I get a lot of questions about my creative space. What does my office look like? What’s around my desk? What kind of art do I have on the walls? The answer to those questions used to be: a whole hell of a lot of dust bunnies, moldering auto magazines, damp carpeting (it never really did get warm in there) and a bearded dragon that should have wanted to be anywhere else but seemed pretty content. These days the environment is a little brighter and a lot less likely to cause breathing problems, which is a good thing, but along with the new setting came a new habit… Post-It Notes.

I’ve always been a Post-It liker, but I never really had more than a few and those usually clung to the edges of my computer monitor. Not anymore. Now I have more Post-Its on the walls around my desk than I have artwork in my entire apartment. To the left of me right now are twenty-three WIP notes and future story ideas (along with date reminders for just this very post with the words “GUEST POST” written in all-caps underneath it so that maybe, just possibly, I might finally get this right), but it’s the ones in front of me that I thought I’d talk to you about. These are the special Post-Its, and they’ve been collected and gathered from just about anywhere you might find words: bits and pieces of conversations, novels, movies, random posts. They’re those things you read (or hear) that jump out at you and mean something, even if that “something” isn’t what the author, producer, or speaker meant them to.

Maybe they’ll also end up mean something to you, but then again, maybe they won’t. Either way, I thought it would be fun to share:

• You can let the music overwhelm you, but you can’t just create your own rhythm.

This was spoken by actor John Lithgow, playing the part of Ben Hull in “Love is Strange” and he meant it simply enough – he’s teaching a young girl to play piano, she reverently and enthusiastically throws herself into a performance for him, he stops her, and he corrects her. Because it’s okay to be so strongly moved by something you’re trying to do that you let it inspire, elevate, and challenge you to try new things… but. There is still a right way to play the piece. I related the comment first to writing – use your creative structure to its fullest, play with your plot designs, and keep stretching to new heights of your imagination, but never lose sight of the fact that there is still a base “right” way to work your craft. However, the more I consider it, the more I’m convinced that this comment goes beyond any creative endeavor and has some good life sense in it as well.

• There is a huge difference between what we work for and what we live for.

If Tumblr and Twitter are any indications, I’m not the only one who fell in love with Nomi Marks’ comment to Lito in the “Death Doesn’t Let You Say Goodbye” episode of Sense8. And it doesn’t take a lot of explaining to understand why this one caught me as it did. Quite simply, the things we do to keep us alive (work) are not the things we live for (love, fulfillment, peace). Understand the importance of the first, but never let it become more important than the second.

• Yet what is an ocean but a multitude of drops?

My favorite line from “Cloud Atlas” but by no means the only one I loved. One of my father’s most overused statements when I grew up was that the effort that I/she/he/they/whomever-he-was-talking-about-at-that-moment amounted to as being nothing more than a “drop in a bucket.” And when Adam Ewing (played by Jim Sturgess) spoke the above line, I cursed David Mitchell for not having brought that reply to my lips earlier in life. Of course, in actual conversation it probably would sound pretty dorky, but the point is there, isn’t it? One drop at a time, be it my drops alone or a combination of my drops/your drops/their drops, is going to one day, eventually, get us a full bucket. Maybe we’ll even pull together an ocean.

• There is no inspiration in the tedium of details.

I’m going to credit this one to Kelly Wyre, who will tell you that it is to be credited to Dorn. I will also say that what Dorn meant by this statement most likely has nothing to with what I took from it. To me, it was a reminder that sometimes we (be it we as authors, watchers, readers, co-workers, family members, etc.) spend too much time focussing on the little persnickety shit that we end up messing with the overall beauty of the moment/picture/novel/whatever. Let me explain with some visuals…

Look at the first picture on the right. Are you asking, where are the details? Where is the definition? Where is the perfect sharpness that shows the artist labored for hours over each and every element?

Now… look again… at the second, complete one… and tell me if it matters.

(Artist: Claude Oscar Monet – Impression, sunrise, 1873)

• Reality is Ralph.

Last but not least, my favorite quote on my wall. It was spoken by Stephen’s King character author Scott Landon—in “Lisey’s Story—in response to Scott’s editor’s request to make something in his story more “realistic.” A tirade follows in which Scott ends up wielding a newspaper article about a lost dog (Ralph) that finds its way home over the course of three years and hundreds of miles. I paraphrase and condense, but it goes something like this: put that in a novel and they’ll tell you that it’s unrealistic, but here it is in black and white and it happened and it IS real because that’s what reality is! Reality is Ralph!

In short, fuck “realism” because realism doesn’t exist. There is nothing more obscure, fantastical, and surprising than real life. In real life the monsters are scarier than fiction could ever make them ((huge child-eating crocodile, massive jumping spiders… Ted Bundy); there are stories of love that would put romance stories to shame: parents/lovers/spouses moving obstacles that a simple man/woman couldn’t hope to in an effort to save their significant others, couples that insist that the eighty-three years of their marriage has been “a wonderful ride.” And of course, the dogs like Ralph who manage to make it home after years, across hundreds of miles.

So, that’s me and my walls of Post-Its. How about you? Do you have any special quotes or whatnot that you find inspirational or meaningful? Do you have a secret piece of prose that you keep in the back of your mind?

I’d love to hear it… keep the sharing going and let’s see what YOU find cool as well!

Thanks for reading. Until next time!

AF Henley <3

Henley was born with a full-blown passion for run-on sentences, a zealous indulgence in all words descriptive, and the endearing tendency to overuse punctuation. Since the early years Henley has been an enthusiastic writer, from the first few I-love-my-dog stories to the current leap into erotica. A self-professed Google genius, Henley lives for the hours spent digging through the Internet for ‘research purposes’ which, more often than not, lead seven thousand miles away from first intentions but bring Henley to new discoveries and ideas that, once seeded, tend to flourish.

Henley has been proudly publishing with Less Than Three Press since 2012, and has been writing like mad ever since—an indentured servant to the belief that romance and true love can mend the most broken soul. Even when presented in prose. Check out Henley’s most recent release, ‘Baby’s on Fire’ at Less Than Three Press or your favorite online retailer.