Writing

Great essay in Salon by author and teacher Patrick Somerville. (Spoilers! Spoilers! Beware.) It’s tremendous, really, this essay, and I loved this graf: “In the end nothing matters but the work. You can’t control how it’s taken, and the act of telling a story always involves a gap. Sometimes confusion is the risk of ambiguity …

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” — Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012 from his website: “Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, …

Jean Craighead George… Maurice Sendak… and… Carlos Fuentes… Whenever my students and I were having a wild day, all we had to do was read “Where the Wild Things Are” and we pow! We calmed down right down. Big kids, little kids, the teachers and I… It was like magic. Someone gifted me little “Where …

(Photo by Steve Rawley) “Writers are a little below the clowns and a little above the trained seals.” — John Steinbeck “To me, in a novel everything is real, and I really don’t care where the author got it, you know? But for readers, that is important, I understand. They love to know how much …

(Photo by Steve Rawley) “If you become a writer you’ll be trying to describe the ‘thing’ all your life: and lucky if, out of dozens of books, one or two sentences, just for a moment, come near to getting it across.” — C.S. Lewis

(Photo by Steve Rawley) “Every word was once a poem.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

(Photo by Steve Rawley) Hellooooooooooo, cats and kittens, You know why I haven’t posted here lately? I cannot remember or find my password. Ever. It just took me an hour to track it down. Kind of redonkulous, no? Also it keeps snowing here, even though it’s March. Daffodils + snow. Cherry blossoms + snow. Sunshine …

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn…” — Jack Kerouac The author of On the Road was born …

Tomorrow, Sunday, we’re working on marketing. Yeah, marketing! (This is all new to me.) I think a lot of coffee and cookies will be required. Thank you, New Deal Media. (Our publishing house — taking care of business.) (By “ours” I mean, Steve’s — my husband’s — and mine.) Hope you are enjoying your spring. …