What Inspires: First Love!

And they ask: “Are you ever going to try writing a ‘real’ book” . . .

 “The prime function of the children’s book writer is to write a book that is so absorbing, exciting, funny, fast and beautiful that the child will fall in love with it. And that first love affair between the young child and the young book will lead hopefully to other loves for other books and when that happens the battle is probably won. The child will have found a crock of gold. He will also have gained something that will help to carry him most marvelously through the tangles of his later years.”

Notable children’s books by Roald Dahl include: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Who Could Resist Falling in Love with Charlie?

James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, The Witches, The Twits, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, The BFG, The Gremlins, The Enormous Crocodile, Esio Trot, Fantastic Mr Fox, George’s Marvellous Medicine, and Danny, the Champion of the World.

I’m reading a collection of Dahl’s adult short stories now—beautiful writing at its most irreverent, racy, scary, creepy, often horrific. No crock: pure gold!

What inspires: Saying NO!

It’s usual to begin a new year with a resolutions. Lists of things we “must do” and “have to” and “will do” lists. It’s also usual, and expected, that we will break those resolutions (If we’re honest, don’t we make some specifically so we can break them?)  We are barely into the 2nd month of the year, it’s FULL MOON Time, and I’ve already broken mine…

So instead of more Do lists, how about a couple of Don’t Do lists? Here are two :  the first a quit-pussy footing-around-and-get-after-it list called “Twenty-Five Things Writers Should Stop Doing…” specifically for us writers by novelist, screenwriter and self-proclaimed “Freelance Pe-monkey”  Chuck Wendig.

And for everyone:  the list that inspired Chuck to “cobble” his list: 30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself

Just say no! Reading them inspired me to begin my own No List. Item #1: NO MORE BEATING YOURSELF UP!                 

What Inspires: A Clean Slate
Happy 2012 to us all.

Our new calendars are open and flipped to bright, new, blank pages. Along with all those other resolutions, let’s save space for creative moments, deep jolly belly rolls,  and personal fulfillment!

For my part, I’ll keep seeking tidbits that inspire me and promise to share them here in hopes they’ll inspire you, too.

As the song goes: “It’s a new dawn/It’s a new day…” add to that It’s a new year!

Great niece, Adelaide Smith, a bright shining new mind--what could be more inspiriing?