*Because it’s Christmas Eve, and because it’s been a long week after a long month plus after a mostly disappointing election (Slotkin, Baldwin, Alsobrooks etc. notwithstanding) and I am tired, because all of these authors and these specific quotes inspire me during those moments, hours, and days during which I wonder why I write, at all. Finding our voices, seeking out our purpose whether as writers, teachers, leaders, humans – is essential, is powerful and is deeply subversive – especially and particularly for women and other marginalized communities (fifty-percent of humanity can be identified as a marginalized community, think on that for a mo’). When the stories and voices of half the world’s population are ignored, erased, marginalized, absent – we collectively suffer. #WomenWrite
Once, many years ago, a male friend, after attending a reading of one of my plays, said the following, “It would be perfect for Lifetime TV”, which he meant as a compliment but – really? Really, dude? Was he, a white, gay man, actually that unconscious about what he was actually saying, which was that my play – a story featuring women written by a woman – was meant for that “women’s channel”, because women’s stories aren’t by definition mainstream? I think he was unconscious to that, but – ahem – he didn’t stay that way for long. By the way, he’s still alive, in case you’re wondering, and we’re still good friends.
“A word after a word after a word is power.” – Margaret Atwood
“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” – Sylvia Plath – The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath.
“Creativity is a crushing chore and a glorious mystery. The work wants to be made, and it wants to be made through you.” – Elizabeth Gilbert
“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.” – Muriel Rukeyser
“Tell your story.
Shout it. Write it.
Whisper it if you have to.
But tell it.
Some won’t understand it.
Some will outright reject it.
But many will
thank you for it.
And then the most
magical thing will happen.
One by one, voices will start
whispering, ‘Me, too.’
And your tribe will gather.
And you will never
feel alone again.” ~ L.R. Knost
“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing…and keeping the unknown always beyond you.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.” ~ Madeleine L’Engle
“Tell them about how you’re never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there’s always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don’t speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside.” ~ Audre Lorde
“The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.” – Maya Angelou
“Socrates said, ‘The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.’ He wasn’t talking about grammar. To misuse language is to use it the way politicians and advertisers do, for profit, without taking responsibility for what the words mean. Language used as a means to get power or make money goes wrong: it lies. Language used as an end in itself, to sing a poem or tell a story, goes right, goes towards the truth. A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well, they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.” ~ Ursula K. Le Guin
“The moment Eve bit into the apple, her eyes opened and she became free. She exposed the truth of what every woman knows: to find our sovereign voice often requires a betrayal.” – Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice