Solid Advice for a Writer.....

“The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.” – William Saroyan

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Greetings from the South! Fall weather is here, trying desperately to flirt with a Southern Winter every now and then; dang if the girl isn’t flirting back every couple of days.

The house is full of activity. Football games on the weekends, homework on the weeknights, movies, books, art festivals, music, laughter, writing, and living. William Saroyan was quite right in his assessment for a writer. We get bogged down sometimes in characters, plotlines, settings, grammar and word counts. We often slip into our fictional worlds and shut off the one around us.  His words remind me that we must pull from the life we are leading in order to bring our fictional worlds alive. If we forget to experience, to observe, to enjoy then we are shortchanging the characters we love. For them to breathe we must give them emotions, give them life experiences, give them knowledge or hide from them what they need not know just yet…So take his advice. Live. You just might find that whatever has you bogged down in your writing will be released and discovery is one of the best side effects life has to offer.