My Artist E-Circle is reading Julia Cameron's WALKING IN THE WORLD this winter. My favorite quote so far is this one:
“Our life is supposed to be our life and our art is supposed to be
something we do in it and with it. Our life must be larger than our art, it
must be the container that holds it….Rather than yearning to be full-time
artists, we might aspire to being full-time human beings…art is the overflow of
a heart filled with life.”
Live, Love, Laugh and Write!
Kathy-Diane
Monday, March 24, 2014
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Heading into the Unknown
I always equate writing a novel with feeling my way in a dark room. As 2014 begins, and it's time to get back to the novel in progress (which is about as appealing as crocheting earmuffs from dust balls), I love this thought:
When we walk to the edge of all the light we have and take the step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two things will happen.
There will be something solid for us to stand on or WE WILL BE TAUGHT TO FLY.
-Patrick Overton
Off to face the dreaded blank page!
Kathy-Diane
When we walk to the edge of all the light we have and take the step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two things will happen.
There will be something solid for us to stand on or WE WILL BE TAUGHT TO FLY.
-Patrick Overton
Off to face the dreaded blank page!
Kathy-Diane
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Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Failure
Opened my daily planner to find this quote:
"Try again. Fail again. Fail better." -Samuel Beckett
I've learned gut-wrenching lessons from every failure.
Steve Jobs said: "Stay hungry, stay foolish."
Better to be a happy failing fool than to have never had the courage to crack open the hollow shell of longing.
Never stop. Seriously. Just do not let yourself. Dream. BIG.
Friday, June 21, 2013
Why do we tell stories?
We've had a week of sun and each morning when I'm finished work, I head out to the deck with a pot of Chiai tea and a copy of "Writing asa Sacred Path" by Jill Jepson.While the sparrows eat the aphids on the golden hops vine and cardinals dart through the willows, I turn the pages and wonder over the gift of being able to tell stories.I don't why I'm a writer, but I'm pretty sure the obsession to put words on the page was tattooed in my DNA from day one. Here are a few abridged quotes:
Storytelling may seem too commonplace--even trivial--to be the key to a writer's spiritual path. But this is because , like all seemingly simple work...we fail to see how remarkable it is. When you try to analyze the feat of telling a story, it becomes an act of immense complexity and depth.
When you tell a story, you become what F. Scott Fitzgerald called, "part of the consciousness of our human race." Stories sculpt meaning; they shape how we think about the world; they provide framework for understanding our place in the Universe. Stories determine what we cherish, despise or ignore. Stories express the inexpressible.
Stories remind us that we are not separate, isolated individuals afloat in the cosmos, but part of the universal stream of life. Stories are gifts.
E. B. White: "As a writing man, or secretary, I have always felt charged with safekeeping of all unexpected items of worldly or unworldly enchantment, as though I might be personally held responsible if even a small one were to be lost."
Lofty thoughts, right? It's true that writing is excruciatingly hard work, exasperating, nerve wracking, ulcer producing and much much worse. But when the vision inside finally begins to come into focus on the page, the feeling of satisfaction warms to the core like a golden benediction and, like birthing a child, I instantly forget all that came before. I always go back for more.
May your pages be dusted with 'enchantment' today.
Happy Writing! Kathy-Diane
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Fling yourself!
Friday, February 15, 2013
Inspiration from RUMI
If your writing is calling you to a wounded place you don't have the courage to probe because it's too raw, honest and painful, contemplate these words from RUMI:
With this pain,
You are
digging a path
for yourself.
Trust the process. I find writing, like a GPS for the soul, often leads me to higher ground. Be brave!
Kathy-Diane
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
No more excuses?
Not so. In "The NightTime Novelist" Joseph Bates lists
authors who held day jobs and wrote at night: Franz Kafka worked at Workers
Accident Insurance in Prague...Stephen King taught high school English...John
Grisham worked as an attorney...William Faulkner did a stint as a
postmaster.
There's more: Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark
Twain, Charles Dickens, Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorn.
In fact, according to Bates, there are "only a handful
of writers working who make their living solely by their fiction."
Guess it's time to cross that excuse off the list. Take that
procrastination!
Happy writing! Kathy-Diane
"Roads Unravelling
sends the reader off the beaten path and down an honest dirt-road trek...a great piece
of Canadian literature." -Lesley Choyce
author of Clear Cold Morning
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