“It’s an adrenaline surge rushing through your body. You have this spark of an idea that keeps threatening to burst into flames and you have to get the words out on paper to match this emotion or picture in your head. After this comes the work of cleaning up the mess that you made.”
–Janet West
Tag Archives: quote
Four Victories for Same-Sex Marriage!!
Sending out a huge thank-you and congrats to the US voters of Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington! (see the voting results)
“When the history books are written, 2012 will be remembered as the year when LGBT Americans won decisively at the ballot box.” —Chad Griffin, head of Human Rights Campaign
Although I’m celebrating this wonderful news today, I know we still have a ways to go. Even with this win, any legal same-sex marriages are not yet equal.
“Yesterday, same-sex couples won respect and dignity, along with rights at the state level. And we finally won marriage at the ballot after losing all these years. But now they’re one of tens of thousands of legally married same-sex couples who are denied 1,138 federal rights and benefits because of DOMA. They also lose recognition when they cross from their state into any state that doesn’t allow same-sex couples to marry, or recognize those marriages.” –in an email from Rick Jacobs (Chair and Founder, Courage Campaign)
I’m keeping the hope going that the next four years will bring even more positive change.
Quote I Love: What stirs your respect
On writing characters…
“It does not matter whether your intent is to portray someone real or someone heroic. To make either type matter to your readers, you need only find in your real human being what is strong, and in your strong human being what is real . . . How do you find the strong or human qualities in your protagonist? What will be most effective to portray? The answer to those lies in you, the author. What is forgivably human to you? What stirs your respect? That is where to start.”
Donald Maass, The Fire in Fiction
Quote I Love: Courage
“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, I will try again tomorrow.”
-Mary Anne Radmacher Hershey
Overheard at Writers’ Brainstorming Weekend
(c) Sloan Parker, 2010
Recently I spent a weekend at a house on a lake with my local writing group. We alternated between writing and helping each other brainstorm story ideas. Here’s some of what was overheard during the weekend:
- “The Fire Lube and Goo stories.”
- “Life’s too short to spend it in retail.”
- “We can’t help because of the prime directive.”
- “I showed the neighbors my ta-tas.”
- “Now that we got our juices flowing…”
- “He doesn’t play our reindeer games” (about our only man who left the room when we started killing off characters with poisoned Viagra)
- “I was a whiny bitch.” (from our only man)
- “What’s wrong with his nipples?”
And perhaps my fave…
- “My hero’s nickname is Meat.” Followed by… “His friend’s name should be Buns.” And then you know where I went… “It can be an m/m. Slap the Meat and Buns together.”
And of course that led us to…
- “You gotta give him a T-shirt that says Eat the Meat“
I love this group of writers! There aren’t words to express how reaffirming and energizing it is to hang with other people who get the drive to spend hours and hours creating characters and stories from nothing but your imagination.