Hi, this is my first post on this site. Please take a wander around. I’ll be posting more every few days, from writing to projects to other reflections to writing prompts. Please, take a few minutes, and visit today…and every few days in the future. I’m glad to have you here!
I write a little bit of everything, although I have a few kinds of literature I enjoy most. I love a good science fiction story, something that examines the human condition, often with less-than-human participants. I love a good lighthearted story with some strong humor that helps me escape from myself. I love a good disaster story and movie, something that lets me feel that my world is less insane than it is. And I love a good heartfelt story, although the last two of these kinds of stories I prefer in movie form so that the hits are faster than most written forms to experience.
In these pages, you’ll find pieces I’ve written, including one particular group of pieces I call Warriors of Light. This series is spiritual in nature, focusing on experiences people might have and how they can survive or thrive through spiritual experiences. I hope you enjoy each of these pieces.
I also include some writing prompts for you to consider if you’re a writer. I hope you find them interesting. I’ll post them every few days, as I will writing and current project information. I hope you’ll visit them often.
Finally, I’ll include some photos that are artwork that can either serve as a writing prompt or, maybe, just some kind of inspiration. Like my cover picture, some will have particularly different or bizarre appearances, and some will be traditional designed to be fun, useful, or just enlightening or inspirational.
Please wander, enjoy, and visit often!
A Year Later, Just Before Christmas
December 23, 2020
What a year it’s been! It’s been a year since I’ve entered a store, since I’ve visited face-to-face with anyone but a doctor, that my children have taken a bus or my service dog has done any service outside my home. I know I’m not unusual for work-at-home employees or for people my age but, boy, has it been a long year!
It’s been a year of reflection–after all, how long can a person hang out on the phone or in front of a screen without going nutty, and who else could I talk to sometimes but myself? As a person who’s usually pretty self-reflective, that’s meant some quiet moments and some pretty wild moments. As a perpetual student, it’s also offered some interesting realizations:
- At 64 years old, over 40 years of my life is now considered fodder for the history books–and how they recount it is at times dramatically different from my memories of it
- I am becoming a just the facts, ma’am person. It’s great to do research, but in the end I really want to know what that research distills to and means for the specific topic in which I’m interested. I love the details, but don’t drown me in them.
- My just the facts, ma’am attitude is lazy, and I need to work on it. The virtue is in the details, and focusing on just what someone distills as the important aspects of a topic in which I’m interested is giving control over my thoughts to someone else.
- I only have so many minutes left. Yes, I’m young in terms of overall lifespans, but this pandemic has demonstrated some realities everyone must face. My clock is ticking, and no one is guaranteed another day…so I’d better be thankful for every day–every minute–I get and use it wisely.
- Even in a pandemic, isolated from my neighbors and friends, I can make a difference. I must make a difference, because we’re all important in this crazy quilted tapestry that is our lives. I need to daily ask myself what I can do to help someone or some creature (yes, dogs, cats, pigs, and even bats count to me) and then follow through on providing that help.
- I have a story to write…and write it I will as I complete my M.F.A. in creative writing from Lindenwood and begin my M.A. in intelligence studies from the American Public University. What I am doing with the M.F.A. is obvious throughout this page–my writing is improving every day because of my studies. What I will do with the M.A. is less obvious, but it ties into what I’ve done since studying during my undergraduate program in the 1970s (yes, I am that old). With this course, I will come back full circle to where I began my academic journey. I’m excited!
- After I finish my M.A. in intelligence studies, I’ll start my M.A. in American history to understand how my life fits with the history being taught. Most important, it will keep me growing new neural pathways in my brain. Research has shown that people who continue to learn and create new neural pathways suffer less from Alzheimer’s because, even as parts of a brain die, new parts are stimulated. I like my brain, so I will always be a student.
Whew! It’s been a long year, hasn’t it? And 2021 is coming in like a lion–we all know why. We need each other to last until the virus is tamed, the climate can be treated, the businesses can reopen or alter to become ever-sustainable, and people can become homed and their hunger sated. We need to tame 2021 so it becomes a lamb. Picture a team of horses pulling the American people in a giant stagecoach toward the cliff’s edge of the Grand Canyon. That’s us. We need everyone able to help pulling at the reins to stop the stagecoach before we plummet into the abyss. I’ll pull. Who’ll join me?
New Publications! Yea!
May 28, 2021
I’m drawing close to the end of my MFA, and I have to say it was worth it. I am learning so much from the editing we’re doing for others that is helping me within my own writing. I just started submitting work about one month ago, and I’ve gotten two literary journal acceptances already. I’m not sure the trend will continue, but here’s hoping.
Meanwhile, here are the links:
Habits, a Memoir published in the literary journal, Potato Soup Journal
The Brook, a poem about Boulder Colorado’s mass shooting, in The Voices Project Poetry Library
I hope you visit, read them, and enjoy then!
I’ve spent the last few years studying writing formally so I can do the best job possible. I try to do everything I do in the best manner I can, and writing is a permanent record of my thoughts and my creativity. It was a great journey at Lindenwood University. The instructors are outstanding, and the courses are fantastic. I admit I earned more credits than I needed to graduate and was sad to leave finally, but it was time. So, now I have my MFA in Creative Writing, and I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done.
Memoir Almost Done and Degree Finished…
I’ve spent the last few years studying writing formally so I can do the best job possible. I try to do everything I do in the best manner I can, and writing is a permanent record of my thoughts and my creativity. It was a great journey at Lindenwood University. The instructors are outstanding, and the courses are fantastic. I admit I earned more credits than I needed to graduate and was sad to leave finally, but it was time. So, now I have my MFA in Creative Writing.
As my thesis, I wrote a draft of a memoir I’m writing that will be published soon. I look forward to sharing it with you. Meanwhile, I read a short portion of a snippet of a drop of it for Lindenwood’s YouTube MFA site. You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDuRoYdi6Ek