English author Doris Lessing dead at age 94.  Born to British parents in Persia (now Iran) October 22, 1919, Lessing moved with her family to Zimbabwe, South Africa, at age five and lived there until she was twenty-nine.  Moved to England in 1949.
Leaving school at age fourteen she was self-educated from then on.

Lessing has over 55 works to her name having won among many awards the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007 at the age of eighty-eight.  A word for young writers?  Doris advised, "Acquire a tough skin as soon as possible."

Among Lessing's novels:  The Golden Notebook and The Grass is Singing.

All Quiet

"What mainly worries me, if you'll excuse my speaking on my own affairs for the moment, is a strengthening suspicion that in my character there is an antipathy between 'art' and 'life.'  I find that once I 'give in' to another person, as I have given in not altogether voluntarily, but almost completely, to Ruth,* it impossible to achieve that mental 'clenching' that crystallises a pattern and keeps it still while you draw it.  It's very easy to float along in a semi-submerged way, dissipating one's talent for pleasing by amusing and being affectionate to the other --easy because the returns are instant and delightful -- but I find, myself, that this letting-in of a second person spells death to perception and the desire to express, as well as the ability.  Time & time again I feel that before I write anything else at all I must drag myself out of the water, shake myself dry and sit down on a lonely rock to contemplate glittering loneliness.  Marriage, of course (since you mentioned marriage), is impossible if one wants to do this."

~ Philip Larkin.  Letter to J. B. Sutton, 7 April 1946.  English poet, novelist (Aug. 9, 1922 - Dec. 2, 1985)  Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940 - 1985.  Edited by Anthony Thwaite.  Faber and Faber Limited, 1992.
*Ruth was Larkin's first girlfriend.  Met in 1945.  Split in 1950.

Waiting for Morning Coffee & Cable News