W is for Words

Happy Friday, friends!

Today's inspiration is all about words. I love words. I always have. When I was in elementary school, my favorite word was identification. I remember spelling it out loud over and over again, no doubt driving everyone around me crazy. I just liked the way it sounded: id-en-ti-fi-ca-ti-on. I admired its beauty and rhythm, even if I couldn't express those feelings at such a young age.

Now, at a significantly older age, I can appreciate the sound and beauty of words, how they hit the ear and feel on the tongue, and as a writer, I'm inspired by the way they can be crafted and turned into something quite beautiful. I think that's the main reason I enjoy writing poetry so much, particularly haiku. I love the pictures I can paint with the right choice of words.

In addition to being beautiful, though, words are also powerful, as you'll see in today's video inspiration. I hope you enjoy it.



My daily haiku is now up at the Pulitzer Remix site. You can find it here. To those of you who have been reading and commenting: Thank you. Your support means so much!


Wishing you all a wonderful Friday. ☺

On headbands and writing

I was never without my notebook and pen.
Image courtesy of Stefan van Bremen
rgbstock.com

Happy Tuesday! Today is Blog Me MAYbe's "May I tell you something about myself?" day, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to share a little about how I began writing.

I've been writing stories and poems from the moment I learned to print, but it wasn't until I was around twelve that I wrote the first story I can remember with clarity. It was a short about a twelve-year-old girl who caved in to peer pressure and shoplifted some headbands from a department store. She was caught, of course, and the rest of the story was about the Big Life Lesson she learned. Never mind that I had no firsthand knowledge about the topic. I didn't care. I just wanted to tell the story, and so I told it--simple as that. My seventh-grade creative writing teacher (I wrote about her here) encouraged me to do more writing, and I did, using most of my free time to tell tales and pen poems. I was happiest whenever I had a notebook and pencil in my hand.



The words didn't come easily.
Photo by Anna Langova,
courtesy of Public Domain Pictures

Not long afterward, though--right about the time in high school when I decide I wanted to be a Writer with a capital W--writing started to get more difficult. Ideas didn't come as freely, and neither did words. Where I had once found writing freeing, I began to find it somewhat enslaving. It became something I felt I had to do rather than something I really wanted to do, and I started to have doubts about whether I was good enough to make it. Instead of writing, I began worrying. I worried about my ideas, my word choice, my writing process. I even worried about things I really had no business concerning myself with at that early stage, like marketability and appeal. My Inner Critic had come to town and worked me into a writer's block that lasted for nearly a year. I didn't think I had it in me to write again.

Eventually, though, I did, and what brought me back was the realization that writing is supposed to be hard. It's supposed to take time and effort. Once I let those thoughts sink in, I was able to tell my Inner Critic to scram, at least for a time. Writing still isn't easy, of course--and as I said earlier, it isn't meant to be--but I've found my way back to that twelve-year-old girl who wrote freely and without abandon about whatever was on her mind, and every day as I practice my craft I'm learning more and becoming a stronger writer.

And my Inner Critic? He's still around, of course, but Charis, my muse, helps me kick his butt. ;)



We all have a passion. For some, it's writing, and for others, it's something else. So for those of you who are also writers, how did you get started? And if you're not a writer, tell me about what made you decide to follow your passion.

What will their dreams be?

Today's 100 words:

It was my mom who told me that I should be a writer. I guess she saw something in me way back when I was young and spending much of my free time scribbling away in notebooks. It's been my own dream for just as long. Now I look at my kids and wonder what their dreams will be. Will my daughter's love of animals turn into a career as a veterinarian? Will my son's love of trains and cars and singing factor into his future plans?

Both of my children love books. Will they be writers, too?

"Had we but world enough, and time..."*

I was thinking this morning about how hard it is to do all the things I need to do each day. My to-do list is often left unfinished, as everyday chores, like cooking and laundry and cleaning and running after children, take up most of my time, leaving little for the other things that really need to be done around here, like organizing and weeding out clothes that no longer fit and attempting to unpack more of the boxes I put in the basement when I moved here years ago. Fitting in writing time is sometimes an even bigger challenge, but it's an important one--and also the topic of today's 100 words:

As a writer and a mom, one of the things I struggle most with is finding the time to write. I stay at home with my two very young kids, something I wouldn't trade for anything. I do some writing early in the morning before they get up and some late at night after they're in their beds; however, in both cases, I'm pretty tired and often unfocused. But to paraphrase Tim Gunn on Project Runway, I make it work. I have to. If I have to sacrifice something--sleep--to follow my dream, that's what I'll do.

*Opening lines of "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell

An exhausted writer with a cell phone

Just as I was about to fall asleep last night, I felt inspired to write, so with no paper available, I grabbed my cell phone and wrote everything in an e-mail to myself. When I read the words this morning, I was surprised by them. The tone and the style were so different from what I normally write. Even the content didn't seem like my own--it didn't feel like it came from me, yet I remember writing it. It's strange. I'm not sure what I'll do with these words. I don't know if they belong in the novel I'm currently working on, coming from the mouth of a character that I don't know as well as I thought I did. Perhaps they're meant to be part of an essay or even a blog post. I need to think about this for a while.

I found the whole experience so strange: being pulled from that place between not quite awake and almost asleep, writing words that seem in their tone and possibly even in their intent to be someone else's.  I feel they're important somehow; I just need to discover where they belong. Last night's writing was almost a surreal experience. It's funny how the mind works...