Shannon Celebi

Just write. That's my only tip. And read. I guess that's two.

Wine and a straitjacket. That pretty much sums it up.

I am forever an advocate of books, both the reading of them and the writing. There is something sacred to me in that community. Because writing--and reading--is a solitary business. And it__ good to know I__ not alone.

Cuz I can count on one hand the men who__e loved me, not in the Biblical sense__ don__ have enough digits for that__ut who have truly loved me.

I think first of the children. What the hell am I supposed to tell them? Then I think about money, the house, all those things no widow will tell you ever crossed her mind.

The bottom line was that I was in an abusive relationship.

When I was twenty-something, I asked my father, __hen did you start feeling like a grownup?_ His response: __ever.

Just five minutes, God, I chant like some hostage negotiator on the brink of a resolution. Five minutes alone. Please, please. Please.

Okay, I__l just jump right out and say it. I have anxiety issues.

Then the weeks rolled by in a sinister psych ward haze filled with white-coated orderlies and rocking whack-job patients torn straight from some old Jack Nicholson film, all anti-psychotic meds and padded lonely cells...

Using one__ beauty was the only way a smart girl could get by, at least that__ how it was back then, though even for a smart girl there were really only three professions. You could be a nurse or a teacher or a wife.

A woman brings so much more to the world than birth, for she can birth discovery, intelligence, invention, art, just as well as any man.

Writing is a solitary business. It__ just you and your characters and a blank page you need to fill.

I long for some connection, to the real and those who love them, and hope that my fiction can reach beyond the veil, that I might touch someone and make them feel something_or something.

You__e saying, __hat the hell am I gonna do with her?_ You__e saying, __hit, did she take her pills?_ You__e saying, __nce upon a time, I used to have a little girl.

I hung a picture of him above my bed and learned by hand the internal workings of the female combustion engine.

We didn__ want to admit it then, but we were friends. Best friends.

She also understood there was a hole in her heart where her son should be, that she was a wicked, selfish woman for wishing him back.