Shameless request for attention

It's my birthday next week! Last year I asked people to share old photos. The year before, I hosted a poetry party. This year, I'm going to be asking for you to BRING ME MUSIC.

No, I don't mean an iTunes gift card, although that would certainly be nice. Instead, I'd like my readers to share a favorite song... links to audio, quoted song lyrics, however you want to do it. It's a lot like poetry (did I mention my poetry party got 42 comments and that fun was had by all?!?) and I think it's going to be awesome.

So, on Wednesday, December 7th, please swing by to share some of your favorite verses, and tell me that I don't look a day over 37.

Write fast.

Write so fast, your inner editor can't catch you.

-- Carrie Kei Heim Binas

Thus ends the second-half-of-November inspirational-quote marathon. If you're still doing NaNoWriMo, WHAT ARE YOU DOING ONLINE?!?!!? GO WRITE!

Every minute you spend writing.

[My] first manuscript will never be published, but writing it was in NO way a waste of time. If you want to be a writer, every minute you spend writing is valuable . . . The world will never see the product, but the process was worth every second.

-- Alison Cherry

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

Courage.

Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage.

-- Anaïs Nin

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

Persistence.

How often -- even before we began -- have we declared a task "impossible"? And how often have we construed a picture of ourselves as being inadequate? . . . A great deal depends upon the thought patterns we choose and on the persistence with which we affirm them.

-- Piero Ferrucci

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

The same age.

Give yourself permission to be a beginner. By being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one.

When I make this point in teaching, I am met by instant defensive hostility: "But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano / act / paint / write a decent play?"

Yes . . . the same age you will be if you don't.

So let's start.

-- Julia Cameron

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

The energy it takes to pout.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

-- Duke Ellington

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

Dare.

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

-- Seneca (4 B.C. - 65 A.D.)

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

Lose your fear.

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.

-- Joseph Chilton Pearce

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

Trust your subconscious.

... I discovered that if I trusted my subconscious, or imagination, whatever you want to call it, and if I made the characters as real and honest as I could, then no matter how complex the pattern being woven, my subconscious would find ways to tie it together -- often doing things far more complicated and sophisticated than I could with brute conscious effort. I would have ideas for 'nodes', as I think of them -- story or character details that have lots of potential connections to other such nodes -- and even though I didn't quite understand, I would plunk them in. Two hundred pages later, everything would back-fit, and I'd say, "Ah, that's why I wrote that."

-- Tad Williams

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

The seat of your pants.

The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.

-- Mary Heaton Vorse

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

Write much?

By writing much, one learns to write well.

-- Robert Southey

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

Figure out what you have to say.

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.

-- Barbara Kingsolver

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

Take chances.

Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good.

-- William Faulkner

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

How to write a novel.

The shortest answer is doing the thing.

-- Ernest Hemingway

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

Fail Better.

Ever tried.

Ever failed.

No matter.

Try again.

Fail again.

Fail better.

-- Samuel Beckett

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.