How to Use The Life Literary

In this blog I discuss and model ways to shake a dash of literary on your life.  (Or serve yourself a thick slab, if you’d like).  I call it living literarily.  There are a couple of ways to use and enjoy The Life Literary.

1.  You can simply read things for the fun of reading. I’ll try to keep my pantry stocked with a good supply of well-written, interesting essays, stories, poems, book reviews, letters (from abroad and from home), narratives (of events), and journals (dated entries that follow the progress of something, like a garden or a grandchild’s birth and growth).  I’ll put everything I write in a category (see the list of categories on the right-hand side of the page).  Hover the cursor over the category for a description of what’s there.  Click the category to see everything in a particular group.

2.  You can get ideas and practical suggestions for ways to live literarily. The tabs just under the picture across the top are like chapter titles for a book that might be called Ways to Live Literarily.  Click a tab, reveal the introduction to the particular subject.  Each chapter has its corresponding category on the right-hand side of the page.  You want information about conducting a Literary Event, memorizing poetry, or ways to include writing in your life?  Click on the category that interests you and start gathering ideas.  Or search for a specific thing using the Search field at the bottom of the right-hand column.

Here’s a tip.  Each tab across the top is like the chapter of a book.  All posts should fit into one chapter or another, either as an example of what the chapter is talking about or else a discussion of the chapter’s topic.

My quirks (thrown in free of charge): A. I am going to try to model good writing and techniques for literary living.  I am not, however, going to explain everything I do.   I’m just going to do it.  For example, I wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times.  I posted the first version with 343 words and the one I actually sent with only 150.  I’m not going to say: “Hey!  Look at this!  Here’s an example of how to strengthen what you write by editing out extraneous words.”  Similarly, for example, though I will write about writing a daily sentence, I’m also simply going to write one or twenty without saying, “This is a daily sentence.  See?  See?  Ain’t it spiffy?”  Maybe that’s at least part of why I haven’t written this how-to guide until nearly two months into this venture.  The pursuit is vital to the capture.

B. I will not explain puns, picture captions, or any other word play.  Unless someone asks me nicely.  Maybe.  I’m just going to put it out there.  I love word play and I love not letting anyone in on the humor, at least not until they’ve thought about it a tad.  Once again, part of the fun is the pursuit.  (Plus, hopefully, I’ll do a decent enough job of the word play that you’ll get it.)

C. I really can’t stand over-used cliches like “work in progress.”  A good writer ought to be able to express things cleverly and concisely without resorting to hackneyed, worn-out phrases.  With that in mind, I want to say that this blog is a work in progress.  That may bother you, but it is what it is.  You may search this blog with a fine tooth comb, looking for what interests you, but you may not find it yet.  Make no mistake!  I am not going to run around like a chicken with its head cut off to get every category nicely filled.  It’ll get done.  All in due time.

A couple more things:

Links I Like: There are a blue million literary links on the Internet.  The ones I list are the ones I read regularly.

Recent Posts and Archives:  My goal is to add one or two posts every day.  That means something that might interest you will get quickly buried in the archives.  Take a look at the list of Recent Posts and Archives, both in the right-hand column, to see what you might have missed that you wish you hadn’t.

RSS Feed: At the bottom of the page, you can select to receive The Life Literary posts via RSS feed to your reader.  That’s another option for using TLL.

About literarylee

I sling words for a living. Always have, always will. Some have been interesting and fun; most not. These days, I write the fun words early in the morning before the adults are up and make me eat my Cream of Wheat.
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