{"id":4389,"date":"2010-02-06T00:01:57","date_gmt":"2010-02-06T08:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=4389"},"modified":"2010-02-06T00:01:57","modified_gmt":"2010-02-06T08:01:57","slug":"the-writing-room-george-leonard-and-the-tao-of-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/the-writing-room-george-leonard-and-the-tao-of-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"San Francisco’s George Leonard and the Tao of Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"George<\/a>
George Leonard, San Francisco Bay Area author, counterculture guru and Look magazine writer. YouTube photo.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ve thought of George Leonard often over the years. And when I read in the New York Times last month that he had died on January 6 at the age of 86, I thought of him yet again.<\/p>\n

George and I knew each other in New York at Look magazine<\/a>, where we both worked during the 1960s. That is to say, we were aware of each other at Look – I more aware of George than he of me.<\/p>\n

An Editorial Secretary<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I was a very young editorial secretary —\u00a0and not a very good one. (My bosses were\u00a0people like Betty Rollin, Jack Shepherd <\/a>and Pat Carbine<\/a>.) He was a Look writer and a star. He was documenting – no, inspiring – the youth and human potential movements that were fermenting in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time.<\/p>\n

George went on to write a number of books, including Education and Ecstasy,<\/em> The Way of Aikido, Mastery<\/em> and The Ultimate Athlete<\/em>. He was a long-time influence at the Esalen Institute. And he was as formidable physically as he was intellectually; he took up aikido at mid-life and earned a fifth-degree black belt.<\/p>\n

Though he barely knew me, George was kind enough to meet with me when I first moved from New York\u00a0to San Francisco in 1969. During that conversation, he gave me some advice I’ve kept pasted to the inside of my forehead ever since.<\/p>\n

We were talking about story ideas, and I told him I had one\u00a0I thought\u00a0was pretty hot, but I didn’t want to reveal it to him. At Look, story ideas were gold, we treated them like state secrets. If we didn’t keep them under wraps, our competition —\u00a0Life magazine —\u00a0might get wind of them and scoop us. We hoarded our ideas.<\/p>\n

Writing Tip From George Leonard<\/strong><\/h5>\n

George’s response took me by surprise. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Ideas are not in finite supply. The more you give away, the more you generate. That’s the way the universe works.”<\/p>\n

Those aren’t George’s exact words. But\u00a0they are\u00a0the way\u00a0I’ve remembered, interpreted and reinterpreted\u00a0them over the years.<\/p>\n

Following\u00a0George’s advice has been a useful practice. I’ve learned over time that\u00a0the more willing I am to help out other writers and share my ideas and (hard-won) expertise with them —\u00a0the more thoughts, ideas,\u00a0inspirations and writing tricks\u00a0(hot ones all!) pop into my mind.<\/p>\n

I think of it as the Tao of writing.<\/p>\n

Thanks, George. I’m going to keep on\u00a0thinking about you.<\/p>\n

More writing tips at “Noah Lukeman on the Colon, That Most Majestic of Punctuation Marks.”<\/a>\u00a0 Also,\u00a0 “Different From, Different Than — Which Is It?”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"George<\/a><\/p>\n

George Leonard, one of the founders of the human potential movement, and I both worked at Look magazine during the 1960s. We knew each other — that is to say, I knew who he was. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,52],"tags":[34,511,512,513,514,69],"class_list":["post-4389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-on-writing-reading","category-the-writing-room","tag-dont-miss","tag-george-leonard","tag-human-potential-movement","tag-look-magazine","tag-san-francisco","tag-writing-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}