TITLE: Get Busy; Time is Short
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: May 11, 2012  2:31 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
After an award-winning author had criticized popular literature,
Stephen King responded with advice that is a useful reminder to
us all:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
Get busy.  You have a short life span.  You need to stop this
crap about sitting there and talking about what we do, and
actually do it.  Because God gave you some talent, but he
also gave you a certain number of years.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

You don't have to be an award-winning author to waste precious
time commenting on other people's work.  Anyone with a web
browser can fill his or her day talking about stuff, and not
actually making stuff.  For academics, it is a professional
hazard.  We need to balance the analytic and the creative.  We
learn by studying others' work and writing about it, but we
also need to make time to make.

(The passage above comes from
<A HREF="http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5653/the-art-of-fiction-no-189-stephen-king">
   Stephen King, The Art of Fiction No. 189</A>,
in the wonderful on-line archive of interviews from the Paris
Review.)
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