Writing Challenge #1 and a Giveaway!

So, this year I want to throw out some writing challenges. Hopefully they will be every week, but they might not be; we'll just have to see how it goes.

Hot topic on the writing blogs right now is writing resolutions. I already said that I'm not going to make resolutions this year, so I'm going to make goals instead. (Do you see the difference? It's slight, I know--Okay, there's no difference. Stop mocking me!)

Here I go (and these are in no particular order):

• Write every day. Even if it's just for ten minutes a day, I'm going to write everyday.
• Finish the first draft of my novel and work through it at least once.
• Publish an actual article in a Stampington & Co. magazine.

Your challenge is to make a comment on this post telling me what your writing goal for the year is. It may be that you want to write in your journal every day or even once or twice a week. Or you could make a goal to blog more. Maybe it's to take a writing class or to start a notebook of favorite lines from novels. Whatever it is, leave your comment here. On Friday, I'll have a drawing for a cool journal to help you start on your writing goal.

Woohoo, writing!

Hope is the thing with feathers

Hope. I've been thinking about it a lot lately. I've been hoping and wishing and dreaming the last few months. And doing a little work as well. And hope just keeps creeping up behind me, pecking at my heels, and telling me to keep on keeping on.


This is a page I did for a circle journal I am involved in. The theme was "birds" and I was supposed to use a bird image or a quote about birds. And my English major brain immediately turned to the poem by Emily Dickinson which begins "Hope is the thing with feathers." (Yes, the poem in my last post was inspired by her poem as well.)


Hope, in this piece, is perching on a branch (yep, that is a real stick) and with the feather and bird charm attached to it with eye pins. I love this piece! I hope the person it goes to will love it as well. And, now, that I think about it, I think I make make a larger piece that includes this line. And that one I WILL keep for myself. Unless, I guess, someone else really needs some hope.

Hope's Flutterings

This is a poem I was going to use for my writing sample that I need to submit with my application to graduate school next week. And, since I'm a little bit crazy, I've decided to send some fiction work instead of poetry, so I guess I'll be working on THAT all weekend. And, since I am now not sending poetry for my writing sample, I'm going to share this piece with you.

My thing with feathers,
I'm so glad you're back.
I thought you’d taken an extra-long
southern vacation.
I’ve waited for centuries
To feel your flutterings inside me.
I was at the end of my rope
No light at the end of the tunnel
Treading water
Just surviving
When you sang your sweet song in
the nest of my soul.

No, I thought as your melody rang through me,
Not me. I can’t do that.
I’m not smart enough
Talented enough
Ambitious enough
Enough enough.
But you kept at it.
You made me think about a new future.
A brighter future.
I started to believe that maybe, just maybe,
What I had come to think of as only
daydreams conjured to dull the boredom
of grading papers
could be a reality.
A real life.

And when doubt, your scavenger relative,
Came pecking and chirping
You’re nothing!
You’ll starve!
You’re crazy!
I swept him out the window with the straw end of my broom

And there you still were
Hanging out in the perch of my soul
Urging me to complete the application
Take the test
Keep on writing.

It must not be easy to be my thing with feathers.
Certainly you wish that you belonged to another
Who didn’t constantly quiet you
with the mundane details of life,

But you’re still here
And your song pops up at random times,
In the middle of class.
In the middle of a sentence.
In the middle of—

Where was I?

Oh!

And I want to shout

Hope, thank you!
Thank you for inspiring me to
Move on
Move out
Move up
To move.

No more imagined futures for me.
With you, I’ll realize my dreams.

3 Wishes for 2010

I'm not going to make resolutions this year. Instead, I'm giving myself 3 wishes for the new year. I'm not a genie or a fairy or a talking fish, so I can't grant anyone else 3 wishes. Just myself. Here they are:

1. I wish for a year of following my bliss. A year that includes writing and creating art and being in my children's lives.

2. I wish for a year of happiness for my sweetheart. For him coming home safe in April, for him finding a job he can like and that can support our family, and for him to begin to live a life he loves.

3. I wish for a year of realized dreams for all those I love and care for. And, yes, that means your dreams as well.

As I said, I can't grant you three wishes, but you can grant them to yourself. What will you wish for in this new year?

*Andria*

Is there enough for all of us?

Hello, my dear blog friends. Do you know how much I love reading your comments? It is one of the things that gives me joy during my days.

Lately, I'm been thinking and hoping and dreaming and praying and planning...a lot. By this time next year, I want to be writing and creating much more than I am. I really want to take my life into a whole new direction.

But it's scary.

I read a lot of blogs of people who really do seem to have a charmed life or at least they've been able to get what they want in their lives. And it's not necessarily that they are well off in a monetary way, but they are doing what they love and they're not starving. That's what I want for my life. But latetly, I've been concerned that maybe there isn't enough charm, or whatever, left over for me. Maybe the Universe only has so much charm and it's running out. Or maybe it has a yearly quota or something and there's already a waiting list for next year. So, what do I do then?

And then there are the fears of what others might say about what I'm trying to do. Will everyone think I'm crazy? Will I disappoint some? Will I enrage others?

Am I thinking too much? Should I just go for it?

That's what I'm thinking; I should just go for it.

If you have any similar experiences with happy endings, would you mind sharing them with me?

30 Things I Believe

Today, I decided to have my students start writing This I Believe essays. As usual, there was moaning and groaning, but I told them that these essays are so different from the other essays they've written before. I showed them two examples: "Be Cool To The Pizza Delivery Dude" by an English teacher named Sarah Adams and "Thirty Things I Believe" by 7 year old Tarak McLain. This is the first year I've used the Thirty Things essay, because I just found it, and I'm really glad I did. After we read the essay, I asked the students to write 30 things they believe. I also wrote 30 things I believe. And here they are:

1. I believe everyone has the ability to be creative.
2. I believe we are stronger than we realize.
3. I believe every person I meet has something to teach me.
4. I believe if more people would read, they would suffer less.
5. I believe you have to support those you love in their dreams.
6. I believe you have to dream or you'll die.
7. I believe God has more blessings for us than we even dare to ask for.
8. I believe God wants to bless us with all of those things, but he's waiting for us to ask.
9. I believe in black pens.
10. I believe some obsessions are healthy.
11. I believe people should sing at the top of their lungs, even if they can't carry a tune.
12. I believe everyone has the right and privilege to be happy.
13. I believe writing frees the soul and the mind.
14. I believe chocolate can solve some problems.
15. I believe a heart can be broken and grow back stronger than before.
16. I believe that the closest place to a heaven in this world is on a sandy beach in Washington state.
17. I believe acrylic gel medium is my best friend.
18. I believe crying can sometimes lead to the clearest thinking.
19. I believe in love.
20. I believe that we appreciate what we have only after its absence.
21. I believe you should make friends wherever you go.
22. I believe wishes come true.
23. I believe miracles do happen.
24. I believe my children will be smarter than I am.
25. I believe you must go out, search, and find your bliss.
26. I believe all people are created equally.
27. I believe there won't be a time during my life where all people are treated equally.
28. I believe you don't have to be able to draw to create a work of art.
29. I believe in God.
30. I believe that we are all children of God and that he loves us all.

So, what do you believe?

What I Learned About Life From NaNoWriMo

I'm back!

Yep, I've been gone for over a month. I'm sure you're all wondering why. Well, I was participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and I had to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Although I did write the 50,000 words, I didn't actually finish the novel, so don't start asking when you'll find it in paperback at your local bookstore.

As I worked on my novel, I actually discovered a lot about myself and even a few things about life. And as this the place where I muse, here are my musings about life from NaNoWriMo.

1. When you start to get bored, throw in a love scene. One night I was struggling to get my 1667 words to keep me on track. I was bored. I wasn't enjoying what I was writing. I didn't feel like anything interesting was happening. I was about ready to tear it up (or backspace it all). Instead, however, I decided to throw in a kissing scene. Now, it was a very tasteful kissing scene, don't worry. But it boosted my word count and pushed me over my 1667 words for the evening.



What does this have to do with real life, you ask? You may not have a significant other in your life, or your significant other might be in a land far, far away, so a kissing scene may not be in store for you. But I'm sure you love to do something, right? That's the kind of love scene I'm talking about. Spend some time doing something you really love. If that's crafting, do that. If it's writing, do that. If it's cleaning, um, do that then. Just spend some quality time with that activity. I think it'll boost endorphins almost as much as kissing does.



2. The rule of 400, 900, 1667. I discovered this strange little rule early on in the writing of my 50,000 words. The first 400 words would be fairly easy to write. The next 500 were pure torture! I couldn't think of anything to write. Every time I'd check my word count, it would only be about 20 more than the time I checked it before. Then, somehow, after I'd hit about 900, the next 700+ words were easy sailing.

Here's how I believe this can be applied to real life: It'll get harder before it gets easier. Isn't that something that some aged wisewoman would say? Seriously, I can see it embroidered on a pillow. But it is so true. But maybe, more precisely, I should say, "It'll start out easy and then it'll get harder and then it'll get easier." Sometimes we set out to do something, and it isn't so bad. We think, "Hey, I can totally handle this!" And then we get trucking along, complacent in our ability to accomplish the task and, dagnabit!, it gets hard! We want to give up, because there is just no end in sight to our troubles. And then, miraculously, after a while, things get easier again. Perhaps that is the Circle of Life. Or, as I call it, the rule of 400, 900, 1667.

3. Sometimes you can find jewels in big, huge piles of garbage. Some nights I'd be writing just to get my 1667 words done. I knew what I was writing wasn't very good. I wasn't sure where my plot was going or what motiviated my characters to act. And I'd end up with too many words that were probably (almost certainly) going to be completely cut from my novel. It was word garbage. Big, huge piles of it. But, again, almost certainly, I would discover something new about my characters or I'd write a line of dialogue that I loved or the next part of my plot would suddenly pop into my head. They were teeny, tiny jewels, or sometimes not so teeny, tiny, but they were totally worth going through all of the garbage I had written before.

We all have big, huge piles of garbage in our lives. Some people have literal piles of garbage, while others have more metaphorical piles of garbage. But I really do believe that we can find moments in those pile of garbage times that are jewels. For me, my big pile of garbage time has been from July 2008 right through today and on 'til April. In this time, TSH has been home for about, oh, 4 months total. In that time, the oldest son started preschool, the baby started doing everything, the oldest graduated from preschool, the oldest started kindergarten, and the middle child started preschool. I've worked full-time. I quit my reading endorsement when I just had one class left to take. The air conditioning in my faithful steed went kaput. It has been quite...exhausting. But we've had so much good in our lives. The baby is the sweetest little boy and he's so much easier than the other two were as babies. We were able to buy a house with the help of my brother, so we didn't have to live in an apartment anymore. TSH's bonus finally came through and I bought my beautiful new (to me) Ford Fusion. So many tiny jewels that have let me know how blessed I am. Oh, and, hello! I finished 50,000 words of my novel in 30 days!

So, I said I learned a few things, and I think I learned more than these 3, but I'm going to stick with just these for now. Even if you never write a novel, I hope you find some wisdom in these. And if you do decide to write a novel, you have to do NaNoWriMo. It's the best legal high you can get!