People Who Produce
Topic: Writing Outings
Sunday 5:55am 6Aug06

In keeping with my IFOA Notes

Prince
I let the music dictate what I want.

"He's an example of the ability to keep being inspired by your life" -- Ani Difranco

Earth, Wind & Fire
"I'd just get together with guys and kick it until we came up with something appropriate for a song. Piano and vocals or piano and drums, and then adding layers from there."

"We just took our cues from the Universe and kept moving on." -- Maurice White

Earth, Air and Fire didn't sound right so I used 'wind' instead, and I literally drew a picture of what I wanted the group to look like. I was reading Napoleon Hill's book, The Laws of Success, and I put the drawing in the back of the book...

The message in the music was clearly a reflection of White's vision for the group: "From the very start, I had a commitment to be different in terms of music and what was projected on stage. Coming out of a period of social confusion in the seventies, I wanted EW&F to reflect the growing search for greater self-understanding, greater freedom from the restrictions we placed on ourselves in terms of our individual potential"

Anthony Robbins
Your life can change in a minute and you can change the way you feel right now. You don't have to wait for someone to say I love you. It's already inside you. You just have to give yourself permission.

He wrote in his journal...
On one side of the page, he put the things he could no longer stand in his life. On the other side, he wrote down every thing he was committed to. Having set some higher stands for himself, he went about looking for the "tools" that would help him achieve them.

Affirmation
Now I am the voice. I will lead, not follow. I will believe, not doubt. I will create, not destroy. I am a force for good. I am a leader. I will defy the odds. Step up. Step up. Step up.

Will Smith
There's no place for a lack of confidence.
You cannot beat a person who is going to tell you the truth.
Being the guy that does what people say can't be done.
The road to success is through commitment.

Selma Hayek
Life is one opportunity
My sexuality doesn't make me less intelligent or talented.
Mexico & Frieda Kahlo - broken with an indestructible spirit.

Everything that you grow up with you have to fight against. Whether you grow up poor or you grow up privileged because you have to keep moving so that you keep learning different things. Otherwise, how do you discover life? You've got to get out there and discover who you are.
Regarding the film Frieda - You do something, you give it your best, and then when it's done you let it go, and then you have to dream a new dream.

Tim O'Brien
writing allows me to live lives I could have led.
You remember wonderful moments in the midst of horror.

Sharon Butala
Everything you do is part of your real life.
People suffer a lot of pain and try to hide it from themselves and from others.
what gifts we bring to the lives of others.

Keith Maillard
Commitment to what is true.

Mary Lou Zeitoun
Sex is tricked out of women
You can't let your self feel remorse when you write.

Mariah Carey
Impresario Lyor Cohen: "I said to [Mariah], 'What's your competitive advantage? A great voice, of course. And what else? You write every one of your songs - You're a great writer. So why did you stray from your competitive advantage?"

Eric Drooker
novel - "Flood" - a novel done in pictures without words.

Patricia Cornwall
Writing is a way of having experiences without scars.

Ray Bradbury
"I don't think I know what writer's block is. I never had it. My typewriter goes everywhere I go. I get up at 3am everyday, head for the keyboard, laugh a lot, then go to bed."

It takes him 2 hours to write a poem, half a day to finish a story, 9 days for a full-scale novel. His secret? "let your subconscious take over, keep your intellect out of the way. Be passionate about what you're doing. When you start a love affair, the last thing you want to be is critical right? Don't look back, just write. Go and write."

Elie Weisel
obsession of memory
the duty to memory
To write - to plum the unfathomable depths of being.
celebration of memory

Tim O'Brien
You have to be a great liar on the page.
The world as it could have been or as it should have been
Fascination with that what might have been or could be.
Try to make it feel true

Margaret Laurence
Waiting is an act of faith or hope.

Irving Layton
Artists are here to warn us about the dangers to the human soul.

August Wilson
has been telling the story of black America through an ongoing 10 play cycle, each play covering a decade of the 20th century:
- the dynamics of the father-son relationship ... how can a people move forward if each generation cannot help the next to realize its own dreams?
- the characters question how to build a family, an economy, and, above all, a sense of self worth.
- another consistent motif is the presence of the ancestors, as well as death.
- the spirit world and the physical plane are very much connected.

It's the question that African Americans must ask: What do you do with your legacy? Can you achieve a sense of self worth by denying your past? It's an affirmation of your past; that's how you achieve a sense of self worth.

EY