Tips & Answers to Qs

A NOD TO THE MASTERS OF THEIR CRAFT ON WRITING

Eudora Welty

“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute
than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on.
Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are
just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”

“Great fiction shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually,
it may show us how to face our feelings and face our actions and to have new inklings
about what they mean. A good novel of any year can initiate us into our own new experience.” 

“Both reading and writing are experiences--lifelong-- in the course of which
we who encounter words used in certain ways are persuaded by them to be
brought mind and heart within the presence, the power, of the imagination.”

“Human life is fiction's only theme.” 

Join Us
Valencia, California
February 1st 2020

American Association of University Women
BOOK LOVERS LUNCHEON

&

Jury's Inn
Broad Street, Birmingham, UK
February 21st–23rd

ShiMMer 2020

From the Editor's Desk

Blank Slate

Promises, promises. We all make them around the turn of a new year. Call them resolutions, a new way to do the same things, employing better organizational skills, or digging into your stack of cookbooks and promising to be more creative with your meal choices. All of it adds up to an attempt to improve things in your life.

What have you promised yourself about your writing? Your authorship? Your business acumen? Don’t roll your eyes. It’s past time to make changes, even if things are going well. Especially if things are going well. What are you doing right? Can you do it better and take your writing, authorship, and the business of you to the next level? Have you defined your objectives, benchmarks, and goals? If not, it’s a good place to start.

Goal oriented and organized is anathema to some artists. But when things aren’t going well, bemoaning one’s fate never changes it. Don’t think of EVERYTHING you have to do, and then give up because it overwhelms. Break it down into its component parts and start with one small thing. Over time, the building blocks you have laid in place make a strong foundation from which to springboard to bigger and better.

Now, what’s your next book and/or series going to be about?