Quotes

"A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a witty person, but a pebble in the hands of a fool."
- Joseph Roux (1886)

Have you noticed that I often use quotes at the beginning of my blogs? How could you miss them, right? I love quotes. I collect them. I use them.

In my book "Aunt Lutie's Blue Moon Cafe," each chapter begins with a quote. Since the primary setting of the book is a cafe in a small East Texas town, those quotes all pertain to food.

"Coffee should be black as Hell, strong as death, and sweet as love." (Turkish Proverb)
"Comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love. (The Song of Solomon 2:4)
"Love and scandal are the best sweetners of tea. (Henry Fielding)

There are hundreds of quotes about authors and writing. Some of them are too profound for me, too deep. I dont't want to analyze a quote. I want to enjoy the quote, see visions before my eyes of what it must be introducing. In some instances, I want to laugh; other times I want to be drawn in by the beauty of the words. I want to enjoy quotes, the ones I read and the ones I use, for what they offer and for nothing anymore complicated than that.

"...For the writer there is no oblivion. Only endless memory." - Anita Brookner

Endless memory--ah, that we all may never forget. Isn't that a quote to remember?

As a writer, I certainly feel this way (about all genres we write in):
"You don't have anything if you don't have the stories." - Leslie Silko, author

And all writers should feel as the author Louise Erdrich does:
"Part of becoming a writer is the desire to have everything mean something."

Look for quotes. Keep a list of your favorites. Use them in your daily writing or journal keeping. Make up your own--maybe this Texas-gal-stuck-in-California writer will use your quotes to enlighten her readers.

On second thought, maybe you don't need that kind of notoriety.

Tip: First drafts are seldom good. Remember what Anne Lamott said about the?
PROMPT: Get your story onto paper. Write what you like, don't edit yourself. Put your work aside for a week. Come back to revise.

THE MYTHS OF CHILDHOOD

"You learn from the imagination what the real world is."
- Bernard Malamud

I'm going to give you an assignment today. I want you to dig out the old photo album left to you by your mother, or dig through those boxes of one's you've been storing in the garage or attic, never an album to see. Pick out a favorite photograph of you as a child.

Study it a few minutes. Now pick up your most trustworthy pen or place those long slender fingers (short and stubby work here, too) on the keyboard. You are now going to write about this picture from your past.

First, write down all the details you see in the picture--not your memories or emotions at this point--"jsut the facts, ma'am." Who is with you (if someone is)? Where are you? What are you doing? What is the expression on your face? When was the photo taken?

Second, write the story of the photo using some of these facts. As you remember it; don't worry about what your sister or brother remembers about the event, or what your parents may have told you about it. Write what you know in your heart was going on in that picture. Add the emotions--happiness, fear, uncertainity, whatever you felt before and after this photo was taken of you.

Third, write the story of the picture that you would like to tell if you hadn't sworn to "tell the whole truth and nothing but, so help you God."

Which story would you rather rely on? In the supposedly nonfiction tale, are there elements of creativity? Has the telling of the story over the years taken on aspects of fiction? By doing this assignment, you may find out what I have when doing this--a lot of our childhood is a myth.

I'd like to keep it that way, wouldn't you?

TIP: Watch the length of your paragraphs. Shorter makes for better reading, moving your readers along smoothly through your work.

PROMPT: Cut out pictures of interesting faces from magazines. Paste them on index cards. Draw one at a time and create a character sketch from them.

IT'S SOUTHERN, BY GOD

"Texas has yet to learn submission to any oppression, come from what source it may."
- Sam Houston, 1st President of Texas (1836-38, 1841-44)

I think by now I have made it pretty clear that I am from the southern part of our great country. Now, I've had folks point out quite bluntly that Texas is NOT a Southern state. They place a finger at it on a map and swear that it is a southwestern state. I beg to differ.

Texas history was drummed into all of our little pointed heads from the beginning of school classes. The stories of my own, and other, families who settled on that sandy soil when it still belonged to Mexico, point out the facts to me. Although Sam Houston, the first president of what was a seperate country/republic back then, was from Tennessee, I am sure he was a Texan at heart. He loved the South but was broken hearted when our state joined the Confederacy and went to war against the aggressors from the North. Hear up, folks, they fought for their states rights as a Southern state.

My relatives had arrived in Texas in 1824. Coming from Mississippi and Georgia, they had answered a call from Stephen F. Austin to populate the area. All of my people were Southerners; they created a new republic that eventually became a new Southern state upon joining the Union. Some of my relatives fought and died for the Confederacy. Pure Southern in God's eye.

My Southern state is the only one in the United States that, upon agreeing to become a part of the larger country, retained the right to fly the state flag on the same level as the Stars and Stripes. I still see that done when I visit my home state. That stubborness makes them Southern in most anyone's book.

I haven't lived in the South for thirty years but my heart's still there. I yearn to hear the slow drawl that show's we're kin. My cooking hints at that area's flavor. My eyes mist at the sound of gospel hymns sung in one of those country churches in the middle of a field in Central Texas, reminding me of those baptisms in a creek in East Texas. I secretly root for all Southern teams in sports events. The fondest memories I have as a child is of sunny days spent on the side of a creek bank, cane pole in hand, grandpa Daddy Joe by my side, fishing for those tiny perch grandma would fry in an iron skillet over a hot open fire--just for me.

Some of the South has been brought home to me here in Southern (you do know there is a profound difference in the two distinct sections of this state, don't you?)California in the past few years. The supermarket chains out here have finally wised up and stocked two commodities most precious to we transplanted Texans--
Dr. Pepper (TM) and moon pies.


TIP: Clear your mind. Be open. Let your writing surprise you.

PROMPT: Who is that bag lady you see at the corner of 2nd and Broadway each morning? Write her story.

CURIOSITY

"Curiosity killed the cat...and some readers."

No wonder I often call my work a mish-mash, a patchwork, a collection of ramblings. My mind, when not working on a special project, goes from curiosity to question to idea and then back again. I'm not complaining--Oh, Heavens, no. God gave me the joy of a curious mind and I love it.

Readers will find I often give an "Atta girl" to favorite authors, new books, creative magazines,somewhere I've traveled to--even food, which I should avoid except for diet food. LOL Now, if I could only get someone to praise me as a person, enjoy my cooking efforts, be curious about my writing--Hey, do you wanna buy my latest book, "Growing up Barefoot in the South" or my first one, "The Quilt Maker?" Just go on Amazon.com--Oh, well, I always said you should promote, promote, promote.

Do most of you know the author, E. Annie Proulx? You might remember her for books she wrote which were made into movies: "The Shipping News" (a 1994 Pulitzer Prize winner) or "Postcards." I know her more for her absolutely wonderful short stories--many of my favorites appear in "Winter Range" and in "Heart Songs."

Proulx writes about the ordinary man in rural tradition, the rites of nature and the rituals of small-town living. If you read her stories, you will find all the elements of human life there: revenge, greed, hatred and passion. Her stories will fill you with images of people you will never forget.

Reading her work makes me curious about the author. Does she write about her own experiences? Was her heart once broken by a flim-flam (what on old-fashioned descriptive word) man? Did she really once have murder in her heart?

I would hope that ones who read my work would have the same curiosity. Did Deming create those quilts she writes about? Was her cat involved in solving a murder? Was one of her many jobs that of a waitress? What kind of woman would pour out her soul on a blog?

A very strange one?


TIP: Sometimes we are so anxious to get to the end of our story, we leave out parts that need to be closely inspected.

PROMPT: Write about something dark from your past, or buried in the fiction of your mind.

NUTS ABOUT NATURE"

"As you walk and eat and travel, be where you are. Otherwise you will miss most of your life." - Buddha

Hubby Ray thinks I'm just a little strange. Most women will probably agree that most husbands feel that way about their wives, and vice versa. But we each put up with each other, or we hash out issue. One way or the other, couples accept, with love, the differences in each other's personality.

Ray thinks I'm a little off because I take photographs--lots of them--of flowers, birds, trees, ponds, grass--nature. He can't imagine what worth such "nothings" can possibly have. I try to educate him to what I see by explaining the images I see in, for example, a photo of a lovely flower.

I see beauty in those pictures. I "feel" stories in my photos. When I study the center of a flower, I might see the blazing, fast-paced center of our earlier years of life. As the color blends its way from center to edge, it becomes calmer-looking. I see my own self in the transformation: active childhood while rushing through school, a wrong first marriage with children and career. A creamy blend of my second marriage and all the good times.

Then the shadings change as I begin to mellow, slow the pace down as I found my peaceful place on the waters of retirement. Time is virtually my own. Volunteering. Traveling at the drop of a hat. The writing and photography finds a new road.

The very edge of the flower in the photo shows the plains of my today-life--soft and smooth, strong, happy, loving, alert and fulfilling God's plan--hopefully, all of these will hold true until the pedals begin to fade and slowly fall away.

Then others will find my stories, essays and poetry drawn from the images I see in all those boxes of photographs left for someone else to make sense of.


TIP: Look for stories everywhere--in old photo albums, in postcards, and in the faces you see in the view finder of your camera just before you snap another of those pictures your spouse might not see a story in.

PROMPT: Take a photograph out of your album or that box filled with them you have in the top of the closet or beneath the bed. Tell me the story you see there.