The Scribbling Novelist: December 2009

Sunday, December 27, 2009

I love feeling inspired!

So, today my family and I saw Avatar (XD or 3D, whatever it's called). I love leaving the movie theatre inspired so much that I just want to sit down and write novels. I think it's the creativity that inspires me--the total creation of a new world and a new race of people, maybe? I was blown away by this movie. It was absolutely stunning visually, but struck lots of emotional chords too (humor, tears). I highly recommend seeing this movie. The XD experience was pretty damn awesome, but I'm sure seeing it the more traditional (and cheaper!) way is just as pleasing. I'll probably see it the normal way if I go again (which is likely). James Cameron did an amazing job. (My rating: A+)

Anyway, so it's Christmas break--or winter break for the more PC-minded folks out there. I have a lot to do. I need to write a few short stories, get a move on my thesis project, and send out three stories (which still needed editing and revision). I'm looking forward to writing something new but scared too--new semester, new workshop group, new stressors. I hope everything goes well as this is going to be my last semester of classes. I still can't believe it--I'll be done in one year. I have no idea what comes next. I suppose I need to be done with school for good and really join the working world? I'd rather be a life-time student.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Wowzer

Man... talk about out of site out of mind. Or maybe it should be "too busy to blog," which is a complete excuse. I've been lazy. Considering that it's been about 2.5 months since I last blogged, I suppose I've been super lazy. The semester's winding down and I only have one semester of classes left, followed by the writing of my thesis. It's crazy how fast this journey has gone.

So, a few updates:

1. The semester went really well. I was super busy working three jobs and doing homework/assignments for three writing-intensive classes. I feel like I've grown as a writer, which is important in a program like this.

2. Still unpublished, but looking to send out a few more stories in early January.

And... that's it. See, nothing worth blogging about, but I'll try to get back into the swing of things.

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

Sunday, December 27, 2009

I love feeling inspired!

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Wowzer

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