Wendell Berry

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

Wendell Berry

John Woodrow Cox

I cherish many tips that editors and colleagues have offered on craft, but I think the best lesson I’ve learned is the importance of empathy, both as a reporter and a writer.

John Woodrow Cox

https://advicetowriters.com/interviews/john-woodrow-cox

Make a Fool of Yourself

 When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap. 

CYNTHIA HEIMEL

Take a Break and Read

I think “writer’s block” is a natural part of the creative process for almost all writers. There are times when one is bursting with ideas and inspiration and all the necessary components—time, focus, etc.—are in place. But there are other times when one or more of those elements is missing and writing is more difficult as a result. I have written for long enough to accept these patterns, and to understand that the blocks are temporary, that eventually, if one sticks to a schedule and tries to write on a regular basis, something will eventually come. I think a lot of what people refer to as “writer’s block” is the period during which ideas gestate in the mind, when a story grows but isn’t necessarily being written in sentences on the page. But it’s all necessary, in the end. If I am feeling stuck or uninspired, I usually take a break and read. That always gets me going again.

JHUMPA LAHIRI

One Rule

Over the years, I’ve found one rule. It is the only one I give on those occasions when I talk about writing. A simple rule. If you tell yourself you are going to be at your desk tomorrow, you are by that declaration asking your unconscious to prepare the material. You are, in effect, contracting to pick up such valuables at a given time. Count on me, you are saying to a few forces below: I will be there to write.

NORMAN MAILER

Summer Solstice, Winter Solstice

I am relieved that the days will begin to move again. The stagnating daylight affects me emotionally. Happy Winter to friends in Brazil. Happy Summer to the Northern Hemisphere.

In the Southern Hemisphere, the June solstice marks the beginning of winter.

https://www.almanac.com/content/first-day-summer-summer-solstice

Gina Cohen

What’s Enough?

Walking the Fort Lauderdale street of very rich Las Olas Blvd, we pass many restaurants and over priced shops where the rich spend their  disposable money… the type of spending that only the wealthy have in such abundance.  I shake my head no at every price tag I find inside the shops and restaurant menus and wonder just how much you have to have before it becomes satisfyingly enough.  With these thoughts I pass 2 homeless people both sleeping on the sidewalk at noon. They each have laid there cardboard boxes under them to protect themselves from the Florida heat that bakes the sidewalks. The dichotomy between the wealth of the inside and the dearth of the outside is staggering. So much abundance for some alongside so much nothing for others makes me wonder what actually brings happiness.  Buying more than you need or having only what is necessary. For the 2 homeless ones a cardboard box to lay on is a blessing. For those in the shops and restaurants nothing can bring happiness but for the money that is never enough.

-Gina Cohen

Two Pats of Butter

She signed onto a home delivery meal kit service. Each week she would tell us about the food dropped at her door. A box would arrive with one lemon, 2 pats of butter, a dixie cup of grain to boil with salt and a few wilted leaves of dandelion, and a steak. You could buy these things at the store and make it yourself I thought. One day she waited at the door until well past dark for the delivery person who had gotten lost. "We had to order a tuna sandwich from the 24 hour diner," she said. I was puzzled. Here were two adults fully capable with multiple cars and 2 homes. Had they never made food for themselves? Perhaps this was their secret to slenderness, never keeping food in the pantry or fridge. This is not the first person I've known to do this, to support their deprivation with a ridiculous luxury.

Making Vanilla

We purchased vanilla beans to soak in vodka which we have not purchased yet. My YMCA lifeguard's mom did this over the winter and the results were spectacular, the best vanilla in the world. It has to sit from 3 to 6 months in the dark. Perhaps I should start on the SUMMER SOSTICE and unscrew the cap on the WINTER SOLSTICE. Solstice vanilla!!

I have been saving Gold's Horseradish jars because I think they are a beautiful shape with a gorgeous label. I might use these for my vanilla making. The jars should be tinted or kept in the dark. I will keep them in the dark.

We use a lot of vanilla because I bake a batch of granola every 2 weeks.

Be sure to wash the jars and take the cardboard out of the caps and soak the lids, and to get rid of the horseradish scent.

The Swimmer by John Cheever

https://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2012/05/swimmer.html

Grilled Fennel

https://www.shelovesbiscotti.com/grilled-fennel-recipe/

Judy Blume

No one can teach you exactly how to write. Each person approaches creative writing differently. Every writer has his or her own method. I usually have a character or story idea inside my head for a long time (sometimes years) before I actually begin. I know where I'm starting and where I'm going but I never know what's going to happen in the middle or if the ending will be what I imagined on the day I began to write. It's the surprise that makes writing exciting for me. Other writers know everything before they begin. They make detailed outlines or have it all worked out in their heads before they put a word on paper. There is no right way or wrong way. There are a hundred different ways to tell the same story. Whatever works for you is okay.

JUDY BLUME

Alice McDermott

We're all there trying to make the story, novel, or chapter as good as it can be. It's a constant struggle to get it down, get it clear, and understand that your intentions are the same, whether you're an undergraduate writing a short story or a writer with seven published novels. The continually reassuring thing is that we're all novices when we start a new work.

ALICE McDERMOTT

Don Roff

“Regarding the creative: never assume you're the master, only the student. Your audience will determine if you're masterful.”

― Don Roff

Summer Solstice

Solstice comes from the Latin words sol, meaning Sun and sistere, meaning to come to a stop or stand still. On the day of the June solstice, the Sun reaches its northernmost position, as seen from the Earth. At that moment, its zenith does not move north or south as during most other days of the year, but it stands still at the Tropic of Cancer. It then reverses its direction and starts moving south again.

The opposite happens during the December solstice. Then, the Sun reaches its southernmost position in the sky - Tropic of Capricorn - stands still, and then reverses its direction towards the north.

https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/facts-about-june-solstice.html

Summer solstice 2021 in Northern Hemisphere will be at 11:31 PM on

Sunday

,

June 20

All times are in Eastern Time.

Dava Sobel

 “Time is to clock as mind is to brain. The clock or watch somehow contains the time. And yet time refuses to be bottled up like a genie stuffed in a lamp. Whether it flows as sand or turns on wheels within wheels, time escapes irretrievably, while we watch. Even when the bulbs of the hourglass shatter, when darkness withholds the shadow from the sundial, when the mainspring winds down so far that the clock hands hold still as death, time itself keeps on. The most we can hope a watch to do is mark that progress. And since time sets its own tempo, like a heartbeat or an ebb tide, timepieces don't really keep time. They just keep up with it, if they're able.”
― Dava Sobel, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time

Denis Johnson

He lived in the woods in northern Idaho, at the top of the stovepipe, near the Canadian border. He had guns and books and a Corvette and an amused wife, Cindy, whom he clung to like a mast in a stormy sea. I think he kept himself out of society because he was too appealing. He captivated people with his humor and brilliance, but adulation was another form of intoxication that he fiercely avoided.

Denis said that he never read his reviews, although he was one of America’s most acclaimed writers. While we were in Russia, his novel “The Name of the World” got a front-page review in the Times Book Review, by Robert Stone. When Denis’s editor called to give him the news, he told me, “I had to read my Bible to calm down.” And that was a good review. He said he stopped reading reviews when his friends began calling him at six in the morning, warning him not to read an indifferent notice in the Times. Each of his friends quoted just enough of the review that Denis felt like he had read it anyway. “A bad review is like one of those worms in the Amazon that swims up your penis,” he told me. “If you read it, you can’t get it out, somehow.”

Denis had a voice that was both lyrical and brutal, which sometimes seemed at odds with his buoyant personality. When I confided that I was anxious about writing a novel, worrying that I didn’t know where it was headed, Denis said that that wasn’t a problem. “You get in your teacup and take your oar and strike off for Australia,” he said, “and if you wind up in Japan, you’re ecstatic.”

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/remembering-denis-johnson

Ezra Klein

For the most part, America finds the money to pay for the things it values. In recent decades, and despite deep gridlock in Washington, we have spent trillions of dollars on wars in the Middle East and tax cuts for the wealthy. We have also spent trillions of dollars on health insurance subsidies and coronavirus relief. It is in our power to wipe out poverty. It simply isn’t among our priorities.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/opinion/stimulus-unemployment-republicans-poverty.html

Anne Lamott

I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do — the actual act of writing — turns out to be the best part. It’s like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward. 

ANNE LAMOTT

Rustic Beauty

I laughed when I saw this new place name on Park Avenue in Woonsocket: The Rustic Beauty Barn Salon It reminds me of  this story. Many years ago we were driving through Vermont and saw a sign hanging out in front of a farm house. HAY and HAIRDOS. So funny, we never forgot it.