I set myself to read more this week, and have. When the student is ready, the teacher appears, so they say. Perhaps setting myself to read drew to me the perfect book– Jacqueline Winspear’s novel, Elegy for Eddie. It is her Maisie Dobbs series, and I’ve read them all. How I missed this one, I can’t say, but everything does come at the right time, and this was the right time for me. I had my nose in the book–printed paper, ah, the smell and feel!– for happy hours.

“The old had been destroyed and the new was yet to come, and as Maisie knew only too well, the limbo in between was akin to a desert, a place where one stood with nothing while waiting for the road ahead to become clear.” ~ Jacqueline Winspear, Elegy for Eddie.

How often this happens to us in life. Sometimes the desert is deep and wide, and there is nothing else to do but wait. In the meantime– and it can be a mean time– read, books help the waiting. They help to keep our minds open. They are sort of like food and water until we reach the end of the desert.

If you don’t say yes on your own terms, you are saying it on everyone else’s terms, and the results will hurt you. ~ Claudia Altucher, The Power of No.

I have said yes to reading, and writing, and in order to do this, I have had to say no to circumstances and people. I’m getting better with practice.

When writers say that they don’t like what they’re writing, what they really mean is that they no longer like their own ideas and arguments. Seeing their ideas on the page, they no longer believe them. ~ Eric Maisel, Living the Writer’s Life.

Sometimes we grow to see that our ideas don’t work. But, I think, most of the time it is that we let doubt come in and steal the faith in the idea. We must keep our faith in our ideas and ourselves. How do we do this? By jutting our chin and pressing on, continuing to write right through the doubt. I like to think that when I’ve given up on a project three times, that’s a limit. Start and keep on going.