More Hiking Pictures to Share, Medical Update, and Writing Quotes

I apologize for not being chatty on my blog these days. I've been pouring my energies into my novel-in-progress Heart's Chalice and into hiking (which, in turn, further inspires my story). But I'm still here.

I saw my doctor yesterday - looks like no surgery, at least in the near future. I'm doing a good job keeping my gallbladder symptoms under control with my diet modifications. I'm back to regular hiking and weight-lifting, and -- of course -- writing, and feeling fine as frog hair. ;)

I took some great pictures on recent hikes, and wanted to share.

Found another strange and beautiful fungus:



And a lovely, late-summer wildflower:



Some way-cool moss, with tendrils:



And new mountain laurel growing from old:



And here is the forest, captured in various moods of gorgeousness:











I'll conclude this post with two inspiring quotes from John Gardner's On Becoming a Novelist.

The first quote describes the process by which the story of Heart's Chalice is emerging:

"Fiction does not spring into the world full grown, like Athena. It is the process of writing and rewriting that makes a fiction original and profound. One cannot judge in advance whether or not the idea of the story is worthwhile because until one has finished writing the story one does not know for sure what the idea is; and one cannot judge the style of a story on the basis of a first draft, because in a first draft the style of the finished story does not yet exist."

And the second quote -- well, it's wise and wonderful and it does my heart good:

"If you have taken the time to learn to write beautiful, rock-firm sentences, if you have mastered evocation of the vivid and continuous dream, if you are generous enough in your personal character to treat imaginary characters and readers fairly, if you have held on to your childhood virtues and have not settled for literary standards much lower than those of the fiction you admire, then the novel you write will eventually be, after the necessary labor of repeated revision, a novel to be proud of, one that almost certainly someone, sooner or later, will be glad to publish."

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Added at o'dark thirty, 8/20: *~*~*Yay me!*~*~* I broke 65K on Heart's Chalice!