January poem #1

For some crazy reason, when I accepted the Ultimate Blog Challenge and committed myself to post a blog a day, I decided that on Mondays I would write a poem. I know, what am I thinking? I can't write poetry. Yet, by studying poetry, by stringing stingy words together line by line, any writer can become more attune to the finer aspects of description.

A friend of mine from Green Lake Writers Conference offers up a monthly poetry challenge. This month's challenge inspired me to pen not one but two verses. The longer one is submitted to Wilda's challenge, but the second one I share here.

I wrote a blog on this subject once. After you have absorbed these lines, check this blog post to clarify my imagery. And then let me know if you think I am completely daft. 

Dad’s New Safe

Big sister

Big safe

Little sister

Big gullible

“I promise I won’t close the door,

Just see if you fit.”

I fit

“But I have to close the door,

To see if you really fit.”

Life flashes before my eyes

It is not more than five seconds

Till I see daylight again

Can breathe again

Big sister

Best friend

Really?

Little sister

Desperate for friends

I would say. 

Who's in your Manger?

I was going to write about the gift of the Magi or maybe something to do with the twelve days of Christmas, since it is the twelfth day of Christmas today. I went on-line to do some research and came across this story. Click on this link for the entire article. It is taken from the website of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in New Rochelle, New York. 

In 1994, two Americans traveled to Russia to teach morals and ethics in prisons, businesses, the fire and police departments and a large orphanage. During the Christmas season, they shared the story of the first Christmas with the 100 orphans at the orphanage. Then they helped the children to recreate their own nativity scenes using scraps of fabric, cardboard and paper napkins.

One of the Americans watched as one six year old boy, Misha, finished his project and put two cloth babies in the manger. Through the translator he asked the young boy to explain why where there were two babies.

Misha accurately retold the story of Jesus birth until he got to the end of the story. This is what he had to say:

"And when Maria laid the baby in the manger, Jesus looked at me and asked me if I had a place to stay.

   "I told him I have no mamma and I have no papa, so I don't have any place to stay. Then Jesus told me I could stay with him. But I told him I couldn't, because I didn't have a gift to give him like everybody else did. But I wanted to stay with Jesus so much, so I thought about what I had that maybe I could use for a gift. I thought maybe if I kept him warm, that would be a good gift.

   "So I asked Jesus, "If I keep you warm, will that be a good enough gift?" And Jesus told me, "If you keep me warm, that will be the best gift anybody ever gave me."

"So I got into the manger, and then Jesus looked at me and he told me I could stay with him---for always."

The volunteer who wrote this story went on to write:

As little Misha finished his story, his eyes brimmed full of tears that splashed down his little cheeks. Putting his hand over his face, his head dropped to the table and his shoulders shook as he sobbed and sobbed.

    The little orphan had found someone who would never abandon nor abuse him, someone who would stay with him-FOR ALWAYS. I've learned that it's not what you have in your life, but who you have in your life that counts.

...Amid the Chaos

In the spring of 2011, my husband got a new job – a fulltime one with benefits. Yeah! But that meant that he wouldn’t be able to take off for a summer vacation. We had already made plans and it wasn’t until the week before that I cancelled our reservations and sought out something for myself to do that week. Just like the Green LakeChristian Writers Conference, I had known for years that the town just up the road from us held a School of the Arts each summer. This weeklong school offers courses in photography, painting, other visual arts, and writing. I had always thought about attending but it never worked out.

Low and behold the week I was off in July 2011 was the week in which the UW-Madison was hosting the annual School of the Arts in Rhinelander. I gave them a call and signed up for a class in marketing your writing.

There were not one but two other participants from my home town. One of them, Mark Gaedtke, had been writing a weekly column for our paper for years. I think that I knew he was working on compiling those columns into a book, but it wasn’t until that workshop that I really learned much about it.

Needless to say, when Mark’s book came out a few months back, I downloaded it onto my Kindle as soon as I was able. My husband fed my reading fix by buying the paperback version a few weeks later.

“Harold's Boys: Observations,Opinions, and Outright Lies from Amid the Chaos” is a wonderful book. It shares the many adventures and misadventures of growing up in rural America during a time when kids truly were innocent and naive, when kids had lots of siblings and one mom and one dad. I suppose I am biased, as this book is based in the town where I too grew up, but I think that anyone who was a kid during the sixties and seventies could relate to the many stores shared in this book. And it was all good clean fun. 

“Harold’s Boy” is available on line at both Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble . 

Clearing the thoughts

At Green Lake Christian Writers Conference last summer, one of the things our instructor encouraged us to do was to spend the first waking minutes writing the first thoughts that came to mind. That sure didn’t work for me; my first waking minutes are spent in a complete daze. But it was great to spend that week at the Conference spending ten or fifteen random minutes each day writing the first thing that came to mind. It is a good exercise to get the creative juices flowing.  

Unfortunately, that entire ten or fifteen minutes of random writing went right out the window as soon as I got home. With so many other things to write, who has time to write off the top of your head?

I think I need to try to reestablish that practice, if only as a form of journaling to clear the thoughts. And heaven knows, I need my thoughts cleared a lot. Just like Mary, our Green Lake instructor.  

Whenever I am feeling down all I have to do is think of this picture of Mary and I start to laugh!

What are you driving?

“Writing is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” E.L. Doctorow

Isn’t all of life that way, though? We don’t know what tomorrow will bring, we don’t know what is around the next curve. All we can do is keep going.

I joined yet another writing challenge, the Ultimate BlogChallenge. The goal is to post on your blog every single day the entire month of January. I have a tentative outline for all of those days, but it seems that things in my life keep changing, evolving. Just like the novel I had been trying to write (and have sadly neglected the last month and a half), I don’t know what’s around the corner. But I will keep driving this crazy car called “the aspiring writer”. We will see where I end up. 

Wow! Big News

I’ve been really trying hard to get some good solid goals established for writing in 2013. I even submitted a piece to a magazine last night. I keep telling myself that I have to get back to my novel. I tell myself I need to get going on all these other projects.

Then this afternoon I got a message on my cell phone from my publisher. He was so excited. He said something like, “Great news. I was just checking the best sellers’ lists and your book is number two on one of the lists. This is cause to celebrate. We don’t know how long it will be there, but this is definitely something to watch.”

I should not check my voice mail or my e-mail while I am at work. Sure, it is a company policy, but everyone does it – not that that makes it right. I won’t go there. But for me, getting a message that exciting, when I still have to work for another two hours, well, it makes it hard to focus.

So that’s really all I have right now. My brain is fried. No, not really. Actually my brain is bouncing all over the place. The marketer in me is saying that I really have to jump on this and use this little fact to publicize my book like crazy right now while I can. The rest of me says, can’t we just go to bed early for a change?

(And as I post this, the book has already slipped to number three. I am sure not cut out for this kind of stress. Good thing Dino will love me no matter how the book does.)

January 1, 2013

It is a good thing that the date and time show up in the lower right hand corner of my laptop. Otherwise I would never know. (At the clinic where I work, we are supposed to ask our Medicare patients if they know what day it is – I have to take their word for it.)

So here we are on January 1. A new year. I have been trying to get my thoughts on the New Year, write down some resolutions, you know, the usual stuff. But I still haven’t gotten my mind around 2012! I’m thinking that I should recap last year before plowing into this year.

If you have been following this blog, though, you are probably sick and tired of hearing about my big accomplishment of the year and of my life time – publishing a book. But have I shared my deep secrets about this? Since deciding in the third grade that I wanted to be a writer, I never thought I would write something considered non-fiction. 

I had all these stories in my head, romance and mystery and adventure and more romance. The thing is I can hardly stand to read romance, what makes me think I can write it? Yet, in the novel I am currently working on there is this couple who want to be romantic and I keep telling them to knock it off, their time will come. Funny how things turn out.

Anyway, so that is my big recap of the year. I like to keep my posts short because I only like to read other bloggers’ posts that are short. And of course I have to include a picture.  

I don't have any pictures of New Year's in my archives so here is Christmas 1967. I am on the left and my sister Pat is in the middle. I would have just turned six at the time, so wasn't writing too much yet. But you can tell by the look on my face that I am already formulating a story in my head.