Richard Martin's Blog
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Apr.19.2013
It's not online. Please support this fine long-established journal if you can, thanks. If you absolutely positively unequivocababably can't afford to buy the Spring issue ... ($8 for the issue, inc. shipping) here:
The Greensboro Review
... or maybe even subscribe, then please contact me and...
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Dec.16.2012
By Spiritual I mean intuitive, human, vision, voice, psychology, psychic, empathy, insight, wisdom, love, and so on.
By Update I mean the growth that an individual undergoes every day. The man I am yesterday is not the man I am today. I see more, slightly yes, but when I look into the work today I...
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Nov.02.2012
Chapter One, in Rusty Barnes' Fried Chicken and Coffee:
http://www.friedchickenandcoffee.com/2012/11/02/i-inherited-a-mixed-animal-from-uncle-living-in-woods-novel-excerpt-from-richard-martin/
My Uncle Leonard was a hermit who lived alone in the Unconscious Forest his entire life....
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Oct.10.2012
There are a million ways but I find I use two
First, I sit
Then:
1. I let my mind go where it wants, where it will It journeys many many places big & small & then after ten minutes or so, it returns & goes, "Oh, that was nice, here I am"
2. I use a technique, say, focusing on my...
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Oct.01.2012
...but I can't
Which doesn't mean I have no innocence
only that it's hiding from my wisdom from my experience, my knowledge my skills, my certainty...
I wonder if there's a way...
First comes the urge to write the story A hook emotional & spiritual that snags me gets my blood going wakes...
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Sep.12.2012
Don't prove anything.
Don't win anything.
Pride is beautiful static, a backpack
full of beautiful bricks.
Write as if it is impossible to be ashamed
of being as honest & square as a child.
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2 comments
Aug.06.2012
I had heard two things that people are saying about this book, one about content and one about the writing itself, the style, quality, etc.
The content is about sex, people had said, and the detail that I had heard was that it involved somebody being tied up, or somebody tying somebody up, and...
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Jun.02.2012
1. To save the world. 2. To enjoy yourself.
You must choose, you must choose now, and you can only choose both.
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May.23.2012
It is not possible to meditate
Please give it up now
There is no way to meditate ever anywhere
in this world which is made
for not meditating
Have you given it up yet
Have you abandoned all hope of meditating
Have you lost all idea of meditating
Has the very word meditating
become a...
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Apr.12.2012
A small backwards village in the Northern Woods region, Hillbottomhosted the first and only Hillbottom Great American Novella Retreat/Conference some years back. It was the first and only because the lady and gentleman couple who put it on, Anton and Anka Siv, were arrested and sent back...
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Apr.09.2012
“If what’s always distinguished bad writing — flat characters, a narrative world that’s clichéd and not recognizably human, etc. — is also a description of today’s world, then bad writing becomes an ingenious mimesis of a bad world.
If readers simply believe the world is stupid and shallow and...
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Mar.05.2012
then freedom is just ... entertainment."
--Sean Penn, The Crossing Guard
I don't think I've ever thought about that before.
How could I have never thought about something so important and obvious before?
I must have thought about it in other terms.
The quote above, from the film The Crossing...
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Jan.08.2012
His real life is led in his headand is known to none but himself.
All day long, and every day,the mill of his brain is grinding,and his thoughts (which are but themute articulation of his feelings)are his history.
His acts and his words are merely the visible thin crust of his world, with its...
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Dec.07.2011
How are you?I hope you are fine.Or if you are suffering,I hope there is a wayfor you to ease that sufferingor have it eased, or forget about itfor a minute or two.
It seems to be a very difficult world sometimes these days but maybe it's just me but I don't think so.
Is there any way to sit in the...
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Oct.06.2011
I was indeed unfortunate enough to be selected as poet laureateof a to-remain-unnamed institution of public health in NorthernCalifornia some years ago. The circumstances of my election to that post are too tawdry to report in detail here, but I must say that they involved a heated campaign of...
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1 comment
About Richard
My novel MIXED ANIMAL is back on the street. I have withdrawn the book from MacAdam/Cage and have ended my association with that house. Another novel, ORANGES FOR MAGELLAN, is also out prowling for a publisher. Michelle Brower, at Folio Literary, remains my...
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