Still at work on The Secret Language of Money, and I suddenly found the opportunity to employ a few more of my favorite quotes on writing.

Dave (Krueger, my coauthor) is writing about a remarkable study in the UK on how varying one’s habitual ways of doing almost anything can lead to all sorts of positive changes in other, unrelated aspects of one’s life. (In the study, people did things like read different books and act more extroverted, or more introverted, than they normally would, and they ended up losing weight—even though they weren’t trying to—and keeping it off even months after the study was over.)

I was just editing along, like a good boy, and all at once my fingers took off on their own again. Those pesky little digits, them. Here’s what they typed:

E.B. White, Pulitzer Prize–winning editor of the classic writing handbook The Elements of Style and author of such beloved children’s books as Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web, wrote a single sentence about writing that has served as a lifeline for every writer that followed: “The best writing is rewriting.” Ernest Hemingway put it a little more bluntly: “The first draft of anything is crap.” Though expressed differently, both statements mean essentially the same thing: you don’t have to get it right the first time. And thank heavens: because this is true not only for novels and short stories, but also for the chapters of your life.

Another writer, F. Scott Fitzgerald, once said that in the process of creating good writing, you have to “murder your darlings.” Sometimes the aspects of ourselves that we most need to let go of—to toss so we can write a second draft—are those we happen to be especially fond of or attached to. But remember the question to ask in the unblinking light of day: Is it working?

Your life story is the manifestations of your beliefs. You are always free to change your mind, always free to change your beliefs, including core assumptions about who you are.

Let’s hear it for second drafts—and third, and fourth.

Sometimes I’m working on a book, and the stuff that comes up on the screen surprises me. I’m right now working on a book called The Secret Language of Money, with David Krueger, M.D. (you might’ve seen his writing in Networking Times), writing a chapter on core values and finding your passion. I had absolutely no intention of writing about politicians—honest. But I must have had Rod Blagojevich in the brain; here’s what came out.

Politicians seem to fulfill various roles in our lives. They watch out for the common good; they attend to all manner of logistics in the managing of the social order; and they lead us in times of trouble. And they do one more thing: now and then, they flame out in entertainingly spectacular fireballs of scandal and self-destruction.

Hardly a season goes by without some new political drama of disgrace and disrepute; and we seem to love it. The term schadenfreude (literally, “the joy of sorrow”) describes the pleasure we derive from another person’s misfortune, and it seems to be one of the duties of politicians, as well as movie stars, pop stars and top athletes, that they satisfy our schadenfreude from time to time.

I don’t think it’s an entirely perverse impulse on our part: perhaps we need these dramas as cautionary tales, examples to remind us, “There but the grace of God go I.” That way lies the path of self-sabotage, and it is a frighteningly real possibility for all of us.

Literature and film are replete with famous characters who seem to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, falling into catastrophic harm’s way just as their most profoundly hoped-for wishes are about to come to fruition. Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth and Ibsen’s Rebecca West both suffer grave illnesses almost the moment they know a major wish is about to be fulfilled. In The Horse’s Mouth, Joyce Cary’s irascible painter, Gulley Jimson, finds a unique route out of success: he paints his most elaborate masterpiece on a wall scheduled for demolition and personally bulldozes the wall as soon as the mural is completed.

Those who have the opportunity, intelligence and imagination to succeed, and yet do not live up to their potential, or suffer when they do, are victims of their own internal obstacles, rather than any external impediment to success. It is as if they cannot tolerate their own success. Why would someone recoil from the very thing they have sought so long and for which they have striven so hard? Could it be that there is a core conflict between their true ideals and their stated ideals?

Disclaimer: The paragraph about Lady Macbeth, Ibsen and Joyce Cary came totally from Dave. The rest, well, that’s my Saturday-night typing fingers acting on their own.

Someone commented on my Facebook “wall” today that my “personal information” page was a little lean. I looked; she was right: it was blank.

“Who has time to fill these things out?” I muttered, with the self-righteous sigh of one way too burdened with the Important Things of the World for such frivolry—and then felt silly. Hey, it takes five minutes.

I resisted this Facebook thing at first, but after a while being a Luddite is not as thrilling as it’s cracked up to be. So here I go, filling in some Personal Information.

Yesterday was Inauguration Day, and we heard some fine speechifying. I thought I’d honor the day by collecting some of my favorite quotes on writing to add to my Facebook profile, and include them here, too. Given that we now have one of the most eloquent presidents ever, I thought for the caboose on this train of thought, I’d include some soaring prose on Warren Harding, one of our least eloquent.

“I would have written a shorter letter, but I didn’t have the time.” — Mark Twain

“Writing is easy. All you have to do is stare at a blank piece of paper until beads of blood start to form on your forehead.” — attributed to the late Jeff MacNeilly, cartoonist-author of “Shoe”

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” — W. Somerset Maugham

“I write to find out what I think.” — Joan Didion

“Yesterday Mr. Hall wrote that the printer’s proof-reader was improving my punctuation for me, and I telegraphed orders to have him shot without giving him time to pray.” — Mark Twain (from an 1889 letter to a friend)

“I love writing but hate starting. The page is awfully white and it says, ‘You may have fooled some of the people some of the time but those days are over, giftless. I’m not your agent and I’m not your mommy, I’m a white piece of paper, you wanna dance with me?’” — Aaron Sorkin

“He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.” — H.L. Mencken (writing about President Warren Harding)

Good grief: has it really been a month since I’ve blogged? Nearly. I’ve been so buried in books. (The ones I’m writing, not just the ones I’m reading.) So here come a few miscellaneous bits of book notes:

Ana and I just got back from a week in Arizona. One day in Sedona, Ana went around with a realtor to look at a few houses (we’re always interested in possible future relocations where the snow don’t shine). Touring one especially nice home, she went through the master bedroom and glanced at the book on the bedstand —

It was a little red book called The Go-Giver. (Rats, no photo: I had the camera.)

Arriving home I discovered that both The Go-Giver and A Deadly Misunderstanding hit the “Monthly Top 25” December bestseller list at 800-CEO-Read, at spots #4 and #15, respectively. Sweet.

I also discovered that over on Harvey McKinnon’s blog, Harvey (coauthor of The Power of Giving) wrote a very moving post about A Deadly Misunderstanding.

We went to Sedona fully intending to hate it there (dry, barren, cactusy, no green, nuttin like the East) — and when we got there, we fell in love. I don’t mean with each other (that train left the station ten years ago), but with Sedona.

And just to prove that we were really there:

These pictures cannot possibly do it justice. It’s gorgeous there: lushly green, only in a “Did we just land on Mars?” way. Ringed round by rich red mountains, you feel like you are the tapioca in a bowl of intensely vibrational pudding.

I know: the words aren’t exactly doing it justice, either. You have to go see it for yourself.

Okay, back to work. I’m about to dig into Chapter 11 of The Secret Language of Money — more on that before long.