Lucky 13: Women Writers about Courage.

"It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else."
- Erma Bombeck

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what."
- Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow."
- Mary Anne Radmacher

"One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We cannot be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest."
- Maya Angelou

"Everyone has talent. What's rare is the courage to follow it to the dark places where it leads."
- Erica Jong

"One is not in bondage to the past, which has shaped our feelings, to race, inheritance, background. All this can be altered if we have the courage to examine how it formed us. We can alter the chemistry provided we have the courage to dissect the elements."
- Anaïs Nin

"Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want."
- Ayn Rand

"There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me."
- Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"[Responsibility to yourself] means, therefore, the courage to be "different"...The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies, is an immense difference. Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way."
- Adrienne Rich

"With enough courage, you can do without a reputation."
- Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)

"There must be courage; there must be no awe. There must be criticism, for humor, to my mind, is encapsulated in criticism. There must be a disciplined eye and a wild mind...There must be a magnificent disregard of your reader, for if he cannot follow you, there is nothing you can do about it."
- Dorothy Parker

"HELPED are those who find the courage to do at least one small thing each day to help the existence of another--plant, animal, river, or human being. They shall be joined by a multitude of the timid."
- Alice Walker

"I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn."
- Anne Frank

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Photo 'Jumping in the waves' by TheGiantVermin, available under a creative commons license. © 2004, TheGiantVermin.

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Writing and the Power of Vulnerability.

I have just sent out the reworked first 4 chapters of my manuscript to a select number of betareaders.

These are people whom I love and trust, who all have a particular outlook on different aspects of my writing and who I know will give me honest and useful feedback. They are aware of how writing is a craft I will forever be learning. I can be (quite) sure none of them will think any less of me when they spot the awful bits in my writing and the flaws in my thinking. Still, every time I send something out, I have to call on a deep layer of courage to get myself to click that 'send' button.

Of course, being me, I had to dig my teeth into that feeling. Find out about its nature and its origins. I didn't have to look far. I've written about perfection before, I've hinted at the human fear of 'not being good enough', of what could come back at you when you put yourself out there.

As if by cosmic accident, I found this video a few days ago. It's a TED talk by Brene Brown, a professor at the University of Houston, Texas, who has spent the past 10 years researching courage, authenticity, vulnerability and shame.

Some of what she says is probably (MBTI-) J stuff (the measuring stick, etc.), which I can only relate to from a distance, being far out on the Perceiving scale. But for the most part, what she talked about was very recognisable. And insightful. Take out the banana nut muffins and stuff in dark, Belgian chocolate, and we're talking very, very recognisable.

The talk is about 20 minutes long and well worth that time. As a bonus, Brene is an excellent speaker with a great sense of humour.

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