Sleepless
In the sleepless of night, my mind loosens and my thoughts chase. Thinking too much . . . anxious feelings . . . unhappy ways . . . keep me from falling deeper into subconscious. And then in the beyond, where my mind hovers, I hear the rhythms of a train cutting through the darkness uniting with its tracks as it traverses in the distance. The heavy stillness of night, the sound cuts through a heavy stillness in interruption, like ripples, just as a skipping stones makes their way, breaking [...]
Map Reading
I have been diligent for almost a week in rewriting my memoir manuscript, "Under the Birch Tree." I've acknowledged open doors signaling me that it's time to look up, and not at me feet, and walk through the timing as it is opportunity for progress. It's time to pick the book up once again, leaving behind the work of polishing shorter essays for publication. I have heeded signs presented in my writer's workshop group with a guest speaker talking about how he self-published, another guest writer talking about finalizing her [...]
my week of nations
You never know who you’re gonna meet once you start talking to him or her. My week was looking like a travelogue of nations united. Megan is my go-to person for all things related to painting fingernails and toes. I paid her a visit one Monday morning. We got to talking about business, customers, how long she’d been there. She recalled an incident where a customer’s English got lost in translation. She chuckled as she told me she needed to step in as translator. I assumed she was Korean as [...]
feet make life stories
Do you take a look at your feet – ever? Or maybe you only notice them when you go to fit yourself with a new pair of shoes. But do you really look at them? Do you notice changes from chubby feet as a kid to now with slender toes and narrow arch? If only your feet could narrate a travelogue for you logging miles and destinations, at rest, and injuries. I stole a quote from War and Peace. It struck me because our feet our responsible for treading what’s [...]
Emotional Writing
In Jill Jepson's latest blog post, she suggests we let anger be our writing guide. Jill, author of blog, Writing a Sacred Path, tells us to listen to what our anger is telling us. Is it evoking a fear? Is it defining our boundaries? The more we write, the more we can discover the sources of our anger. In doing so, we can then learn more about ourselves and our world around us. Anger is a teacher, it can also fuel our writing, says Jill. I find this emotion useful [...]
A Book Report
I’m going to write a book report. Some of you may not know what I’m talking about but can probably deduce that I’ll be writing a report on a book. When I had book report assignments in school, I had to discern what the story was about. Otherwise known as “theme,” sometimes I thought I didn’t really get the entire scope of the story. I would still identify who the lead characters where, protagonist, etc. I’d be reading the book in a different way than say non-book report writers who [...]
Memoir-Making Sense
I read a line somewhere, sometime, during one of many memoir writing researching binges. At the time, I was working backwards. I wrote a memoir, well, a very first draft, and then I read anything I could about the non-fiction category. Headlines stating "Personal essay" or "First-person essay" also caught my attention. I Googled and searched, walked Barnes and Nobles aisles, and clicked Amazon pages. I subscribed to Writer's Digest, Poets and Writers, The Writer Magazine, and then some. I've got tear sheets on the subject of memoir waded in [...]
ACCEPTANCE
I read this when the day has ended and I need to breathe deeply dispelling all the shallow gulps of air grabbed during the day that have accumulated to where I feel airless, depleted. When your past comes to live in the woods behind your house, you must go to the window, forgive yourself once again, and welcome the creature that suns himself on the sill. Source: Sacred Journey, Nancy Compton Williams