It’s that time of the year again. Christmas music is playing in all the stores; the scent of pine hangs in the air; people are starting to rush home with their treasures. (Okay, maybe that’s just me. I’m an early bird Christmas shopper.)
Writing Life
Running with Scissors
It’s a bad idea to run with scissors, but it’s more or less what a writer does whenever she edits her work. Oh, sure, she may have her red pens. Blood may spill across the page. What’s the intent of it? It surely isn’t to watch a river of red unfurl. (Okay, maybe it sometimes is. Editing can be viciously enjoyable.)
I Want to Help People
“Strength is for service, not status. Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, ‘How can I help?’” – Romans 15:2, The Message
Writing as an Act of Community
“Writing is an act of community. It is a letter, it is comforting, consoling, helping, advising on our part as well as asking for it on yours. It is part of our human association with each other. It is an expression of our love and concern for each other.” — Dorothy Day
Evolution: Do or Die Time
If you don’t evolve, you die. The vultures and buzzards and all the other carrion birds will come to pick off the remains. It’s a simple rule, really, easy to learn, easy to live by. Evolve. Change. Transform. Do or die. Do, or be eaten, swallowed whole, by the adaptable ones.
Forget the Writer
“‘There is no such thing as THE WRITER.’ … The battle is this: the dethroning of the writer, the constant and all-consuming bloody coup every story or poem or essay—every genuine work of art—must accomplish over its author in order truly to live and to breathe and to have something to say to us that will matter.” — Brett Lott, Letters and Life, quoting Flannery O’Connor