GREENWICH PEN WOMEN - Arts, Letters, Music, Creativity

  “The first sentence can be written only after the last sentence has been written. FIRST DRAFTS ARE HELL. FINAL DRAFTS, PARADISE.”   ~~ Joyce Carol Oates

                              "Don’t wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working.”  — Henri Matisse

  May 2021: “Trust your reader. Not everything needs to be explained. If you really know something, and breathe life into it, they’ll know it too.”   ~~ Esther Freud

  “Don’t panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews, the friends’ embarrassment, the failing career, the dwindling income, the repossessed house, the divorce . . . Working doggedly on through crises like these, however has always got me there in the end.  . .”  ~~ Sarah Waters

Your take-out food containers can be recycled as handy storage places for your tubes of paint. Label each container have its own color range, i.e., reds, greens, etc.

When buying a new tube of paint: Open the tube and lubricate the grooves by putting a little petroleum jelly on them. Twist cap back and forth a couple of times. No more sticking caps.

  Susan and I played tennis every evening after our commute to New Canaan, CT from New York City. We were poor players, but we loved the game. Life was good – until we became greedy for more time on the courts. One evening, Susan said that she had found an indoor game on Saturday nights. We could increase our playing time by four hours a week at this party she saw advertised in the “General Interest” section of the local newspaper. We signed up for our first session. It turned out to be Susan’s last time on a tennis court.    As I drove us to the Shippan Tennis Club, she looked at the newspaper once more...and gasped. This event was also listed in the singles' section! We were on our way to a meat market in our short skirts! Neither of us had been to a singles’ party, bar or other excuse for a pick-up parlor, and we did not want to start now. After all, we were dignified women. Susan was a lawyer with a big New York law firm, and I was an institutional portfolio manager. ...