"Thou knowest that I sit waiting for the moon to turn black, that I may listen to all people's stories... For I am here, in a great city-- I do not obtain stories, I do merely listen, watching for a story which I want to hear, that it may float into my ear...
    "I will go to sit at my home that I may listen, turn my ears backwards to the heels of my feet on which I wait, so that I can feel that a story is in the wind."

And I found the following entry about the process of writing in the book "A Voice of Her Own: Women and the Journal Writing Journey" by Marlene A Schiwy:

"The process is after all like music,
like the development of a piece of music.
The figures come back and
      again and again
interweave.
A theme may seem to have been put
aside,
but it keeps returning--
the same thing modulated,
somewhat changed in form.
Unusally richer.
And it is very good that this is so."

    -- from Kathe Kollwitz by Muriel Rukeyser

      Before concluding these remarks, I must mention one of the amusements of the place which has particularly struck me. I had repeatedly observed a long lean fellow perched on the top of one of the towers, manoeuvering two or three fishing-rods, as though angling for the stars. I was for some time perplexed by the evolutions of this aerial fisherman, and my perplexity increased on observing others employed in like manner on different parts of the battlements and bastions; it was not until I consulted Mateo Ximenes, that I solved the mystery.
      It seems that the pure and airy situation of this fortress has rendered it, like the castle of Macbeth, a prolific breeding-place for swallows and martlets, who sport in its towers in myriads, with the holiday glee of urchins just let loose from school. To entrap these birds in their giddy circlings, with hooks baited with flies, is one of the favorite amusements of the ragged "sons of the Alhambra," who, with the good-for-nothing ingenuity of arrant idlers, have thus invented the art of angling in the sky.
                -- Washington Irving, The Alhambra

I have been thinking that writing is very much like fishing... perhaps it resembles ice fishing most... putting a journal out on the internet is most certainly a kind of fishing for readers...

"A play should take its protagonist through a series of experiences which lead to a climactic moment toward the end when he learns something, discovers something about himself that he could have known all along but has been blind to. This discovery comes as such an emotionally shattering blow (and that's the key word, emotionally) that it changes the entire course of his life-- and that change must be for the better. If he's changed for the worse, the audience will reject the play, as they do Troilus and Cressida, and all other failures. The audience must feel and see the leading man or woman become wiser, and the discovery must happen onstage in front of their eyes. And that doesn't mean a happy ending. If the hero is to die, then he must make the discovery before he dies. Of course, the classic example is Oedipus. But it's true of Hamlet and Macbeth and down the line even to Jeeter Lester in Tobacco Road and De Lawd in Green Pastures. You'll find it in every successful play. For when the protagonist has this revelation, one which raises his moral stature, the audience can grow vicariously along with him. Thus people leave the theatre feeling better, healthier-minded than when they arrived. It's an exciting experience. And that excitement makes plays live."

I've used this Golden Rule, to some extent, on every play and film I've done. It has strengthened the strong ones and quite often saved the weak ones from disaster. George Axelrod, who did the fine screenplay when I directed Marilyn Monroe in Bus Stop, still calls it Logan's Law.

From Josh, My Up & Down, In & Out Life By Joshua Logan