Birthdays: Edwin Abbot Abbott (1838), Theodore (TF) Powys (1875), Hortense Calisher (1911), David Levine (1926), David Markson (1927), Abdulrazak Gurnah (1948), Kate Atkinson (1951), Peter May (1951), Sandra Cisneros (1954), Nalo Hopkinson (1960)

Abdulrazak Gurnah won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Quotes: “Why do cats sleep so much? Perhaps they’ve been trusted with some major cosmic task, an essential law of physics – such as: if there are less than five million cats sleeping at any one time the world will stop spinning.” – Kate Atkinson

“First publication is a pure, carnal leap into that dark which one dreams is life.” – Hortense Calisher

Tip: If writing genre fiction, determine what settings are common to your genre. E.g., science fiction – space ships, space stations, other worlds. Fantasy – medieval villages, woods. Cozy mysteries – usually small towns. This isn’t always true—far from it—but it is more common.

Jumpstart: She was driving on the highway, boxed in by trucks and bigger cars, her hands making imprints on the steering wheel. She hated this road, but she had no choice. Not if she was to get there on time…