Anna DeStefano's Blog, page 6

Happily Ever Now…

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” ~Winston Churchill

Now is our real, our chance to mark time as more than killing.

What of now will you remember always?

Make today a happy that stays.

Because…courage.

Because you lived.

Writers. Read…

“Change is inevitable. Progress is optional.” ~ Toni Robbins.

Should Barnes & Noble and punt their forever-failing self-publishing selves?

Read more HERE.

No, really, if you’re a writer, publisher, agent, editor, READ.

Piecing life together…

“Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.” ~ Bruce Lee

Heirloom quilts and Bruce Lee quotes? Leave it to a women’s fiction writer.

Quilts are strong, durable things once they’re pieced together. From variant bits of fabric, often discarded scrap, evolves a tapestry that can last decades, centuries. Like any other unique idea, any creation, any voice uniquely owned. And if you make a mistake making a quilt, making a life, making a vision come into being, you can always pull stitches out, see your next path more clearly, readjust and rework.

It’s hard work, leaving something so beautiful and enduring as your legacy. But look at the amazing thing you’ve done, once you admit what you know, what you don’t, what you’ve done wrong up ’til now, and make the decision to move onward.

I don’t craft quilts, though the gift is in my genes, women on both sides of my family craft working their entire lives. I craft words and thoughts and ideas into story. I miss and mess up more than I nail a concept at first pass. I flounder and struggle and prick my pride and damage my self-esteem and let the language the moment get the best of me, when the vision of the whole is what matters. And then I right myself. I admit my folly. I push on, forgiving what’s not perfect behind me and focusing on what I’ll discover next that will make the quilt of my new creation that much stronger.

Quilts are like families in my creating these days. They’re like life. They’re like living. Tiny bits of blood might be lost along the way, when you prick your finger and stumble through a stitch. If you look closely at heirloom quilts like the one above, you’ll often find tiny drops of blood from the crafter’s hand, forever marking the fabric with the effort and sacrifice that the creation took. But the glorious result trumps all. It sings. It will speak forever, if we protect and preserve what’s best from our time creating. What’s mistaken as much as what’s made fine.

So the tiny mistakes we make, the tiny bites time takes from us as our families grow, our pasts, our memories… How do we forgive them? How do we continue to hope? I surround myself with vintage things. Have for years. And I’m just beginning to understand why, as my heirloom quilt collection grows, as my stories grow, as my family grows.

Mistakes, not playing it safe and expecting perfection, are how we grow into the magical creations we’re meant to become.

The PERFECT Road Trip

“People don’t take trips. Trips take people.” ~ John Steinbeck

My ideal road trip?

Dreaming. Floating away. My best friend, my lover, my life at the wheel beside me.

I write and read best on the road, traveling and experiencing and loving the day for what it is, expecting nothing more. He knows that. He loves the journey and the release and the silence.

He loves me, so I am more as I create and experience the stories the road brings me. I am exactly what I need to be, with all that I need next to me

Where do you go when you get lost, and who do you take along for the ride?

Barnes & Noble breaking from Nook…

Barnes and & Noble spinning the Nook to its own business unit that will be separately traded going forward, and possibly sold to a private investor as soon as 2015?

Not unexpected, but still very sad.

Publishing is forever changing, and what works today might be the worst possible solution to tomorrow’s problem. We all know that.

But when a book selling giant like B&N (or Borders or Waldenbooks or, say, Harlequin or Penguin or…) can’t make the business work, no matter how hard they try (or stumble around, as the case has been much of the last five years of lightening-fast shifts in the book industry’s retail playing field), it’s time for writers to pause, take stock of their personal business models, and update every last thing we can to be forward-facing, rather than excessively reactive and behind the curve.

Be smart…

Don’t just be an ass. Aspire for more!

Teach your skeletons to dance…

“ If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you best take it out and teach it to dance.” ~ George Benard Shaw

Don’t hide the scars and the mistakes and the embarrassing things that make you uniquely you. Celebrate the chance to dance, to grow and change and be more. And to inspire others who need to dance as much as you do.

Be free, and be aware of how lucky you are to have the chance to make right another day and another choice and another beginning.

Loyalty makes you family

Blood makes you related. Loyalty make you family.

I dream of families that become, not perfection that arrives already formed. I read, I write, I create worlds where courage and facing the best and the worst together, as one, is family.

Community. Our strength. Attaching to anything less values your “self” meanly. It’s settling. It’s failure, when the threads slip and the weaker falls away.

No perfection, but trust.

No guarantees, but loyalty.

No winning, but together through it all.

We must…

“We must do that which we think we cannot…” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Who also tells us, “With the new day comes new strength…”

So let’s lean in and kick some ass today ;o)

Be brave enough…

“Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative place where no one else has ever been.” ~ Alan Alda