If you aspire to be a writer, or are already a professional, perhaps you need more than the most elaborate laptop on the market and all the typical writer’s tools. Maybe you should invest in a punching bag, too, or some other appropriate way to vent your anger.

Excerpt from Virgina Woolf’s unfinished memoirs. “Perhaps this is the strongest pleasure known to me. It is the rapture I get when in writing I seem to be discovering what belongs to what; making a scene come right; making a character come together. From this I reach what I might call a philosophy; at any rate it is a constrant idea of mine; that behind the cotton wool [of daily life] is hidden a pattern; that we–I mean all human beings–are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mess that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven . . . we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself.”

Quotes about art by Pablo Picasso and Thomas Merton.

Laura Millier, senior writer at Salon.com, writes about the changes going on in the publishing and self-publishing worlds and how this will effect readers.

The article is called: The democratization of slush: How do you find something good to read in the brave new self-published world.

I think this comment illustrates beautifully the power of books (or poetry, or art, in general) to help us heal, empower and transform.

Would you be happier if you spent more time discussing creativity and the meaning of life — and less time talking about the weather? According to a blog post at the NY Times, a study has shown that deep conversations make people happier than small talk.

“I was faced with the simplest life question I’ve ever had to answer. I asked myself whether, on my deathbed, I wanted to sigh and say, ‘I could have written a novel’ or ‘I wrote a novel.’ Believe me, the answer was simplicity itself.” — Elizabeth George

There is nothing “magical” about doing three to six months of revisions on your novel. It’s hard work. The first drafts of manuscripts, like the personalities of the chronically unaware, are raw, unrefined messes. To put first drafts out into the world is not only naïve but careless. They are almost always ineffective and even embarrassing when read a few years down the road. It is only in the subsequent drafts, where the true gold of a piece can be found.

Jennifer Higdon has composer anxiety, but she stuck with it and now she has a Pulitzer Prize for music for her Violin Concerto. Here is some of what Ms. Higdon had to say in a recent article in the New York Times.

Quotes about Writing and Creativity. Which one is your favorite?
“It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way. – Ernest Hemingway