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A bit about me~

I'm originally from North Carolina. My motto is "Anything fried is good." Name one thing fried that isn't. Shrimp? Good! Okra? Squash? Corn bread? All Good! Get my point? Now I live in Idaho. I even like potatoes fried.

I like to write fiction for children and young adults, but since none of it is worth bragging about here, I'll share some of my favorite quotes instead.

My favorite book about writing is by Brenda Ueland "If you want to Write" written in 1938. Here's a few of the best parts:

"The creative power and imagination is in everyone and so is the need to express it, i.e., to share it with others. But what happens to it? It is very tender and sensitive, and it is usually drummed out of people early in life by criticism (so called "helpful criticism" is often the worst kind)...This joyful, imaginative, impassioned energy dies out of us very young. Why? Because we do not see that it is great and important. Because we let dry obligation take its place. Because we don't respect it in ourselves and keep it alive by using it. And because we don't keep it alive in others by listening to them. For when you come to think of it, the only way to love a person is not, as the sterotyped Christian notion is, to coddle them and bring them soup when they are sick, but by listening to them and seeing and believing in the god, in the poet, in them. For by doing this, you keep the god and the poet alive and make it flourish."

And there's this:
"For when you write, if it is to be any good at all, you must feel free- free and not anxious. The only good teachers for you are those friends who love you, who think you are interesting, or very important, or wonderfully funny, whose attitude is: "Tell me more. Tell me all you can. I want to understand more about everything you feel and know and all the changes inside and out of you. Let more come out."

"...there is much, much in all of us, but we do not know it. If you are going to write you must become aware of this richness in you and come to believe in it and know it is there so that you can write opulently and with self-trust."

As you can probably tell, I think Brenda is the patron saint of writers and artists. I wanted to put some passages from Sun Monk Kidd's Secret Life of Bees here, but there's just too much, more about the power within us. I highly recommend you read it some time.

I also like "To thine own self be true." Shakespeare I think. Apparently Dostoevsky felt the same "Never, never lie to yourself. Don't lie to others, but least of all to yourself."

Martin Luther King said "Men hate each other because they fear each other and they fear each other because they don't know each other because they are often separated from each other." A lot of "each other"s, but you get the point.

And of course, as Jewel points out "In the end, only kindness matters."

I aspire to write books for children and young adults. Well, actually I do that already. I aspire to get those books published. Drop me a line if you just want to talk sometime.

Now I'm blogging too, for what it's worth. http:\\spuddreams.wordpress.com

Lisa

A bit about me~ I'm originally from North Carolina. My motto is "Anything fried is good." Name one thing fried that isn't. Shrimp? Good! Okra? Squash? Corn bread? All Good! Get my point? Now I live in Idaho. I even like potatoes fried. I like to write fiction for children and young adults, but since none of it is worth bragging about here, I'll share some of my favorite quotes instead. My f... More