Today I have no thoughts of my own, so I’m quoting or directing you to the thoughts of others.

On her Squeetus blog, Shannon Hale offers up a list of things you must love in order to be a writer, and I think she hits it dead-on:

Things You Must Love In Order to Be a Writer:

– People
– Words
– Ideas
– Sounds
– Smells
– Stories
– Complications
– Connections
– Serendipity
– Silence
– History
– Flaws
– Details

(Although I think I might like the differences in people more than people as a general catch-all term.)

J.A.Konrath shares How Not To Start A Story on A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing, but all due respect, each rule as probably been, at some time or other, broken by a truly awesome book. That would actually be an interesting experiment, to take this list and try to disprove it. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

And on Pub Rants, Kristin Nelson is outlining Beginning Writer Mistakes. A very good checklist.

Go out and absorb.

Today I prepped my first recipe from Apples for Jam. I started in the ‘Orange’ section with Mango Sorbet, and as we speak, the chopped mangoes are marrying flavors with some lime zest, fresh-squeezed lime juice and sugar. Having licked the spoon, I can tell you it’s yummy so far. Tomorrow, I’ll have to puree it and then swirl it through the ice cream maker for the ultimate taste test. After this, I’ll have to try something a little more difficult, a more in-depth recipe. For this one all I had to do was chop some mangoes, zest some limes, squeeze some juice, and stir it all together with a half cup of sugar.

The mangoes are tricky with those big flat pits splayed across the whole fruit, but I did the best I could and then, with my brave little one who was a little nervous about the prospect, sucked the remaining fruit from the pits. One of the little anecdotes in Apples for Jam was how the author used to do the same and then really clean the pit before claiming it as a pet and brushing its downy mane of hair. My son just wants to plant all the pits so we’ll be surrounded by a mango forest and have the fruit anytime we wish. I find I’m liking them more and more with their lush fruity flavor and slightly floral aroma.

And now, back to playing Clone Commander with my son as we’re off to explore the Star Wars galaxies.

I’ve finished it! (For those of you not keeping up with the detailed minutiae of my life, I’m referring to Rebel Angels by Libba Bray.) And in finishing it, I wanted to hang on just a bit longer and so scanned the Readers Group questions and the Q&A with Libba Bray. Ms. Bray seems like a very cool chick, which supports my initial assessment of her as a very cool author.

One of the questions (I assume the publisher) asked of her was what advice would she give her younger self. This struck me as an awesome question and I immediately began to ponder my own answer to that question.

What advice could I have used back then (not so very long ago)?

Try harder to overcome your shyness, find a team sport you can get excited about, drink more milk, eat less candy, travel more, be more adventurous, more daring, floss, moisturize, don’t waste your time trying to curl hair that is determined to remain straight, don’t worry so much about what other people think, give yourself permission to just let some arguments go unargued (my family will never believe I included this one), squeeze in a couple of writing classes, assert yourself, learn to dance, learn to play tennis, realize the sheer awesomeness of Target at an earlier age…

I guess that’s it. I don’t have many regrets. My life turned out pretty much how I hoped it would, which is pretty excellent.

What would you tell the younger you?