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Donna Mebane, Author & Senior Associate

Emma and Donna on a girls’ weekend getaway to Cape Cod in October 2010.

Donna Mebane grew up wanting to be two things: a mother and a writer. She became a mom after the birth of her first child, Jason. She became a writer after the death of her youngest child, Emma.

While Donna has had numerous writing experiences over the years, she became a published author after she wrote Tomorrow Comes as a way of envisioning a future for her 19-year-old daughter who went to sleep one night and never woke up. She calls Tomorrow Comes a work of “reality fiction” because it captures the reality of grief that family and friends endured after Emma died at the same time that it creates an enchanting fictional world of AFTER where Emma can continue to be herself.

Born in Pennsylvania as the daughter of a US Navy Commander, Donna moved frequently in her childhood years and so developed an easy, approachable style and a warm sense of humor that helped her make new friends easily. She applies these same attributes to her writing, mixing gentle good humor with heart-touching authenticity and simple, accessible language with profound truths about loss and hope. Donna lives with her husband, Rod, in Geneva, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. She is currently working on a Tomorrow Comes sequel, with the working title, Tomorrow Matters.

For a taste of Donna’s writing, see her various blog posts, which she calls Wisps of Hope. Also see Donna’s Notes on Writing ‘Tomorrow Comes’ Author Notes, which beautifully detail the backstory for the development of Tomorrow Comes in the months after Emma’s death. Finally, Donna has been a guest on a fascinating variety of radio shows – listen to her engaging conversations in Interviews with Donna.

SEEK TO FIND

WRITINGS ON THE WALL

  • Sweet religion makes a rhapsody of words. –Shakespeare, Hamlet
  • Words are like leaves and, where they most abound, much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. –Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism
  • And many a word, at random spoken, may soothe a wound or heart that’s broken. –Sir Walter Scott, Lord of the Isles
  • I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long Words Bother me. –Alan Alexander Milne, Willie-the-Pooh
  • The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it. –Ernest Hemingway, Paris Review
  • Life's like a movie. Write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending. –Jim Henson, The Muppet Movie
  • Prête-moi ta plume pour écrire un mot. Lend me your pen to write a word. –Au Clair de la Lune
  • Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact. It is silence which isolates. –Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
  • How many verses have I thrown into the fire because the one peculiar word, the wanted most, was irrecoverably lost. –Walter Savage Landor, Verses Why Burnt
  • To call forth a concept, a word is needed; to portray a phenomenon, a concept is needed. All three mirror one and the same reality. –Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, Traité Elémentaire de Chimie
  • Nature fits all her children with something to do, He who would write and can’t write, can surely review. –James Russell Lowell, A Fable for Critics
  • The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work and that writing didn’t require any. –Russell Baker, Growing Up
  • “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.” –Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
  • Honeyed words like bees, gilded and sticky, with a little sting. –Elinor Hoyt Wylie, Pretty Words
  • Omit needless words. –William Strunk, Jr, The Elements of Style
  • So is a word better than a gift. –Apocrypha
  • Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled. –Horace, Epistles
  • Man’s word is God in man. –Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Idylls of the King,” The Coming of Arthur
  • Good words are worth much … and cost little. –George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum
  • Watch your thoughts, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your action. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny. –Anonymous
  • It is not of so much consequence what you say, as how you say it. Memorable sentences are memorable on account of some irradiating word. –Alexander Smith, “Dreamthorp,” On the Writing of Essays
  • In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature. –Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous
  • Choice word and measured phrase… above the reach of ordinary men. –William Wordsworth, Resolution and Independence
  • A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator. –John Steinbeck, “In Awe of Words”
  • How long a time lies in one little word! Such is the breath of kings. –Shakespeare, King Richard II
  • Light dies before thy uncreating word; Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall, and universal darkness buries all. –Alexander Pope, The Dunciad
  • My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts –never to heaven go. –Shakespeare, Hamlet
  • The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence. –Paul Simon, The Sound of Silence
  • Word is a shadow of deed. –Democritus
  • The writer doesn’t want success ... The writer wants to leave a scratch on the wall of oblivion that someone a hundred or a thousand years later will see. Kilroy was here. –William Faulkner, Faulkner in the University
  • In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. –The Common Gospel, “Eternal Word”
  • Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it. –Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
  • All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind. –Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam

CLICK HERE to see these writings on the wall in a larger size.

Printing in Perspective

Printing in Perspective
Your life is made up of two dates and a dash. Make the most of the dash.

Make the most of your life - your dash! - and share what you learn with others.

The kingdom of God does not come with observation ... for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. -Jesus the Messiah. The Common Gospel ("Final Journey)

LEARN ABOUT ‘LEGACY DOCUMENTS’

LEARN ABOUT ‘LEGACY DOCUMENTS’

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