quotations

No blood on the tracks

/ Tracy Abell / 4 Comments

Over the past two days, I’ve felt stalled and demoralized about the middle-grade novel I’m writing. When I woke this morning, I was determined to face the pages and write myself out of that morale-sucking place. No matter what it took.

Well, I’m pleased to say that (1) there was no bloodshed involved in the writing of those pages and that (2), I’ve officially regained my momentum and am back on track.

However, I can’t be complacent about my efforts. Tomorrow I must plant my butt in the chair and face the pages again. And so on, day after day, until this draft is finished.

Even if you’re on the right track,
you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
~ Will Rogers

Flexing my literary muscle

/ Tracy Abell

Whenever I write a novel,
I have a strong sense that I am doing something I was unable to do before.
With each new work, I move up a step and discover something new inside me.
~ Haruki Murakami

Image from pexels.com

Day 2: art in Amsterdam

/ Tracy Abell / 2 Comments

We did a whole lot today: Climate March + MOCO Museum for Banksy/Dali exhibits + Climate March again + FOAM Museum for William Eggleston’s LOS ALAMOS exhibit plus additional photography exhibits, and then dinner out at SNCKBR. (And yeah, I’m totally cognizant of the fact that there are a whole lotta acronyms in the preceding sentence.)

It’s been a good day here in Amsterdam. So good, in fact, that I’m having trouble picking just one image to represent the experience. (To add more pics would result in a marathon blog post, and I don’t have the bandwidth for that right now.) So I’m going to leave it at this quote that was painted on the wall at the Banksy exhibit:
Actually, this is THE perfect sentiment for the day. You know why? The “art” wasn’t just in those museums. It was also on display in Museumplein where all those people gathered to voice their concern/outrage/hopes/etc regarding the climate change affecting the planet.

We’re a creative species, and it’s gonna take a whole lotta outrage + art + action to get us out of this mess. It’s a daunting endeavor. But today, between the civic action outside the museums and the creativity exhibited inside, I truly believe that is possible.

Art is essential to our survival.

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Trying to keep this truth in mind

/ Tracy Abell

It’s not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it.
~  Hans Selye

A whole lot of stress-inducing stuff swirled around me today and while I undoubtedly could’ve handled all of it more gracefully, I’m still standing. And if tomorrow brings more of the same, I’m going to try to remember that watching the clouds is a sure-fire remedy for all that ails me.

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On this day and every other day

/ Tracy Abell

You carry Mother Earth within you.
She is not outside of you.
Mother Earth is not just your environment.
In that insight of inter-being,
it is possible to have real communication with the Earth,
which is the highest form of prayer.
~  Thich Nhat Hanh

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A garden had better make room

/ Tracy Abell / 2 Comments

A garden is to be a world unto itself,
it had better make room
for the darker shades of feeling as well as the sunny ones.
~ William Kent

I worked in my garden today and experienced conflicting feelings. Why was I born into this life and society while others were born into regions of the world that are under constant assault? I’m no more exceptional than any of those people facing horrific circumstances. Why is that I can quietly work in my garden while others know only mayhem and violence?

At times, I felt guilty for my easy day outside under the blue sky.

However, I also felt satisfaction knowing my work would help living things thrive and that my efforts were keeping materials from the landfill. I reminded myself that I was creating beauty in the world and that beauty is a legitimate pursuit.

Last spring’s poppy blooms reminding me of the beauty yet to come.

Today, my garden made room for all the feelings.

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A feeling of buoyancy and clarity

/ Tracy Abell

For me, when I ‘discover’ a story,
there is a feeling of buoyancy and clarity,
perhaps similar to early morning out on a prairie highway,
when darkness lifts and reveals
the outline of farmhouses and copses of trees in the distance.
~  David Bergen

Image from Pexels.com

 

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Sunday Confessional: Today I’m wishing I could have a do-over

/ Tracy Abell / 2 Comments

This afternoon I randomly thought about a man I once knew and then looked him up online. Well, I discovered that he’d died about 18 months ago. He used to be married to a friend of mine, but they divorced. The man had done some stuff that ended up being unforgivable. Zippy and I had spent quite a bit of time with both of them as a couple, and we liked the man. He was smart, funny, and always made us feel welcome when we visited. But after the bad stuff came to light, my loyalty was to my friend. The man reached out once, but I didn’t return the call.

I still believe I was right to stand by my friend, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m now wishing I’d tried to communicate with him at some point. The thing is, my friend and I aren’t really in touch anymore so this news makes it feel as if I’ve lost two friends.

But, as Billy Wilder said, “Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.”

Because he loved these flowers.

 

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Life is just one gigantic marble maze

/ Tracy Abell

Exhibit A:

Look at all the bright and shiny colors!
The rocket ship! The stars!
There’s even a dotted line to map out the route.
There’s so much potential in the marble maze of life.

And at the end of some days, I go to bed feeling like a WINNER.

Other days it seems as if I keep falling into the same damned hole.

But the secret  to the marble maze of life is finesse,
a little bit of TILT,
and a willingness to fall down,
get back up,
and show Hole 15 that this aggression will not stand.

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Why I write books: Reason #87

/ Tracy Abell

Look at a book. A book is the right size to be a book.
They’re solar-powered. If you drop them, they keep on being a book.
You can find your place in microseconds.
Books are really good at being books,
and no matter what happens,
books will survive.
~  Douglas Adams

 

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Magpie Monday

/ Tracy Abell

There are many rhymes about magpies, but none of them is very reliable because they are not the ones that the magpies know themselves.
~  Terry Pratchett

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There’s still hope

/ Tracy Abell

 

It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome
but if that is all we ever were,
we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.
~  John Steinbeck

image from morguefile.com

image from morguefile.com

 

 

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Yeah? Well, I’m the kind of writer who does

/ Tracy Abell / 2 Comments

I grabbed my copy of WRITERS DREAMING from the shelf and opened it in hopes of finding something interesting/insightful to share here today. I wasn’t searching for anything in particular and within a couple minutes, I happened upon these two excerpts:

I’m the kind of writer who doesn’t take notes.
I tell myself, trust the unconscious.
If something is important enough in my unconscious life I will remember.
It will come to me when I need it.
So I don’t keep a notebook of good lines, good thoughts or dreams.
~ Bharati Mukherjee in WRITERS DREAMING

Usually I don’t take notes
even when I have an idea for a story until I actually sit down to do it.
Because I always have felt that I have so many ideas that the ones that are important to me, that really are good, will stay.
And the other stuff will fade.
That’s kind of a filing system.
If it was not that interesting, or not that good an idea, if it had a germ of something good in it, that part will come back.
It’ll be in there somewhere.
~  John Sayles in WRITERS DREAMING

What the hell? No notes? Because the unconscious? And because bad will fade away and good will make itself known?

Who are these writers with their functioning memories and bizarre confidence in their abilities?!

I can’t imagine life without notebooks.notebooks
 I have a variety of notebooks in a drawer, waiting for me to pull them out to write down all sorts of things inside. The good, bad, and everything in between. It’s how I sort out what’s what and who’s who in my stories. Notebooks help me navigate the oftentimes confusing dance of ideas going on in my head.

I take notes because I’m that kind of writer.

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Happy Windsday, Piglet

/ Tracy Abell / 2 Comments

Zippy and I just went for a run.
It is very blowy out there.
Ugh.
winnie-the-pooh-and-the-blustery-day-winnie-the-pooh

It wasn’t quite that bad.
I mean, neither of us went airborne.
But that’s only because we’re not chubby little cubbies all stuffed with fluff.

Otherwise . . . WHOOOOOSH.
Trust me.

 

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Thankful Thursday: The I-Didn’t-Procrastinate-(Much) Edition

/ Tracy Abell

stevenwrightquote

I’ve started working again on a project that I put on hold in 2012 because I didn’t feel equipped to do it justice. I’m still not insanely confident about my abilities (after all, I am a writer), but I’m pushing ahead.

Last night my Writing Roosters critique group got together, and one of the members spoke of her current process as she drafts another book in a series. She said that for her, outlining and research could turn into a form of procrastination, and that it was important to just get writing and trust that that other stuff will sort itself out along the way. I realize that isn’t a new concept, but it was one of those right-comments-at-the-right time things, and it went ping in my brain.

That’s exactly where I’ve been with this project; reacquainting myself with the characters and plot, doing more and more research. Thinking I had to get most every detail nailed down. Obviously, that’s false. Because as it says in STOP THAT BALL! : Could this go on all day and night? It could, you know, and it just might.

stopthatballcover

One of the best read-alouds EVER!

So today I stepped away from the outlining and research rabbit holes, and started writing. I didn’t get a whole lot of words down, but I accomplished more than page numbers.

Take that, Steven Wright!

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You yourself burst into bloom

/ Tracy Abell

geranium-bloom

“I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories… water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.”
                                                                       ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

 

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