'A poet can survive anything but a misprint.'

                                                                                            Oscar Wilde

        'The wastepaper basket is the writer's best friend' says Isaac Basheivis Singer.
 
         But not yet...I need every word I've got so far, even the bad ones....

In Sauchiehall St in Glasgow is Vanilla and Black.
 
A small place with cakes so large - huge meringues with glitter  - that although I like looking at them, I'm not really tempted to eat them. But it's clean, pretty in a girlie way with its vintage  unmatched china, twinkly lights and chandeliers, has friendly young staff, and is near to a good art gallery (Roger Billcliffe where I currently have five small watercolours on show - three sold so far!) and to the only remaining bookshop in the city centre.

A good place to write.

        'It is perfectly OK to write garbage - as long as you edit brilliantly.'

                                                                                                                                    C J Cherryh


....have got to 20,408 words..it's getting harder!

        'It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by then                                I was too famous.'

                                                                                                                         Robert Benchley

    
'It's better to write about things you feel than about things you know about'

                                                                                     L P Hartley







Snow on the mountains, mist on the water.
Today I needed yellow.

        'A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage.'

                                                                                                                                    Sidney Smith



is there something you are not trying for want of a little courage? Or put another way, if you had just a little more courage, what might you be doing now?.....

     'Writing is easy; all you have to do is sit there staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on                   your forehead.'
                                             Gene Fowler

Could I pretend it's another month? Any month with 31 days in it?

No,  better take Lynne's wise advice and give myself a week's swimming leave.

So no more talk of blood and torture! I must remember I am doing this for fun!

I shall listen to T S Eliot, who said about novel writing:

    'There is no method except to be very intelligent.'


In times of stress I ask myself 'What would a sane, rational person do?' And the funny, and reassuring thing is I always know the answer....


thank you for the encouraging messages...favourite cafe tomorrow

I am thousands  of words behind - maybe I'll have to take Clarence Buddington Kelland's approach:

                           'I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter till it screams, then stop.'