An Awesome Therapy

Yesterday I spent some time in the morning researching websites which talk about freelance writing jobs and how to get those jobs. There were lists of available jobs right now. There were message boards to go through to look for jobs. It was exciting to think that perhaps I could write a blog post, magazine or e-zine article and get paid. There’s nothing like getting some monetary reward for something you love to do. I love to write. I write something almost every day. I would love to get a job doing that. Especially if it were something I can do at home like that. Write a few articles a week and have some spending money. Oh the things I could do with some spending money. I began to look through the opportunities. Lots of topics. Art, design and photography; audio and multimedia; business and finance; computing and IT; entertainment and humor; food and drink; health and fitness; lifestyle; parenting and family; sport and leisure; travel and international; web development; writing blogs; etc. All these lists being very serious about their topic and expecting an educated mind to respond, perhaps with some serious research done.

I have forty-five posts on my blog. All of them quickly typed off the top of my head, from my heart. I have more than that in Scrivener. Nothing serious. I question whether anyone would read my posts never mind pay to have them. I write what I want to write. I write what I like. I just write. One morning I wrote a one thousand word page of nothing in particular. It was rather like a painting loaded with colors, vibrant and soft but with no definite shape or recognizable spaces. Words come streaming out and I an observer. Sometimes I have to change something because I do have a little education and even I know when something won’t work or just plain isn’t right. I have read some books and I have paid attention to some stuff.

These lists of topics intimidated me. I looked at them. I wasn’t even interested in them. If I did feel qualified to write for them, I’m not sure my writing would fit in. I don’t do things like ordinary people. I don’t live like ordinary people. I don’t raise my children ordinary either so even the parenting lists went over my head and out the door. I couldn’t write for the finance columns. What do I know about art? I love art and I like to make art sometimes, although I haven’t picked up a paintbrush since Debbie was here. I couldn’t write about housecleaning and homemaking since I know very little about either. I couldn’t write about being a good wife. Did you know that people actually write about that? Chickens and gardening, well, I’m no expert and I don’t follow the rules even though I read all the available books about chickens, they were impractical and unnecessary and I have had to find my own way. If people knew how relaxed I am with my chickens, well, lets not write about it. My chickens practically take care of themselves and I fill waterers and feeders and open and close doors at night and in the morning and we gather eggs. A child can do it. People write books about it, whole books, long books as though it’s a very important thing to write about. Gardening, well, I’m just learning about that and there is so very much to know and it changes all the time. I’m still reading up on it and learning from Grandpa and from our local farmers. I see gardens in people’s backyards and I’m jealous of them even though I have my own. “Look, they have a beautiful garden.” I say thinking about my own fenced off weed patch which delivers so much to our family in the way of food.

So it seems that I don’t really have anything to offer anyone that could pay a reward to me. I suppose I’m challenged now. Should I become interested in these topics? Should I foster an interest in the American lifestyle enough to write about it? Perhaps I should pretend I was given one of those assignments. Pick one and do my best with it. See what happens. Perhaps I should write about how you don’t need any of that advice at all and that you should just go with your best instincts and make sure that you love you own life just the way you are. Perhaps we should all just stop trying to do everything right and just do what’s best for yourselves and your families. Don’t send your kids to school if you don’t want to. Of course you have to get permission for that. Don’t participate in organized sports if you don’t want to. Don’t go around trying to get the edge on everyone else and don’t go making sure your kids are getting the edge either. Just make sure that they are getting enough sleep. Make sure they have lots of time for play. Make sure they are eating real food and drinking plenty of clean water. I don’t think that kind of writing would be readable never mind getting paid for it. People want to be told how to live. The next best way to do things. That’s why we have our Martha Stewarts. We wouldn’t have those kinds of key people if we weren’t trying to be taught how to make our beds and fold our sheets and what to do with stuff. We wouldn’t have a lot of key people and magazines if we weren’t trying to be like everyone else and know about everything else. I suppose you have to be a little bit interested in the rest of the world if you are going to sell any writing. Perhaps a lot interested. I suppose I should get an education. I’m sure it’s not too late. Or maybe I’ll just write everyday because I enjoy it and it’s an awesome therapy.

Elizabeth Williams, daily writing exercise, 1,012 words

Reading and Writing

It’s really late to be writing my morning pages. I’ve read and read this morning. It is the kind of reading which makes you want to write. I can’t walk away from this keyboard now after having read these wonderful pieces. I read about Hillary Mantel. A face book page called Writers shared a feature article about her. About how crazy and lovable, how sensitive and how cold. The article was written in the www.newstatesman.com. On the outside a quiet lovable, interested lady. On the inside a driving force of real and surreal ideas cramming her brain to be let out. Her real life sufferings forming and shaping who she is and driving her imagination. I loved the article. I felt as though I had been to her apartment to meet her and had found in her a kindred spirit, reciprocated by her. I couldn’t pull my eyes from the page and read more quickly so to be finished in time to wake up Chloe. Alas, I let Chloe sleep in but finished reading the story. Inspired I kept scrolling and found an article by Lev Grossman, How Fatherhood Ruined His Life Plan and made him the Writer He is Today. Excerpted from “Daughter Pressure” by Lev Grossman. Several things he said resonated clearly with me. Experiences from his childhood and the crumbling of the shell he had grown around himself as a result, due to his relationship with his brand new daughter. It was a wonderful read and completely inspiring. I just can’t walk away from my morning pages now. So even if it is nearly nine o’clock in the morning and today has not only school in it, but also a couple of loads of laundry, clothes to put away and some to iron first, bread to bake and all the usual cleaning up and straightening including an overall vacuuming ending with home made pizza and a movie, morning pages it is. I’m actually really quite good at making up time. I’ve had a lot of practice due to an insufferable capability for procrastination. I’m normally slow and methodical and then click, boom, I’m freaking everybody out because I just got focused and aim to accomplish a ton in the remaining time or bust. I’m really feeling not too bad. My mind seems to be doing the best lately. I noticed on my morning walk around the chicken coops and subsequent search for the dog that my mind is not rebelling at being up at the crack of dawn any more. I was recalling how I wouldn’t bring the dog with me because, of course, she would wander off and have things of her own to do. It would irritate me no end to have to make my body walk the extra steps to go and find her. It’s not like I could holler for her either. My voice didn’t use to work in the mornings. She wouldn’t listen if I did holler. Those memories come from a time when neither my body nor my mind felt well. Now at least my mind feels well and I’m bringing my body along and it is also liking the experience very much. I am able to talk to the chickens and the ducks. The roosters stop their crowing to listen to my soothing talk. My voice isn’t scary to them in the mornings any more. I remember opening the coop door once as they came out in a rush, happy to be let out into a new day and saying “Good morning” in my very bad morning voice. Suddenly they all stopped and ran back in. I was sorry I had tried to greet them. But now my voice is awake, soft and comforting in the mornings and I can talk to them without fear of frightening them back into the coop. I’m actually enjoying my morning stroll even the part where I go looking for the dog. I feel refreshed and ready for the day when I get back. Sometimes I have finished my writing sometimes I still have more writing to do. Morning pages were supposed to be unedited, quickly written, badly spelled, enlightening pieces designed to wake one up. I am having trouble writing that way. I recognize errors as they happen and I can’t seem to move on without going back and correcting them. I keep reading what I’m writing so I have to make adjustments. Really it is turning out to be more of an exercise in writing. I also have a hard time writing anything which may be negative about my life, even my over-eating habit is difficult to talk about in a negative way. I think it’s best to focus on stuff that is great. I do love what I cook. I love what I’ve grown in the garden and that I’ve figured out a way to cook it. I end up loving it and eating too much of it. I also can’t bear to throw it away, since I grew it and cooked it and all that is a lot of work. I love that I get to home-school our daughter and that we both love to write. I’m often listening to the keys on the other computer clacking away. Every once in awhile I hear satisfied or happy noises coming from her direction when she is writing. Like she just wrote something really good and is enjoying it. I love that she uses big words in her writing and nothing she writes makes any sense. I love that I get to garden and that I have a greenhouse now and a cold-frame and plants all around which are either pretty or producing food or both. I do like the dirt, I don’t care for spiders and grasshoppers. There are plenty of hard work aspects to gardening and home-schooling but writing, even though it can at time exhaust one, feels only like play. I love that about writing.  

Written by Elizabeth Williams, writing exercise, morning pages.
1,000 words.

Talents

I looked up the word talent this morning. It has several meanings yet all of them are related. Talent can be a gift, aptitude, characteristic bent, flair, endowment, unit of weight or money, a measure of giftedness, or ability. The dictionary quotes the story of the talents in the Bible. Matthew 25:14-30. The story goes that a higher power has given a different amount of talent to three individuals. It is assumed that the talent is money. It could be anything, really. The talent is your gift. One of the people buried the talent because he didn’t want to ruin it and perhaps lose it. He later gave it back to his owner untouched. The other two people, used their talents and increased them. When the owner came back they had grown in talent, both of them. They got to keep using their talents and continued to grow, but that first person has his talent taken away from him because he didn’t use it. I think everyone has some talent or gift. It may be helping, with money or things. Maybe it’s artistic and creative. Perhaps it’s something else like caring for other people. That is a gift. Nurses, teachers, service providers, there are a lot of people in those fields but some are really gifted making a difference in another persons life. One talent isn’t really more important than another yet some are valued more than others. Musical talents are held in high regard by most. We mostly all love some kind of music. Music is deep in our souls. It’s not just using our voice or instruments it’s much more than that. Music is in the ground reverberating all around us, a rhythm. The birds and bugs and flying things and creeping and crawling things all in time with time. Roots and wiggly things, moving and growing and bursting out. Children clapping, shouting, running, crying, playing. It’s all music. The ocean heaving, sighing, crashing and rivers spilling, it’s all a song. We all have it. Breathing, blinking, shivering, relaxing. Music is everywhere and it is definitely a gift and we all love some form of it. Some folks open their mouths and it is beautiful music. Not everyone can do that. Some have gifts with children and really caring for them, like foster parents and others who give their time making a difference in the lives of children. You know there are so many gifts, the more I think about it the more I realize that I’m surrounded by gifted people doing awesome things in this world.

I remember sitting in church and hearing about gifts and talents and using them. I could never figure out what my gift was, though I tried and tried. I thought perhaps it was taking care of children, but then their was always those really annoying ones. I thought maybe it was music, but I couldn’t get the rhythm nor could I hold a tone. I struggled to learn every note on the piano and every instrument I could lay my hands on, but none of them bonded back with me. I love to listen to music, but I don’t think that counts as a gift. I thought maybe it would be in crafts, but while I’m great at following someone else’s plans I don’t have any real gift there and I quickly get bored with it. I couldn’t be a nurse because I don’t like to clean up after other people and I faint at the sight of blood. I couldn’t teach a regular classroom because I think kids should be outside playing and I fall apart at the whining. Anyway I’m much too childish. I love to cook but I wouldn’t call it a gift. That’s more of a need, really.

I loved it when I worked in a company that let me develop the entire plan and structure for publishing their books and then develop my own skills in graphic design and proper layout and pagination. Working with the public and taking pride in my work. That job got deleted because someone from the big city came and bought the company out, taking it away to automation. Thankfully I had already left the company to be a stay-at-home mother and wasn’t left stranded like so many others. I could take my skills somewhere else but the methods have changed and their are so many gifted people in that field that have three year degrees in graphic design or four years in management. But skills and interests are not the same thing as gifts and talents.

So what is my talent? I like to talk. I like to tell stories, and listen to people. Inside me is an undeveloped and much neglected desire to write stories. To write them down. To find the truth and explore it in my own words. To show in writing the world as I feel it. My mind is inquisitive, not about real things, but about hidden things. Things between the lines. Curios about what isn’t seen and can only be felt. To find the words and write them down. Things we have all felt but brushed aside. To capture a moment in words much as an artist captures with oils on canvass a feeling in colors, hues and textures. It is a gift which needs to grow and develop into a skill. To use your gift is to become more skillful in it. To discover it more fully and find the joy in giving it, like a nurse who feels the blessing of having blessed the helpless. Like a crafter who has something of value to give and a musician who’s music is chosen to celebrate defining moments in other’s lives. Like the helper who knows exactly when to help and what is needed. The discovery of using the gift is as much a part of becoming skillful as the continued use. So the writer’s gift doesn’t grow and become more skilled without the reader. I am discovering my talent is in writing and am sharing it with you before it becomes lost or taken away.

Memories

They pulled up their chairs in a row behind me and listened eagerly to my stories. My stories were true accounts of experiences I had had. “Is it really true?” they asked. “Yes, it’s true.” I insisted. Their were five or six of them, maybe more, I don’t remember exactly. They were stair-step brothers starting at about age six. That means that they were born approximately one year apart give or take a few months. The details of that time are sketchy but I had never washed dishes before to such a delightful audience. It was wonderful. I barely noticed the huge pile of dirty pots and pans, utensils, cups and plates on the long counter beside me. The eager listeners were respectful and enthusiastic. “Tell us more!” they begged as each tale came to an end. I had had adventures in my nineteen years, but this was classic. I talked and talked. Talking is what I did best, and I told story after story. The dishes were getting washed and rinsed and piled on the other side of the sink. Their mother burst into the room, brandishing a long wooden spoon. “Get out!” she hollered, “Get out! Either pitch in and help or just get out!” They scrambled and I was left alone with the rest of the pile. My shoulders sank and my spirits dropped. I had lost my companions and was left alone to the lonely task of cleaning up the kitchen. I don’t suppose it did look right to the poor mother. All those big boys sitting in a row behind me, watching me do the dishes. She couldn’t know that I was perfectly happy and that if I needed any help at all they would have eagerly jumped in. She couldn’t know that keeping them together in chairs was much easier for me than to supervise the half grown boys in a cleaning effort. I hadn’t won their confidence yet. I hadn’t won their team spirit yet. I was doing what I really did do best. Telling stories. Worse than having to wash that mountain of dirty dishes was having to wash them alone. It was too much like my own lonely childhood, standing for hours in front of a sink of dirty dishes, beside a counter with the remains of a meal eaten by a family of ten to twelve or more people. It’s no wonder I eventually became the Queen of disposable dishes. Disposable dishes weren’t that common back in those days though and a woman who was faithfully bringing a new child into the world every year was really thankful to get some help in the dish washing department, I’m sure. I haven’t forgotten that day, that audience, those eager listeners and how wonderful it was to have the company in an otherwise lonely task. They are all grown up now and have families of their own. I doubt that they remember that day the way I do. I was the one who had to put the chairs back around the long table. I treasure that memory though. It is one of the ones which hasn’t left my consciousness. I lost a lot of memories over the years. At one point I lost so many memories I wasn’t sure of the way to the grocery store and I couldn’t remember my own phone number nor house address. I stumbled over the children’s names and ages. I piled the children into the car and backed out of the driveway. I drove down the main road and it all looked unfamiliar. I started to panic but didn’t want the children to know. We drove around, street after street. Finally the children helped me and I pretended that it was a game. One day we drove from dentist to dentist because I couldn’t remember which dentist I had made the appointment with. Each office looked just as unfamiliar as the last and I was sure it must be this one. We went in and announced our arrival to much confusion at the front desk and eventually annoyance at which point we decided it was best to leave. We never did have a dentist appointment that day. None of the dentists had us on their schedules or in their files. I felt like an alien for sure, that day. Or perhaps more like a time traveler. And to think that I was entrusted with four beautiful children. I didn’t have trouble figuring it out at home. There were always books. We could take a stack of books and place them on the coffee table and just start reading together. I loved books. We studied them, the pictures in them, the words in them, and the lives of those who wrote them. I’m not sure exactly when I started to pick up a pencil or pen but it was during that time of severe memory loss that I was encouraged to start writing. It was thought that writing would stimulate the memory and writing did that. It is still doing that. Writing is opening the closed doors. I read something remarkable yesterday about Laura Ingalls Wilder. Her daughter Rose encouraged her to write about her childhood. She was close to my age at the time, maybe a little older. She couldn’t remember many things, especially since she was only two when they lived in the ‘Big Woods’ so she said that when she went back in her memory as far as she could and left her mind there for awhile, it would go further back and bring things out of the dimness of the past that were beyond her ordinary remembrance. Paraphrased from "Inside Laura’s Little House” by Carolyn Strom Collins and Christina Wyss Eriksson. Page 95. What an interesting concept. One problem for me was that there was too much pain in my past and conjuring up memories opened up the wounds. But writing most certainly helped. It helped to unlock doors. There is still a lot of good memories locked in the archives and a lot of pain has already been diffused. Every once in awhile a new one comes back and it’s like opening a brand new book that is written about me. 

Elizabeth Williams, daily writing exercise, 1,040 words.

Procrastination

It’s one of those days when everything begins off right. Don’t you love those days? It really shouldn’t have been easy to get up because I was dealing with a sneezy nose all night. I had to get up and deal with it at one point. Then I tried to be really quiet so that I don’t wake up Mark who really does have to be up at five. Trying to keep a sneezy nose quiet is not a relaxing activity. I find my muscles all tensed up and have to work on relaxing them. I found my tea tree oil and dropped a bunch onto a hankie. I was too stuffed up to smell it and that stuff packs a punch. But I could feel the cool on the back of my throat and I knew that the power of the tea tree oil was at work. I soon fell asleep but had to roll over at some point because it didn’t feel good to lay like that all night and then my really sensitive nose started to act up again. I’m wide awake, trying to be really quiet while I throw one tissue after another over the edge of the bed. Finally I must have slept again because the alarm was going off. I have a back up alarm set for myself, you can do that on the i-phone, it’s great, in case I end up asleep again. I woke up with my backup alarm and was awake at just the break of dawn, which is when all the chickens like to be getting up. So everything began as it should. I took my allergy medicine and sat at my computer and saw my emails had an email from: Web Editor ICL - Rx list from the Institute for Children’s Literature. The place where I did my writing course years ago. I love their emails. I always read them and sometimes print them out so that I can read them some more. I didn’t get very far down the email when I noticed that a website they had been referring to recently was up and running. 

http://kristiholl.net/writers-blog/

I couldn’t help it and clicked. Then I started reading her blog. I read and read and read. It was amazing. Motivation, willpower, bad habits, reasons, excuses, goals, mini habits and so much more. It was wonderful to read about what other writers deal with and how they overcome. We all struggle with the same things. Somehow I ended up on a website applying for a writing job with a Christian booklet company. I read a story about a lady who is inspiring Christian writers and her story brought me emotional tears. That was some great writing. I finally clicked over to my program, Scrivener. Opened a blank page and started writing. It isn’t early morning hours. It is light out. I’ve eaten breakfast. Chloe is at her desk and I just heard the washer end. So stuff has been happening and I’m writing. I’m still inspired and my fingers are still writing what ever they want to write. What I think is wonderful about it is that they still know how to type clearly even with all this going on. It’s about training my mind and fingers to work together. It isn’t dark in the room anymore and my mind is working just fine. You can laugh here if you want to. I did. I was going to sit here and write about procrastination. We’ve all heard how bad that is and we all know that horrible feeling you get when you are doing it and you know you are doing it and you can’t stop doing it to start doing what you are supposed to be doing. But there may be a silver lining in the procrastination. It may be that one is expected to be doing something that one doesn’t really want to do and there may be a really good reason for it. Maybe I just need to look at myself and say, ‘Hey, why are you putting this or that off?’ Maybe there is a logically good reason. Maybe I can learn more about what is right for me. It’s a good thing to get rid of guilty feelings. Doing everything promptly and timely and perfectly all the time. Is that who I am? Is that even who I want to be? Sounds like grounds for super self-righteousness. It’s not me. I’m glad it’s not me. I learned so much this morning while procrastinating. I’m so glad I did it. I even applied for a possible writing job, although I’m hardly spiritual enough to write for a Christian magazine or Christian children’s publications, but you just never know. They may have an assignment that works for me. So about procrastination. I’m not going to fight it any more. I’m not going to feel bad about it. I’m going to go with it. There just may be a beautiful reason why I procrastinated. There may be something God wanted me to see or know and I can be peaceful about knowing that I followed the lead.

I am learning something else new. I am discovering that once you open the doors of your passion, in this case writing, you will always find a way. You won’t be able to stop. You will be able to write in the early morning hours, in the mid morning with school girl questions and readings from her of her writings. In the middle of the day, quickly on the i-phone or Kindle, in the car even with those inefficient tools, (not if you drive, don’t write on your i-phone or kindle while you are driving, I don’t drive), in the boat, even in the evenings with paper and pencil. You will be driven to write once you have begun. You can even take short breaks and get back to it. I’ve been taking weekends off, but I couldn’t stand to take more time away than that. I wouldn’t want to go back to not being in the habit of writing.

P.S. I can’t seem to write through a hot flash. My fingers can’t remember where the keys are and the words get all jumbled up.

Elizabeth Williams - daily writing exercise, 1,050 words.

The Conduit

So now this one thousand words is being used as a diary? I really hope not. My plan is to come up with something fresh everyday. Even when I’m tired. Even when I’m late. Even when I’ve overslept and let the poor chickens wait half an hour to be let out. It’s at times like this that my day starts off with guilt and other bad feelings, like dejection. It’s not rejection, it’s dejection. Is that even a word? I just looked it up for me. Yes, it’s a word. It means: lowness of spirits. It’s not other people putting me down, rejection. It’s me putting me down, dejection. That’s sad. Just really sad. But it happens. It happens to me at a drop of the hat and I’m sure it happens to almost everybody sometime. It happened to me yesterday. I reread my new story before bedtime. I felt dejection. This isn’t very good. It isn’t very good at all. That’s how my thoughts went. How can I be putting this stuff out there like this? Went through my head. Like a wind which gently but firmly comes out of the sky directly above me in a spiral down-wards motion. It pushes me down until I am quite deeply stuck in the dirt. And I mean deep. This wind called dejection can push us so deep that we can’t see because we are like a little rock down in the ground, all covered up. It just keeps it’s pressure on me. Then it gives me a little extra push. I feel like I’m going to be mortally humiliated in front of my family. I feel sure that I will be laughed at and mocked. The wind of dejection thinks it’s got me now because shame is a huge tool it uses to silence me and it has worked in the past. It has gotten me to pack up all my journals and lock them in the trunk. It even got me to throw them all out once. It got me to throw away my writing course. It got me to eliminate writing tools. But it can’t stop me. Because I love to write and I have dug those journals out of the trash time after time and moved them around the house closer to my daily work spaces, farther away, closer again, back and forth. I fight back. I always fight back. Dejection is the enemy. It wants to silence me and take away my talent. But I’m angry at it. It’s just trying to shut me up and I won’t be beat down. God is my friend and strength and He gives me tools to fight back with. The more I write, the stronger I become and the more I read the stronger I become. I can’t help but be humble, because I’m truly just a beginner and my talent undeveloped. I know that there will always be those who are better, world’s better. It doesn’t matter what I do, there will always be those who do it better than me. But with writing it differs only in that no one can write what is inside of me. The skill with which I write will develop and grow with use. The confidence will come with practice. Dejection can kiss my ass because I’m still writing and I’m blogging it and putting it out there in spite. It may be late in the day. I may have messed up on my duties this morning and be really late for breakfast, but I’m writing. Dejection tries to ruin all the good parts of my life. It has tried for as long as I can remember. Keeping me from doing what I truly want and being what I truly am. Making me feel silly about being me. Making me feel like all the good stuff is for everybody else but not for me. If you really think about it, it makes no sense at all.

What I found out since I’ve been bravely writing and sharing with the world, is that I have the best sisters in the world. My oldest sister inspires me everyday. She works really hard all day, every day. I’ve never had to work as hard physically as my oldest sister works. She looks forward to coming home from work and relaxing in the evening to read what I have written that day. Makes me cry just thinking about it. Pushes me to write. Pushes me to write better. To give her something worth reading. I can’t quit now. No matter how dejected I’m tempted to feel. I have to fight. I have to win in the fight against dejection. I have to overcome. I have to do it for her and for all my sisters but mostly for me.

I have a picture in my mind from a creepy movie I watched a long time ago. A hand sticking out of the dirt and the body pulling itself out of the ground. That’s what I’m seeing. That’s me not staying down, not staying dejected. That’s me.

Actually what I felt when I finished reading my story was emotional. I was moved to tears. I felt a connection with the lady. I don’t even know her name. I know the names of her children, but I don’t know her name. I don’t know what she looks like, nor the color of her hair, eyes or skin. I don’t know what style she likes, what kind of car she drives. I don’t know what country she lives in or what language she speaks. I don’t even know what her age is. But I’m bound to find out. Perhaps there is something in the lady’s story which we can all relate to in some way. I don’t know. The story is actually about a house. I just read something by ‘Carlos Cooper’. He said that “The story isn’t mine. I’m just the conduit”. He said God brings him the story.

Elizabeth Williams, daily writing exercise, 1,007 words

A Boy Named Richard

A long time ago, in a far away town, lived a little boy named Richard. Who is this little boy named Richard and why is he important enough to be writing about? What happened to him? What is it? What did he do? Why are we even talking about him? Stories used to start that way all the time. Curiosity was raised with the mention of a far away place and time and a boy or girl, man or woman no one knew. Some how it helped. Putting yourself into another world, another time. Imagining yourself in another life. We still do this. We still play pretend. Novels are all about pretend. We learned from the old tales. Sometimes they taught a moral understanding. Sometimes they taught about courage and other times how sheer luck or magic might intervene at anytime and end all this suffering. It’s a kind of hope. Stories today tend to go more towards finding your own inner strengths and answers to life’s troubles. Life’s troubles haven’t really changed that much we just dress them up differently. We have guns today instead of swords. We have drugs instead of magic potions, which is all really the same thing except today people poison themselves instead of their unsuspecting victims. Very often the really special stories aren’t that far away and times not as long ago like ‘Little House on the Prairie’. Some times the story is about a mouse or a rabbit and the adventures from their point of view. Some times magical things happening takes one far away, although the story is in the present time. Writers found a way to take the reality of a child’s experience and turn it into something fantastical and far away, yet keep that closeness to it. ‘Stuart Little’ is such a story. Regular, though eccentric, people adopting a little mouse and treating him like a member of the family. Sometimes my daughter sets a tiny place at the table for an imaginary Stuart. He even gets a special spot to relax and watch a movie with her. Usually it’s much too close to the screen. I don’t really have a story about a little boy named Richard, but I might some day. Now that I’ve written that much down, I’d like to find out more about him. I’d like to find out where he lives and what period of time. What were they doing back then. How did they live and what is so interesting about him that we should be writing about it. Other writers have brought to us stories about children long ago, who dealt with monsters, and giants and mean step-mothers and hard work. The same things children today deal with. Well they don’t all have mean step-mothers. Sometimes it’s a mean teacher or a mean neighbor, or kid. Someone is mean and we’ve all got to find a way to deal with this stuff. We do all have some kind of monster, imaginary or not. And giant is just another word for challenge. Anyway little Richard from long ago had all of them. He had so many giants and monsters and mean people to deal with, but he was also very creative. He had a wonderful way of interpreting life and dealing with it. He had important decisions to make, like would he give in to the pressures or stand up tall and proud. Would he be what someone wanted him to be or would he be himself and be really good at it. Would he know what he wanted? Would he know who he was? There are a lot of serious questions woven into the tales told to children. Children love to consider serious questions and come up with really smart solutions. But they aren’t anything like the kind of questions we think they may have. That’s why it’s so difficult to mix adult with child. Really the adult needs to become a child again in order to mix with the child. In order to write for a child one needs to be a child. For example, I love to have the floors and table tops in my home, cleared off and accessible. My youngest daughter is a maker of worlds and uses up every possible square inch with buildings and lego’s, homes made of plastic, homes made of cardboard, rock city etc. I come to find out there are people living in those places. Am I the ogre who demands them all removed? Am I the evil step-mother who demands the floors to be cleaned again? The rock city was fabulous, it was however in the doorway to another useful room in the house and I was the giant who crushed the city with it’s big feet. I’m also the witch who picks up whole homes and moves them to other countries. Or perhaps I’m the cyclone which picked up the house. There is so much to know about all this. The more I investigate it the more I remember about my own childhood. I was the third oldest child in a family with ten children. My usual job in the family was to play with the children. I wasn’t capable enough to have a job in meal preparation. I was too slow at most important jobs which really required some amount of speed in order for a home of this size to function well. The most useful place for me was to play with the children. Later I went on to have children of my own. I have spent many hours as a mother, playing with my children. Building, researching, going on adventures and reading. Housework and the business of mealtimes was also a type of play for me although I had no training in actual usefulness I was able to invent my own methods and draw from memories of what I had observed as a child. I did have other chores sometimes, but can you imagine having the job of playing with the children when you are yet a child? Priceless.

Elizabeth Williams, daily writing exercise, 1,013 words.

Lost Words

Lost. I write that like it’s a whole sentence because sometimes it is. It’s not loss. Loss is a different subject entirely which has to do with grief. It’s lost. Lost is an experience I’ve had a lot in my life. Not me so much, I wasn’t lost, although that was questionable at times, I always knew where I was. Perhaps other people thought I was lost. God always knew where I was and so did I. I got lost in Buffalo NY one time. I was driving to Canada with my four younger children and I missed the exit and took a different one thinking I could back track. It wasn’t that simple and the streets I found myself on weren’t on the map. This was well before the days of cell phones and GPS.

I’ve had the experience a lot where something is lost, reaching for something which isn’t there any more and turning the house upside down looking for it only to realize that I was looking for something which belonged to me in a different time of my life. I spent a good part of my thirties and forties looking for things. Every once in awhile I go through everything and get rid of stuff. A lot of people do that. Then you miss it and wonder where it is, perhaps forgetting that it went to Good Will. Maybe if you are like me you search and search for it. But I always end up again with too much stuff. Moving is a time when I always parted with a lot of things. Some things I regretted getting rid of later. I have decided not to move again.

Things are important. Don’t listen to people who tell you that things aren’t important. Things connect us to each other and we use things to communicate love and care. We don’t live here on this earth without things. Losing things can be very upsetting and unsettling. Children relate to the things around them and are sensitive to things being moved or removed. Things are important. Usually the sentiment behind a thing is the important part. It is what connects us to memories and other people in our lives. I have a china cabinet full of things which conjure up memories of childhoods lived with me and the love and creativity of little ones. Yes, things are important. Losing things can be considered loss. Things can also have a lot to do with our emotional well-being.

Losing words is a different type of loss. When words are lost they may never be retrieved and can not be replaced. I’ve had the experience of discovering some words in just the order to inspire a whole world of creative thoughts and not captured them on paper or i-note and then lose them completely by the time I get to a paper and pencil. The whole thing is lost then. It was something special which can never be found again. It was the arrangement of a few words which conjured up a whole library of books from ones soul. It was that arrangement which expressed the exact balance of expression. It was the one time I felt that I could say it. I may be in the bathroom or in bed or out with the chickens or at the park, or in church at the grocery store or on a bike ride. It may be an idea, or a revelation about a character or the path a story should proceed. It is something hidden from the past boldly reaching out to the page. It is that thing which doesn’t come from intellect or research. It doesn’t come from brain storming. It comes only by it’s own will from the subconscious to the conscious and only for a brief moment. If I’m not ready, if I don’t repeat it out loud or write it quickly down, it becomes lost, forever. Gone. I can think and think and think, but it will not return. This is the plight of a writer such as myself. Being ready with pencil and paper. I’ve been noticing a common thread among the literature I’ve been reading, that the writer draws from a well. Writing opens the well and one must let it flow. The well will replenish itself as it empties but if it is not captured it will dry up. Too much thought into the actual inspired words will dry the well up. As I write I become a better writer. Sure I need to do my learning as well, but that is more for polish than anything. Everything I need as a writer is down in that well. It is coming from a lifetime of experiences, some of them too painful to tell, but opening that well and letting it flow will tap into those places which are hidden. This is what I’m learning as I begin to write. Those things too painful to remember and those good things in the past which are hidden by pain affect the quality of the words which come out as one writes and in time as one continues to write. Thinking too much can sometimes stifle the flow of words from the well. It’s kind of like all the filters on the water lines between our well and our drinking water. A lot is lost on the way. With drinking water that’s a good thing we don’t want that stuff anyway. But in writing it’s not good. Those things which are lost are the necessary things. The inspired things, they are the things which add color and life to an otherwise stale piece. Sometimes I think I’m afraid of the well and opening it up. But those moments when I don’t have a pencil and paper and a burst of words pops out keep me in awe of what is in there. I am trying to carry my i-phone with me at all times. If I don’t get a burst of words I can at least take pictures. 

Elizabeth Williams, writing exercise, 1,012 words.

School Days

It’s a new day, a new week and the first Monday in August, 2014. Today is also the first day of our new school year. Grade Four. Chloe has been excited about grade four for a long time. We got the new books before the end of third grade. Recently I’ve been finding her on the floor next to the boxes with grade four books all around her, deep into one or another of her new texts. She has already read the health book, science, history and discovered the stories in her readers. I’m familiar with fourth grade. I’ve taught it before. It is a wonderful transitional year. Fourth is the first in three years of deeper learning, broadening subject material and finer tuning of the reading and writing skills. Children have more of the finer motor skills. Chloe is learning to bake and she can do her own cast on in knitting now. She has more focus when writing. Her picture books look more detailed and she can now type out her stories more quickly. She is ready for more learning. I love to teach a student who can’t wait to learn. With the right curriculum it isn’t even really teaching. It’s learning together. Clearing the way. Opening the doors. Setting the stage. It is up to me to make learning easier for her. I have to learn to be quiet sometimes. To moderate my activities so that they aren’t that interesting to her so that she won’t be distracted. I have to put my singing and bursts of enthusiasm on mute while she figures out long division, looks up words in the dictionary, reads her lessons. History and science are together-time subjects. I love learning as well and could do these years over and over. I haven’t become tired of the primary grades yet. We have environments in our home. They don’t look like much to an outsider. They sure don’t look any different than any other time but during school days they take on different meanings. The dining room table. There is one seat there which she loves to sit in to do Language and to read to me. I sit across from her and either knit or crochet while she reads. It is our first meeting place since her day begins. She does her journaling, math drills, spelling and poetry without me, although I’m not far away and get caught up in the wonderful poetry included in her curriculum. But we always meet up for reading. She reads to me in the mornings and I read to her in the evenings. She has a little wooden desk which we bought for her when she started preschool, around age two. She prefers to sit there to do her math. It has a lift up top and a little groove across the back of the top where she can put her pencils. She keeps a pencil sharpener there and a huge eraser which she got from her sister. The eraser says in big letters, OOPS. This is her usual place for battling through her necessary daily math page. She has a little bulletin board on the wall in front of her desk where she pins her favorite things. History, science and health are couch subjects. We sit together there in the afternoons and study all kinds of things. Places, people, times, body, manners, oceans, seeds, jungles, teeth and bones. There is a huge map of the world in the next room where we can stand and discover some of the world’s places. She has another desk in the sunny room with a computer where she studies Spanish and practices typing skills. Then there is the piano bench where she sits a couple of times a day and works out new songs, plays the familiar and pounds out scales and arpeggio’s. I love the time of day when she practices her piano. Listening to her play, while I fold laundry, wash dishes or bake bread. This year I am writing and illustrating a children’s book. I know that she will be playing the piano, learning Spanish or struggling through her math while I’m deciding between words, which ones to put on a page or sketching out numerous options for pictures. The tricky part for me will be to be quiet while she works. I’m a big girl though, so I think that this year I can handle that. I love our school days. I love the structure. I think that most parents love the structure of school days no matter where their children school. I love the challenge of keeping school special for her. No grind going on here. Except for math. This year we will begin going to the library again. Every two weeks. I want to read children’s books and see what’s newly published, and by whom. I want to start doing book reviews on my blog. Children’s books of course. Chloe wants to discover new worlds. I’m curious to see which books will draw her in and where her interests are. She wants to learn about other countries so I bought her a country scrapbook. The book will guide her to research the country of her choice and step by step put together a book about it. She wakes up now while I’m writing this. She is ready for her new year. It will be a short school day since many subjects do reviews and introductions on day one and some don’t even have a lesson yet. We have planned to go to the fair this afternoon. You can’t beat a school which starts right off the first day with a field trip to the county fair. It will be a sunny day and not too hot although it may get toasty on the pavement. We plan to go on some rides and eat fair food, ice cream, see the animals and play some games. Last year we got Max the penguin. I wonder what we will get this year. Once a year we eat cotton candy. Well, we don’t really eat much. We buy it, taste it and save the rest. It feels good to have it. Everyone should know what cotton candy tastes like.

Elizabeth Williams, daily writing exercise 1,042 words.

My Blog

It’s the first day of August and this marks the end of the first three weeks of my 1,000 words daily exercise. I have really enjoyed this and I plan to continue to write 1,000 words a day. I don’t always blog what I write, sometimes I do if I think it would be interesting to anybody. It isn’t great writing, it’s just writing. I haven’t been writing long enough to have great writing. I don’t spend long enough with each piece to have it qualify as great. Usually I sit down to write, open my program and just start writing. I let myself discover what is on the inside. I think this is important because it gives me an idea as to what is on the inside. It also gives me the chance to let my brain flow. Sometimes I start with one thought and end up with a completely different one with several other thoughts in the middle. Usually when I have struggled through the start of a piece I look at the word count and it says 155 or something. I immediately think that that’s nothing yet and I’m running out of words. What will I write about for 850 more words. I keep going and after awhile I check the word count again and it’s around 750 words. Now I’m thinking that I better get to the point and tie things up because I’m running out of words. But the words keep coming and I keep typing. When I’m finished tying things up I check the word count and it’s way over 1,000 words, so I read through and start cutting. I find other mistakes in spelling or grammar and quickly fix them. I take out repetition and unnecessary rambling until I’m really close but still over. That’s all I do. Then I post it to my blog and share it on my face book page. Now if I want to write something really good or even great, I would put a lot more time into it and choose words carefully and go over the outline in more detail. I would take longer with it, but since it is meant to be a sample of free flowing words I just let it be. Recently I found this paper with ideas for weekly writing to share on my blog. It is by: DIY Author. I printed it out and I really liked a few of the ideas. One is to serialize a whole story. That is a cool idea. Another one is to write micro fiction. Just little stand alone stories, 1,000 words. Most of their ideas were great. I like having a map for stuff. Sometimes it just helps. At first when I started my blog I was all about setting it up. I did it carefully, needing it to reflect me. Then it was ready and it was so clean and nice but completely empty. I wasn’t sure what to put in it because I didn’t want to mess it up. I want to encourage anyone who wants to write to just go for it. Start posting stuff. Start getting your words out there. Start a blog and write for it. Don’t worry about audience yet. Start publishing your words to your blog. It is great practice. It is best not to start off with a huge audience because that is a lot of pressure. Once you get the feeling that someone is reading what you wrote then you have to deal with that feeling. You will have that. You will be so grateful that someone actually took time to read all those words. The thing is you have just got to start. In three weeks I have changed from being a private writer to being a self-published author. You know you are considered published when you post to your blog. Strange how easy that was. It has nothing to do with money. It has only to do with your writing being where anyone can pick it up and read it. Some of the other things on this list are; sharing excerpts of work you are currently doing; telling the story behind the story, or revealing where you came up with the idea; Q&A with characters in your book or series; interview authors who write similar to you; share and review new books in the same category as yours; make lists of books similar to yours; invite your readers to ask questions and have Q&A time. The are more, it’s a pretty awesome list. I like the first one, ‘serialize a whole story - 1,000 words at a time’. I will still write 1,000 words a day but not always post them. Sometimes I will be rewriting and planning the next step in a story. I’m also working on a children’s book, illustrations and all. Sometimes you just have to do it. You wonder for years if you could, if you should, then one day you just have to go ahead and do it. Perhaps I’ll write a serialized story once a week, a micro fiction once a week or other kind of story and do a book review once a month. A book review will require a library trip on my part, which is something I would like to get back to doing. I would like to feature other writers from time to time but that will take time to figure out. These are some of the plans I have for my blog. Unlike most other venues in business, there is not much competition among writers. No two writers are exactly the same and there is always room for more. It’s the more the merrier in this field. What is important is the quality. One writer inspires another and in inspiring is inspiration. I have received emails from well-known authors encouraging me to write and keep writing until I break-out and then, keep writing.

Elizabeth Williams, daily writing exercise, 1,000 words exactly.

There is a lot of love in a Grandma

I began to notice a hesitation in moving forward with my book. I was excited about it and did all the set up. I started a file and wrote out the synopsis. Then I made an outline. I compiled these and printed them out as if I were sending it to a publisher. I made a character sheet for all the characters and printed them out. During my research of the process I found a self-publishing site on Amazon where a person can publish books whenever they want. It is awesome to think that I don’t have to mess with the big guys because I’m quite timid and lack confidence. So I was happy to find the on-line site. I am a Prime member with Amazon and sell used books through them and I like how they work. I became bolder about my writing and illustrating this book after reading instructions from a published author who has used the amazon system. I began to think of myself as a successful published author. Now this is a good thing, not bad. One should reach for the stars. One should feel deep down inside and live that out. All the positives of that feeling should be pushed to the surface. Then one should set up their life around that to make it happen.

"I don't want to hear whining about how it's so difficult. Oh, I don't tolerate any of that because most of the people who've ever written are under enormous duress, myself being one them. So whining about how they can't get it is ridiculous. What I can do very well is what I used to do, which is edit. I can follow their train of thought, see where their language is going, suggest other avenues. I can do that, and I can do that very well."
-- Toni Morrison from an interview with Zia Jaffrey, "The Salon Interview With Toni Morrison," Salon.com (February 1998)

“most of the people who've ever written are under enormous duress, myself being one them” I can’t stop thinking about this because a writing lifestyle doesn’t really fit in, even though it does. It only does because I make it fit. Making it fit has changed everything for me. I now get up in the morning and write. I do the other stuff after I have written. It wouldn’t fit at all, any other way. Writing must come first. I did stop during writing this to fill up my cup of coffee. Yesterday I forgot to get my first cup of coffee until I was almost finished with my writing. That was amazing to me because it shows me how much I’ve changed since I started writing in the mornings. I just put a load of laundry in as well because then I can hang it up when I’m finished writing, and that works. I used to not be able to do very much at all in the mornings but lately I’ve been starting my day at six. Gradually I feel more anxious in my body to move about and do things earlier in the day. I can’t sit and waste the morning any more, or sleep through it. Things are changing for me. I’m waking up. My husband is doing less and less for me and I’m taking back my duties one by one. I penned up my birds the other day and he gave me a look that said that maybe I didn’t need him anymore. I know he wasn’t thinking that, but maybe he was thinking that I didn’t think he was doing it right. You can’t blame a guy for having a thought like that, after all I’ve put him through. He said he would have done it and asked why I did it. I simply told him that I would like to start taking on my responsibilities again and that if I didn’t he could but soon I would like to be taking care of all my stuff. I thanked him for always being there for me and taking over when I couldn’t. Earlier in the year I had started getting up before he leaves for work and letting my birds out. Now I water my plants and feed the cat, before I go back in the house. Then I write at least 1,000 words. It has changed me. I am writing that many words more and more quickly and the words just keep coming. When I’m finished I feel that anything is possible. One author I read about shared that she writes in spurts and puts nose to the grindstone to get a book finished, her husband writes consistently for one hour a day and puts out just as many books as she does. Life doesn’t have to clear out for a job to get done. It just takes a little time each day. In all my enthusiasm for being a published author I became overwhelmed. I began to be intimidated. I’m sure I’m not actually good enough. My illustrations are putting up a huge road block. I began to lose the momentum for my book. I was starting to judge myself as manic and mentally unstable. I started to feel embarrassed about all the paper with doodles and drawing tryouts on them scattered all over the dining room table. I have two fridges full of corn to get into the freezer and peas to shell and a load of beans to snap, blanch and freeze and the house is not taken care of. All of this began to weigh heavy on me and I could see myself putting all those papers and outline into a box and packing it away for a time in the future when the time will be just right. Another idea partially worked through, set aside. I have a lot of them. Then I spoke to my son. I told him I was writing and illustrating a children’s book about the little rabbits I knitted for the kids at Easter. I told him I was struggling with the illustrations. He became excited and asked me if he could tell his little girl that her rabbit is going to be in a picture book. I’ve been thinking about that. His faith in me and his excitement for something I am doing. It blew me away and I’m getting this passion in me to give her that book and make sure that her little rabbit is in it. And put ‘for Olivia’ in the beginning, printed. My inspiration has been from Chloe, she got all this going, but I will make this book for Olivia, and Stephan, and Loralei, and Isaac and Larry and Elijah and Chloe who has given me my childhood back and Joanna and Andrea and Carl, who bring these perfect little people into our world. And Debbie who will read it from Heaven and watch the process first hand. I will do this for them and put their names in it. It will be a gift to my children and grandchildren. Doing it for any other reason is just not working. The world is too intimidating for me. But doing it for them is just a Grandma making a picture book for her kids. And there is a lot of love in a Grandma.

Written by Elizabeth Williams.  1,224 words.

My Journals

This is from a daily writing exercise, One  Thousand words a day. This article is 1,011 words.

Recently I found all my journals, when I was looking for something. They were in the upstairs hall closet on a shelf behind our clothes. We don’t have closets in our rooms, only one at the top of the stairs and one underneath the stairs. So all three of us share one narrow closet for our clothes and one closet for our winter coats, and extras, under the stairs. It is interesting because it is the first house I have lived in that has been like this. All the other homes had closets in every room. I do have a wardrobe in one of the rooms. It is an old heirloom wardrobe that I’m really proud to have. But that’s not where I found my journals. They were upstairs on a shelf behind the clothes. I pulled them out and began to open them. What a treasure. At first I wasn’t sure if I wanted to read them. I had been through some really difficult times. But I was happily surprised when I began to read. 1997, I wrote about people that didn’t exist and fanciful things about the children and I wrote about what I wanted to accomplish and I shared a little about what was going on but only in the I’m challenged sort of way. I didn’t find one 'woe is me' kind of entry. I didn’t find one thing that someone else did or said to me that was unfair, unkind or atrocious behavior. I was concerned that I was about to revisit a dark and depressing past. But none of that was recorded in them. Only this wild fanciful stuff and lots of encouragement. I probably didn’t write anything when I was depressed. Oh, but I did. Truth is I never knew I was depressed until I was coming out of it. It’s like the sky is dark and dreary and you are used to it being that way and you don’t really notice. Then one day a hole in the clouds appear and you can see some sky. It is unbelievable the color of the sky. And you recognize that you have been depressed, and think it is over now, and you tell everyone how great you are doing and you don’t even notice that the hole is covered up again but you treasure that glimpse of blue sky in your memory while gray darkness surrounds you. I began to read my journals. There was this thread running through them. I wrote about how much I had written or not. I wrote about my tiredness and that I was thankful for a moment to write. I wrote huge character sketches about people I knew and people I made up. I wrote about stuff that the kids were doing. Situations that made for great writing prompts. I began stories and stopped, later in the same journal or in another one I found the same story only different and much better. I didn’t complain in my journals. Everything I wrote about my circumstances, if I wrote about them at all, was about my plan. I challenged myself on paper to make positive changes. But mostly I wrote stories. I still don’t see any point in complaining or even saying how it is if it isn’t nice. Unless it could be turned into a story. I usually won’t focus on anything that does not already have a solution. I’m so glad I did not write a lot of negative things. I wrote about books I was writing and picture books I wanted to write and illustrate. I wrote about a course I was taking about writing for children. I wrote some of those exercises in my journals. I found a treasure. I found aliens from galaxies you have never heard of. I found stories about my childhood that were brave and exciting. I found stories about my son when he was a child and my beautiful daughters. There was a sea dragon who helped a child overcome. There were real stories about the things that we experienced. I wouldn’t want to go back in time and read only the bad stuff. I went back twenty years and I was delighted. I am still writing. When I read those journals I knew for sure I was meant to be an author. I knew that more than anything I want to write. This is my passion. And my journals confirm that. Complaining is a way to keep negativity in your life and seek company in it. I can use the experiences I’ve had in my writing. Experiences are gold to a writer. Why complain about too much gold? If I weren’t a writer I would still not want to focus on the negatives unless I’m working out the solution. In that case I would be focusing on the solution and the situation would merely be a tool to an improvement. It’s not that I have never complained, but I didn’t complain in my journals. I focused on the positives. If there weren’t any available positives in my life at the time, or I couldn’t see them, then I wrote about other stuff. I think that if you want your life to change for the better then you need to focus on the good. Cultivate good thoughts, good habits and smile a lot. Have some clean funny thoughts and smile to yourself. Write those funny thoughts down and other fun stuff. Things will start to change. You will rise to the challenges you face. Don’t record the horror and despair that’s in your life. Only record beauty and blessing. Don’t talk about the unfair stuff happening to you. Don’t focus on how awful the weather is. Talk about that funny thought you had. Talk about a beautiful discovery you made. Tell someone else how cool they are. Don’t even ruin their day with tales of how awful something or someone is. Don’t ruin your day with it either and definitely don’t ruin your poor journals’ day. I’m so glad I didn’t.

Elizabeth Williams 1,000 words a day.