Stone Soup by Jan Eliot for April 19, 2020

It used to be easier to focus. There was that black screen and there was that *C:\ * … but now there’s that twitter app and that facebook app and a browser with GoComics in the first tab. Heck you don’t even have to stand up to procrastinate.

before computers (as well as typewriters and printing presses), people had to wait for their ideas to come in form of a quill pen, an ink well, and a sheet of paper

Remember the instructions for coming up with an idea, focus on blank screen unlike drops of blood start forming on your forehead.

“Necessity is the mother of taking chances.” Mark Twain

“Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.” Mark Twain

“Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered – either by themselves or by others.” Mark Twain

You need a brain to run the computer the computer isn’t gonna figure it out for you till you find the solution to your problem and find the program or thoughts etc to solve your problem.

Don’t ask if it’s plugged in. I see the coffee, so her brain is definitely wired to the juice.

That’s why you have COFFEE!

You need to get away from the computer, a rest, depends on what Joan topic is.

Long before computers, there was this thing called blank white paper which was the terror of writers and students.

Been there, done that.

Why research at all? We now have Wikipedia and political trolls telling us how to vote (or whom to hate)…

That’s why I read the comics. Don’t have to think. Jan does it for me.

If your brain is off, you are brain dead.

Some writers will tell you to write what you know about. But, suppose you don’t know anything? Then what?

I believe that it was Theodore Sturgeon who said “Writing is easy. You just stare at a blank sheet of paper until beads of blood appear on your forehead.”