GREENWICH PEN WOMEN - Arts, Letters, Music, Creativity

September 11, 2001 dawned with a glorious royal blue sky without a single cloud to soften the brilliance. Typical of early fall in southern New England, the temperature was comfortably warm while the humidity level was low. A picture-perfect day. The addition of a slight breeze was enough to convince one that summer was hanging on and all was right with the world.  "Twin Towers, New York"   by  Guillaume Cattiaux  is licensed under  CC BY-SA 2.0 School was back in session; it was the first full week of the new year ripe with the promise of new learning and new friends. As the School Psychologist assigned to two elementary schools in Greenwich, Cos Cob and New Lebanon, my job was to support the psychological well-being of close to 700 children between the ages of four and a half and twelve.  I was working at ‘New Leb’ that morning, arranging my schedule, meeting new students, and comforting the few reticent 4 & 5-year old kindergarten children who missed...

  “Don't romanticize your “vocation." You can either write good sentences or you can't. There is no “writer's lifestyle." All that matters is what you leave on the page.”   ~~ Zadie Smith

  “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.