PUNDITRY OVER PERFUNCTORY
by Deborah Smith
I Eat, Therefore I Yam.
The Lard Cooks In Mysterious Ways
I’m Not A Biscuit, Don’t Butter Me Up.
I love slogans and sayings. For one thing, they turn words into a toy box full of colorful blocks, sort of an old-school Rubik’s Cube, and it’s fun to arrange 
the blocks until CLICK, you’ve figured out the angles and discovered some nifty patterns. But also, pedestrian though they may often be, slogans and sayings often contain serious kernels of truth. They’re one-line poems. Haiku for the half-hearted. Shortcuts to Deep Thought.
But they touch us. The three above are from The Crossroads Café and its spin-off novellas—The Biscuit Witch (now published) and The Pickle Queen (coming in August.) By the time I get to the third novella in the trilogy, The Kitchen Charmer (this fall,) I’ll have more pithy perceptive packets of punditry than a politician in a pickle.
Ah, alliteration. I love you.
Since discovering the world of Pinterest, where EVERYTHING EVER THOUGHT OF is posted with links to the source material, I’ve begun collecting memorable, witty or simply silly words to live by. Or, at least, to laugh by.
Here are some of my favorites, all of which are inspirational, particularly when it comes to writing a novel:
“She loved mysteries so much that she became one.” (Literatureismyutopia.tumblr.com)
“Sometimes you miss the memories, not the person.” (sayingimages.com)
“I’m not telling you it’s going to be easy, I’m telling you it’s going to be worth it.” (Unknown)
“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” (Sylvia Plath)
“When I first met her I knew in a moment I would have to spend the next few days re-arranging my mind so there’d be room for her to stay.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby.)
“Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life.” (Stephen King.)
“There are certain fiction character’s deaths you will never recover from. Ever.”
(problemsofabooknerd.tumblr.com)
“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.” (Margaret Atwood.)
“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader—not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” (E.L. Doctorow)
“At any given moment you have the power to say: This is not how the story is going to end.” (artistlaraharris.tumblr.com)
“Forget all the reasons why it won’t work and believe the one reason why it will.” (Unknown.)
And last but not least, a TRULY IMPORTANT saying inspired by Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, as contributed by redbubble.com:
“Marry the beast. Get that library.”
Yours in pithy profundity … Debs
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