I decided to go back in our blog postings and pick out a few words of wisdom from a few of our members.  They are varied and fun and oh so wise.

Ann B. Howard.  July, 28, 2013:  Walt Whitman said, “The secret of it all is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood of the moment—without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote—wrote, wrote…by writing at the instant, the very heartbeat of life is caught.”

Deborah Epperson. August 24, 2013:  Where does your inspiration come from? Is it the vibrant colors in a treasured painting or the pulsating beat of your favorite rock band that gets your heart to pumping and makes your hands itch to pick up a paintbrush or guitar and produce your own masterpiece? Maybe you’re like me and find yourself surprised by a plethora of sensory delights that stir your imagination and inspires your creativity.

Leslie Budewitz. August 20,13: Storytellers need story-listeners. Story-hearers. Story-receivers. Those aren’t words in our language, but they ought to be. In my household, we say “that may not be in the dictionary, but I said it and you knew what I meant, so it’s a word.”

Christine Schimpff-Carbo.  September 18, 13: I have written before on the type of things that help lure my muse: reading other authors, exercising, looking at artwork, visiting with other writers and so on, but I left out watching musicians perform. I definitely need to add them to the list. As I sat under the white tent under the Big Sky and watched the talented musicians get completely lost in their guitars, basses, keyboards and drums, it made me want to get lost in my computer keyboard, drumming out words instead of notes to tell a tale, to weave a plot, to use my imagination.

Marie F Martin. September 16, 13: In the middle 1930s, my grandfather Yeats wrote the following poem.  He homesteaded a Montana flatland spread just north of Gilford, near a town named Goldstone.  In the evenings after chores, he wrote the rhythms that ran through his mind while doing endless chores in his Red Chief tablet.  The ranch is gone, the town is gone but the poems live on.

Ina Albert. January 26, 14: It’s late on a Wednesday night, and Franklin Crawford, 52, is pushing a shopping cart around a 24-hour grocery store in Ithaca, New York. He’s found the bananas and cat food he needs, but as he roams the aisles he adds ice cream and other nonessentials to his basket. “This is the meeting place, the agora,” he explains. “It’s the abundance, the people, the bright light. It makes me feel good.”

Nan McKenzie. February 23, 14 Our heart is a magical organ, capable of loving, giving, generosity, anger, hurt, evil and goodness.  It is also capable of fining down to love a tiny flower, a teacup puppy, a newborn child, and yet it can expand to encompass a family, friends, co-workers, showering them with love, and expanding even further to love a neighborhood, a country, even all Americans.

Ann Minnett.  September 12, 14: If I held onto that manuscript another week, I’d revise chapter numbers, change tense on Serita’s POV, or something equally compulsive, so I self-published Serita’s Shelf Life in late August. Then two more agents requested my manuscript. What?! After a walk in the woods I realized it didn’t matter. Self-publishing is my path, and an agent’s validation or rejection can’t change that.  Oh, I love maturing as a person and writer.