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Living the Waiting Game #IWSG #amwriting #SciFiTimes
[I wrote this post as a member of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group where we share our worries and also offer support and encouragement to each other on the first Wednesday of every month. If you’re a writer like me and you’re looking for a bit of support, you can click the link and sign up here]
This month’s awesome Co-Hosts feature other fabulous writing friends with me:
CDiane Burton, JH Moncrieff, Anna @ Emaginette, Karen @ Reprobate Typewriter, and Lisa Buie-Collard!
Check out our IWSG homepage for recent news and events. And as always, thank you to founder Alex J. Cavaugh 🙂
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A reflection on my life based on the IWSG Question this month:
In early March, my mother began to take the warnings of the spreading virus seriously. I gave some thought to it, and started being more careful going out and about, and strangely, I also started buying cleaning supplies. Spring Break quickly approached, and I knew several families including my own had plans to fly out of the state. Never the country. Thank goodness. Though I did hear of a few families who were adamant they would keep their plans to fly overseas and relief came when the greater government entities stepped in and forced them to stay put.
On the work front, I’m in the field of Education. Though buildings have closed through the end of April, I’m in Public Relations and currently called in to work because it’s an essential need. Administration is busy prepping food, serving families in school parking lots, and organizing online and paper Education packets for all grades. My fiancé is also called in to work, employed in a pharmaceutical plant. We’re nervous, glad to have steady work though, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say the drive down the road to work and back isn’t scary.
So what is my plan now? I’m homeschooling the kids several days a week. They maintain a schedule with bedtimes and rising times, and thanks to my youngest daughter’s teacher, I have an hour-by-hour or topic by topic powerpoint to follow. Bless the teachers! I made my first online grocery order for a curbside pickup. It took four days to schedule the pick-up, but I feel better about the arrangement. I’ve rearranged my basement so the kids and I can get online exercise every day. Amazon Prime has some great free options for workouts, no matter your preference.
On the writing front, I just started editing and writing again this past week. I’ve been so worked up I haven’t been able to find the creative flow. I guess I figured I better try, because it feels like this is a longer road than any of us know. So I wear gloves, I carry hand-sanitizer in my car, my desk, and in every room of the house. We’re certainly living science fiction times, and I pray everyone says safe and follows guidelines for the sake of others. On a lighter note, I’ve found several great quotes to consider:
The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. — Barbara Kingsolver
You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. ― Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter
To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless. ― G.K. Chesterton
Everything that is done in this world is done by hope. — Martin Luther
Imaginative Potential in Useless Academic Requirements #IWSG #amwriting #WednesdayMotivation
[I wrote this post as a member of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group where we share our worries and also offer support and encouragement to each other on the first Wednesday of every month. If you’re a writer like me and you’re looking for a bit of support, you can click the link and sign up here]
This month’s awesome Co-Hosts: Raimey Gallant, Natalie Aguirre, CV Grehan, and Michelle Wallace!
Check out our IWSG homepage. And as always, thank you to founder Alex J. Cavaugh 🙂
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This past Monday while I was getting ready for work, while the pups wove in and out of my legs in the bathroom, the 6 a.m. news caught my attention. A survey of post high school students listed four top useless required learning items:
- The Pythagorean Theorem
- The Periodic Table
- Protons and Electrons
- The sum of Pi = 3.14 and then some.
Post high school students cited they not once used these formulas or learning points in school since they were required to memorize them, so why not take more classes in managing college student loans, learning how to do taxes, and how to budget money once out of high school?
Do I agree?
I’d have to say no, and maybe a little yes?
Math and Physics were not my friends. I’m a picture person. I don’t memorize lengthy jumbles of words and numbers without seeing a bigger application. However, just because I struggle to understand certain concepts, doesn’t mean these concepts shouldn’t be required learning. In fact, I believe in Plato when he said, “Geometry will draw the soul toward truth and create the spirit of philosophy.”
So where am I going with this conversation of science and math?
This month’s IWSG question asks, “Besides writing, what other creative outlets do you have?”
I find creative outlets in everything. From the way I cook, to the way I work on the computer as a graphic designer in Public Relations, to the way I write my notes on a page at work when my print and cursive swirl together, and my bullets become flaming falling stars (which aren’t really stars by the way). In fact, my whole note page may become one giant doodle.
Creativity never leaves us. We always find our own ways of self expression.
And what do math and physics have to do with creativity? Lately, they’ve been the source of my creative inspiration. My second draft in my YA Urban Fantasy/Sci-Fi manuscript has challenged me to merge science and magic. I’ve had to revisit the topics I once dreaded, and am now doing it on my own terms. No horrid college textbooks. No over the head lectures where professors talk to the chalk board more than to my face. I don’t have that kind of time anymore, so I invest it wisely in YouTube PBS mini lessons in astronomy and physics. I’ve covered everything from magnetic fields, to electron charges, to neutron stars, magnetars, galaxy formations, and the importance of tides and how they shift with the new and full moons.
And required subjects in high school? Sure I would have loved to have taken accounting or a business class instead of Chemistry. I don’t think skipping Chemistry would have done me an ounce of good. Why? Required academics exposes our minds to unfathomable possibility. I now have a greater imagination, and it’s one mixed with science, hypotheses, and magical potential.
What about you? Would you agree with the post high school graduates? What was your least favorite subject in high school? Was any subject or formula useless to you? I’d love to hear it.
Reclaim Your Greater Story #IWSG #amwriting #Newyear
[I wrote this post as a member of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group where we share our worries and also offer support and encouragement to each other on the first Wednesday of every month. If you’re a writer like me and you’re looking for a bit of support, you can click the link and sign up here]
This month’s awesome Co-Hosts: J.H. Patricia Lynne, Lisa Buie-Collard, Kim Lajevardi, and Fundy Blue!
Check out our IWSG homepage. And as always, thank you to founder Alex J. Cavaugh 🙂
As a writer, I’ve often questioned where I am. I’ve wondered if I can compete when I really haven’t gotten my feet off the ground very far. And now faced with another new year with more distance between my goals and the time, I admit, my heart has weighed in a little heavier than I’ve wanted it to weigh.
This past Sunday, something drew me to hustle the children out of bed, compelled to get them to church. Drained from a severe flu, I finally felt an ounce of energy, and my heart said get up, now is the time to leave the house.
We made it to church. I sat on the bench with my hands crossed in my lap, staring up at the pastor on the stage while my children colored on worksheets next to me. Then the pastor held out his hands, looked straight out at all of us and said, “You can find a new flow from an old well.”
I sat up straight and grabbed a pen. I wrote down every word thereafter and I haven’t stopped thinking about his words of hope since. Thus, I’m sharing them today because of what they mean, and how much they mean to me.
“Dig. Unearth. Take care of the well you already have. Reclaim that greater story. Hope again. Allow yourself to dream.”
I don’t often write about religion, but the words seemed timely, and they touched me in a force of inspiration.
So this year, I’ve decided to hold on to my writing dreams. And out of my brainstorming, I reached out to one of my great writing friends, happy to learn she recently moved back to town. We’re meeting for coffee this Sunday and I’m super excited to have someone to talk to face-to-face again about books, my first quiet prayer come true, already this year.
On another fun note, I saw a great movie with the kids: Bumblebee. It sure amazed the heck out of me. The soundtrack seemed really great too. And a new book? I found one! I went to Half Price Books the other day and picked up the murmurings by Carly Anne West. So far, I’m incredibly intrigued.
Lesson learned, not every minute will shine like you want. Love the minutes that shine as they come. Have faith the road you choose to walk will continue to show you brighter, shinier minutes along the way.
Question: Have you come across something recently that revived your spirit, your heart? A great new book or movie? I’d love to hear it.
Focused Distraction Is A Creative Technique #IWSG #AMWRITING
[I wrote this post as a member of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group where we share our worries and also offer support and encouragement to each other on the first Wednesday of every month. If you’re a writer like me and you’re looking for a bit of support, you can click the link and sign up here]
This month’s awesome Co-Hosts: Ellen @ The Cynical Sailor, Ann V. Friend, JQ Rose, and Elizabeth Seckman!
Check out our IWSG homepage. And as always, thank you to founder Alex J. Cavaugh 🙂
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Have you ever watched a child in an art room digging fingers in a ball of clay, smoothing water over a shape she’s trying to create with her own two hands?
Have you ever listened to a teen recite lines for a speech or a play, eyes lost on some space on the wall, hugging her arms in while the words slip out just as she hoped?
Have you ever sat at a desk and stared at a blank screen or piece of paper, wondered where to start and why it isn’t starting right now when you have the time, and maybe too much time to think?
Creativity is a beautiful science. Images. Voices. Blank screens of possibility. Puzzled thoughts and making choices. Learning basic formulas and mixing and matching the right ones for you.
This month’s IWSG question asks, “How has your creativity in life evolved since you began writing?
I might have digressed in this post this month, thinking more of what I use to get through the evolution of creativity. I guess in remembering my own journey, I focused on what helped me work through the process, to keep going.
For me, distraction has kept me on track through time. How to use sensations to get past that chunk of clay, the cool water slipping through your fingers. The hugging motion I didn’t realize I used to get the words out. And when I’m stuck on a thought or a blank screen, I always go to the gym. I solve everything on a stair climber or a spin bike in the spin room. Maybe it’s my busy mind unable to let go. So when I distract myself with other motions, sensations, I free the block. I’m able to start again.
Distraction has taught me to use my eyes and hands, to search with additional senses. Study expressions. Memorize color. Smile at the detail in eye lashes and dimples. Wonder, or wander. Over time my distractions have evolved into smarter, doable things I am choosing to use because they work.
We can’t always control a thought or where we are, but we can change our surroundings and what we see to dream again.
A few last thoughts on creativity by some creative writers:
Have a lovely rest of your week 🙂
Cloud Nine Girl 