• Writing Can’t Be ‘Thin Love’

    Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all. ~ Toni Morrison I admire writer Toni Morrison. She is smart, insightful, and willing to write for herself. Her books are powerful and influential…and from the heart. After sitting here reading many of her quotes, I keep coming back to the one above along with this one: If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it. ~ Toni Morrison You have to love to write in order to take an idea and watch it come to fruition. Anyone who has the fortitude to do…

  • Curl Up With A Good Book, Or Write One

    * * * It’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and we writers are hard at work as we attempt to make our way through our projects. It’s not easy, and for those of us with full-time jobs, kids, husbands and families, and friends who love and need our time, slotting in those hours can be challenging. So here’s the idea: Those of you who are readers, curl up with a good book. Those of you who are writers, get to work. You mustn’t stop writing and creating. As Toni Morrison said, “If there’s a book you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, go write it.” The computer…

  • Be Careful Or You’ll End Up In My Novel…and other thoughts…

    *** Sometimes I want to toss my novel out the window. I completely understand what Dorothy Parker meant when she said, “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” I’ve been working on Beneath the Mimosa Tree for so long that I would be lying if I didn’t say I could throw in the towel. Writing is painful sometimes. We are hard on ourselves. But then I think of what Raymond Carver said: “Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder.” Luckily, I have the passion. I could put my novel out…