Quote of the Day

“You ask whether I should continue to write if no one but myself would ever see my work. There is no reason to believe that anyone will ever see any more of my work…We are likely to give many incorrect explanations for what we do instinctively. It is very easy for me to say that I write poetry in order to formulate my ideas and to relate myself to the world. That is why I think I write it, though it may not be the right reason. That being so, I think that I should continue to write poetry whether or not anybody ever saw it, and certainly I write lots of it that nobody ever sees. We are all busy thinking things that nobody ever knows about.”-Wallace Stevens in a letter to editor Ronald Lane Latimer, from Letters of Wallace Stevens

We write because it’s what we do. We don’t write because it’s going to be published or win awards or get a million reviews. We write because we’re writers.

Quote of the Day

Shonda Rhimes

(ABC/Image Group LA) SHONDA RHIMES

“I don’t even know who a character is until I’ve seen how they handle adversity.”
Shonda Rhimes

I’m reading Rising Strong by Brené Brown right now, and she includes this quote from an interview she had with writer/producer Shonda Rhimes. Brown uses this quote to talk about how we all deal with adversity and how it can demonstrate who we are, but I think this is also a great quote for writers to keep in mind. We don’t know a character until we see them face a major challenge–and this is when the story has to start. It’s gotta be on the day when everything changes for them, when they face the biggest challenge of their lives. Otherwise, how do we really know them?

When do you feel like you really know your characters? Share in the comments!

Quote of the Day

“…have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”–Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet

Quote of the Day

Since we’re in Jewish Book Month, it feels right to share another great poem from The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492 by Peter Cole (translator). This one is by Meshullam DePiera, who was writing in the thirteenth century.

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I love the intensity here–it makes me feel both cautious and powerful. Words matter, people.

Quote of the Day

Sound wave
Art is not linear. Neither is the artist’s life, but we forget that. We try to “plan” our life and “plan” our career–as if we could…And yet experience teaches us that life, especially life in the arts, is as much about mystery as it is about mastery.”–Julia Cameron

Reading The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity and really digging it. It feels like a book you could just pick up and flip through whenever you needed it.

(image: Sound wave by betmari)

Quote of the Day

“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.”William Faulkner

A little inspiration for anyone writing today, especially those of you participating in NaNoWriMo. Forget what anyone else is doing or has done–focus on what you’re doing right now.

(Photograph by Carl Van Vechten, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Van Vechten Collection, reproduction number LOT 12735, no. 368.)