Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say." — C. S. Lewis



Don't you wish it happend this way all the time?






I recently heard about an author who often wrote blindfolded. According to him, his hands were rarely in the wrong position on the keyboard so gobbledy-gook was not an issue.




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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"A word after a word after a word is power."
— Margaret Atwood

So what are you waiting for?



It's all better with friends.

Human Trafficking

In doing research for my next book, I came across this wonderful organization.

While NOMI focuses on women in India and Cambodia, it's important for those of us in the US to truly understand that trafficking for sex and labor is in our own backyard. Young girls are being enslaved in this country. And where, do you imagine, will many (if not most) of the girls be marketed? What country's citizens have the financial ability to create and pay for the demand?



I tried unsuccessfully to post a video, but you can click HERE to watch.

It's all better with friends

Wednesday Wisdom for Writer and Those Who Love Them

I recently finished reading KINDRED by Octavia E. Butler. Although my list of her quotes doesn't tie this one to KINDRED, I have to think it was.


"I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people."

She was an amazing author, and KINDRED was an amazing book.




It's all better with friends.

OT: Slavery to Mass Incarceration

This is off topic, but something that's important to me. I hope you take a few minutes (less than six) to look at this video from the Equal Justice Initiative.



How did you look at the news today? How will you look at it tomorrow? How quickly are we evolving and how firmly are we holding on to the dysfunctional and evil ideas of our past?

Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

I'm reading KINDRED by Octavia E. Butler right now and am enthralled. You'll likely read a few quotes from Ms. Butler in the near future.

"You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence." —Octavia E. Butler


My plan for the week is to back up and get a running start on the manuscript I'm currently writing. I'm hoping to find something fresh and exciting. In other words, I'm counting on persistence paying off in a measurable way.

Keeping the faith is part of the process, right?

(A free copy of THE SACRIFICE to the first commenter who gets the significance of the photo.)



It's all better with friends.

Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair—the sense that you can never completely put on the page what's in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page." —Stephen King



This is pretty much the guts of it.


It's all better with friends.