Just something to think about. No one can tell Your Story except you. 🙂
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The Common Literary Journal
The Common is an award-winning print and digital literary journal published biannually, in the fall and spring. The Common includes short stories, essays, poems, and images that embody a strong sense of place. The Common Online publishes original content four times per week, including book reviews, interviews, personal essays, short dispatches, poetry, contributor podcasts and recordings, and multimedia features.
MISSION
To deepen our individual and collective sense of place through bold, engaging literature and art.
VISION
To serve as a vibrant common space for the global exchange of ideas and experiences. To be an essential destination for creative work that embodies particular times and places, both real and imagined. To mentor and promote the next generation of writers, editors, and publishers.
Finding the extraordinary in the common has long been the mission of literature. Inspired by this mission and the role of the town common, a public gathering place for the display and exchange of ideas, The Common seeks to recapture an old idea. The Common publishes pieces of literature that embody particular times and places both real and imagined; from deserts to teeming ports; from Winnipeg to Beijing; from Earth to the Moon: literature and art powerful enough to reach from there to here. In short, we seek a modern sense of place.
In our hectic and sometimes alienating world, themes of place provoke us to reflect on our situations and both comfort and fascinate us. Sense of place is not provincial nor old fashioned. It is a characteristic of great literature from all ages around the world. It is, simply, the feeling of being transported, of “being there.”
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A time you felt free to be you . . . Prompt #355
Write about a time you had no worries . . .
a play-filled time . . .
a time you felt free to be you.
Does this scene look familiar? You know where it’s from if you’ve been to Maria’s Out West Garage in Petaluma, California.
Hi, Maria. 🙂
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Guest Blogger Suzanne Murray
We are lucky to have Suzanne Murray as today’s guest blogger, encouraging our writing.Excerpt from Suzanne Murray’s Post, 2/14/2018
Are you feeling uninspired? Has your got-up-and-go got-up-and-went? Say that three times!
Then read Suzanne’s inspiring message:
FALL IN LOVE WITH CREATIVE PROCESS by Suzanne Murray. A lot of people think that when it comes to creativity, inspiration is the key. Yet those moments of insight or revelation never occur without the willingness to commit to the work and continue to show up. This perseverance is just as important. You get a creative flash. You show up to the work and what wants to be born becomes more clear.
Nobel prize winning Canadian short story writer Alice Munro once said, “I threw away all my early writings and it wasn’t because I was the mother of three small children. It was because I was learning my craft and it took a long time.”
It was the same with David Guterson who wrote the award winning novel Snow Falling on Cedars. When critics acclaimed that a brilliant new writer had just come out of the Pacific Northwest as if he and his book had arrived by magic, he responded “excuse me but I’ve written in the early morning hours for 25 years before going to my job.” It took him ten years to write the novel.
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning poet, Mary Oliver wrote for twenty five years before putting her work out into the world. She refused to take an interesting job because she didn’t want to be distracted from her work. It was only a few years after she started publishing her work that she won the Pulitzer. Her perseverance clearly paid off.
One of the favorite essays I’ve ever written is 13 pages and it took five years to write. I started from a clear place of inspiration but then I had to do the work. I needed to do research. I needed to continue my writing practice. I had to put the draft away for a couple of years while I developed my skill as a writer because this essay was very complex and when I started it I didn’t have the level of ability to finish it.
This is why as a writing teacher and creativity coach I teach people to fall in love with the process. It is true for any form of creativity. You show up, you start playing around and you find yourself in the flow where time stops and you taste of the joy of being creative. This allows you to persevere. Even when things aren’t going well, you can find pleasure in showing up and being willing to play with what wants to be born out of your effort. This provides its own deep sense of satisfaction and working the process is its own reward.
An award-winning writer, Suzanne Murray’s work has appeared in literary magazines including Orion and The Sun. Author of “Love Poems to Nature,” she has kept a journal for forty years and is currently at work on a collection of essays about her connection to Ireland.
Suzanne also has creative experience in photography, dance and design. She is trained in EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), Access Consciousness the Bars, Psych-K & Theta Healing. She works to empower clients to clear energetic limiting beliefs that hold them back from living their full creative potential. She also has a background as a biologist and professional naturalist and has worked of Yosemite Institute and the National Park Service.
Suzanne Murray offers:
Writing Coaching, Creativity Coaching,
Ireland Journey
Creative Life Coaching & EFT Sessions -
Wrong Number . . . Prompt #354
Today’s writing prompt:
Wrong Number.
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If you could invent something . . . Prompt #353
If you could invent something to make your life easier, what would it be?
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Favorite time of year. Prompt #351
Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter.
In-between seasons.
Write about your favorite time of year.
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You think you know them . . . Prompt #350
“You think you know them,
these creatures robed
in your parent’s skins.”
Writing Prompt: Read the excerpt. Copy it in your notebook, if you want. Then see what comes up for you and Just Write!
Excerpt from the poem, At the Lake House by Jon Loomis
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Brad Yates Inspires Action
Note from Marlene: I have been helped and inspired by Brad Yates and his Tapping Videos. I hope you enjoy reading about his New Year’s Eve experience in Paris.Guest Blogger Brad Yates: Walking with a blind man
From time to time we hear stories – or see videos – of differently-abled people doing remarkable things. We may find these stories to be inspiring… and sometimes we might even find them challenging, as we confront how we may have allowed lesser hurdles than theirs to limit our lives. We can allow ourselves to be shamed by these, or let them serve as wake-up calls to stop making excuses. Naturally, I’d guide folks towards the second option.
Most of the time, these stories come into our awareness in a fleeting way, and not a personal one. More often, it’s someone we don’t know and will likely never meet, making it less likely to stick.
Our 2017 ended with an up-close-and-personal encounter. 🙂
My family and I spent the holidays in Europe, where I did workshops in London, Dublin, Prague and Paris. It was a fantastic trip, filled with wonderful experiences, many of which involved meeting fantastic people. This is one of them…
We had chosen to be in Paris on New Year’s Eve, and decided to check out the Main Attraction – the celebration on the Champs-Élysées. We had taken a boat tour along the Seine, and returned to the Eiffel Tower just after sunset, arriving just in time for the spectacular hourly light show. From there we walked up to the Arc de Triomphe. It was still early, and people were just starting to gather. The roads were starting to close, and there were heavily armed and armored police – which was both intimidating and reassuring. The Arc was lit up with test patterns for the light show that would take place just before midnight.
It looked like it was going to be quite an event … but it also looked like it would be very crowded … and it was raining … and we all agreed that we’d rather head home and watch it on TV while sipping champagne, which we wouldn’t be able to do there.
So we headed down into the nearest metro station, which was packed. We noticed a woman holding the arm of a blind gentleman in his late-twenties, who made his way past us up to the glass doors at the edge of the platform as his guide disappeared, apparently having only been there to help him get to this point.
My French isn’t great, but I could tell he was asking for some assistance. I don’t recall which of us explained that we didn’t understand, but he quickly responded in English. (We would later discover that he spoke five or six languages fluently!). He explained that the glass doors in this station made him nervous, and was hoping for some assistance when the train arrived and they opened. The crowd in the station would make lots of folks nervous, even if they could see everything going on.
It wasn’t long before a train came … and passed us by. Then another… and another. Then there was an announcement on the loudspeaker, and people started leaving the platform. Our new friend explained that this line was being closed at this station. He asked where we were going, and when we told him, he suggested a different line that also stopped at this station, and where to take that to get to another line to get to our desired destination. Even though he had never seen a metro map, he knew the different lines, where they stopped and where they connected. The alternate line he suggested would also take him in the right direction, so he latched onto Christy’s arm and suggested we head to that platform.
Not long after we got there, there was another announcement, and people again started leaving. The whole station was being shut down. Our new friend said there was another station further down the road – at the Place de la Concorde, where we could find a train we needed. Although he was on my wife’s arm, he was the guide to the clueless tourists. A very different take on “the blind leading the blind.”
As we walked along the Champs-Élysées, we learned that our new friend was named Hossein, and was from Iran. He was very friendly and charming and asked a little about each of us. When we said we were from California, he mentioned he hoped to go there someday and we’d find him swimming in the rivers. He said he loved to swim – “faster than a fish” – and had competed in tournaments.
I was impressed. Far from feeling limited by his lack of sight, here was a young man who had studied engineering, was traveling the world, learning languages, getting to know people, doing things that could intimidate lots of sighted people (like going into crowded metro stations), figuring out complicated metro map… and apparently really living a full life.
He also wasn’t afraid to ask for help – something so many of us struggle with. Obviously, it was something of a necessity, which may be why he had learned to do it so matter-of-factly and pleasantly.
Eventually we arrived at the next station, and he insisted we leave him at a certain spot, as we would be going on different trains. He warmly shook hands with my son and me, and kissed my wife and daughter’s hands. Then began gently saying, “Excusez-moi…,” looking for the next person who could help navigate the way to the platform. We felt comfortable leaving when a Metro staff member came to assist him.
It was a really lovely way to put 2017 to bed, and we were all touched by the experience. It is my intention that his example of not making excuses will continue to inspire me in this New Year. I hope it might do the same for you as well. You deserve a great life.
Note from Marlene: Are you waiting to write? What’s holding you back? If you can envision it, you can do it, especially with inspiration from Tapping with Brad Yates.
Brad Yates is known internationally for his creative and often humorous use of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). Brad is the author of the best-selling children’s book “The Wizard’s Wish,” the co-author of the best-seller “Freedom at Your Fingertips,” and a featured expert in the film “The Tapping Solution,” He has also been a presenter at a number of events, including Jack Canfield’s Breakthrough to Success, has done teleseminars with “The Secret” stars Bob Doyle and Dr. Joe Vitale, and has been heard internationally on a number of internet radio talk shows. Brad also has well over 700 videos on YouTube that have been viewed over 19 million times, and is a contributing expert on the Huffington Post.
