the well written - william faulkner

It is just dawn, daylight: that gray and lonely suspension filled with
the peaceful and tentative waking of birds. The air, inbreathed, is like
spring water. He breathes deep and slow, feeling with each breath
himself diffuse in the natural grayness, becoming one with loneliness
and quiet that has never known fury or despair. "That was all I wanted,"
he thinks, in a quiet and slow amazement. "That was all, for thirty
years. That didn't seem to be a whole lot to ask in thirty years.

- William Faulkner, Light in August

By Me

illustration - jenny meilihove

I love these by Jenny Meilihove.  There's nothing explicitly
magical in them, but its there, somewhere in the eccentricity.
A creepy child stuck in the middle of a rug, another playing
the accordion.  The anticipation of a wind-up toy, a peculiar
way of dressing.  There are stories here.

on writing - editing

Bits of encouragement for those presently editing stories short and long:

It is perfectly okay to write garbage—as long as you edit brilliantly.
- C. J. Cherryh

Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer.
But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity,
and destroy most of it.   - Colette

So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore
for the reader who reads.   - Dr. Seuss

By Elena Hormiga

a dreamer's wisdom - bryce courtenay

Always in life an idea starts small, it is only a sapling idea, but the
vines will come and they will try to choke your idea so it cannot
grow and it will die and you will never know you had a big idea,
an idea so big it could have grown thirty meters through the dark
canopy of leaves and touched the face of the sky.  It is better to be
wrong than simply to follow convention. If you are wrong, no
matter, you have learned something and you grow stronger. If you
are right, you have taken another step toward a fulfilling life.

- Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

By Steven Curry

awards - free reads - nebula short story nominees

“Robot” by Helena Bell (Clarkesworld)
“Immersion” by Aliette de Bodard (Clarkesworld)
“Fragmentation, or Ten Thousand Goodbyes” by Tom Crosshill (Clarkesworld)
“Nanny’s Day” by Leah Cypess (Asimov’s)
“Give Her Honey When You Hear Her Scream” by Maria Dahvana Headley (Lightspeed)
“The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” by Ken Liu (Lightspeed)
“Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain” by Cat Rambo (Near+Far)

Several novella and novelette free-read links available here.

                            

on writing - mary gaitskill

Writing is.... being able to take something whole and fiercely
alive that exists inside you in some unknowable combination of
thought, feeling, physicality, and spirit, and to then store it like
a genie in tense, tiny black symbols on a calm white page. If the
wrong reader comes across the words, they will remain just
words. But for the right readers, your vision blooms off the page
and is absorbed into their minds like smoke, where it will
re-form, whole and alive, fully adapted to its new environment.

- Mary Gaitskill

on reading - madeleine l'engle

A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness,
leading out into the expanding universe.   - Madeleine L’Engle