A Quote by Alison McGhee

We'd decided to write a book about two friends. I gave her some coffee and then we sat there not knowing what to do. How do you start writing a book together? So Kate [DiCamillo] got up after about 10 minutes into this endeavor, and said, 'Well, that was fun,' and started to head out the door. I said, 'Wait, wait, wait, no no no,' because I'm a bit more patient.
I remember wanting to write a book with someone, the someone being Kate [DiCamillo], and we decided to write about two friends. We had no idea how to begin this project - neither of us had ever collaborated with another writer - and I'm pretty sure that we began by giving our two friends a sock, just to see what they'd do with it. And it went from there.
We had so much fun together as friends that I suggested we [with Kate DiCamillo] write a book together.
I don't think we [with Kate DiCamillo] intended to write a book about friendship, I think we intended to write a book about two friends.
So we [with Kate DiCamillo] decided to give the friends an object and see what they did with it. The object was a sock and it went from there. Once we got going, once we got on a roll, it became very easy to work together and to figure out how to do it. We would meet for two-hour segments, usually from 10-12, two or three times a week. We met all one summer, and I think into the fall.
"Patience, grasshopper," I counseled. "You don't want to seem overeager." "Right, that's why I said tomorrow," he said. "I want to see you again tonight. But I'm willing to wait all night and much of tomorrow." I rolled my eyes. "I'm serious," he said."You don't even know me," I said. I grabbed the book from the center console. "How about I call you when I finish this?""But you don't even have my phone number," he said."I strongly suspect you wrote it in this book."He broke out into that goofy smile. "And you say we don't know each other."
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Don't try to write through it, to force it. Many do, but that won't work. Just wait, it will come.
Look at those hedge funds - you think they can wait? They don't know how to wait! I have sat for years at a time with $10 to $12 million in treasuries or municipals, just waiting, waiting...As Jesse Livermore said, 'The big money is not in the buying and selling...but in the waiting.'
Everyday happiness means getting up in the morning, and you can't wait to finish your breakfast. You can't wait to do your exercises. You can't wait to put on your clothes. You can't wait to get out. And you can't wait to come home, because the soup is hot.
The thing I hated about it was that you live in your trailer all the time and then they call you and you do maybe two dozen lines. Then they do that for three hours and you wait and wait and wait, and I don't like waiting.
Don't wait for perfect. Don't wait for something to be fully formed in your head to start on it. Just start, and then work it out as you go.
I just can't think how I would go on without children having lost Edith already... It's too upsetting for me to write about them. Naturally, I still hope, and wait, wait, wait.
I had been doing private readings for ten years when my guides said, "We want you to reach more people." Then I said "How?" They said, "You're going to write a book." And I said, "Oh, yeah sure, I'm going to write a book. No way." But I did an outline. And I got pushed by my development circle.
I'm being given a little bit of credit now as being a viable collage artist, which some people think is ridiculous. Like this guy who said, "Wait a minute: You had an art show where you just cut out pictures and then glued them back together?" And I said, "Yeah, that's pretty much what it is." There's more to it than that. It's about having the eye for detail, moving things from one environment and reassembling them into new environments....Everyone can do it, but not everyone can do it well.
We wait for the tortoises to come. We wait for that lady who walks them. That’s how art works. It’s never a jackrabbit, or a racehorse. It’s the tortoises that hold all the secrets. We’ve got to be patient enough to wait for them.
Tell me, he said, "What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. what are they waiting for?" "Well […] I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel." "And when you have waited—-has it made you sure?
The book was just something that came along after we played the Super Bowl and I wrote a little essay that went online. Then I had two or three weeks and I said, wow, that essay was pretty good. Maybe I'll try and write some other stuff. Writing about the depression, I just felt - you know, when you write a book like this, you have to open up your life. You have to be willing to do so to a certain degree.
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