphere, just waiting to be peopled with quirky characters and magical adventures.
A new website for artbreak™
- Published in a_journal
Welcome to the new, updated web site for artbreak™ ARTS IMMERSION VACATIONS. We are thrilled to have gotten to this point, and grateful for the work of those who have helped make it happen. Three years ago, Richard and I realized that the artbreak™ concept had been fully proved out in Prague, and that we wanted to be able to say yes to the many artbreak™ alumni who have asked us when we are going to offer vacations in other locations. To do that, we have needed a web site that has the flexibility and capacity of the new site. We also wanted to have a vehicle for sustaining a community, hence this Journal.
An Apology For Idlers
- Published in a_journal
Even though this essey was published in 1881, it is amazing to see time and again how contemporary and relevant is wisdom we have reachable at our fingertips. Just to reach out...
AN APOLOGY FOR IDLERS by Robert Louis Stevenson
"BOSWELL: We grow weary when idle." "JOHNSON: That is, sir, because others being busy, we want company; but if we were idle, there would be no growing weary; we should all entertain one another."
JUST now, when every one is bound, under pain of a decree in absence convicting them of LESE-respectability, to enter on some lucrative profession, and labour therein with something not far short of enthusiasm, a cry from the opposite party who are content when they have enough, and like to look on and enjoy in the meanwhile, savours a little of bravado and gasconade. And yet this should not be. Idleness so called, which does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognised in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class, has as good a right to state its position as industry itself. It is admitted that the presence of people who refuse to enter in the great handicap race for sixpenny pieces, is at once an insult and a disenchantment for those who do.