The Scribbling Novelist: I survived!!! Now I will conquer the world...

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

I survived!!! Now I will conquer the world...

So, my friend woke me up this morning with one simple message: "Slow and steady wins the race." I had been snoozing (oops) and had no idea what he was talking about. And then I looked outside and saw my world blanketed in glorious white snow. And then I saw the little slope to my driveway and felt a tad apprehensive. He offered to pick me up for work, and for a second I seriously contemplated that. And then I said no. I knew I couldn't put off driving in snow and other crappy weather forever. It's always the first step that's the hardest. So I drove, and I learned winter. Picture: My backyard--winter wonderland!

Here is what I learned:

What it feels like to have the tires skid (it happened a couple times and I was going about 5mph).
That I have a fancy indicator light on the console that tells me when my tires have lost traction.
That my car will beep loudly if I really start to skid.
That it's important to sweep snow off the back part of my roof before opening the door (or suffer a huge pile of snow in my trunk).
That I need to leave a half hour early when it's snowing (maybe even an hour).
That I should never leave my good gloves in the car.
That I should put on said gloves before sweeping snow and chipping ice (no matter how cold I think they are because they've been in the car all night, because snow is cold).
To sweep snow away from my body.
To zip my coat all the way so that I don't sweep snow down my chest again.
That slow and steady really does win the race.
That I hate not being able to see the road clearly.
That it is important to really de-snow, de-ice the windshield wipers.

I felt like a powerful bad ass driving. It's always an awesome feeling when you realize that you can do something, no matter how scary it is. Note to self.

2 comments:

angie said...: Love the list of things you learned.... coming from Iowa, I know how true they are!!

And by the way, my bad ass friend, if there is one thing I know about you... you can do whatever you set your mind to.

XOXOX
signed:
another bad ass :-); December 17, 2008 at 4:05 PM
jenny lynn said...: I'd say that's a productive day.; December 18, 2008 at 9:08 PM

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Writing Quotes

To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all. ~Lord Byron

Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, then for a few close friends, and then for money. ~Moliere

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ~Ray Bradbury

But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. ~Lord Byron

I write to discover what I think. ~Joan Didion

What is The Subconscious to every other man, in its creative aspect becomes, for writers, The Muse. ~Ray Bradbury

I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions. ~James Michener

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public. ~Winston Churchill

Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyze yourself, get rid of hostilities and frustrations in public, and get paid for it. ~Octavia Butler

Writers aren't exactly people.... they're a whole bunch of people trying to be one person. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind. ~Kahlil Gibran

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use. ~Ernest Hemingway

From "Byron" a BBC movie: Shelley to Byron:
"What makes you write?" Byron to Shelley: "My inability to prevent it."

Real writers can't sleep because there are stories batting around inside their heads. Real writers create characters they weep over, because they are so real. Real writers can't NOT write. I think you can make a person a better writer technically by having him/her attend workshops and creative writing programs… but I think that at the basal level, writers are born, not made. ~ Jodi Picoult

A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket. ~Charles Peguy

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~William Wordsworth

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

I'd rather be caught holding up a bank than stealing so much as a two-word phrase from another writer. ~Jack Smith

You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke. ~Arthur Polotnik

Pen names are masks that allow us to unmask ourselves. ~C. Astrid Weber

Being an author is having angels whisper in your ear - and devils, too. ~Graycie Harmon

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. ~Hart Crane

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will. ~Goethe

You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway. ~Junot Diaz