Et out by jackrabbits

“My life reminds me of a sign that hung by a rusty staple to a run-down barbed-wire fence in Texas. It read:

Burned out by drought,
Drowned out by flud waters,
Et out by jackrabbits,
Sold out by sheriff,
Still here!”

(Gordon B. Hinckley)

Hey there. Haven’t been around much. We’re in the middle of the first of two moves we’re making this year, and we had an outbreak of pink-eye this morning, not to mention that it’s allergy season and there’s been a cottonwood seed blizzard of DEATH outside for the past week.

But it’s all cool.

It’ll be a hectic month, but I’ll get back to blogging one of these days. In the meantime, I’ve become a Twitter addict, so you can find me there: @ehbates.

Tschüssi!

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“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

Theodore Roosevelt

Endings and Beginnings

“Sometimes,” I said, “you have to let one story end so the next one can begin.”

“How do you know when that will happen?”

“You don’t,” I said. “Which is why you should always carry on.”

(Finding Winnie, Lindsay Mattick)

It’s how we use them

“But of course we can’t take any credit for our talents. It’s how we use them that counts.” (Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time)

Something gained

“To be always peaceful is no more a part of progress than it is of a river, which piles up rocks and creates barriers as it flows; these obstacles cause the water to froth and humanity to seethe. This leads to disturbance; but when the disturbance is over we realize that something has been gained.” (Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

“Living in squalor, that was the answer.”

Someone asked me this week how I find time to write, which is easily the most common question put to me when people hear I’m an author. The first thing that came to mind was this wonderful quote from JK Rowling:

“People very often say to me, ‘How did you do it, how did you raise a baby and write a book?’ And the answer is–I didn’t do housework for four years. I am not superwoman. And, um, living in squalor, that was the answer.”

In a week where I had a book release, beta reading, layout designing, piano teaching, toddler wrangling, AND I was praying desperately that I wouldn’t go into labor before my launch party on Saturday (good news: looks like I’ll make it!), this quote resonated deep in my soul.

We don’t have the time to do everything. So make the time to do what’s important to you.

 

Winning by inches

“Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more.” –Louis L’Amour

A writer’s life

“Every  morning, no matter how late he had been up, my father rose at 5:30, went to his study, wrote for a couple of hours, made us all breakfast, read the paper with my mother, and then went back to work for the rest of the morning. Many years passed before I realized that he did this by choice, for a living, and that he was not unemployed or mentally ill.”

(Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird)

Immortality

“He was seeking immortality, which is a terrible thing to seek. It is not seeking anything, but rather avoiding the unavoidable.” (The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern)

Through the eyes of a story

“Stories give you a way to see things. A way to understand the events of your life. Even if you don’t realize it while you’re hearing the tale.”

Icefall, Matthew Kirby