'Take a deep breath and start writing'

  “Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. So, write like you’re a death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say.  Write like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything . . . Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king.” -- Alan Watts

Watts, born in England in January 2015, was a self-styled "philosophical entertainer" and prolific writer who spent much of his adult life in California.  His many writings, led by the bestseller The Way of Zen, often reflect his keen interest in patterns that occur in nature and which are repeated in various ways and at a wide range of scales – including the patterns to be discerned in the history of civilizations. 

His friendship with poet Gary Snyder nurtured his sympathies with the budding environmentalist movement which he strongly supported from the 1950s until his death in 1973.  

 

Watts once said of man's relationship to nature that, "If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything."