Even though I've just finished up Dumpling Days, I'm already making plans for my next novel "Return to Sky." I admit I've been a bit scared to begin this one, even though I have been thinking about it for quite some time. Truthfully, I'm afraid my ambitions for it are greater than my abilities. But, I'm trying to take courage just like I did before when I first began work on Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. I had said I was going with Samuel Beckett's quote "Try again. Fail again. Fail better." I'm still going with the "fail better."
But a new quote has also crossed my mind. Recently, I read this post by Brenda Bowen where she excerpted Virginia Wolff's speech at the National Book Awards. In that speech Virgina Wolff talked about "Faulkner's six"--the six things writers should write about. Here's an excerpt:
Faulkner said in 1949 in the Nobel speech that if we are not writing about these six things we are not doing our job. They are love, honor, pity, pride, compassion and sacrifice. I think of them as Faulkner's six.
I thought that was interesting and quite moving, and it made me think of the things that are important to me write about, especially for this book. Right now, I think my six would be:
LOVE
KINDNESS
EMPATHY
RESPONSIBILITY
PEACE
JOY
But I think I'll keep tweaking and changing it. What would your six be?
