Tag Archives: writing inspiration

The Last Day of the Year

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New Year’s Eve is a little like Christmas Eve, isn’t it?

In that moment before, there’s such potential, such excitement! For what, who knows? And that’s the point, I think, when one’s standing on the precipice, right before the leap: there is no telling what is coming next.

The last week of the old year, I do a lot of thinking. It may look like napping or cleaning or eating cookies, but I am really engaged in an inordinate amount of ruminating and pondering. You can read how I apply all that thinking to my writing life over at The Muffin with End of the Year Thinking. But I also do a lot of thinking about me and my…well, all the other parts of my life.

And as I do a lot of inbox cleaning this time of year, I happened to come across a two minute video I’d saved by Matthew Kelly, a prolific Catholic Christian author. It’s titled Five Lessons from Roald Dahl so I knew immediately why I’d saved it.

I am a huge Roald Dahl fan, a lover of his children’s books and his macabre short stories, too. You can watch Kelly’s excellent video and hear the lessons we should learn from the following Dahl quotes but honestly, I think we’re all sharp enough to get the points:

1) “A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.”

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“I will not pretend I wasn’t petrified. I was. But mixed in with the awful fear was a glorious feeling of excitement. Most of the really exciting things we do in our lives scare us to death. They wouldn’t be exciting if they didn’t.’ – Danny the Champion of the World

‘A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.’ – The Twits

From The Witches: REAL WITCHES dress in ordinary clothes and look very much like ordinary women. They live in ordinary houses and they work in ORDINARY JOBS.

And finally, perhaps Dahl’s most well-known quote:

‘And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.’ – Billy and The Minpins

I have no idea what can be coming next in this old world of mine, but I feel like a little Roald Dahl wit and wisdom might be just what we all need before making the leap into 2022. Happy writing, happy living, and happy New Year!

~♥Cathy (and Libs)

And So It Begins

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There’s something compelling about a door.

Anything can be behind a door. Open the door and a story begins. Or maybe it ends. But for sure, the doorway stands between what was and what will be. Which explains why Janus, the Roman god for whence the month January comes, is perfectly suited for this first month of the year. Janus represents the transition, the both-sides-of-the-story; he’s depicted with two faces, and often found adorning doors, or gates, or archways. That’s Janus–and January–for you. You never know what you’re going to get until you open the door.

I was sorely tempted to just stand on the other side of the door for this January and wait until I felt a little stronger, a bit more hopeful. But eventually, I stepped through.

Do you remember that game, “Mother May I?” I played it when I was just a wee girl and I taught my kids how to play it. One of my favorite ploys in the game was to allow a child to get almost to the finish line and then on the next turn, when the smug kiddo had just inches to go, I’d say, “Joey (because he was the oldest and best able to handle the vagaries of life), you may take THREE GIANT STEPS! (Pause for a beat or two) BACKWARDS!” (Oh, don’t get worked up, Joey would almost always win. And he learned important lessons about the Game of Life along the way. But now that I think about it, he will not so much as play a game of cards with his dear, sainted mother today. I believe I’ve suddenly had an insight as to why.)

Anyway, I really, truly wanted to take three giant steps backwards this January. Or maybe just call out, “Do Over!” the way my kids would when they didn’t like the way things were going. But those aren’t exactly very effective strategies in the grown-up world. So I just pulled myself up by my faith and carried on.

And then I remembered that Thomas A Kempis, who was a veritable font of quotes that one could copy on notecards and keep handy for inspiration, had one particular quote that should perhaps be above January’s door:

THEY TRAVEL LIGHTLY WHOM GOD’S GRACE CARRIES.

(And for those of you who’d like a little writing inspiration, The Muffin is also a veritable font this month, with my two posts, The Secret to Success, and Just for Today, For Writers (Part Deux) in the offerings. I wish for you a year full of writing happiness, and I hope you’ll let me know all about your beginnings or endings in 2021!)