A mural of Neruda graces the Bellavista neighborhood in Santiago, Chile.

These Top 10 Literary Cities in the World were picked by National Geographic. For descriptions of each city and why it is considered one of the top 10 go here.

1. Edinburgh, Scotland

2. Dublin, Ireland

3. London, England

4. Paris, France

5. St. Petersburg, Russia

6. Stockholm, Sweden

7. Portland, Oregon

8. Washington, D.C.

9. Melbourne, Australia

10. Santiago, Chile

I’m humbled to say that I have only been to one of the ten on this list, though several are on my bucket list. What about you? Are there places listed here that you’d like to go someday or have already visited?

Author, naturalist, and environmental activist, Terry Tempest Williams says:

“I live in a very, very quiet place. I have a sequence to my creative life. In spring and fall, I am above ground and commit to community. In the summer, I’m outside. It is a time for family. And in the winter, I am underground. Home. This is when I do my work as a writer — in hibernation. I write with the bears.”

I love that quote and love thinking of writing that way. A few weeks ago I started a new novel that is a huge, yet wonderful, distraction. You may have noticed that I’m not posting as often and that is why. I am obsessed with finishing the first draft and keep having fantasies of going to live in a cave (or maybe a 5-star hotel) so that I can. (As of today, I have 57,000 words. A typical novel for me is around 80,000 words.) What about you? Are you working on something right now? Are you writing with the bears? As always, I’d love to hear from you.

P.S. Happy Holidays!

P.P.S. A new book is coming out next year. You’ll be hearing about it soon.

Author website.

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1) my mate, my daughters, my friends

2) mountain streams

3) authenticity

4) song birds

5) readers of my books and blog (thank you!)

6)  seasons

7) sincerity

8) well-written fiction

9) advanced writer’s groups

10) milk chocolate with nuts

11) blues

12) female vocalists

13) storytellers

14) hummingbirds

15) deciduous trees

16) clean rivers

17) meadows

18) white-tailed deer

19) word processing

20) Pentel mechanical pencils

21) a genuine smile

22) independent & foreign films

23) a really good story

24) creativity

25) gusts of warm wind

26) falling leaves

27) deep breaths

28) a good hamburger

29) coffee shops that sell quality tea

30) bookstores

31) libraries

32) get-togethers with friends

33) waterfalls

34) sitting by a mountain stream on a sunny day

35) writing in the mornings

36) artistic excellence

37) writers who focus on craft

38) art museums

39) kindness

40) a good southern breakfast

41) time to contemplate life

42) courage

43) quests for brilliance

44) wisdom

45) symbolism

46) mysticism

47) nature poetry

48) nature poets

49) four-legged family: current and past

50) dogs: Emma & Jack

51) cats: Sammy, Squeaker, and Timmy

52) grace

53) forgiveness

54) knowledge and intelligence

55) artists of all kinds

56) travel that expands

57) freedom to write what I want

58) soul

59) book sales

60) Scrabble

61) memories that lift and nourish

62) integrity

63) cheese Danish

64) Assam tea

65) ancestors

66) consciousness

67) drawings & illustrations

68) comedy

69) laughter

70) our house in the forest

71) wood stoves

72) wood floors

73) holidays with select family and friends

74) a good joke

75) walks by the river

76) red-tailed hawks

77) grocery stores

78) farmer’s markets

79) white squirrels outside my window

80) playfulness

81) shade on hot, sunny days

82) campfires

83) deep conversation

84) dreams, dreams, dreams

85) dancers at the top of their game

86) moonlight

87) sunlight through trees

88) stars

89) oceans

90) children laughing

91) grand-dogs

92) hearing

93) sight

94) intuition

95) live music

96) a book that enlightens me

97) good health

98) sacred landscapes

99) the desire to listen deeply

What about you? What are you grateful for?

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Author website.

Writer, Elizabeth Gilbert, has encouraging words for people who come to writing later in life. She says:

“Writing is not like dancing or modeling; it’s not something where — if you missed it by age 19 — you’re finished. It’s never too late. Your writing will only get better as you get older and wiser. If you write something beautiful and important, and the right person somehow discovers it, they will clear room for you on the bookshelves of the world — at any age. At least try.”

I can second that. I didn’t start writing until I was turning 40. I was a psychotherapist with a full private practice and had the realization that if I died at that moment, a lot of people might come to my funeral, but I would die having never done what I really wanted and needed to do, which was to write.

I agree that it’s never too late to claim your “voice,” in whatever arena you feel you have things to say. It doesn’t matter if you’re a late bloomer, as long as you bloom!

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life… Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

–Steve Jobs, cofounder of Apple computers

Are there people or situations in your life that are drowning out your inner voice? As you know, this can be devastating for writers and creative types. Are you willing to do what Steve Jobs suggests? Do you have the courage to follow your heart and intuition? As always, I’d love to hear from you.

As a person who has attended numerous writers groups and writers conferences over the last decade, I’ve heard lots of excuses about why people don’t write. Some of them I’ve even heard coming from myself! For fun, I came up with a list of 101 excuses why people don’t write that book they say they are always going to write. See what you think.

1. No one will want to read it anyway

2. I’m not good enough

3. I don’t have time to be creative

4. I have to take care of everybody else first

5. I’m just too busy to go on book tours

6.  The sun is in my eyes

7. Starbucks has run out of coffee

8. I don’t know what to write about

9.  No one will understand me

10. I don’t think I can handle success

11. I don’t think I can handle failure

12. If my parents had encouraged/would encourage me more, I could do this

13. If my spouse/children/teachers/friends would encourage me more, I could do this

14. Writers are naval-gazers

15. I like money too much to become a starving artist

16. It takes too long to learn to write well 

17. I don’t like criticism

18. There’s a ballgame on

19. I don’t like to read

20. My twitter followers need me to tweet about what I had for lunch

21. See #1 on the list (it’s worth repeating)

22. The spell-check on my computer is set to British English

23. I don’t want to have to promote my own book

24. I don’t really have anything to say

25. Everybody says I should write a book, but I don’t believe them

26. See # 7

27. I want to save on electricity

28. I can’t find the pencil sharpener I used in 3rd grade

29. The back of this envelope isn’t big enough

30. I can’t afford the gasoline to drive to Starbucks

31. There are no comfortable chairs in my house

32. It’s too cold

33. It’s too hot

34. My facebook friends need me to post something every 5 minutes

35. I work fulltime

36. I’m already better than all those bozos writing today

37. If I can’t have fame and fortune, I don’t want to bother

38. Writing is the get-rich-slow-or-not-at-all plan

39. 99% of all writers get their work rejected by publishers

40. I’ll do it when I have more time to devote to it 

41. I’ll do it when the kids are grown

42. I’ll do it after my divorce is final

43. I’ll do it after I am independently wealthy

44. I’ll do it after I get everything finished with the house

45. I’ll do it after everybody I want to write about is dead

46. I need my down time 

47. Most of the writer’s I know are mentally unbalanced

48. I’m too tired

49. My neighbors are too loud

50. Is that a dog barking?

51. I need to go out to get a drink with my neighbors

52. I have a cut on my finger

53. My back hurts

54. My ghostwriter has disappeared

55. Sarah Palin has already said it all

56. John Grisholm doesn’t answer my emails

57. Oprah’s show has ended, so my book won’t be a book club pick

58. I don’t have anything to wear to the Academy Awards 

59. My cat won’t get off my lap 

60. repeat # 6

61. I need to wash my car

62. Somebody’s got to make a living

63. The coffee shop doesn’t carry my brand of tea

64. My writer’s group is full of critics

65. Writer’s conferences are a racket

66. I have a cramp in my big toe

67. It’s that time of the month

68. My bowling team will think I’m a sissy

69. I won’t have anyone to sit next to at the National Book Awards

70. I’m shy

71. I need to make a list of excuses for my blog readers so maybe they’ll laugh and maybe even buy my books

72. I can’t afford to live in New York City where all the famous writers live

73. I don’t have time to find an agent

74. Creativity is over-rated

75. I’m sleep-deprived

76. Hemingway killed himself 

77. I don’t have enough self-esteem

78. I’m a woman

79. I’m a man

80. I’m not white

81. I’m not a person of color

82. I’m thirsty

83. Time to eat

84. I need to see who wins American Idol 

85. I secretly find myself boring and have absolutely nothing to say

86. Virginia Woolf drowned herself 

87. I don’t want to become an alcoholic

88. I don’t want to give up drinking  

89. I’m much better than a lot of writers out there; they’ll be jealous

90. I don’t like competition

91. The publishing companies only want stories about vampires

92. No one is getting published these days

93. I ran out of my medication

94. If I had had a better childhood, I could do this

95. My therapist is on vacation for the next two months

96. I have to write the next great American novel

97. I’ve never read a great American novel

98. see # 83 and repeat

99. I don’t like writers

100. Is there an app for this? 

Now add in the comment section your own number one excuse for not writing that book, poem, article, screenplay, or other creative endeavor:

101. ——————————

Are there any excuses from the list that you particularly resonate with? We all make excuses. But let’s face it, excuses are boring, and my guess is that you really do have something to say. So why don’t we collectively bury all those excuses in a cyber box in our cyber backyards and get on with it, shall we?!

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Author website. 

 P.S. My novel, Seeking Sara Summers , is available in paperback and is also a bestseller on Kindle. It can be found at iBooks and Barnes and Noble (on the Nook), as well. Thanks for checking it out! No excuses, please.

• “What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do, is re-engage people with their own humanity. Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.” –Barbara Kingsolver

• “There’s room for everybody on the planet to be creative and conscious if you are your own person. If you’re trying to be like somebody else, then there isn’t.”- Tori Amos

• Everyone deserves Sanctuary a place to go where you are safe
  Art offers Sanctuary to everyone willing
  to open their hearts as well as their eyes
  “Art Sanctuary” by Nikki Giovanni, from Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea.

• Joy Williams said: “The writer doesn’t trust his enemies, of course, who are wrong about his writing, but he doesn’t trust his friends, either, who he hopes are right. The writer trusts nothing he writes — it should be too reckless and alive for that, it should be beautiful and menacing and slightly out of his control. It should want to live itself somehow.”

• Julian Barnes said that a great book “is a book that describes the world in a way that has not been done before; and that is recognized by those who read it as telling new truths — about society or the way in which emotional lives are led, or both.”

•  ”Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.” Alice Walker

• Stories have to be told
  or they die,
  and when they die,
  we can’t remember
  who we are
  or why we are here.
  Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

• “When I’m writing, I am concentrating almost wholly on concrete detail: the color a room is painted, the way a drop of water rolls off a wet leaf after a rain.” –Novelist, Donna Tartt

• “You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” –Madeleine L’Engle

• “I have this sense of urgency about what I want to get done and I discipline myself by keeping to myself.” –Marilynne Robinson

Do any of these quotes speak to you? What’s your favorite? As always, I’d love to hear from you.

In the March 14, 2011 issue of The New Yorker, Tina Fey talks about the lessons she learned from working as a writer in late night television (i.e. Saturday Night Live) and the things she learned from producer Lorne Michaels. One of these lessons is something that might interest writers, poets, playwrights, artists, composers, and creative types in any medium. That is: “the show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s eleven-thirty.”

She goes on to say:

This is something Lorne has said often about “Saturday Night Live,” but it’s a great lesson in not being too precious about your writing. You have to try your hardest to be at the top of your game and improve every joke until the last possible second, but then you have to let it go.

You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute. (And I’m from a generation in which a lot of people died on waterslides, so this was an important lesson for me to learn.) You have to let people see what you wrote. It will never be perfect, but perfect is overrated. Perfect is boring on live television.

So what do you think? Is there something in your life that you are overthinking? Are you that kid standing at the top of the waterslide ready to go down the chute? I’d love to hear from you.

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According to Writer’s Almanac, Maya Angelou still writes on yellow legal pads.

She said:

I see a yellow pad, and my knees get weak, and I salivate.

She also said:

The writer has to take the most used, most familiar objects — nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs — ball them together and make them bounce, turn them a certain way and make people get into a romantic mood; and another way, into a bellicose mood. I’m most happy to be a writer.

And this:

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

How do you write? Yellow legal pad? Laptop computer? Do you have the agony of an untold story inside of you? As always, I’d love to hear from you.

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www.susangabriel.com

Kiran Desai

Kiran Desai is the youngest woman ever to receive the Booker Prize for her novel, The Inheritance of Loss, published in 2006. But she started out like everybody else with her first book called Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, not knowing exactly what she was doing and by plowing through anyway.

Below are excerpts from an interview conducted a few years ago where she talks about  the “incredibly messy” process of writing a first book, how to know when to quit revising, her writing rituals and she gives some advice to aspiring writers.

Bold Type: What was your process for writing this book–did you start with the characters or with the plot?

Kiran Desai: When I started writing it I had no idea what the story would be; I had no idea of the plot. It sort of gathered momentum and drew me along. It was an incredibly messy process and I don’t know if it was the smartest way to go about it because this was my first book, so I had to teach myself how to write as I was writing it, and I don’t know if I went about it the right way but I certainly had a lot of fun. It was very messy though–I had to throw out many pages–about half the book I think I ended up editing. Once I was aware of all the different ways to go, all the plot turns to take.

BT: So how did you know when you were done, when the story was complete?

KD: I think that’s perhaps the hardest thing, to know when you’ve finished, because it seems like you can always go on polishing and polishing and working on it some more. But after a while I think I was so close to it that I couldn’t even see it anymore; it didn’t make sense to continue on my own, and so I finally showed it to my agent and wanted an editor to help me take it to the next level. But, I also realized that after a point you can’t go on perfecting something and polishing it and making it better, because you lose something in the process, the freshness of it, and I realized that even if it wasn’t completely perfect I had to leave it; it was enough–I couldn’t work on it any more. It’s a balance; if you perfect one thing you lose something else, and that’s the stage where I think you have to know when to stop.

BT: Do you have any private rituals or special environments that you need to create in order to write best?

KD: Well, I carried this book around all over the place when I was writing it, just took it with me everywhere–I was writing in India and in this country and in Mexico and in different environments and different rooms everywhere. I had to be quite adaptable, I think, to try and work wherever I was….

I really like working in the kitchen; I find that wherever I am I work near the kitchen or in the kitchen itself. I can constantly make myself little things to eat or cups of tea; I find it’s the perfect balance, in that I can write a bit, eat a cookie, and then I write a bit more, eat some ice cream. Reward myself– it’s constant rewards. And I work best in the morning, as soon as I get out of bed I start writing, and late at night. I have dead space in the afternoon, which I think comes from growing up with an afternoon siesta; my brain just shuts off from about two to five.

BT: In writing classes one’s often taught to flesh out every character and plot twist well in advance, and you’re proof that that’s not always the necessary formula. As you said, you had an unconventional method for writing Hullabaloo; this being your first book, do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

KD: There are all kinds of theories that you get told in writing workshops–”Write what you know,” and that sort of thing, which I don’t believe at all. I think one of the great joys of writing is to try and explore what you don’t know, that’s exciting to me. There are all kinds of little things–show, don’t tell–I just wouldn’t pay attention to any of that really. I don’t think you can write according to a set of rules and laws; every writer is so different. I can’t imagine how they come up with these rules–they’re really ludicrous. You can’t learn to write in that fashion. What inspired me really was reading, reading a lot and learning from other writers. Learning how they are going about something–I was very aware of that when I was writing this book. Every book that I read at the same time I’d think, “Hmm–how do they do this?” Looking at it in that way, from a technical point of view, which we don’t usually do as a reader. But really I think that’s for me what was important; I was training myself to look at my work with a critical eye….

If you want to read the rest of the interview, you can find it here.

So what do you think? Do you agree? Disagree? Did you learn anything new?  As always, I’d love to hear from you.