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December’s Writersword: 
"Solitude is a deepening of the present."
Why do I choose solitude as a holiday theme? I’ll tell you why. I don’t want to lose myself in noise. I also don’t want to lose the majesty of the moment. I want to be present, not stressed. I want to be overwhelmed with discovery, not discovered overwhelmed. I don’t want to be absent from myself or my art. Solitude lives in us. May we learn to live in it and perhaps even love it a little.
September’s Writersword: "Art is the ax to break up the frozen sea within us."
August's Writersword:
Uris went on to say, "Writing comes with the human race. We are genetically programmed to write. Writing chooses you. First of all you have to have some God-given talent. If you don't have that, you cannot develop it. You can't make a tightrope walker out of Pavarotti. You also have to have powerful motivation. Something has to really be driving you to write. What it usually is a desire to please our parents, which is the basis of all mankind." ... And??
(Now here’s the zinger:) "A writer," said Uris, "has to unlock a series of doors. We go into the living room and we entertain and we show whom we are and we want to leave a good impression. Then we go into the den where we show a little more of ourselves. Then we have the bedroom where we show a lot of ourselves, but to relatively few people in a lifetime. Then we have our private room where we win our Olympic medals and our arguments with our wives." "THEN there is a locked room we don't go into. This room is guarded by mendacity. Inside that vault are your lies, your cheating, your greed. All the things you don't want to know about yourself, you keep locked in there. Well, the great writer eventually has to go in there to work in order to explain human relationships. How long, how hard and how deeply you work in that garbage can tell you what kind of writer you are going to be. Being honest with yourself is a very tough job. Most people cut that off. They stop before that vault and the say, 'I don't want to go in there.' Good writers have to confront the locked doors." So dear writer, here’s to the opening of locked doors! Be sure to keep checking this website for more good stuff. And good writing! Love, Marie |
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In an interview I found with the writer, Leon Uris, ("Exodus", "Trinity") he was asked how he came a writer. Uris answered: "I was born to that misery. I think everyone wants to write, it is a human condition, whether it is on a cave wall or a book. One of the things that sets us apart from all other species is the desire to perpetuate ourselves and leave behind a record."
"Then you have to have tremendous persistence. Nobody's going to say, 'We want you to be a writer.' You have to say, 'I am going to be a writer no matter what you are going to throw in my way.' It is this combination that eventually produces a writer."