No more excuses?

 

As writers, we'll often find any old excuse to delay putting pen to page. When you work at a desk job, one excuse that seems full proof is that you just can't squeeze in the time.

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

 

For Writing and Life

 

From Sylvia Fraser's "The Green Labyrinth:

"Perform in humility, just as birds accept that air is their vehicle."

Reading this quote from an Amazonian shaman, got me pondering: As a writer, what is my vehicle?

There is a mystery, something larger, more expansive and powerful than myself that sustains my imagination, sparks my creativity, transforms words into wonder when they bloom on the page...

I don't need to dissect this unknown, quantify it or squash it into a neatly labelled box.

I only need to put my pen to the page.....marvel with rising joy and rumbling fear...and be always, bone-deep, astonished and grateful.  

The Tao

On of my favorite verses from Wayne Dyer's "Living the Wisdom of the Tao:"

6th Verse

 

The spirit that never dies

is called the mysterious feminine.

Although she becomes the whole universe,

her immaculate purity is never lost.

Although she assumes countless forms,

her true identity remains intact.

The gateway to the mysterious female

is called the root of creation.

Listen to her voice,

hear it echo through creation.

Without fail, she reveals her presence.

Without fail, she brings us to our own perfection.

Although it is invisible, it endures;

it will never end.

"I pay attention to my inner callings and apply my uniqueness to everything I undertake."