2014 on Pavan Yarahttps://pavanyara.com/tags/2014/Recent content in 2014 on Pavan YaraHugo -- gohugo.ioen-USpavan.yara@gmail.com (Pavan Yara)pavan.yara@gmail.com (Pavan Yara)Pavan YaraFri, 12 Dec 2014 20:52:00 +0530On the Shortness of Life!https://pavanyara.com/blog/on-the-shortness-of-life/Fri, 12 Dec 2014 20:52:00 +0530pavan.yara@gmail.com (Pavan Yara)https://pavanyara.com/blog/on-the-shortness-of-life/<blockquote> <p>It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.</p>

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.

  • Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
]]>Still Writing!https://pavanyara.com/blog/still-writing/Fri, 12 Dec 2014 20:50:00 +0530pavan.yara@gmail.com (Pavan Yara)https://pavanyara.com/blog/still-writing/<blockquote> <p>When writers who are just starting out ask me when it gets easier, my answer is never. It never gets easier. I don’t want to scare them, so I rarely say more than that, but the truth is that, if anything, it gets harder. The writing life isn’t just filled with predictable uncertainties but with the awareness that we are always starting over again. That everything we ever write will be flawed. We may have written one book, or many, but all we know — if we know anything at all — is how to write the book we’re writing. All novels are failures. Perfection itself would be a failure. All we can hope is that we will fail better. That we won’t succumb to fear of the unknown. That we will not fall prey to the easy enchantments of repeating what may have worked in the past. I try to remember that the job — as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy — of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it. To be birthed by it. Each time we come to the end of a piece of work, we have failed as we have leapt — spectacularly, brazenly — into the unknown.                               - Dan Shapiro, Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life</p><blockquote> <p>When writers who are just starting out ask me when it gets easier, my answer is never. It never gets easier. I don’t want to scare them, so I rarely say more than that, but the truth is that, if anything, it gets harder. The writing life isn’t just filled with predictable uncertainties but with the awareness that we are always starting over again. That everything we ever write will be flawed. We may have written one book, or many, but all we know — if we know anything at all — is how to write the book we’re writing. All novels are failures. Perfection itself would be a failure. All we can hope is that we will fail better. That we won’t succumb to fear of the unknown. That we will not fall prey to the easy enchantments of repeating what may have worked in the past. I try to remember that the job — as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy — of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it. To be birthed by it. Each time we come to the end of a piece of work, we have failed as we have leapt — spectacularly, brazenly — into the unknown.                               - Dan Shapiro, Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life</p> </blockquote> How To Be Creative!https://pavanyara.com/blog/how-to-be-creative/Thu, 24 Jul 2014 15:43:00 +0530pavan.yara@gmail.com (Pavan Yara)https://pavanyara.com/blog/how-to-be-creative/<blockquote> <p>The old ways are dead. And you need people around you who concur. That means hanging out more with the creative people, the freaks, the real visionaries, than you&rsquo;re already doing. Thinking more about what their needs are, and responding accordingly. Avoid the dullards; avoid the folk who play it safe. They can&rsquo;t help you any more. Their stability model no longer offers that much stability. They are extinct, they are extinction. </p>

The old ways are dead. And you need people around you who concur. That means hanging out more with the creative people, the freaks, the real visionaries, than you’re already doing. Thinking more about what their needs are, and responding accordingly. Avoid the dullards; avoid the folk who play it safe. They can’t help you any more. Their stability model no longer offers that much stability. They are extinct, they are extinction. 

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