A Quote by Sally Kirkland

I have some great stories and I will get around to writing a book. — © Sally Kirkland
I have some great stories and I will get around to writing a book.
I started writing the book without realizing I was writing a book. That sounds stupid, but it's true. I'd been trying and failing to make a different manuscript work, and I thought I was just taking a break by writing some short stories. I'm not a very good short story writer - the amazing compression that is required for short stories doesn't come easily to me. But anyway, I thought I'd try to write some short stories. And a structure took shape - I stumbled upon it.
About a year after (my stories began being published), magazine editor George Scithers, suggested to me that since I was so new at being published, I must be very close to what I had to learn to move from fooling around with writing to actually producing professional stories. There are a lot of aspiring writers out there who would like to know just that. Write that book.SFWW-I is that book. It's the book I was looking for when I first started writing fiction.
When I realized I wanted to do more writing and less traveling around the world teaching live seminars, I decided to write the first 'Chicken Soup for the Soul(R)' book. I knew I wanted to have 100 stories in the book, so I wrote or edited two stories a week for a year.
By Cunning & Craft is a masterpiece of writing about writing. If, like Scheherazade, you had to spin out a story under threat of death, this is the how-to book to read. It's filled with thoughtful, nuanced advice from a teacher/writer who actually writes, and writes beautifully and with great humor. The list of rejected stories is worth the price of the whole book.
The secret to writing is writing. Lots of people I know talk about writing. They will tell me about the book they are going to write, or are thinking about writing, or may write some day in the future. And I know they will never do it. If someone is serious about writing, then they will sit down every day and put some words down on paper.
I fall in love with certain stories. Those stories tend to be connected to my life some way - for instance, with my first book I was writing about the experience of coaching Little League in the Chicago inner city. But the common thread tends to be exploring some kind of mystery. Simple questions that spiral deeper.
I hope I will get to novelize my present circumstances at some point. I have some great stories to tell.
I will never stop writing. People often ask when I will retire, but I say it's none of their business. Writing defines who I am. I love the feeling of holding a finished book in my hands, and then I can't wait to start the great adventure of writing the next one.
Actually, the first thing I do is choose the antique that will be featured in each book. I try to find unusual objects with great stories. I am fascinated by the stories.
Reading good books is one distraction that will help you become a better writer. And writing - that's the thing - writing is what will really make you a better writer. Write bad stories until you begin to write so-so stories, which might, if you keep at it, turn to writing good stories.
I usually have about four books on the go - a bedside book, a lavatory book, a downstairs book, and the book in my study that I read sneakily while I should be writing. Short stories for the lavatory, obviously.
My family sits around and tells all these amazing stories of pirates and the wa. Then one day I'm having a beer after shooting an episode of 'Thank God You're Here,' and started telling Dave Hughes some stories, and he said, 'You've gotta turn this into a book.'
Writing is a process and you must trust the process! Fear and anxiety are part of that process along with the enthusaism and the good days and the joy and the passion and the great hopes you have for a book. But when you run into problems, when you get stuck or scared, you must trust that that is part of how a book comes to pass, and what you need to do is get very still and quiet because Self will tell you how to get out of a hole you've dug for yourself.
I've published one book before, and now I'm writing a book of essays and stories about life in Tokyo. And I have one book coming out in May in Germany, about fitness.
The process of writing a book is infinitely more important than the book that is completed as a result of the writing, let alone the success or failure that book may have after it is written . . . the book is merely a symbol of the writing. In writing the book, I am living. I am growing. I am tapping myself. I am changing. The process is the product.
Writing short stories was kind of like I was cheating the whole time, in some way. I went back and forth between writing the novels and sort of sneaking out to work on stories occasionally. These stories were written over the last 10 years or so, as I was taking breaks from the novels I've written.
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