Kurt Vonnegut

"Write to please just one person.  If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia."

— Kurt Vonnegut

American Novelist

1922 - 2007

Whom do you create for?  Yourself?  Your relatives?  The masses?  Write for yourself.  Write to please yourself?  Paint for yourself?  If you paint what others want, you will lose yourself in the dust.  Scribble for yourself.  You are the only one you have to please.  Not your parents.  Not your spouse.  Not your editor?  Not the general public.  Just yourself. 

Here are Vonnegut's eight tips on how to write a good short story.

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Kurt Vonnegut

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

— Kurt Vonnegut

American Novelist

1922 - 2007

Who do you pretend to be?  Have you stopped pretending?  Every artist, writer and actor needs the skill of pretending.  A writer invents worlds that he inhabits through multiple characters.   An actor must climb inside the psyche of the characters he plays.  An artist must inhabit the paintings he creates.  So who do you pretend to be.




When I was young I pretended to by a professional pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals.  I pretended to be a professional basketball player.  A child loves to pretend.  The three-year-old child that my wife and I are raising loves to pretend to be a dog.  Many of us as we grow older lose the habit of pretending.  We are taught to live in the real world, not the one of imagination.  In fact, day dreaming is frowned on.  Yet, as creative leaders, we must encourage and cultivate our imaginations.  It is with our imaginations that we create new artistic expressions.




Play with your imagination today.  Become someone else.  Pretend to be what you want to be and enjoy it.  Relax, sit back and day dream.

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Kurt Vonnegut

"The practice of art isn't to make a living.  It's to make your soul grow."

— Kurt Vonnegut

American Novelist

1922 - 2007

Many of us dream of making a living from our art.  We want to spend a hundred percent of our time on our art.  Actually very few artists, musicians and writers make a living from their work.  Most have to take on jobs to support their creative habit or starve.  If the reason we write or paint is to make money, then we should give it up and go find a job in business.  Making art is not about money.  Making art is about personal growth and development — about the journey of the soul.  Money, if it comes, is the gravy.

Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite novelists.  His Cat's Cradle is in my all time list of favorite novels.  I first read him in college and last in 2009 when I read Armagedd0n in Retrospect.

Here is a visual tribute to Kurt Vonnegut.

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