From: To Kill a Mockingbird

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

Harper Lee

*Keep on fightin' the good fight, bloggees. I'm a bit overwhelmed by injustice these days, but I'll be back soon with regular updates.

Why Being Told You Suck is a Good Thing

Let me tell you something true about me:

I HATE disappointing people. Yet, sometimes at work, I screw up. People come down hard on me, but no one comes down on me harder than I do. Because I hate to hear people point out things I did wrong--especially when they are choices I stopped and questioned, and then did anyway.

Maybe that's why this section of The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch is loitering in my mind:

"Coach Graham rode you pretty hard, didn't he?" he said.

I could barely muster a "yeah."

"That's a good thing," the assistant told me.

"When you're screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they've given up on you."

...

You may not want to hear it, but your critics are often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you and want to make you better.

Remember, bloggees. People tell you your writing sucks because they believe you have the potential to do better. Prove 'em right.

From: "Thumbing My Way"

"No matter how cold the winter,
there's a springtime ahead."

Pearl Jam

A Thought for Friday

"I really would like to stop working forever--never work again, never do anything like the kind of work I'm doing now--and do nothing but write poetry and have leisure.... Just a literary and quiet city-hermit existence."

-Allen Ginsberg

(Thanks, yet again, Mode Room Press for today's Daily Literary Quote.)

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."

Dr. Seuss

This is one of my all-time favorite quotes! It's magnetted to my fridge. What's your favorite Dr. Seuss line or book?

From: "Closer to the Heart"

"The men who hold high places
must be the ones who start
to mold a new reality
closer to the heart."

Rush

My husband ruled the radio all weekend, so my head's spinning through classic rock lyrics this morning. Sometimes I get so used to the words, I don't hear them anymore. This one struck me as so apt for the times, I stopped in my tracks and jotted.

Me loves this.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, --
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few.

Emily Dickinson

Found: A Reminder

"The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for."

Maureen Dowd
Thanks yet again, Writer's Almanac

Found: The Gist

"Get busy living, or get busy dying."

The Shawshank Redemption
said by Andy Dufresne in the movie version
said by Red in the text version (titled "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" and written by Stephen King)

From: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

"Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free."

Tom Robbins
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

P.S.: Thanks to real-life friend Trilby for suggesting this quote for a booknapping.

How to Survive Drowning in a Sea of Rejection

I read blogs for all sorts of reasons:

• procrastinating
• research
• laughing
  
• motivation

I found this blog by a successful publisher the other day, and I wanted to blognap a quote from it and share. Some of you are querying in vain. Some of you hate your day job. Some of you have had horrible weeks and can't wait until 5PM so you can get slothy for 48 hours.

Some of you want to give up.

Well, this successful publisher dude gave some solid practical advice for how to talk yourself out of quitting. His words are simple yet genius:

"[W]hen Gail and I have a fight—yes, we do have fights—I ask, 'So why should I stay in this marriage?' Instead of pushing that question down like holding a beach ball under the water, I let it surface and embrace it. 'What is at stake?'

But notice: I’m not asking 'Why should I quit? because I will get answers to that question too. The mind is tricky that way. It will attempt to answer whatever question you ask it, so you must be very careful with how you frame the question. Instead, I focus on the positive. I am looking for reasons to keep going."

Got it?

Why should I keep going?

not

Why should I quit?

I'll help you get started. One reason I keep writing: because some stories hit me with a truth so big and obvious (yet not) that my heart feels like it's going to explode out of my chest, and I want to make other people feel that. What's one of your reasons?

Happy Birthday Thoreau!

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

So if you've been visiting Booknapped from way back, you might've noticed that I'm a major Henry David Thoreau fan. I formally wish a happy posthumous birthday to someone who is much cooler than I will ever be.

You know all those quizzes that ask who you'd like to have dinner with, dead or alive? I always choose Thoreau.

Who do you choose?

Something to Ponder

"Instant karma's going to get you."

-John Lennon

A Quick Laugh for the Enlightened

Do you think of Google as an extension of your brain? I do, so I thought this comic was hilarious. Thanks to Citizen X over at tanjentsdotcom, an Internet culture blog, for turning me on to it.

Life is too short for shoddy prose

For a while, I’ve wanted to take Booknapped in a new direction. I’ve been thinking of adding more of my own ideas here in conjunction with the ideas of others, commenting on my booknappings instead of just posting them here for you to figure out for yourselves.

My first order of business is to introduce myself and my blog.

What the hell is Booknapped and who are you anyway?

The idea behind Booknapped is that artists work as a filter, taking in everything and holding the best in their subconscious until it comes out in their work. Booknapped is a record of the influences in my world—words so smart I wish I said them.

I’m a writer. By day I get paid to write for other people. I listen to their ideas and transform them into text. By night, and very early in the morning, I don’t get paid to write about made-up worlds and characters I build in my head. One day, I hope to get paid for my night and early morning work, but I’m fine and dandy with paying my dues.

Why should we listen to you?

I don’t know. Maybe you shouldn’t. Use your judgment. I went to a great university where I majored in English. I traveled. I moved to the edge of America to study writing for three years. While I was there, I read all kinds of books. I finished many of them. I also taught writing and literature classes.

Now, I’m an editor. I read about a 100 books a year. I’ve written two novels and millions* of short stories and poems. My writing has been steadily improving for the last 30 years. By my calculations, in another 30, my work will be phenomenal, and this site will have many more readers.

What will we see on the new and improved Booknapped?

Writing tips, links to good articles about writing and funny sites about punctuation, rants and raves about the world and the artist’s place in it, complaints about my characters who have been being bitches and bastards lately, the occasional dirty word, pictures that say a 1000 words, me groveling at the feet of writers so good I want to give up sometimes—etc.

Basically, the same stuff my favorite quotes are about: not being an asshole, not letting the bastards get you down, and writing. I won’t complain about writers and editors even though both piss me off regularly. I might regale you with fascinating stories about the writing, editing, beta reading, and querying process.

Oh and self-doubt, so much self-doubt you could wade in it.

And quiet rebellion. I am a big fan of getting on the boat, and then tipping it from the inside.

On Booknapped, you won’t see reviews--especially bad ones. I might tell you that a particular author is made of awesome or that I want to ask a certain book to run away and elope with me. But I will never say that a book sucked or that a writer needs to go back to waitressing. I won’t do this for several reasons:

• It’s tacky for an artist to put down another artist. It is impolite and goes against all that I believe. What do I believe? That anyone who has the guts to create something and then subject it to public scrutiny is my hero.
• I don’t finish books that suck, so for all I know they get better. If I were to say a book was bad, I’d have to read it to the end to make sure I was correct. Life is too short for shoddy prose.
• Booknapped is a love fest. It’s a place for me to store ideas that are so incredible, so insightful, that I want to internalize them. I don’t want to clog up all this beauty with crap.

You’ll still see quotes sometimes, because, well, wouldn’t it be more fitting to sum it up in a quote? To explain, I’ll use the words of Ricky Fitts from the movie American Beauty:

Because it helps me remember... and I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in.

Why did it take you so long to put your own ideas on here?

Because I’m shy. In real life, I hide in books, music, and museums to avoid conversations. In my cyber life, I guess I do the same. But here I come, blogosphere. Look out.

P.S., Leave comments, people! Don’t let the only response to my barbaric yawp be my own echo. Let me know what you think of this rash new policy on Booknapped!

*estimate

Found: Inspiration

"Noli nothis permittere te terere"

It's been a week of short quotes.

Mostly because it's also been a week of my insecurity rearing all 10,000 of its ugly little heads and screaming at me in unison.

For Friday, I offer you one of my all-time favorites--my life mantra, if you will.

Don't feel dumb if you don't know Latin. Hardly anybody knows Latin. Just Google it and be happy that you live in an age when Latin is Google-able and books like 13 Reasons Why exist.

Finished it at 7:58 this morning. Am still reeling.

Thank you, Jay Asher for being awesome.

Found: Wisdom

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

Leonardo da Vinci

From: "The End Has No End"

"It's not the secrets of the government
That's keeping you dumb
Oh, it's the other way around --"

The Strokes

Happy Birthday Walt Whitman!

O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless--of cities fill'd with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light--of the objects mean--of the struggle ever renew'd;
Of the poor results of all--of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest--with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring--What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here--that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

Yawp!

From: "Beneficence"

"I realized that the world does not represent a struggle at all, or a predacious sequence of chance events, but shimmering bliss, beneficent trepidation, a gift bestowed upon us and unappreciated."
quotes from literature
Vladimir Nabokov