My Two Blessings

First lines: "I was near the door, where woman should stay.  The floor was hard, refusing me, though I lay face down, my arms outstretched, embracing it, wanting this life, this death. I  knew there were people nearby, those from the village who had come to look or pray, but I saw none of them.  Voices in the sanctuary that seemed so far away sang a dirge, a celebration of loss, prayers for me.  I knew the words: I had read and reread them, memorized them, prayed on them, but now they were nothing but sound." I was intrigued by the story of The Anchoress as I'd never heard of the anchorite life before.  I knew about cloistered nuns as I had visited a cloistered convent when I was a teenager.  We were allowed to talk to them through a screen in which they could only see us from the waist up, a privacy screen raised in case any outside visitor was inappropriately dressed.  They were a giggly group of ladies who enjoyed their simple life of prayer and...

First lines:  "Once in a while you find yourself in an odd situation.  You get into it by degrees and in the most natural way but, when you are right in the midst of it, you are suddenly astonished and ask yourself how in the world it all came about." Back cover:  Kon-Tiki is the record of an astonishing adventure -- a journey of 4,300 nautical miles across the Pacific Ocean by raft. Intrigued by Polynesian folklore, biologist Thor Heyerdahl suspected that the South Sea Islands had been settled by an ancient race from thousands of miles to the east, led by a mythical hero, Kon-Tiki. He decided to prove his theory by duplicating the legendary voyage. On April 28, 1947, Heyerdahl and five other adventurers sailed from Peru on a balsa log raft. After three months on the open sea, encountering raging storms, whales, and sharks, they sighted land -- the Polynesian island of Puka Puka. Translated into sixty-five languages, Kon-Tiki is a classic, inspiring tale of darin...

First lines:  "The London air was full of smog and filth. Kai's senses were better than those of a human, though he tried not to be too smug about it.  But even he couldn't see down a dark alley any better than the average Londoner.  And even native Londoners walked carefully in the narrow streets behind King's Cross Station." Back Cover: The written word is mightier than the sword—most of the time... Working in an alternate version of Victorian London, Librarian-spy Irene has settled into a routine, collecting important fiction for the mysterious Library and blending in nicely with the local culture. But when her apprentice, Kai—a dragon of royal descent—is kidnapped by the Fae, her carefully crafted undercover operation begins to crumble. Kai’s abduction could incite a conflict between the forces of chaos and order that would devastate all worlds and all dimensions. To keep humanity from getting caught in the crossfire, Irene will have to team up wit...

First lines:  The world is a clock winding down.  I hear it in the wind's icy fingers scratching against the window.  I smell it in the mildewed carpeting and the rotting wallpaper of the old hotel.  And I feel it in Teacup's chest as she sleeps.  The hammering of her heart, the rhythm of her breath, warm in the freezing air, the clock winding down. Synopsis: How do you rid the Earth of seven billion humans? Rid the humans of their humanity. Surviving the first four waves was nearly impossible. Now Cassie Sullivan finds herself in a new world, a world in which the fundamental trust that binds us together is gone. As the 5th Wave rolls across the landscape, Cassie, Ben, and Ringer are forced to confront the Others’ ultimate goal: the extermination of the human race. Cassie and her friends haven’t seen the depths to which the Others will sink, nor have the Others seen the heights to which humanity will rise, in the ultimate battle between life and death,...

First Lines: "Richard did not become frightened until darkness began to settle over the woods.  In the fading light, the trees began to take on unfamiliar and menacing shapes. There was movement in the shadows. Low-hanging branches barred his path; rain-sodden leaved trailed wetly across his cheek." Back cover:  He was the last-born son of the Duke of York and the last Plantagenet King.  He was Richard III, a complex man living in tumultuous times.  Caught in the vicious power struggle that history has called the War of the Roses, Richard had been raised in the shadow of his charismatic brother Edward.  At nineteen and against all odds, Edward had defeated the House of Lancaster and claimed the English throne for York.  Famous for his sensual appetites and his preference for the expedient over the correct, Edward nonetheless found in his younger brother Richard an unfailing loyal ally.  Richard himself was repaid for his allegiance; he was ...

I finished Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones which was most entertaining, educational as well as an inspirational read.  Her essays are like meandering down a winding trail with something new around each curve to observe and absorb, with new or common sense ideas to try out different approaches to writing as well as writing in different places and spaces.    Synopsis:  With insight, humor, and practicality, Natalie Goldberg inspires writers and would-be writers to take the leap into writing skillfully and creatively. She offers suggestions, encouragement, and solid advice on many aspects of the writer’s craft: on writing from “first thoughts” (keep your hand moving, don’t cross out, just get it on paper), on listening (writing is ninety percent listening; the deeper you listen, the better you write), on using verbs (verbs provide the energy of the sentence), on overcoming doubts (doubt is torture; don’t listen to it)—even on choosing a restaurant ...

Sunday evening and hubby is using everything - including the kitchen sink - to make Margaritas!  *grin*    He dug out the old oster blender and ice crusher and is having a fun time mixing our drinks.  Best he's made yet...Well this time!  I made great progress this week with outlining my current WIP on poster board and had more than a few epiphanies! I've always been a visual person so don't know why I didn't try this before.  Love seeing each scene and how I can move each one around to make better sense. I'm far from done  and have written more notes,  found holes in the main arc and subplots and discovered which characters I need to still interview.  Even after two sessions with the storyboard, I can see I need to put in more time ironing out details so this week will continue to work with the story board and adding scenes.  I have made a lot of changes regarding the number of characters, deleting some and including new ones, pl...

Birth An idea comes in the midst of sleep. Drowsily you grab paper and pen to scrawl words to keep, before they are lost again. Characters once asleep  in the shadows of your mind, come to life with a leap. A story is born in a moment of time. Let's start with my name then we'll fill in the rest, the chick says as she claims  a home in your mind's nest.  I want joy and strife, a mountain to climb, a pit so deep,  the bottom or top of my life. will take time to reach. I may need a mate,  but not quite like me   we'll both need a race, a riddle, a quest, to solve. I don't want simple or carefree while our life evolves. She sits on your shoulder, filling your ears. You'll tell the tale of my life living vicariously through my fears and tears, laughter and love and strife. A lifetime created with one little spark when you read the page written so clumsily in the dark. Psst! My name is Sage. ~R.L.McCormack~

I had an epiphany today. I have various exercises as well as a short story using the characters from Eyes that I completed while taking classes a while back.  I realized today that all that information can be incorporated into the main story as flashes of backstory or part of the story, providing clues to the characters as well as the conflict.  I don't have to stick with the conclusion in the short story since no ones read it except class mates and it isn't published, so nothing is written in stone. Such a freeing moment.  I've been writing lots of notes and started to fill out post its for the story board.  It's slow going but that's okay.  I've gotten a good start and will continue to work on it throughout the weekend.    Doing a happy dance! 

Our two week Christmas break from lessons is over and time to get back into the groove of learning. Every Sunday I fill out James weekly assignment sheet. The other evening I sat down to fill out his schedule as usual. I happened to look at the pile of books and notebooks in my writing nook, thinking how I'd fit my writing and blogging and everything else in for the day while he's busy working on his stuff, when the idea hit me. To do's and notes and bullet journals just were not working. I needed something simple and always accessible, not buried in a notebook.  I should make an assignment sheet of my very own to follow weekly!  I ignored the voice of the editor in my head saying it's another way to procrastinate from what I really needed to be working on, which is the story board. "Hey you," I say to the criticism, "I printed out the story, put it my notebook and I bought a trifold bulletin board so I'm ready to jet. Lots of changes are percolat...

Have you ever edited the life and your voice out of a story?  I've come to realize I did just that with Eyes in the Ashes.  I wrote it several years ago and had writer classmates and friends  over a period of time review different chapters and provide feedback. Lacking the foresight to decide what was the best thing to do, I implemented way too many changes.  Every time I've gone back and looked at the story, I'd tried rewriting a bit more, but have never been quite happy with how things turned out.  In the meantime,  I've changed and learned so much about the craft of writing and grown into my skin as a writer. Plus I've written a few more stories and even one that kind of ties in with this one, as well as flash fiction and nonfiction.  But I always keep coming back to this particular story.  Things have been percolating in my brain for some time with changes in characters, points of view, and more.      So I have decided to go ...

Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball   By  Haruki Murakami  Amazon:  Wind/Pinball, a unique two-in-one volume, includes, on one side, Murakami’s first novel Hear the Wind Sing. When you flip the book over, you can read his second novel, Pinball, 1973. Each book has its own stunning cover. In the spring of 1978, a young Haruki Murakami sat down at his kitchen table and began to write. The result: two remarkable short novels—Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973—that launched the career of one of the most acclaimed authors of our time. These powerful, at times surreal, works about two young men coming of age—the unnamed narrator and his friend the Rat—are stories of loneliness, obsession, and eroticism. They bear all the hallmarks of Murakami’s later books, and form the first two-thirds, with A Wild Sheep Chase, of the trilogy of the Rat. Widely available in English for the first time ever, newly translated, and featuring a new introduction by Murakami hims...

"There's no such thing as a perfect piece of writing.  Just as there's no such thing as perfect despair." So said a writer I bumped into back when I was a university student.  It wasn't until much later that I could grasp his full meaning, but I still found consolation in his words--that there's no such thing as perfect writing

I fell in like with trappist monk Thomas Merton several years ago when I read Seven Storey Mountain .  Since then I've collected several of his works and they are always enlightening and inspirational.   Synopsis:  Thoughtful and eloquent, as timely (or timeless) now as when it was originally published in 1956, Thoughts in Solitude addresses the pleasure of a solitary life, as well as the necessity for quiet reflection in an age when so little is private. Thomas Merton writes: "When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when men are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, the society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility, resentment and hate." Thoughts in Solitude is a short read of 130 and packed with Merton's philosophical and spiritual thoughts on humility and silen...

Balancing Rocks by Stuant63 Happy New Year!   Yes,  it's that time of the year when we start over with good intentions to balance out our lives and spend less time on the internet.   I’m still trying to figure out my Word for the year – debating between persist, steadfast, or intention.  To persist is to continue steadfastly or firmly in some state, purpose, course of action, or the like, especially in spite of opposition, remonstrance.  Also means to last or endure tenaciously.   To be steadfast is to be fixed in direction; steadily directed Intention - purpose or attitude toward the effect of one's actions or conduct. To have purpose or design.  Now that I’ve looked at the definitions, persist and steadfast seem to be pretty much the same. Continue to stay the course, being stubborn, have purpose, despite opposition. The only opposition is myself and neither word at this point seems too terribly optimistic  or will hel...