Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Quote of the Day

A deep, early love of poetry should be mandatory for all writers.

~Ann Patchett

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Pencils

It is said that John Steinbeck sharpened 24 pencils every morning to start his day. He went through 300 pencils in writing East of Eden; 60 a day in writing the Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row. But the most astonishing thing about pencils is that one pencil can write around 45,000 words!

Maybe I ought to switch from the computer keyboard to the pencil? The pencil appears to weild a power all its own.

Friday, April 8, 2011

Quote of the Day

"The writer has to take the most used, most familiar objects - nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs - ball them together and make them bounce, turn them a certain way and make people get into a romantic mood; and another way, into a bellicose mood. I'm most happy to be a writer." ~Maya Angelou

She also said: "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Quote of the Day

"Writing, for me, is an act of faith, a hope that I will discover what I mean by "truth." I also think of reading as an act of faith, a hope that I will discover something remarkable about ordinary life, about myself. And if the writer and the reader discover the same thing, if they have that connection, the act of faith has resulted in an act of magic. To me, that's the mystery and the wonder of both life and fiction - the connection between two individuals who discover in the end that they are more the same than they are different.

And if that doesn't happen, it's nobody's fault. There are still plenty of other books on the shelf. Choose what you like."

~ Amy Tan