"Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead."

Gene Fowler

"We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little."

Anne Lamott

"Nighttime is really the best time to work. All the ideas are there to be yours because everyone else is asleep."

Catherine O'Hara

"One has to live a life that creates a writer."

Erno Paasilinna

"I believe that the chief gift from Africa to writers, white and black, is the continent itself, its presence which for some people is like an old fever, latent always in their blood; or like an old wound throbbing in the bones as the air changes. That is not a place to visit unless one chooses to be an exile ever afterwards from an inexplicable majestic silence lying just over the border of

memory or thought."

Doris Lessing

Man is a “symbolizing, conceptualizing meaning-seeking animal”…”suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun."

Clifford Geertz

"All the fairest beauties in the human soul, its greatest victories, and its most splendid achievements are always those which no one else knows anything about, or can only dimly guess at."

Hannah Hubbard

"Poets do not go mad; but chess players do."

G.K. Chesterton

"You are very kind in your hints as to the sort of composition which might recommend me at present, and I am fully sensible that an historical romance, founded on the House of Saxe-Cobourg, might be much more to the purpose of profit or popularity than such pictures of domestic life in country villages as I deal in. But I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or at other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No, I must keep to my own style and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other."

Jane Austen

To the recent proliferation of artists sending me DMs: I write for free- I cannot pay for any artistic renderings or inspired works based on my stories. Please do not ask if I can join a paid collaboration. Unless you plan to pay me for my writing, I cannot pay you for your art. Thank you for your consideration.

Story updates (as of December 29, 2024):

The Branch: Another case of over-research stagnation. The use of horses in WW1, the Happy Valley Set in Kenya, and the lives of Edwardian botanists all sent me into merry bunny trails of research.

Thunderbird and His Cumulonimbus: on hiatus but not abandoned. This story has taught me so much, I am determined to see it to completion- for my own growth if nothing else. However, it requires full days of research and writing and can't be done in bits and pieces. I don't have full days. Thus, this one will wait. It's too epic, too complex, too research-heavy, but I love it and so it must continue.

Search For A Soul: technically done. These are short stories. I'm playing with history, mythology, and whatever else I feel like musings over . I can add to it whenever. There's a "fisherman's wife" in 1850's Forks tale, the rescue of a whaling captain from a shipwreck tale, a Last Unicorn with vampires, and a Norse mythology remake which I have floating in my head. When I am inspired, I will throw out more short stories to this collection.

Beauty From Ashes: Only posted on Ao3. Will eventually cross-list, maybe. No research required, only the need to abstain from sleep and pour out the next chapter. Which is already drafted. In my head. Really, my greatest barrier to writing is sleep.

I threw The Phoenix and the Serpent out the window. I needed a break from writing for the MCU.

The Art of Knowing Our Own Nothingness: Since I completed MMM&M, I can start on this one. Hooray!