Encouraging Words

Everyone needs encouraging words from time to time.

So, here’s a nifty collection just for you.

Read them, sing them, or paste them on your forehead.

Then gather up your courage and…

Shine on! 

It's never too late to be what you might have been.

~ George Eliot

A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.

~Richard Bach

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit.

~ Aristotle

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

~ Agatha Christie

A year from now you’ll wish you started today.

~ Karen Lamb

If your ship hasn't come in – swim out to it.

~ Mary Engelbreit

Keep away from people who try to belittle your dreams. Small people always do that, but the really great ones make you feel that you too, can become great.

~ Mark Twain

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

~ Henry David Thoreau 

Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

Believe in love. Believe in magic. Hell, believe in Santa Claus. Believe in others. Believe in yourself. Believe in your dreams.

If you don't, who will?

~ Jon Bon Jovi

For myself I am an optimist – it does not seem to

be much use being anything else.

~ Winston Churchill

PROMPT:  You fail only if you stop writing. ~ Ray Bradbury

Yep, It Is Stranger

Big Chill Victim #237:

Former trapeze artist Ingeborg Fenstermacher

This just in from Germany –

An entire troupe of flea circus performers has been wiped out in one go, thanks to the unseasonably cold temperatures that has gripped the nation.

Director Robert Birk was stunned when he opened the circus transport box last week. Apparently, his entire cast of 300 had knocked ‘em dead for the very last time... as they were, in fact, all dead.

But as they say in the biz— the show must go on. So Mr. Birk wasted no time grieving and immediately scrambled to find and train a new ensemble.

Remarkably, a nearby university was able to provide 50 fleas in time for their weekend show.

So far the institution of higher learning has remained mum about the exact location of their secret flea stash…

Team mascot?

Professor’s beard?

Curious minds want to know.

PROMPT: I'm sure you're itching to work this stranger truth into a great piece of fiction! Write from the perspective of the struggling flea circus director, or perhaps the even odder angle of the university professor who just so happens to have 50 fleas to spare for the cause.

Friendly Reminder

“When one is thirsty one quenches one’s thirst by drinking,

not by reading books which treat of this condition.”

~ Jean Pierre de Caussade

Books are brilliant.

Conferences are crackerjack.

And blogs are beautiful.

But if you really, really, REALLY thirst to be a writer –

You’re gonna have to

WRITE.

PROMPT: Pour yourself a great big glass of water, then hit the page. Nothing quenches the writer soul like black words on white paper.

Write on!

Happy Day!

Children + Books = Happy

Way back in 1967, SOMEbody decided that life would be so much better if the world had a “Super Bowl” Day where men could run around, grunt a lot, and legally give one another head injuries.

At about the same time, some gentle-souled genius had another idea.

He or she decided that the world would be a much better place if we all curled up on a sofa, smiled a lot, and actually GREW some brain cells by reading something fun.

It was called International Children's Book Day.

And guess what –

Today is NOT the Super Bowl.

PROMPT: If you've guessed that today is International Children's Book Day, then you must be a reader with a great set of brain cells!

What was your favorite book back when you were a tyke?

What’s your favorite children’s book now?

What kind of children’s book would you like to see written?

Yep, that last one’s the one you ought to start today!