Today’s prompt: Something you keep but have no use for, why do you keep it?
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Her Story Anthology: Write to Heal Abuse
Gabrielle Pullen, founder of Your L.I.F.E Matters, Inc, is seeking submissions for Her Story Anthology: Write to Heal Abuse.
Writing is one way to make sense of our experience and turn pain into art. Your insight matters, to you and to other women who don’t yet believe they can get out. Pick one moment when you knew something had to give, and for once, it wouldn’t be you. This anthology will contain short stories, either non-fiction or creative fictionalized accounts, of your experience which demonstrate creativity and clarity.
Your L.I.F.E. Matters, Inc. began as a desire to support women with codependency issues who tended to play the victim. Gabrielle hoped to speak indirectly to her grown daughter through her work. But two days before the launch, in September of 2011, her daughter was found dead in her room in Eugene, Oregon where she was about to finish her last semester before graduation from the University of Oregon.
HERSTORY Insight Journaling is just one of the methodologies available for honing your experience into gems of insight to keep you centered in yourself. Rather than living in reaction to the conditioning of disrespect, learn to live from your own authority. Acting in congruence with your own values, gain access to the original confidence and power you were born with.
Hurry!
Deadline: December 15, 2013
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Just because you ran into an obstacle . . . . — Ellen Britt
Just because you ran into an obstacle, a setback or a bump in the road, does NOT mean your dream is over. It’s a sign it’s WORTH pursuing! — Ellen Britt
Dr. Ellen Britt is an award-winning online marketing strategist, Amazon best-selling author and founder of PinkCoatTails.com, featuring Fabulous Finds and Delicious Deals for women online entrepreneurs. Ellen specializes in teaching savvy women entrepreneurs how to take their knowledge and expertise and transform it into Genuine Influence. She has produced and hosted more than a dozen telesummits and has interviewed some of today’s most well-known and respected names in marketing and self-development. Connect with Ellen and her Pink Coattails community on Facebook by clicking here.
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A place where you find satisfaction — Prompt #25
How to write riveting scenery description — shown below by Elizabeth Berg, in an excerpt from her book, Escaping into the Open.
The summer when I was nine years old, we lived beside a huge gully. I used to go there nearly every day. Agates and wildflowers were plentiful and free for the taking — you were limited only by the size of your hands and pockets. Near the center of the gully was a secluded embankment covered by blades of grass the length and texture of girls’ hair. Willow trees surrounded it, and the sunlight coming through their leaves created a lacy pattern of shadow that I always wished I could pick up and lay over my head like a mantilla. Day after day, I lay on that small hill and watched the shifting patterns of clouds and listened to the birds. I could not identify the birds themselves, but I did recognize their calls. Sometimes I made my own sounds to call back; whenever I did, there would follow a moment of abrupt silence during which I assumed the birds tried to identify me, then gave up and went back to business. I found this satisfying; it made us even. — Page 1, Escaping into the Open by Elizabeth Berg
Your turn: Write a description of a place where you find satisfaction.
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Writing about place
Kevin Nance’s interview of August Kleinzahler in the Nov/Dec 2013 issue of Poets & Writers shows how to describe character and setting.
“One bright afternoon in San Francisco, Kleinzahler joins me for a spot of lunch at his favorite Chinese restaurant in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, once a hippie haven and now well into the process of gentrification, full of trendy shops and high-end hipsters. He cuts a fine figure in sunglasses, a banded hat, and a jaunty scarf tied haphazardly around his neck.
He is, in some ways, a Californian now, a San Franciscan. ‘It agreed with me instantly,’ he says of the city he first encountered more than three decades ago. ‘The look of it, the feel of it, the bookstores, the bars, the Chinese food—all good for me.’ On the other hand, ‘It’s not home,’ he says, ‘The people don’t talk right here, they don’t walk right, their body language is wrong.’”
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My mother always said . . . Prompt #24
My Mother always said . . .
Set your timer for 12, 15 or 20 minutes and Just Write!
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Debbie Macomber had so many rejections . . .
I enjoy books that take me away, where I can escape into other worlds, like Cedar Cove, the fictional town Debbie Macomber created for her cast of characters. A Costco Connection article about Macomber invites readers into her real world.
“When I first started out, the rejections came so fast they hit me in the back of the head.” November 2013, The Costco Connection.
The article continues, “Macomber describes her desire to write as a ‘dream that pounded inside of me.’” She overcame dyslexia and taught herself the art of writing by dissecting Kathleen Woodiwiss’ The Wolf and the Dove. “Whatever was inside that story that made me want to go back and read them again and again, I wanted in my own story.”
From Debbie Macomber’s website:
“. . . I wanted to become a writer because I had stories to tell. And I was always interested in people—in what happens to them and what they choose to do or not do and why—which is the basis of story. I knew from the time I was in grade school that I wanted to write books, but it was a dream I kept close to my heart for fear someone would laugh or tell me I’d never be published.”
How about you? Let’s nurture your dream. . . start writing. Use any of the prompts on this blog to spark your flame to write. Write now! Just write!
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You may have tangible wealth untold . . .
You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be —
I had a Mother who read to me.from The Reading Mother by Stickland Gillilan (1869-1954)
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Change is good and . . . — James Seamarsh
Change is good and flexibility in a world of change is even better. — James Seamarsh
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Guest Blogger Rob Loughran writes an unforgettable essay.
The best view in Santa Rosa, it is said, is from Paradise Ridge Winery. The tasting room looks westward toward the semi-organized suburban sprawl where we live and thrive and call home. There is, however, another view from just a tiny bit down the mountain from the winery.
On Round Barn Circle.
A slightly different view.
Sutter Oncology Clinic has the same view, just not as high on the mountain. And the people who get to see it truly appreciate the vista. Sutter Oncology Clinic is the place where people go to receive a drip, drip, drip that will hopefully cure their cancer.
I have had the opportunity to savor the panoramic splendor of Santa Rosa, California from the glassed-in aerie of this clinic.
It’s a beautiful view. It’s a beautiful city.
We, from here, can see the city sprawled out before us. We can also see the clouds and storms from the Pacific bringing us fog, drizzle, rain.
Today as I waited, patiently and hopefully, for the juice to enter my veins for my specific illness I savored the view of this city of Santa Rosa. From up here, as the medicine seeps into my veins, I have a sense of distance from the ant farm that is the modern American city. There is another community, another city, brought together because we are in the same leaky rowboat, of cancer patients who see this panorama – this beautiful city of Santa Rosa – while accepting the latest and hopefully most effective and propitious drug.
Drip, drip drip.
An impromptu community.
I have been coming here since June for my particular problem and I have to say that I have never been more welcomed, befriended, and accepted as I have been every time I show up for my chemotherapy.
And I think it might be the view.
Today I walked in and two of the nurses greeted me by my first name and asked if the restaurant where I worked, The Farmhouse, was busy. I said yes, indeed, we were. Booked until Thanksgiving. They nodded and efficiently, elegantly, found a proper vein for the drip, drip, drip, that I would be receiving for the next seven hours.
In those seven hours I would learn that I am, indeed, the luckiest guy on the planet. I do have a bit of cancer that’s circulating, perambulating, goofing off in my bladder. This little drip, drip, drip, of chemotherapy that I receive will address and resolve that problem.
I wish it were so simple for the people in the chairs surrounding me. I’m here for seven hours and I am one of the few without a port. A port is a plastic junction where the chemotherapy is injected. It is a semi-permanent appliance where cheerful and smiling nurses inject merciless, hopefully effective, drugs for deadly and mysterious ailments.
A beautiful young lady sat next to me and had her elixir administered through such a plastic port. This thirty-year-old woman endured visits from in-laws and friends. Obviously in pain, she perked up whenever someone visited. She was the perfect hostess in English and Spanish as the visitors arrived and left.
Until her children arrived.
The boys, aged nine and eleven, spoke perfect English to the nurses and myself when I said “Hey” but they spoke in Spanish to their mother and their aunt who had accompanied them. Their mother had been on her medication for about two hours before they arrived. I could tell by her breathing that it was not a comfortable situation. But when her boys appeared she became a vibrant and caring mother. She transcended the side effects of whatever drug, whatever poison, for whatever malady was in her system and she became a mama. In Spanish the youngest son said, “My baseball game is at 10 o’clock on Saturday.”
Auntie raised a finger and said in Spanish to her sobrino, “There are more important things right now.”
The young man fought back tears and said, “You are right.”
This stuff that they are pouring into my veins is truly miraculous. Whether or not it snuffs out what is growing wildly within me really doesn’t matter. Today, because I had to be here in this place, at this time, I watched a boy become a man.
That is the best view in Santa Rosa.
Because of the people who are in it.
Rob Loughran usually writes about sillier stuff. His latest novel Beautiful Lies is available at Pages On the Green bookstore in Windsor, CA