Tiny Reviews
Short thoughts on the books we've been reading
Lines I Kept...
Reading a draft aloud helps us sand down the splinters.
Emily Dickinson: “I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.”
Love this line.
It doesn’t matter how powerful the middle of the story is, or how gorgeous and resonant the ending is, if the reader never reaches it.
Beginnings are just as important as the rest of the writing, if not more so!
We can’t change the past, but the rest is up for grabs.
As Mary Oliver says, "what will you do with this one wild and precious life?" We wield so much ability in the present.
I agree with Eudora Welty on this point: “I like the feeling of being able to confront an experience and resolve it as art.”
There is no vulnerability without courage.
Profound in so much more than writing.
To make things that don’t exist yet—and don’t need to exist, because that is the very definition of art—and to send them out into the world is wildly, impractically, gorgeously hopeful.
I feel this every time I try something out in the shop
Creativity is inherently hopeful, and the reverse is also true: Hope is inherently creative. Hope is imaginative; it allows you to envision what might be up ahead, even when you see nothing. To feel optimistic, you have to believe that the future has better, brighter things in store for you. That belief takes imagination.