The Scribbling Novelist: New Semester

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

New Semester

Yay for inauguration day! I was very happy to be cuddled up in bed to watch President Obama take the oath of office.

So... my first class of the second semester starts in a few hours. I have yet to decide if I'm excited for this semester or not. I feel like I'm leaning toward the "not" for some reason. Probably because I didn't write very much during the break like I had planned. Another goal failed. Well... maybe not, I did write ten pages, so that's something. I think I need the pressure of the program to actually work on things. Anyway... one class today and two more classes tomorrow and then my school week is done.

We'll see if my excitement for this semester perks later. Maybe it will if I can sell my stupid grammar books back today.

6 comments:

margosita said...: I know what you mean. I need the structure of school to keep me writing, too.

I hope the excitement sneaks up on you!; January 20, 2009 at 1:58 PM
Unknown said...: 10 pages ... in my world that is a whole story. :)

best of luck; January 20, 2009 at 4:06 PM
Tanya said...: Eileen... I've been told for the past semester that I should be shooting for 10-15 page stories. I can't even imagine how people do that and do it well. I just need to get out of this funky mindset that I have.; January 20, 2009 at 7:36 PM
Becca said...: T-Ann,

You are amazing. I don't even feel like this semester is real yet. Everything feels a little surreal. Like maybe I actually DID graduate with Sara and Jessie but don't realize it yet. That's how I FEEL.; January 21, 2009 at 11:18 PM
Unknown said...: True ... the last story I turned in was 18 and needs probably 6-8 pages more. The only thing that saves it from being a monster is an abundance of dialog.; January 22, 2009 at 9:18 AM
Amy K. said...: Back already?!? Man, I wish I was back. My semester doesn't start until February 7. That feels so far away. So. Far. Away.; January 24, 2009 at 11:08 PM

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

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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

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