Emily

Emily

I wonder as I contemplate, your novel in my hand

How did such a thing your mind create in that windswept Yorkshire land?

Your life, your breath forged onto every page

Your heart, your soul your pen defied the Age.

Her dark hair and his dark eyes, now immortal in desire

Her passion, his rage, her choice, his lies,

She the wind and he the fire

From whence did you learn of such love and such hate?

Of loss and of revenge,

Of torment, and of fate?

Did the moors tell you secret things as you walked upon them all alone?

That life is a type of fault, and men’s hearts become as stone?

Did the things that you lost, give you things only for you?

Or was it the wind brought them, those fierce thoughts written true?

Those cold gray walls, that rose up from the earth

Became your world and the magical birth—

Of something eternal that moves me still today

And like you, I am happiest when I am most away.

A Miscellany...

 A Miscellany of Favorite Quotes and Aphorisms Concerning Writing and Life

 

“This creative power and imagination is very tender and sensitive and it is usually drummed out of people early in life by criticism (so-called ‘helpful criticism’ is often the worst kind), by teasing, jeering, rules, prissy teachers, critics, and all those unloving people who forgot that the letter killeth and the spirit giveth life. Everybody is original, if he tells the truth, if he speaks from himself. But it must be from his true self and not the self he thinks he should be.”—Brenda Ueland

 

“Normal people, people who haven’t been misled by a faulty college education, do not read novels for words alone. They open a novel with the expectation of finding a story.” –John Gardner

“Vigorous writing is concise.”—William Strunk

“Without art a man may find his life on earth unlivable.”—Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“No man will ever unfold the capacities of his own intellect, who does not at least checker his life with solitude.”—Thomas De Quincey

“Depression was not tears. It was deadness. Immobility. A black hole.”—Doris Lessing

“I know of no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect either spiritual or physical, for what the gods had given him.”—Max Beerbohm

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”—Mark Twain

“He that dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose.”—Anne Bronte

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”—Sylvia Plath

“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.”—Jack Kerouac

“Who am I? I’m a poet. My business? Writing. How do I live? I live. In my happy poverty I squander like a prince, my poems, and songs of love. In hopes and dreams and castles-in-air, I’m a millionaire in spirit.”—Rodolfo

“Iucunda macula est ex inimici sanguine.”—Syrus

True writing is magic, it is alchemy.

Dialogue makes stories live.

Begin with conflict, make the stakes high, and don’t let all your important characters live.

  Write Fiercely.