I bring my mom breakfast from Panera Bread for her birthday. She is on the phone with my grandmother. Let’s see what happens next…

Mom: Hillary brought me breakfast from Pandora.
Me: The planet from Avatar?
Dad: Isn’t there also, like, a box called Pandora? Pandora’s box, something like that?
Mom: *into the phone* Oh, nothing. They are just making fun of me because I said Pandora instead of Pantera.

(Pantera is, of course, a heavy metal rock band.)

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Me: I’m having trouble with this part [in my book] and I need some advice.
Husband: OK (Starts to read what is on my computer screen behind me)
Me: No! Don’t read what is on the screen. Everything on the screen has already been cut out and is from an old draft where events don’t even happen in the same order. Ignore what is on the screen, it is not in the story anymore and let me tell you about the problem I’m having.
Husband: OK
(I then detail the problem I am having with my story. He does not appear to be giving me his full attention. I finally ask)
Me: So what do you think of that idea? Do you think it sounds good?
Husband: Well, what is on the screen there is terrible, you should cut all of that out.

He was serious, not trying to be funny. At this point I shrieked “I already told you that I cut that out and not to read it!!!” and highlighted all of that text in the color of poop to remind him that it was crap that had already been cut out. He then became incredibly facinated that my version of Word had the ability to highlight things in poop color while his could only do bright yellow and I lost him into the magical distracted place that men’s minds go when poop is even tangentially involved.

As a husband? A wonderful person.

As a writing critique partner, though, he’s freaking useless.

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There are so many quote board entries I cannot put because they are talking about other people. It is downright sad.

The runner up:

Me: It’s interesting to see how many people I knew from school who were really shallow ended up married to rather fat guys. Do you suppose this means they finally learned to accept a person’s inner beauty?
Steve: (in a half asleep stupor) Nah, it means that they married their hot guys and they got fat. *A really long pause ensues here where I have moved on to other thoughts. Suddenly out of the blue Steve says in a dreamy half-asleep voice* . . .  you know. Like Frederline. He got fat.”

But the amazing winner is, of course, my mother:

Me: So is Watchman worth renting?
Mom: Let me put it this way. His penis isn’t big enough to make it worth sitting through the whole movie for.

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“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” -Kurt Vonnegut

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, flying is described as throwing yourself at the ground and missing. Isn’t that what writing basically is? Making a ridiculous leap, which is, essentially, something very stupid to do, and, by some miracle, making something other people might want to read?

We don’t know how to fly, any of us, before we start. The only way to learn is to just make that jump.

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“I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged… I had poems which were re-written so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out.” -Erica Jong

I really hope this isn’t what I’m doing.

I feel like there is a difference between wanting to put your best foot forward and having the best version of the story possible together before you send it out and being obsessive for the sake of delaying rejection.

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“Motivation is when your dreams put on work clothes.” -Benjamin Franklin

That’s what it boils down to, isn’t it? It’s a ton of fun to make up a story, picture yourself winning the Pulizer, pose in front of a mirror for the make-believe book jacket. But then when it gets down the nitty gritty and you realize it’s honest to goodness work, you want to run.

Motivation is that kick in the pants that makes you tackle something as special to you as your dreams and treat it just like you would any other work project.

And lord knows, it’s hard.

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“Each juggler should be trained in the ignorance of the laws of physics.” -Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

There has to be a certain amount of ignorance or just plain delusion in writing. It’s the delusion that people would want to read what you have to say, sure. But, more than that, it’s ignorance of just what you are in for.

If you knew how much work, how much drama, how much of a royal pain in the neck writing a book is upon starting, let’s be honest, you probably would never have started it in the first place. That ignorance of just what you have undertaken is the impetus of everything.

There is also something very freeing about having no clue what you are doing. If your head is filled with rules and expectations of what the process is going to be like, you are going to constantly hit up against those mental blocks and expectations. But if you have no clue what you are doing, that ignorance is bliss as you force blindly ahead.

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“I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.” -E. B. White

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My 13 year old cousin is a budding writer and we were talking shop one day when she mused, “I am totally stuck in this one story. I don’t know what should happen next.”

“Kill someone,” I said.

“Really?” she replied.

“Yeah,” I said, “I read a book on writing once that recommended killing someone if you are stuck.”

She looked down at the ground for a moment and then looked up and shyly asked, completely serious, “But. . . won’t I go to jail?”

“In the story! Kill a character in the story!” I clarified and she said, “Oh!” with genuine relief.

I’m not even sure where to begin with this.

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“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” -George Elliot

Nothing puts a fire under me better than when I am helping an older person with publishing their book and they are racing to get all their ideas published because they are afraid they are going to die. I am all about the NaNoWriMo philosophy: why wait to write a book someday, make today that someday.

I don’t want to be one of those people that puts off what they want in life until it’s too late. I would to jump out there and do it now while there is still my whole life ahead of me.

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