Rachael Herron's Blog, page 43

Doing It Is Better Than Not

I'm still thinking a lot about this whole meditation thing. I'm not willing to go all religious about it, but it sure has been nice to practice it every day. (I'll reiterate again with no paid compensation, etc -- I'm using Headspace to learn how to meditate. It's been ideal, making it simple. Simple doesn't preclude educational, and I've learned SO MUCH.)

This just in  -  Meditation is like writing is like knitting.

1. If you just do it, it gets done. So simple, right? The secret of everything. Right here. And yet sometimes, SO HARD.

2. A little bit every day adds up. Meditating every day has made all the difference. Even if I'm just doing it at the end of the day to help myself drift off, it's taught me how to relax. I've never, ever known how to do that before. (Oh, holy cow. I just checked in with myself, and I was literally holding my breath as I typed that, hunched into a ball over the computer. I often do that. Most of the time I don't notice it. But just now I relaxed. I let my muscles unknot and my facial expression soften and WOW, in the time it took me to type that last sentence, my shoulders knotted up and I had to relax them again. This relaxing could be a full-time job. Wait. How do I get that job?) 

3. On the days it's bad, it's still pretty damn good. On bad meditation days, your brain goes WHAT THE HELL IS THAT WHAT IS THAT NOISE DID THE CAT JUST THROW UP OMG DOG STOP BARKING I HAVE AN ITCH ON MY EYEBROW I MIGHT DIE WHO ARE YOU WHEN DO I GET TO STOP. But you know what? Afterward, you'll feel better, even if only incrementally. On bad knitting days, the yarn balks and you swear at it and you end up with twenty percent fewer stitches than you had at the beginning. But you've still touched something that no one else could make. And on bad writing days, you write the worst words in the world, words that are pure dreck or worse, words that are the scummy film that grows on dreck under rotting porches. 

But this fact remains: The days that you relax and sit in the now for a few minutes, the days that you touch something you're physically bringing into existence, and the days that you get your thoughts onto a page are way better than the days you don't. 

Reading: 

I'm reading a FANTASTIC book right now called Zen Confidential: Confessions of a Wayward Monk. It's the memoir of a Zen monk who writes from where reality lives, not from a soft tussock on a blessed mountain. I have no interest in pursuing Zen Buddhism, because I'm not that hardcore (aughhh -- those very words inspire this response inside me ---> YES I AM WATCH ME) but I'm fascinated by this guy and his essays. The memoirs I love (and the one I tried to write) are the ones that say something simple and obvious but then wade neck-deep into the embarrassment and shame that come from being human on any given Tuesday. I like watching memoirists hold up the darkest parts of themselves and own them. Shame is the most interesting human feeling, I think, and it's unique in that upon airing in public, it disappears. Shozen Jack Haubner goes there, and then he crawls underneath and inside of there and rolls around in ecstatic agony. It's wonderful. 

Here's a taste of it for you, from the section in which he goes home to his parents' house for his once-yearly vacation from the monastery: 

I dine. I dine again. I dine thrice. Then, pleasantly nauseated, I collapse on the leather La-Z-Boy and flick on a flat-screen TV the width of an RV windshield. Naturally, it is tuned to Fox News. My parents are the Fox News constituency. They voted for G.W. Bush, had four years to think about it, and then went ahead and voted for him again. 

Just hearing the voices of the Fox telegogues makes my skin crawl. My father, not content with leaving work at the shop, has hung guns from every wall in the house--ancient guns, modern guns, guns for dropping rhinoceroses or a fleeing Navajo squaw at a hundred yards. I consider pulling one down and silencing forever this TV, which is as large and loud as a helipad, its sound waves rippling my cheeks like air blast from propeller blades. 

My father enters the room. I am sitting in his chair, which fact I am reminded of by his shadow as he hovers over me silently. I repair to the couch as Dad navigates our TV watching from Fox to a dramatic medical reenactment and then roots for a seventeen-inch tapeworm as it makes its dramatically reenacted black-and-white exit from the tastefully blurred behind of the woman offscreen, who is shrieking "Ain' no one told me my mama's home cookin' gonna lead to this!" her voice competing with the one ricocheting throughout my skull: Why-in-the-HELL did I come back home again?!

The whole book is like this. I highly recommend it, though I'm only half-way through.

I'm also reading The Light Between Oceans. I'm DYING, it's so good. I'm in my favorite reading spot, which is smack-dab in the middle of reading a great memoir and a great novel. I'm also smack-dab in the middle of writing my next novel, which is ALSO my favorite place to be, though it's not quite as much fun as lying in the tub reading someone else's hard work. (Okay, I'm lying. It's way more fun.) 

Excerpt

Just for you, a little excerpt from Pack Up the Moon to tempt your palate:

 

            Once Nolan was back on the couch, he just did one more thing before he closed the laptop for the night. Google Maps came up, and he typed in the address on Ronada Avenue. He switched to street view. For twenty, maybe thirty seconds he let his eyes rest on the house he still thought of as his sometimes, before he remembered he’d been removed from the deed. The front door, almost but not quite hidden by the deep garden, was antique solid-core mahogany, intricately carved. He’d found it at the overpriced salvage yard in the industrial west end of Berkeley, and Kate—only ever frugal on accident—had been shocked at the price.

            “It’s just a door. It has to be able to stand up to a knock. Why on earth would we pay that for a door? Let’s take a trip or something instead.”

            But for once, he hadn’t justified it. Kate had done the bulk of the interior design at their house, even though he was the one who maintained it, picking up behind her as she spun through the rooms as if she were the wind. He’d only balked once, when she wanted to paint the ceilings in the rooms different colors. Reds, oranges, yellows—that was one thing when they were on the walls. A green ceiling was where he drew the line. But everything else she could have. She could choose.

            The door, though, was for him. It made the house sturdy. It stood as protection. Fortification. Not from anything, not really. Just sound. Safe. They were the only people on their street, probably in all of the East Bay who didn’t have an iron security door. Why would he get one of those? It would take a battering ram to splinter theirs.

            And it was still there. At least, in the most recent satellite images, it was. And Kate’s  green Saab still sitting there in the driveway.

            He zoomed in one more notch. Right now, Kate was in that house. Ten miles away. Somewhere in there, maybe in the living room, reading… A second later, he felt like a stalker, as if at any moment he’d see Kate as she put the can on the curb—it was Sunday, trash came on Monday. Nolan wondered idly how many times Kate had forgotten to take the trash out since he’d been gone. Twenty times? Thirty? Once he’d stopped putting the can out on the street entirely just to see if she’d notice. “This is so damn full. How can we have made so much trash in a week?” she’d said, trying to smash the kitchen bag into the big bin. She said it for three weeks in a row until a raccoon found its way in the open top. Nolan had spent an hour on the front lawn, picking up old meat wrappers and used Kleenex as his penance. It was nice, to have that fight. To fight about something that, in the end, didn’t matter in the slightest.

            He’d have sold the house if he were her. Apart from that door—and her—there was nothing at that address he needed anymore.

            Nolan shut the computer and closed his eyes. When they’d had Robin, after he’d realized the depth of the love he possessed for his beautiful blue-eyed boy, he’d forgotten the first rule of corporate finance, the mantra he’d repeated to his clients: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. When it smashes, it’s a fucking nightmare.

 

Preorder links to the left. Preorder and get a free bookplate, just email me!  

Bookplates!

An exhausting day with many, many words written, some of which I will probably end up keeping, woot! I love these late fall days, where the cold is actually a thing, and every time you step outside, you can smell woodsmoke, even in a metropolis like Oakland where it's mostly illegal to burn wood (I say mostly because NO ONE polices that. Go ahead. I won't tell on you. I want to sniff it). 

I would like, someday, to be in the snow. In a cabin, or a snug house, watching snow drift down while I knitted or wrote. (I've been reading May Sarton's Journal of a Solitude, and it shows.) Preferably Lala would be in the kitchen cooking for me or, even better, drawing while our snow-cabana boy cooked for both of us! Doesn't that sound wonderful? 

In my exhausted snowless day, though, I had a really good mail day that you should know about. 

I got this scarf WHICH I LOVE: 

It's from Storiarts, and it's from Little Women, a book I could probably read backward, sentence by sentence, and still love. (The artist makes Anne ones! But I'm just as fond of Jo.) Also, it's not knitted out of wool, which means maybe I'll be able to wear it in this temperate clime.

And I got BOOKPLATES! (Writers, I told you I would report back on this. I am. You should do this.) 

They're awesome. 

 

Signed Bookplates

The tan one on the left is for the American version of Pack Up the Moon, and the green one goes with the Australia/New Zealand version. And you can have either signed (or both! because I'm nice) just for preordering a copy of it (see left sidebar for links). Just shoot me an email at yarnagogo at gmail telling me you've preordered, with your mailing address, and I'll get it to you! You'll probably get several bookmarks, too, because I've got LOTS of those.

For those curious, they're from Moo. They're the rectangular stickers, and they make great, high quality inexpensive bookplates. I just created the images in Photoshop and dragged and dropped them in. ("Just!" As if learning Photoshop has been easy! It hasn't! But don't I sound cool?) 

Okay. I'm going to drink a glass of wine and cook some pork chops for Lala because she'll be home soon and we have neither cabana boy nor snow. But we have fun. 

(And THANK YOU, those of you who already love the Eliza Carpenter story (see prior post). I'm thrilled and seriously, honestly humbled by your reaction.) 

(OMG! I forgot to tell you about my new Ravelry group! You want to be in it! Because we hang out and chat! It's fun!) 

* Holy wow. Just heard from Mandy: "I preordered pack up the moon awhile back when you first posted, but here's the rub! It's a kindle version because I read those a bunch! So a bookplate is a pretty waste of postage for me! But I would LOVE if you would use the postage on a Christmas card for a soldier in honor of my brother in law who deployedyesterday!"

Link: American Red Cross Holiday Mail

I will do this, instead, if you don't want the bookplate because you're preordering in e-version. What a lovely thing. 

Eliza's Home

I wrote Eliza Carpenter's love story. 

This novella is really special to me. Eliza Carpenter has been present in all the Cypress Hollow novels, but I had to travel back to 1940s Cypress Hollow to find out how she met Joshua. 

Eliza is much smarter than I am. She always has been. Those quotes at the top of the chapters? If they don't come from Eliza,  I have no idea where they come from, because half the time when I reread them I have no memory of writing them. 

It was a total joy to hang out with her. (Her story, truthfully, surprised me. I didn't know her backstory until she told me, and I'm glad I get to tell you.) 

ELIZA'S HOME is available here:

Paper | Kindle | Nook | Kobo | iBooks

UK: Paper | Kindle

AU/NZ:  Paper | Kindle 
(with a darling different cover -- don't both of the covers look a little Anne-ish?)

 (If a link above is not live, then it's coming within a day or two -- some vendors are slower than others to catch up.) 

(Oh, my gosh, I'm SO EXCITED!) 

On Grief

I know, two posts in one week! Alert the media! (Wait. Am I part of the media? I might be, tangentially, now that I think of it. Okay, consider me alerted.) 

I had dental work today and I'm almost recovered from the meds I took this morning. I can't talk (ow) but it's raining and I'm drinking tea. I was supposed to record a podcast for TapGurlKnits, but it wouldn't be kind to anyone involved, including the listener. Holly Cole is playing on the stereo (tell me you love her, too) and I'm not being sad about Digit. 

That's the thing. 

I can't be sad about Digit. (See two posts below, if you're not sure what I mean.) 

Here I would be drawn to insert that standard, expected apologetic clause (I know, he was just a cat, not like a person, not my child, but it still hurts, etc.) but I don't have to apologize to YOU, darling reader, because you are smart enough to know that sometimes animals are more important than people. Period. 

That's not my point. 

My point is that I do a weird thing with grief that I've beaten myself up over in the past, and it's not only time for me to let it go, but it's normal and it's worth writing about, in case you or someone else you know does it, too. 

I go numb after someone I loves dies. 

Not a little bit numb. A lot numb. I've teared up a couple of times, but I haven't cried since the day Digit died. 

When my little mama died? I cried, yes, that day. I cried a lot that night. Then I went totally numb, and that terrifying feeling lasted for days. It broke at the funeral, and then it came back and lasted for not weeks but months.

It made me wonder if I'd actually loved her.

I thought I had. I thought I'd loved her more than anything. Why, then, could I talk about her death with nothing more in my heart than a vague unease? I made jokes. "My mother died, let me have the last piece of bacon." I could even think about her being dead, and I only felt a dull throb of cotton-padded nothing. 

But this: it's normal. It's part of grief. It just IS. That's what I didn't know then. 

The day after Digit died, Lala texted me to say she'd left a little treat for me in the freezer. I texted back, "IS IT DIGIT?" And I laughed about it (because come on, that's funny).

I laughed because I'd already moved firmly into the numbness. 

I've been happy to realize that he was the one peeing over the lip of the cat box, requiring me to clean up after it constantly. I don't have to do that now! I'm pleased we won't have to buy the expensive cat food that I've shelled out for for more than a decade. When my mom died, there was more than a little part of me relieved that I'd never have to see her in a nursing home. (What is THAT?) And now there's a strange amount of relief that after I get through this loss, I won't have to go through it again (good god, I've already grieved this cat once. It's already annoying I have to do it again.)

And that's the problem. I'm goal-oriented. I would like to feel the pain now and move through it. I can handle pain. I know what to do with it. This numbness, as normal as it is? It's dumb. I hate it. I want to cry and I can't, and that pisses me off, almost as much as Digit used to when he would climb the leg of my jeans to get to my egg plate. (This morning, I had a second of feeling sad when I ate my eggs without him, and I leaned into. Maybe I'll cry now! But nope. I had nothin'.) 

But hell. This is me accepting it. Accepting that I am NOT callous and mean and small-spirited and unable to love. Although it feels counterintuitive, this stubborn numbness is proof that I am the opposite. 

I loved that jerk. And he knew it. Tears don't prove anything, but even with all this said, I'm looking forward to when I find them again. 

2013 Night of Writing Dangerously

The Night of Writing Dangerously is Prom for writers. (And it funds the Youth Writing Program for NaNoWriMo, what could be better?) 

It really is. 

It's six HOURS of writing, fueled by: caffeine, sugar, and alcohol. If at any point you feel weak, change your consumption order and write some more. If your hands get tired, stretch your fingers and write some more. Just. Keep. Writing. 

Okay, that's what you SHOULD do, but I also tend to be a Flitter. I flit from bar to table to bathroom to photo area and back to table. Even with all the flitting I did, though, I still got two chapters written (3000 words), so huzzah for productivity! 

It is, literally, my favorite night of the year. It's heaven. And this year, some of my favorite people of ALL came. 

Veronica Wolff, sister Bethany, me, Kristin Miller, AJ Larrieu, Gigi Pandian, and Shannon Monroe! 

This is me and Bethany grinning at our fairy godmother, whoever she is. Thank you for giving this to us. I feel like I still have my wings on, and my glass slippers never even got too tight! (When I took them off at home? Ouch. Another matter.) 

I love this shot of Veronica. Seriously, she's as smokin' hot in light drag like this as she is in a little black dress. 

Bethany looks on approvingly as I selfie. 

Oh, my god, this. Every writer got a short story from a 4th grader. This was mine. It says, "A boy who got lost in the woods. He tumbles on a secret passage to another world. Then he has to fight a villan who is trying to hipnotize the bay area." 

THAT'S A GOOD STORY, YO. 

Gigi's card, though? She had an amazing one. From memory, it said something very close to: "I don't know what I'm going to write. I don't know how it ends. I'm going to put in a lot of action." 

That's my current work-in-progress, summed up right there. 

I'm still kind of floating on air today. I'm the luckiest writer in the world, I really, really am. (And dearest Fairy Godmother, you might like to know that I heard through the NaNo grapevine that someone got wind of what you did and sent someone else who couldn't have gone otherwise, so your kindness to us is making ripples out there. xoxox.) 

Digit, Actually Dead This Time

Digit was the worst cat ever. He arrived as a tiny little jerk. 

 

Even in that picture, he’s probably about to scratch me.  

He fell in love with me, though, instantly. I was mama, since he was too young to leave his own who’d abandoned him under a house in San Francisco, but he was never my “fur baby.” I didn’t call him my son. No offense to those who call their pets that—it’s lovely. It just wasn’t the way we rolled. We were bachelors together in that little mother-in-law hovel that clung to the hill in east Oakland. We both went out at night and came back tore up. I’d have careless cigarette burns in my clothing, and he’d have foxtails and other cats’ claws stuck in his. 

 

We bunked together. Happily. He nuzzled under my chin and shoved his paw in mine, using his claws to get closer if he needed to. He attacked visitors with creativity and enthusiasm, clawing his way up their jeans and over their shoulders to the sound of their curses. He drew blood first and often. I told visitors, “Don’t touch the cat, I mean it.” Then if they did that silly, “Oh, all cats love me, watch,” I never felt sorry for them and handed out bandages. 

My neighbors, when we moved to a tonier section of Oakland, hated my emeffing cat. They demanded recompense for Digit chasing their cat into their house and beating the hell out of her—and I was about to pay their vet bill until I saw their cat beat the hell out of Digit in my yard, so we agreed to pay our own bills.  

Digit saw me through six relationships. He didn’t care for most of the people I dated, but he loved Lala. Hated her dogs, though. Hated. He spent years thinking about ways to decapitate Harriet in her sleep, but Harriet could hold her own. He also hated me for a while, for introducing such low-bred animals into my life. He forgave all, however, when we got Clementine, a pit bull of his very own. For at least the first year that Clementine lived with us, all Digit had to do was breathe to make Clementine cower. Digit loved it. Nothing was better than punching Clementine and making her cry. It was fucking Disneyland. 

 

He cost me at least fifteen thousand dollars over the years, and that’s not including the five thousand the knitters raised for his care after he returned from the dead (first, he died. Then, three months later, I got schmittens. Then he came back from the dead. After that, there was a raffle that put him back together again. If you haven't read that story here or in my memoir, I'll let you have a minute). 

Fourteen years ago, I had him de-manned entirely, removing his penis because of a life-threatening disease. Last year, a vet told me soberly that, in fact, the cat I thought was male was actually female. I laughed my way out and I remain impressed with the remarkable job the first vet did. 

 

Because that cat was all male. He stood up to pee, his beer farts were terrible, and when he lost at poker we had to eat ramen for weeks. And he was my guy. I was his girl. We were each other's. We’ve been each other's since the very first moment. It was love at first sight for both of us, and tonight, as I held his paw as he drifted off, there was no one else in the whole world but him. 

Today's decision to let him go was the right decision. It was a terrible day, deciding. Lala called me at work this morning, and I was able to take vacation for the rest of the day.

I spent almost seven hours in bed today holding him as he slept like this.

By the time we got to the vet, he was almost all the way checked out, not even able to purr. Strangely, it was a relief to let him go.  

He was a jerk. A real, complete asshole. And he was MINE. 

My face hurts and my head aches. My eyes are almost swollen shut. I miss the hell out of that beast already and it’s gonna get worse, I bet, before it gets better. We have a lot of animals, yes. We still have three dogs and two cats left. And you know what? I like them all. I even love them.  

But I loved no one and nothing like I loved Digit. We came as a package deal, and for the first time in seventeen years, he’s not yelling at me, and I’m not yelling back.  

Lala has said for a while that his first name is Fuck Off. This is because of how many times a day one or the other of us said, “Fuck off, Digit.” Because he was a ridiculous, demanding jerk who tried to eat the food off our plates constantly. But he’s dying, I’d joke. 

Not a joke, I guess. 

Tonight, after we said our goodbyes, before the vet pushed the needle, I said, “Fuck off, Digit.” 

Lala said, “Fuck right off.” 

As we left, we saw the vet petting his body. 

 

Some cat. Fucking love of my life. 

Stars

Last night I went out with (as I think of her) my Young Writer friend. My favorite barista at my beloved but now defunct cafe, she has stars in her eyes about writing, and is applying to MFA programs all over the country. We ate sushi and talked about writing, and I remembered myself in her.

When I was 25--her age--I packed up my tiny Ford Festiva with its roller-skate wheels and headed to Mills for my MFA. I was going to light the world on fire with my prose. Or at least, I was going to write. And I lit a lot of things on fire, namely the cigarettes I was still smoking back then. I was giving myself two years in the ivory tower, two years to really focus on craft. 

Then, for those two years, I avoided writing as much as possible. I did the bare minimum, because that's what we do sometimes, when it comes to what we love most, right?

Artists don't draw. Musicians don't play. Writers don't write. If we write, we fail (because when we're learning something, DOING anything at all, we fail. Just part of the process). And as artists, we strive for perfection and failing is really not ideal. 

So we don't write. I managed my 150 pages of a terrible novel for my thesis. I took an amazing dialogue class in which we read a book famous for dialogue every week and then wrote a three page scene in the voice of that writer (that did more for my skill with dialogue than anything else). I took a poetry class which almost killed me. 

Then I graduated and spent the next ten years also avoiding failure by not writing. Not writing = safe! Not writing = dreaming about the perfect words you'd string together if you just had time.

What I didn't realize was this: 

Not writing was the biggest failure of all. 

No matter how spectacularly I screwed up in the writing itself (which I did! Still do! Spectacularly!), when I finally started to write everyday (thanks, NaNoWriMo 2006), I was succeeding! 

And seven years (JEESH!) later, I'm still writing, all the time. Every day. Even when I fail, I win.

The job has gotten harder the more I learn. A rank amateur says LOOK I WROTE A BOOK YOU SHOULD READ IT OMG -- a writer who's spent years actively learning how to craft emotion out of words says, Well, you don't have to read it. It's the best I could do but it's still not as good as Murakami. Maybe someday. *kicks rock* (Also known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.*)

I've been both of those people. (Admission: I've been both of those people this WEEK.) 

But I've changed my website a little bit because I want y'all to see that book up there to the left with its quotes and overview and all that because I'm proud of it and I'm excited for it.

Pack Up the Moon. It's literally the book of my heart, and it's available for preorder right now. I'll be releasing excerpts and reasons for you to preorder (gifts! prizes! kisses on the mouth if I see you IRL and you want one!) but the real truth is this: It's a good book. It will make you cry, and then--I hope--it will help heal you a little bit. 

I love the stars in my Young Writer friend's eyes. The funny thing is I still have them, too. 

* "The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average . . . Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding."

Winner! And Book Recommendations!

THANK YOU for the book reviews! I love that y'all like Cora's Heart as much as you do. The reviews and the emails are amazing and when I get one, I do a little spin in my chair. My chair is almost spun out, I'm telling you. Might need a new chair. 

Randomly drawn winner of $50 book certificate: Anna, who's been reading me for ages and is always the first person to ask me "When is it coming out in the UK?" (I love it when long-time readers win things. Don't forget to sign up for my mailing list to be on the random win list! Sometimes I just send a book I like to a random winner! I'll probably do that again next week!) 

What I've Been Reading:
Amazon links for convenience but check your local shop 

Everyday Hero: A Darling Bay Short Story - If you like my writing, you might like Lila Ashe's -- she writes small-town California firefighters, set in a place called Darling Bay which reminds me very much of Cypress Hollow. (Firefighter romance is funny to me because I see firefighters as loud little boys who never got over their fixation on fire engines. Lila seems to know them, though.) This was a funny very short story (free on most platforms!) that introduces the town a bit... (There's one whole book about a dispatcher! Oooh!)

 

The Husband's Secret - Liane Moriarty -  I'm about 70% done with this, and I love it. It hits all my buttons -- a slow, intent look at family life, a secret that blows up, and female characters fully explored and realized... I'm reading slowly to make this Australian gem last.

 

Love on Main Street - A bunch of people I know - It's possible that I and my friends made up a fictional mountain town called Snow Creek and wrote a whack of interconnected stories set at the holidays. It's also quite possible I chose to write about the yarn store owner. As I do. It turned out even more darling than I thought it would, and I had high hopes. I have talented friends, yo.

 

Human Remains - Elizabeth Haynes - You know that when I talk about books, I like to present a wide variety. This is nothing like anything above dark, and it's incredibly gory (I even had to skip over a section when I was eating a gyro, and I'm a dispatcher and not much grosses me out--I can listen to people vomiting while eating oatmeal). (Oh, my god, was that too much? Maybe. Okay, if it was too much, though, don't read this book. Otherwise:) and SO GOOD. If you like  Gillian Flynn (which I do, Gone Girl not as much as Sharp Objects), you'll like this British serial killer novel. 

My Favorite Writing Quotes

Google, in all their wisdom, has decided to shut down iGoogle, saying it's not used for much. All I do on my page is store my favorite writing quotes, so I guess they might have something there. I was casting about in my mind: WHERE WILL I KEEP THE QUOTES? when I realized I have a place! Right here! 

At the moment of commitment, the  universe conspires to assist you. GOETHE
(This is my favorite quote of all. The week I dedicated myself to writing every day, to really doing it even on the days I had to get up at 3:30am to get the work done, I got my agent. Coincidence? Probably. I'd already written the book, after all. But this quote was large in my mind. The universe does  conspire to help you, and it knows when you're finally truly serious.) 

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else. GLORIA STEINEM
For most of my life I felt like this. Now I write so much that now when I'm hanging out with loved ones, or watching Scandal and knitting, I feel just fine, thanks.

Write about it by day, and dream about it by night. E.B. WHITE

I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult. E. B. WHITE
I think me and ole Elwyn would have gotten along well. 

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. THOMAS EDISON

In fiction, veracity is nice...but believability is all that you're really required to provide and all that your audience has a right to expect. ROBERT MASELLO - Robert's Rules of Writing
Whew.

 Anybody who shifts gears when he writes for children is likely to wind up stripping his gears. E.B. WHITE 

Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on. LOUIS L'AMOUR

I’m like a big old hen. I can’t cluck too long about the egg I’ve just laid because I’ve got five more inside me pushing to get out. LOUIS L'AMOUR
Don't you just love this man?

Don’t get it right, just get it written. JAMES THURBER

I have so little control over the act of writing that it's all I can do to remain conscious. DAVID RAKOFF
I die over this line. 

No one ever said it would be easy. ANNIE DILLARD

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil. TRUMAN CAPOTE

When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself. ISAK DINESEN
Like knitting!

Writing is when we make the words. Editing is when we make the words not shitty. CHUCK WENDIG

How much a character cares about his/her goals is in direct proportion to how much the reader will care.  LAURA DEVRIES

Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it. MADELEINE L’ENGLE

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer, an almost physical nerve, the kind you need to walk a log across a river.  MARGARET ATWOOD
I saw her speak recently. She remains my hero. A smarter, classier, funnier woman I think there never was.

As for discipline—it's important, but sort of overrated. The more important virtue for a writer, I believe, is self-forgiveness. Because your writing will always disappoint you. Your laziness will always disappoint you.  ELIZABETH GILBERT

Nulla dies sine linea. Let that be their motto. And let their work be to them as is his common work to the common labourer. No gigantic efforts will then be necessary. He need tie no wet towels round his brow, nor sit for thirty hours at his desk without moving,—as men have sat, or said that they have sat. More than nine-tenths of my literary work has been done in the last twenty years, and during twelve of those years I followed another profession. I have never been a slave to this work, giving due time, if not more than due time, to the amusements I have loved. But I have been constant,—and constancy in labour will conquer all difficulties. Gutta cavat lapidem non vi, sed saepe cadendo. - Trollope
Someday, the first line of this will be a tattoo. 

If I waited until I felt like writing, I'd never write at all. ANNE TYLER 

Talent is cheap. What matters is discipline. ANDRÉ DUBUS
My first writing teacher, Al Landwehr, told me this many, many years ago. He told me I had the first, wasn't sure if I had the second. I was SO MAD, mostly because I knew he was right. So I went about proving him wrong about the latter. (Not about the former.)

I write pieces and move them around. The fun of it is watching the truthful parts slide together. What is false won't fit. ELIZABETH STROUT

Never be ashamed of your subject, and of your passion for your subject. JOYCE CAROL OATES

 The tradition I was born into was essentially nomadic, a herdsmen tradition, following animals across the earth. The bookshops are a form of ranching; instead of herding cattle, I herd books. Writing is a form of herding, too; I herd words into little paragraphlike clusters.  LARRY McMURTRY
I am the border collie of active verbs!

Easy reading is damned hard writing. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
This is why I am pleased instead of insulted every time anyone says my books are easy to read.

Writing is driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make whole trip that way. E.L. DOCTOROW

Writing makes no noise, except groans, and it can be done everywhere, and it is done alone.  URSULA K. LEGUIN 

Every time I hear writers talk about “the muse,” I just want to bitch-slap them. It’s a job. Do your job. NORA ROBERTS
"Sister Mary Responsibility kicks the Muse's ass every single day." Nora Roberts, great video HERE.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath. F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

Don't be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand. HENRY MILLER 

I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork. PETER DE VRIES 

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives… ANNIE DILLARD
I had a postcard with this phrase on my refrigerator. I looked at it daily during the ten years I wasn't really writing. It didn't feel good to think about. Then I started Really Writing, and this is true: I lost the postcard. I know how I'm spending my life. 

Humor is what happens when we're told the truth quicker and more directly than we're used to. ANN PATCHETT 

Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a peanut with your nose across a very dirty floor. JOYCE CAROL OATES

The first 8 drafts are terrible. MALCOLM GLADWELL
Word.

Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving. NEIL GAIMAN 

Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day. ROBERT HASS 

You run it through your mind until your tuning fork is still. MARTIN AMIS

If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you. BILLY WILDER 

An overflow of creative urges is the reward for indulging in the new. JULIA CAMERON

I think the hardest part about writing is writing. NORA EPHRON 

All I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world. E. B. WHITE 

Be obscure clearly. E.B. WHITE

Scenery is fine, but human nature is finer. JOHN KEATS

A word after a word after a word is power. MARGARET ATWOOD

The only way to become a better writer is to become a better person. BRENDA UELAND 

The writer must wade into life as into the sea, but only up to the navel. GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

There are techniques and skills to be learned for writing as in any profession or trade. All the stories fall into certain patterns of behavior that we call plots. Plots are nothing but a constantly recurring human situation, patterns of behavior. It’s my belief that 90% of all fiction is based on just 12 to 18 plots, and you can find them in any metropolitan newspaper in any given week. The same plots used by the ancient Greek dramatists were also used by Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dickens. Nobody “invents” a plot.  LOUIS L’AMOUR

Writing is the hardest work in the world not involving heavy lifting. PETE HAMILL

Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine. MARGARET ATWOOD
No whiners. This rule can be broken if you're talking to your writing partners. Then whine with élan.

I don’t grasp it very readily at all, the “it” being whatever I’m trying to do. ALICE MUNRO

If I’m going slow I’m in trouble. It means I’m pushing the words instead of being pulled by them. RAYMOND CHANDLER
This is my biggest sign that I'm going the wrong direction--the words just don't come. It feels like block, but it's only that I haven't found the right door yet. If I feel around the room blindly, I eventually find the handle.

We have to accept ourselves in order to write. Now none of us does that fully: few of us do it even halfway. Don’t wait for one hundred percent acceptance of yourself before you write, or even eight percent acceptance. Just write. The process of writing is an activity that teaches us about acceptance.  NATALIE GOLDBERG