Ask the Author: Sifu Slim
Answered Questions (6)
Sifu Slim
You get to test your abilities, ideas, and imagination. Reading your own material -- especially after letting it marinate for a long while -- clues you in to its quality. Other writers have already set the literary bar very high; how can you take your own bar and raise it?
Sifu Slim
There are many ways I've been able to overcome writer's block. Here are a few ways that have worked.
1. Go exercise and bring a small pad. While exercising, ideas tend to come to mind. Capture them on your tablet.
2. Go watch a play. Watching humans in live action does more to us -- if we allow it -- than other forms of stimulation. If a good drama, musical, or comedy doesn't inspire you, there may be more going on than simple writer's block.
3. Switch the time at which you write.
4. Go to a cafe in a town where you know no one. Hang out there for four hours. Don't leave until you have ten pages completed. I once did that in Spain with a yellow legal tablet. The problem was, after being computer centric for so many years, my handwriting had deteriorated to the point of making it difficult to read my own penmanship.
1. Go exercise and bring a small pad. While exercising, ideas tend to come to mind. Capture them on your tablet.
2. Go watch a play. Watching humans in live action does more to us -- if we allow it -- than other forms of stimulation. If a good drama, musical, or comedy doesn't inspire you, there may be more going on than simple writer's block.
3. Switch the time at which you write.
4. Go to a cafe in a town where you know no one. Hang out there for four hours. Don't leave until you have ten pages completed. I once did that in Spain with a yellow legal tablet. The problem was, after being computer centric for so many years, my handwriting had deteriorated to the point of making it difficult to read my own penmanship.
Sifu Slim
Write what you know. Here's a great quote:
"The real business of literature study is to arouse--not implant--interest in the human condition, to refine sensibilities, to alert people to the artistry involved, to cause them to consider 'man' in the universal sense, and to expose them to the finest expression of the cummulative wisdom of civilized society."
J. Sullivan
"The real business of literature study is to arouse--not implant--interest in the human condition, to refine sensibilities, to alert people to the artistry involved, to cause them to consider 'man' in the universal sense, and to expose them to the finest expression of the cummulative wisdom of civilized society."
J. Sullivan
Sifu Slim
I'm working on the next volume of The Aging Athlete. Also trying to find a research institute to work with me on a sanctioned study on the physicality of aging athletes.
Sifu Slim
It's the other way around: Writing inspires me. It's like exercising, the benefits come by doing it as well as after doing it.
Sifu Slim
“Sifu, you should write a book called ‘The Aging Athlete.’ It’s a new field of study in orthopedics.”
—Dr. Bill Gallivan, fourth-generation orthopedic surgeon, former college rugby player and current martial artist, and father of four.
—Dr. Bill Gallivan, fourth-generation orthopedic surgeon, former college rugby player and current martial artist, and father of four.
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