“The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.”
― Harlan Ellison, Strange Wine

You must never be afraid to go there. Harlan Ellison

 “The passion for revenge should never blind you to the pragmatics of the situation. There are some people who are so blighted by their past, so warped by experience and the pull of that silken cord, that they never free themselves of the shadows that live in the time machine...

And if there is a kind thought due them, it may be found contained in the words of the late Gerald Kersh, who wrote:"... there are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armour, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment.”
― Harlan Ellison, The Essential Ellison: A 50 Year Retrospective

 “Now begin in the middle, and later learn the beginning; the end will take care of itself.”
― Harlan Ellison

I talk about the things people have always talked about in stories: pain, hate, truth, courage, destiny, friendship, responsibility, growing old, growing up, falling in love, all of these things. What I try to write about are the darkest things in the soul, the mortal dreads. I try to go into those places in me that contain the cauldrous. I want to dip up the fire, and I want to put it on paper. The closer I get to the burning core of my being, the things which are most painful to me, the better is my work.

HARLAN ELLISON

 

 Happiness is a quality of the soul…not a function of one’s material circumstances.

 Aristotle

 "... it is interesting to note how any randomly chosen word can function as a magic word to unearth those fields of memory that had been resting under the dust of time."

 Gianni Rodari The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories p37

The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories by Gianni Rodari

An experiment in invention is a beautiful thing when children have fun with it even if rules get broken in the process, because it is the children themselves who are the goal.

 Gianni Rodari The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories p107

 “Reality can be entered through the main door or it can be slipped into through a window, which is much more fun.”
― Gianni Rodari, The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories

For the past forty-seven years I have devoted most of my time and energy to writing. It has been a vocation in the original sense of the word, that is a religious calling, one I was helpless to deny. For me writing has never been about self-expression. Writing has been about tending the spirit and making real the soul.
- Julius Lester

 To write and not tell the truth? That would be death for any writer. But more, it would be death to the imagination. And if the imagination dies, what would happen to the souls of children?
- Julius Lester

Hashtag Muffins in a Waffle Iron

I didn't want to heat up the kitchen so I made my bran muffin batter and made small hashtag waffles.

Eloise walked an old familiar route with her dog and noticed many of the old and gorgeous trees had been taken down. It's the ogre of Blackridge Massachusetts scaring people into removing their trees. 

Witches Salad: Orange Green Purple

Shredded carrots, frozen peas, chopped red onion, Adobo seasoning, red wine vinegar, olive oil.

Artist peers often become our chosen family because they share a unique creative language and understand the specific vulnerabilities, obsessions, and struggles that come with a dedicated practice.

Writers are solitaries by vocation and necessity. I sometimes think the test is not so much talent, which is not as rare as people think, but purpose or vocation, which manifests in part as the ability to endure a lot of solitude and keep working. Before writers are writers they are readers, living in books, through books, in the lives of others that are also the heads of others, in that act that is so intimate and yet so alone.

REBECCA SOLNIT

 I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become. Carl Jung

A narrative is like a room on whose walls a number of false doors have been painted; while within the narrative, we have many apparent choices of exit, but when the author leads us to one particular door, we know it is the right one because it opens.

JOHN UPDIKE

From the time I was nine or 10, it was a toss-up whether I was going to be a writer or a painter, and I discovered by the time I was 16 or 17 that paints cost too much money, so I became a writer because you could be a writer with a pencil and a penny notebook. Frank O’Connor

Pecking Order

The fish eyes and cheeks were a delicacy saved as an honor for the chefs in his country. Yet when Andrew made his signature sesame noodles dish it was ignored by his American sisters-in-law. Andrew ran a restaurant for over forty years, and no matter what he brought to the holiday table they snubbed him, refused to taste his creations. In their minds they were the only ones who could bake and cook.