We're in transition as we gear up for the new release. Meanwhile...

A Few Quips that feel Appropriate

 

It may be a smile now, but every serious writer knows it isn't always fun and games. Here are a few that feel appropriate... 

"Proofread carefully to see if you any words out."  ~Author Unknown

"I love being a writer.  What I can't stand is the paperwork.  ~Peter De Vries"

"Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very;" your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."  ~Mark Twain

"Easy reading is damn hard writing."  ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Loafing is the most productive part of a writer's life."  ~James Norman Hall

"Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don't start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague." ~William Safire, "Great Rules of Writing"

"I try to leave out the parts that people skip."  ~Elmore Leonard

"Every writer I know has trouble writing."  ~Joseph Heller

"All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients."  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction.  By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say."  ~Mark Twain

"An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere."  ~Gustave Flaubert

"Let's hope the institution of marriage survives its detractors, for without it there would be no more adultery and without adultery two thirds of our novelists would stand in line for unemployment checks." ~Peter S. Prescott

"There's only one person who needs a glass of water oftener than a small child tucked in for the night, and that's a writer sitting down to write."  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook

"A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."  ~Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades, 1947

"The writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax."  ~Alfred Kazin, Think, February 1963

"The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight."  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.” - Mark Twain (1835-1910 – humorist and writer)

“The trouble with young writers is they’re all in their sixties.” - W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965 – British novelist and playwright)

"It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous."  ~Robert Benchley

"Publishing is the only industry I can think of where most of the employees spend most of their time stating with great self-assurance that they don't know how to do their jobs.  'I don't know how to sell this,' they explain, frowning, as though it's your fault. 'I don't know how to package this. I don't know what the market is for this book. I don't know how we're going to draw attention to this.' In most occupations, people try to hide their incompetence; only in publishing is it flaunted as though it were the chief qualification for the job." - Donald Westlake (1933- American mystery writer and author of more than 100 books)

“A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.” - Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862 American naturalist, poet and philosopher)

“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.” - Socrates (BC 469- 399 Greek philosopher of Athens)

"Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.  ~Hannah Arendt

"So often is the virgin sheet of paper more real than what one has to say, and so often one regrets having marred it."  ~Harold Acton, Memoirs of an Aesthete, 1948

THINGS I LOVED AND LEFT (OUT)

PARAGRAPHS AND SENTENCES I LOVED BUT ENDED UP LEAVING OUT

from The Secret Ever Keeps 

“I remember that day perfectly. Since, the months and years have become wrapped in a sort of soft-focus cotton-candy haze, but that day remains with me as if still in progress. It became the new beginning of my life. Life without her, and remains in brilliant, vivid detail in my mind, the way moments of great impact will.”

from The Vitaman Effect

Sweat drew a continent beneath his armpit; South America, complete to the tip of El Punte Del Fuego with its curved tail of rock.

There’s a beat to life. Like telephone poles beside the road to put down the base line. Between each pole? That's the part you create for yourself - all without really knowing how.

Think of existence like this. Here’s the beginning, and here’s where you are now. No matter how you measure, click, click, you’re passing the markers of your existence. They extend into the invisible future, each interval exactly as long as the one before. Problem is, you can see straight back cause the past is a straight line, but you can’t see ahead cause the future is curved. You have to imagine the future before it will bend to your will.

Oh, and another thing, once a thing is past, it stops in time, becomes fixed there forever. The future gains velocity, arrives, no way to stop it or turn it aside or even slow it down until it hits the wall of the present and stops dead.

Between is a void until you learn to see life as a big video game. You play on the stage of reality. What you put into the space between each marker is totally up to you. You can sit back and observe as nothingness slides past, or you can step into the flow and make yourself part of it and see how far you can get before the big bummer zaps you.

 The human mind tends to process emotional impulses before it processes conscious thoughts.

Somebody famous probably said this. It's too good to be mine:

In the same way profanity signals the weak mind attempting to express itself forcibly, bad simile reigns supreme in writers who reach for greatness before bothering to learn how to build a concise sentence.

SOME COLORFUL WORDS

WORDS I REALLY LIKE BUT CAN NEVER SEEM TO WORK INTO A PAGE

SMIDGEON  - ‘SMIDGE’

AROMATIC – adj. – of, relating to, or have aroma, fragrant / having a strong smell / having a distinctive quality

BRIO – noun – with enthusiastic vigor

Breasts that “BILLOW” 

CALLIPYGIAN -  Having shapely buttocks

CASCADE – noun – a steep usually small fall of water; especially: one of a series / something arranged or occurring in a series or in a succession of stages so that each stage derives from or acts upon the product of the preceeding (blood clotting involves a biochemical cascade) (a fall of material –lace- that hangs in a zigzag line

CONNIVE – intrans verb – to pretend ignorance of or fail to take action against something one ought to oppose / to be indulgent or in secret sympathy / to cooperate secretly or have a secret understanding

COUNTERPOINT –noun – one or more independent melodies added above or below a given melody / the combination of two or more independent melodies into a single harmonic texture in which each retains its linear character / a complementing or contrasting item / use of contrast or interplay of elements in a work of art

CROON – verb- to sing or speak in a gentle murmuring manner; especially: to sing in a soft intimate manner adapted to amplifying systems

DEFENESTRATE – To throw a thing out of a window.

FRISSON -  noun – A brief moment of emotional excitement: shudder, thrill

GRANDILOQUENCE –noun – a lofty, extravagantly colorful, pompous or bombastic style, manner or quality especially in language

HEDONISM – noun – the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the sole ore chief good in life / a way of life based on or suggesting the principles of hedonism.

KERFLUFFLE – Disturbance, fuss.

LASCIVIOUS –adj. – licentious, fast, incontinent, lecherous, lewd, libertine,libidinous, lustful, salacious, satyric, lustful

LECHER –noun – to lick, live in debauchery / a man who engages in lechery

LIBIDINOUS –adj. – having or marked by lustful desires

LURID  -adj. – wan and ghastly pale in appearance / of any of several light or medium grayish colors ranging in hue from yellow to orange. / shining with the red glow of fire as seen through smoke or cloud / causing horror or revulsion

NUZZLE – verb – to work with or as if with the nose; especially: to root, rub, of sniff something / to lie close or snug: nestle / to rub or push gently one’s face against something

ONOMATOPOEIA – To name a thing for its sound

PIQUANT (pE-kwant) – adj. – agreeably stimulating to the palate; especially: SPICY / engagingly provocative; also: having a lively arch charm

PRICKLE  -noun – a fine sharp process or projection; especially: a sharp pointed emergence arising from the epidermis or bark of a plant / a prickling or tingling sensation

PRURIENT –adj. – marked by or arousing an immoderate or unwholesome interest or desire; especially: marked by, arousing or appealing to unusual sexual desire.

PUNGENT – adj – sharply painful / having a stiff and sharp point (pungent leaves) / marked by a sharp incisive quality: caustic (a pungent critic)(pungent language) / being sharp and to the point / causing a sharp or irritating sensation; especially: acrid. Pungent implies a sharp, stinging or biting quality especially of odors : synonyms: piquant, poignant, racy

RHETORICAL  -adj. – of, relating to, or concerned with rhetoric / employed for rhetorical effect; especially: asked merely for effect with no answer intended.

SALACIOUS     - adj. - arousing or appealing to sexual desire or imagination

SATYR –noun – a sylvan deity in Greek mythology having certain charactersictics of a horse or goat and fond of Dionysian revelry / a lecherous man, one having satyriasis

SEETHE –verb – to be in a state of rapid agitated movement / to churn or foam as if boiling / to suffer violent internal excitement

VERVE  -  The spirit and enthusiasm animating artistic composition or performance

VAPID -  Having no taste or flavor, Lifeless, dull, boring - NOT EVEN WORTH PRINTING IN BOLD TYPE

WAFT – verb – to move or go lightly on or as if on a buoyant medium /  to cause to move or go lightly or as if by the impulse of wind or waves

BLOATED    CONVULSION   CRUMBLE    CHURN    DELERIOUS    DAINTY

EXCRUCIATING    FRINGE      FLAIL      FERVENT     GLAZED    

GLUTTONOUS     INKLING       JARRED     KEEN      MEWL       MELODIOUS    

MUSKY      RINGLET      RUEFUL    RASPING     ROWDY     STACATTO    

SCORCHING      SQUIRM         SPARSE       SUCCUMB      STIMULUS     

SPIRAL      TART      TAUT    

... and ... and ... enough

But when I die, please drop into my grave bits of paper on which you've written YOUR most wonderful words. I promise to use them at some particular future moment.