Post Thanksgiving Thoughts

Day after Thanksgiving and I'm finally into gratitude.  

Grateful for the satisfaction of wrestling a paragraph onto the page, never mind the two hours I struggled to get it right.

Grateful for rendering a character's emotion believable and honest. Capturing just the right moment to get him on stage, raw and vulnerable.  

Grateful for the joy of having written.  

Sometimes it feels like a great effort just to sit down and turn on the computer.  I look at all the piles on my desk and give myself permission to ignore them.  Just get to the novel. Mornings work for me.  Face the page, reach into the center of myself and don't look back.

Ignore email,  Facebook, Twitter and all the rest. Ignore the cat and the two dogs who have already been fed.

And today I surprise myself.  A breakthrough.  What I believe is the crux of the novel, the emotional truth, the hard story, turns comic at the scene's end.  Not trivial, but funny.

So thankful for not taking myself too seriously.  

Post Election Pessimism

Taking a break from writing to wallow in my role as a curmudgeon.

Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.
 --H.L. Mencken
A pessimist is  person who has to listen to too many optimists. 
--Don Marquis
My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of other pessimists.
--Jean Rostand
Democracy: The worship of jackals by jackasses.
--H.L. Mencken
If you can't say anything good about someone, sit right here by me.
--Alice Roosevelt Longworth
Early to rise and early to bed
Makes a male healthy, wealthy and dead.
--James Thurber
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
--Oscar Wilde
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginable.
--Oscar Wilde
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
--Woody Allen
My heart is pure as the driven slush.
--Tallulah Bankhead