I have had the immense fortune of coming across a person who speaks to me across the abysses of time and space as if she has known me forever. Ursula was not only an excellent narrator; she was a woman so erudite, creative, intense, and noble that I am proud to have been able to know her, even if only through the pages. She is my literary grandmother, along with Philip Pullman.

Ursula's works are like windows that open onto different worlds and perspectives. Her writing is so vivid and engaging that it draws the reader in and makes them feel as if they are part of the story. Through her words, she explores complex themes such as love, loss, identity, and the meaning of life.

I highly recommend reading her books. You will be amazed by her talent and the depth of her insights. So, pick up one of her novels and let yourself be transported to a world of imagination and wonder.

Full disclosure: I didn't read the entire collection.

My rating is based on the following essays:

1) Stress-Rhythm in Poetry and Prose

This essay delves into the fascinating world of stress-rhythm, exploring how it functions in both poetry and prose. It offers valuable insights into the ways in which rhythm can enhance the meaning and impact of written works.

2) Rhythmic Pattern in The Lord of the Rings

Focussing on the renowned literary masterpiece, this piece examines the unique rhythmic patterns present in The Lord of the Rings. It showcases how J.R.R. Tolkien used rhythm to create a vivid and immersive fictional world.

3) Off the Page: Loud Cows: A Talk and a Poem about Reading Aloud

This engaging essay combines a talk and a poem to celebrate the joys of reading aloud. It emphasizes the importance of oral reading in bringing written words to life and connecting with the text on a deeper level.

4) The Writer and the Character

Exploring the complex relationship between the writer and the character, this essay offers practical advice and thought-provoking perspectives on how to create believable and engaging characters in fiction.

5) Prides: An Essay on Writing Workshops

This piece reflects on the role and value of writing workshops in the creative process. It discusses the benefits and challenges of participating in a writing community and offers suggestions for making the most of the workshop experience.

6) The Question I Get Asked Most Often

In this final essay, the author answers the most frequently asked question, providing valuable insights and advice for aspiring writers.

If you enjoy reading essays, I highly recommend this collection, especially if you're also a writer. It offers a diverse range of perspectives and topics that are sure to inspire and inform.

The words "La palabra es mi diente, / mi ala" are two lines from the last text in the book, which is a poem.

These words seem to convey a powerful message. The idea of "the word being a tooth" might suggest that words have the power to bite or have an impact, perhaps to cut through falsehoods or make a statement with force.

And "the word being a wing" could imply that words have the ability to lift us up, to carry us to new heights of understanding or inspiration.

Overall, these two lines offer a unique and thought-provoking perspective on the power and significance of words within the context of the poem and the book as a whole. They make us stop and consider how words can shape our thoughts, emotions, and experiences.

Perhaps we should all pay more attention to the words we use and the impact they can have.

An amazing collection of essays by Ursula K. Le Guin awaits the reader, offering a captivating glance into her formidable knowledge and fascinating personal history. The fact that she was raised by anthropologists truly explains a great deal about the unique way she perceives the world and her deep interest in human society as a construct.

Le Guin was a voracious consumer of literature, an unabashed feminist, and unapologetic in her defence of fantasy and science fiction. She effortlessly flies through a wide range of subjects, from primitivism to beauty, from genetic determinism to Tolstoi and Tolkien. Always witty and charming, she displays her profound intelligence with great generosity, exploring her thoughts and ideas with the carefree attitude of someone who is fully aware of the vast body of knowledge they carry within them.

As a writer myself, I found her essays on writing to be particularly enjoyable. Her ideas on the rhythm of words in fiction were truly illuminating, and her passionate words about the process of building stories served as a powerful reminder of why I love to write in the first place. Reading her work has not only inspired me but also motivated me to pick up my pen again and continue on this creative journey.

Title: 3.5⭐ Review

I recently had an experience that I would rate as 3.5 stars. The overall impression was decent, but there were a few areas that could use some improvement.

The service provided was generally good. The staff was friendly and helpful, always ready to answer my questions and assist me. However, there were a couple of occasions when there was a bit of a wait, which could be frustrating.

The quality of the product or service was also satisfactory. It met my basic needs and expectations, but it didn't really stand out or exceed them. There were some minor flaws or不足之处 that I noticed, but they didn't significantly impact my experience.

In terms of value for money, I felt that it was okay. The price was reasonable considering the quality and service provided, but I also thought that there could be some room for improvement to make it even more competitive.

Overall, I would say that my experience was a 3.5-star one. It had its strengths and weaknesses, and while I would consider using the product or service again, I would also hope to see some improvements in the future.

It is a bit frustrating that we have had to wait until 2018 to access one of Ursula K. Le Guin's essay books. To directly get in touch with her way of seeing literature and various aspects of her life without having to speculate based on her fiction. And it may be worth it. Although "Contar es escuchar" is a bit of a hodgepodge, a heterogeneous collection of texts from the last 30 years where both memories of her parents' work as anthropologists fit, notes on writers to praise very specific details of their works (Cordwainer Smith, Tolkien), various commissions (a text about an island, the fantastic presentation of the anthology of Ocampo, Borges and Bioy Casares...), her appreciation of the act of creation and how she cultivated it prevails. The essays on her conflict with non-fiction, the perception of beauty, the functioning and power of oral communication or the final compendium on how she conceives writing have seemed to me, within their inevitable subjectivity, magnificent. A door open to an unrepeatable writer with a genuine vision of literature.

Who could have imagined that it would be such a captivating book <3

This book truly has the power to draw readers in and keep them engaged from start to finish.

The story unfolds in a way that is both exciting and unpredictable, filled with twists and turns that keep you on the edge of your seat.

The characters are well-developed and relatable, making it easy to become invested in their lives and experiences.

Whether you're a fan of fiction or non-fiction, this book is sure to appeal to you.

So, if you're looking for a good read, be sure to check out this amazing book!

https://pepperlines.blogspot.com/2021...

What an amazing mind!

This person's thoughts and ideas are truly remarkable. It's as if their mind is a treasure trove of inspiration and creativity.

I find myself completely captivated by certain parts of what they have to say. So much so that I want to listen to those specific sections over and over again.

Each time I do, I discover new nuances and gain a deeper understanding.

It's like peeling back the layers of an onion, revealing more and more of its complexity and beauty.

Their words have the power to move me, to make me think, and to inspire me to be a better person.

I feel incredibly fortunate to have come across this amazing mind and to have the opportunity to listen to their thoughts.

It's an experience that I will cherish and carry with me for a long time to come.

I have had this book on my shelf for years and was under the impression that I had read it. However, when I picked it up the other day while searching for materials on prose rhythm, nothing within its pages seemed familiar to me.

The two sections specifically dedicated to rhythm, namely Stress-Rhythm in Poetry and Prose and Rhythmic Pattern in The Lord of the Rings, were both good yet somewhat disappointing. They didn't quite provide the in-depth understanding that I was hoping for.

Additionally, the \\"Drummers\\" part of Collectors, Rhymesters, and Drummers also delved into the topic of rhythm.

Telling Is Listening, which explored the idea that communication is more than just the transfer of information, was particularly interesting in light of the recent advancements in large language models.

I also read several other pieces, including Thinking about Cordwainer Smith, The Operating Instructions, and \\"A War without End\\". The latter was a thought-provoking piece on oppression and how unjustly we tend to judge oppressed individuals for not rising up against their oppressors. As the quote goes, \\"We demand a rebellious spirit of those who have no chance to learn that rebellion is possible, but we the privileged hold still and see no evil.\\"

I also perused A Matter of Trust, The Writer and the Character, and Unquestioned Assumptions.

This time around, I managed to read about one-third of the book, which was more than I had initially planned. Based on what I've read so far, I would probably rate it around 4 stars. However, I won't give it a final rating just yet as the remaining two-thirds of the book isn't currently capturing my attention.

We have been told that there is only one kind of people and they are men. And I think it is very important that we all believe that. It certainly is important to the men.

If I’m no good at pretending to be a man and no good at being young, I might just as well start pretending that I am an old woman. I am not sure that anybody has invented old women yet; but it might be worth trying.

I didn’t know enough French yet to read Cyrano, but that didn’t stop me. That’s when I learned you can read a language you don’t know if you love it enough. You can do anything if you love it enough.

Capitalism, which ceases to exist if it is not expanding its empire, establishes an ever-moving frontier, and its yang conquistadors forever pursue El Dorado. You cannot be too rich, they cry. My realistic fictions are mostly about people on the yin side of capitalism: housewives, waitresses, librarians, keepers of dismal little motels. The people who live, you might say, on the rez, in the broken world the conquistadors leave behind.

I used to be too respectful to disagree with Tolstoy, but after I got into my sixties my faculty of respect atrophied. Besides, at some point in the last forty years I began to question Tolstoy’s respect for his wife. Anybody can make a mistake in marriage, of course. But I have an impression that no matter whom he married Tolstoy would have respected her only in certain respects, though he expected her to respect him in all respects. In this respect, I disapprove of Tolstoy; which makes it easier to disagree with him in the first place, and in the second place, to say so.

There is solid evidence for the fact that when women speak more than 30 percent of the time, men perceive them as dominating the conversation; well, similarly, if, say, two women in a row get one of the big annual literary awards, masculine voices start talking about feminist cabals, political correctness, and the decline of fairness in judging. The ensuing masculine furore would devalue and might destroy the prize.

Excellence in nonfiction lies in the writer’s skills in observing, organising, narrating, and interpreting facts— skills entirely dependent on imagination, used not to invent, but to connect and illuminate observation.

In children’s literature, where by my rough count there are twice as many women authors, men win three times as many prizes as women. Nearly two-thirds of mystery writers are women, but men get three times as many prizes as women, and since 1970, five times as many.

Beauty always has rules. It’s a game. I resent the beauty game when I see it controlled by people who grab fortunes from it and don’t care who they hurt. I hate it when I see it making people so self-dissatisfied that they starve and deform and poison themselves. Most of the time I just play the game myself in a very small way, buying a new lipstick, feeling happy about a pretty new silk shirt. It’s not going to make me beautiful, but it’s beautiful itself, and I like wearing it.

I know what worries me most when I look in the mirror and see the old woman with no waist. It’s not that I’ve lost my beauty—I never had enough to carry on about. It’s that that woman doesn’t look like me. She isn’t who I thought I was.

Sometimes Freud sounds as if that’s what he thought. If (as he said) the artist is motivated to make art by the desire for “fame, money, and the love of beautiful women,” then indeed Beethoven wrote the Ninth because it was mating season. Beethoven was marking his territory.

Above the level of the merely commercial, in the realm of art, whether it’s called mainstream or genre fiction, we can fulfill our expectations only by learning which authors disappoint and which authors offer the true nourishment for the soul. We find out who the good writers are, and then we look or wait for their next book. Such writers—living or dead, whatever genre they write in, critically fashionable or not, academically approved or not—are those who not only meet our expectations but surpass them. That is the gift the great storytellers have. They tell the same stories over and over (how many stories are there?), but when they tell them they are new, they are news, they renew us, they show us the world made new.

Working men watch their company’s CEOs get paid three hundred times what they are paid, and grumble, but do nothing. Women in most societies uphold the claims and institutions of male supremacy, deferring to men, obeying them (overtly), and defending the innate superiority of men as natural fact or religious dogma. Low- status males—young men, poor men—fight and die for the system that keeps them under. Most of the countless soldiers killed in the countless wars waged to uphold the power of a society’s rulers or religion have been men considered inferior by that society.

Dickens as a child was, in many respects, David, but Dickens the novelist does not confuse himself with that child. He keeps the complex, hard-earned vision. And so David Copperfield, fearfully acute in its understanding of how children suffer, is a book for adults. Contrast J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. The author adopts the childish view of adults as inhumanly powerful and uncomprehending, and never goes beyond it; and so his novel, published for adults, is better appreciated by ten-year-olds.

So fiction writers are slow beginners. Few are worth much till they’re thirty or so. Not because they lack life experience, but because their imagination hasn’t had time to context it and compost it, to work on what they’ve done and felt, and realise its value is where it’s common to the human condition. Autobiographical first novels, self-centered and self-pitying, often suffer from poverty of imagination.

Todos los ensayos de este libro son joyitas.

They are like precious gems that sparkle with wisdom and charm.

Each one offers unique perspectives and insights that can truly enrich the reader's mind.

Many of these essays are so captivating that they are meant to be reread without rest.

One can get lost in the beautiful language and profound ideas presented within their pages.

Whether it's a thought-provoking piece on life, love, or society, or a humorous anecdote that brings a smile to your face, these essays have something for everyone.

They are a testament to the author's talent and creativity, and a joy to discover and explore.

So, pick up this book and let the magic of these essays transport you to a world of inspiration and enlightenment.

Recently, I've been deeply immersed in working on a novel. For two weeks, I wrote with great enthusiasm, as if the words were flowing like the wind. But then, suddenly, it all stopped. Busy-ness crept in and interfered with my creative flow.

This morning, determined to break through this block, I did something rather unusual. At nine a.m., I lay on the couch, which is something I would never allow myself to do on a bright spring workday filled with energy and ideas. I was resolute in my decision to do nothing unless the novel miraculously resurrected within me.

What could have caused me to stop the flow of words? There could be many reasons. Perhaps it was some slight or silent criticism that lingered in my mind. Maybe it was the Easter Retreat that disrupted my routine. Worry about money, the appearance of wrinkles, or even the presence of the cat could have played a part. But in the end, it doesn't really matter. To an author, any excuse will do in the moment. I told myself that I was fine with letting the new novel grow on its own. Maybe it wasn't a real idea, or a good story, or perhaps it was too close to 'fact'. There could be a million other rationalizations.

But I know, after so many years of practicing the craft of writing, that I can break this inertia by reading another writer's thoughts on writing. And there is one particular book that I have renewed too many times at the library, let fines build up, because I just couldn't bring myself to finish it. Finally, I realized that I didn't want to finish it. I wanted to always be reading it, always having it with me as it journeyed around my home from the bed to the table, to the kitchen, to the laptop case, to the guest room, and back to the coffee table again. I wanted this book to be mine.

However, the library, which is far distant from where I obtained the book, was determined to have it back. So yesterday, I made the commitment to return it. And I knew that by doing so, I would break the block that had been holding me back. Having this book to complete reading was like having a writer's insurance policy that would pay off with more words.

For starters, I was inspired by Virginia Woolf's words in 1926 in response to Vita Sackville-West's letter. She said, "As for the mot juste, you are quite wrong. (Already amazing, to say quite baldly to a lover, you are quite wrong, what courage!) Style is a very simple matter: it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words." (I was in awe.) "But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can't dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, (n.b), what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it; and in writing – such is my present belief – one has to recapture this, and set this working - which has nothing to apparently to do with the words – and then as it breaks and tumbles in the mind, it makes words to fit it. But no doubt I shall think differently next year." (The parenthesis and bold are mine, not VW's)

Ursula, pardon me for calling her that, begins and ends her book with this quote. In the beginning, I wasn't sure if I fully understood what Virginia really meant. There was something about inspiration and the ocean, but there was more to it than that. By the end of the book, I saw more clearly what they were both talking about. Real writing comes from a profound place inside us, a place that carries the words across the sea of self, makes a big splash as our consciousness grasps it, big enough to notice and wipe the drops onto paper. Writing is like playing by the sea, with bare feet and sand socks, maybe a pail and shovel, and a sunhat if you're lucky to protect yourself from being burned by the relentless motion that brings the story forth.

Whatever I understood that phrase to mean, in that moment of understanding, it also allowed my characters, whom I have already grown fond of and missed hearing from, to break through my excuses. Here I am, writing again, not only in this review but also listening to Sam, Dan, and Alyce (working names) as they pitch their book to me. I am making notes from them right alongside the Ursula notes, since I have to return the book today.

Here are some samples of the key Ursula ideas that helped me get back on track with my novel:

On page 234, she writes, "Writing is a high wire act on cobwebs. Trust your own sense of balance."

On page 253, (I'm going to photocopy this whole passage to keep), she discusses the Papa's (Hemingway and Freud) view that writers write for money and women. Ursula disagrees and says, "writers don't write FOR anything." Then she goes on to talk about the importance Hemingway attributed to 'experience'. I remember being eighteen, wanting to be a writer someday, and lamenting to my girlfriends, who rolled their eyes at me, about how I could get that kind of experience in Bethesda.

Then on page 273, Ursula explodes the Papas with, "Aspiring writers keep telling me they'll start writing when they've gathered enough experience. Usually I keep my mouth shut, but sometimes I can't control myself and ask them, ah, like Jane Austen? Like the Bronte sisters? Those women with their wild, mad lives cram full of gut-wrenching adventure working as stevedores in the Congo and shooting up drugs in Rio and hunting lions on Kilimanjaro and having sex in SoHo and all that stuff that writers have to do – well, that some writers have to do?" (Are we talking about males here? Of course, I answer myself.) Ursula then concedes that writers need the context of living in order to deepen their awareness. But what we really need, as Sinclair Lewis declared, is "to apply seat to chair and get to work."

On page 261, in the chapter titled "The Question I Get Asked Most Often", she answers the question of how she gets her ideas by saying, "I like what Willie Nelson says: the air is full of tunes, I just reach up and pick one."

On page 276, she writes, "In my Earthsea books, particularly the first one, people sail around all the time on the sea in small boats. They do it quite convincingly, and many people understandably assume that I spent years sailing around on the sea in small boats." She then goes on to share her own experience with sailboats, which was rather limited. Her point is that we should do our research. Take our own experience and expand it through the research of others, ask questions, and so on. What is my novel about? Well, it's partially about navigating the sea and boat building, of which I have only web experience.

So Ursula Le Guin changed my mind. I arose full of wind, ready to resume the novel. But first, I wish to honor the great writer who was willing to pass on her wisdom: remember that fiction is basically a lie made into a story.

Now, grab the skeins of your experience, add it with the knowledge of others, and weave it into a whole cloth. May yours become a cloth-of-gold.

I'm feeling so good about writing that I don't even care if the metaphors are mixed!