“If Laura was so prolific with poems, and in truth she was, then what was the problem with Megan’s request? Couldn’t Laura, with a little doing, keep stringing together line after line of words and construct, in time, a novel?… — L.L. Barkat Copy Share Image
“Laura thought Bell would have a few things to say to Pynchon. And Laura had a few things to say to Bell, like, How… — L.L. Barkat Copy Share Image
“Her tea basket was still lost, but that didn’t seem to matter now. People used to eat loose tea on long journeys. They’d pack… — L.L. Barkat Copy Share Image
“Had Mary Shelley fretted so? Maybe yes, maybe no. She’d begun her classic work on a dare. Had culled a dream to bring it into being. But it was not lost on Laura that the story might be a prolonged exercise in Shelley’s personal terrors. The subtitle of the work was 'Prometheus Unbound,' and Laura wondered if Shelley herself was… — L.L. Barkat Copy Share
“Tea was more than boiling water. There were decisions to be made and a frame of mind to develop, no matter how imperceptible.” — L.L. Barkat Copy Share Image
“One Bagatelle, and I’ll raise you a novel,” Megan had tweeted back. “Writing for tea? Now that would have been a solution for the… — L.L. Barkat Copy Share Image
“Maybe you didn’t need to know anything special to write a work of fiction. Maybe you didn’t need to delve into some kind of… — L.L. Barkat Copy Share Image
“Writing starts with living. —Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing” — L.L. Barkat Copy Share Image
“If she was going to write a novel, she felt defeated before she began, because someone might be coming along to pick it apart,… — L.L. Barkat Copy Share Image
“You could use a moth like that as a symbol in a novel, but it was trite, wasn’t it? The old moth-to-the-flame image had… — L.L. Barkat Copy Share Image
“We will need to find people who will provide a safe writing space for us, where criticism comes late and love and delight come… — L.L. Barkat Copy Share Image
“Maybe Laura’s real problem came in admitting this: there was nothing new under the sun. To write a story would be, somehow deep down,… — L.L. Barkat Copy Share Image
