30 days of prompts: day 18

& round-up

Despy Boutris

May 19, 2022

nick miller @nocontextmiller

Here’s what I have for you today:

The prompt
To read
Quotations
Tweets

Day 18: Prompt

Write a nature poem (defined widely).

Here are a few I love:

& a few of my own:

To read:

The Classics Are Whatever We Want Them to Be

Re: beauty, specifically:

&,

because I often think about the sad inevitability of envy, I enjoyed this post by Kate McKean on professional jealousy.

Here are some quotations from the post:

In case you are one of the lucky people who has never wanted anything another person had, professional jealousy is, well, wanting what another person has achieved professionally, regardless of what you already have, what you can do, what’s reasonable, what’s possible, what they have, etc etc etc. Not just stuff or money, but accolades or reputation or stature or clout. It’s irrational most of the time, and comes from the less-charitable and loving parts of our brain.

-Kate McKean

There are a lot of things publishing needs to be more transparent and equitable about, but I’m not sure there is a ways to be fair about it all.

-Kate McKean

I tell my clients publishing is not a meritocracy. I tell them, in a nicer way, that no one owes anyone a book deal. That’s the one I probably need to tell myself more. I’m trying. Because that’s all I can do.

-Kate McKean

The trick is to make the wanting motivation, not self-recrimination. You are not bad for wanting, nor are you bad for not having. The wanting just is. It probably never goes away. Like all feelings, I am learning, you just have to have them, and then they pass or morph or you forget them, and you get on with your day, wanting something else.

-Kate McKean