Category: on writing

Giving the Gift of Time

Seana Moorhead 1 Comment

It’s that time of year again.  I recently told someone that as I get older, the more I wish we could cancel Christmas. On my more optimistic days, I wish we could go back to a time when Christmas was about getting together with family to eat a decadent meal finished off with some concoction of traditional cake with dry fruit preserved in alcohol. But let’s take away all the presents, the tree, the tinsel, the endless Christmas music, fake snow decorations, the wood-stick deer with bows around their necks, the blow-up plastic oversized lawn ornaments and most importantly the fat man in the red suit. I’m ready to fire him not because he doesn’t do a great job but because he represents everything that has commercialized Christmas into some too long-standing season of what used to be a great holiday.  Maybe its time to hire the aliens for an invasion to finally kill off the show.  Yes, somehow I have moved from Team Cindy-Lou to Team Grinch.  

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End of Year Reflection ~ The Fabulous, The Terrible, and The Explosive Train Wreck

Lori Twining 12 Comments
Lori Twining – End of Year Reflection

This is my last blog for 2023. It is hard to believe the year is almost over.

In less than three weeks, we will jump feet first into a new year. It’s impossible to not be sad that you didn’t accomplish everything you were hoping for on your to-do list or goal-oriented calendar. At the same time, excitement is rumbling in your tummy for a new year to start. January always presents a clean slate that allows you to create a new list of endless possibilities.

To make the new goal list, it is always fun to use the week off from work—between Christmas and New Year’s Eve—to realize just how much you have accomplished over the last twelve months. Sometimes, reflecting on our experiences, whether they were fabulous success stories, terrible embarrassing moments, or memorable explosive train wrecks you never want to mention again… they all led to baby steps in your progress to conquer the “big thing” you have been daydreaming about for years.

What is that “big thing” I’m talking about? 

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Hard Choices

Diane Ferguson 2 Comments
Getting ready to write with my new twinkle lights.

Last I left you, dear reader, I had submitted my first fifty pages, query and synopsis for critique, to a NYTimes bestselling author and I was awaiting her notes. In the meantime, my husband had knee replacement surgery and I lost what was to be my bountiful writing time. But hey, life happens…

And it happened to the author / editor I was waiting for. She was busy promoting her latest book and then fell ill, but remained in touch so I always knew what was happening. While I waited, I played around with ideas for my new novel, re-read writing books, bought more writing books. And a surprise book showed up. At first, I thought maybe I lost track of my purchases, but then remembered the author saying she wanted to send me this book.

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Is Creativity A Talent?

Kelly Babcock Leave a comment

I make a lot of things. I make most of them from scratch. There’s a long list of those things and I’m proud enough to bore you with that list.

But I’m kind enough to abridge it. I like you.

Yes, I make physical things from lumber, and from plastic filament. I make breads and cakes, cookies, pies and squares. I make the odd thing from textiles on my sewing machine, I’m good enough to get away with calling it sewing, but not good enough to make clothes. Mostly I make repairs.

I also make stories. I tell them in poetry, lyrics, and prose. That makes me a writer. Read more

Settling Into Retirement

Bernice Connell Leave a comment
Photo Credit: Jill Wellington

It has been a couple of months since my last days of paid work but my working norm of being frantic to get things done has has just begun to ease up. I was eager to get at some big housekeeping jobs that had never reached priority status before retirement. As gratifying as it was to make progress on these chores, I realized I was tackling the jobs like I had a deadline. Having now steam-cleaned most surfaces in the house, emptied drawers and closets and purged a couple of truckloads of trash to the dump and donations to the usual organizations, it is time to shift gears.

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Barbed Wire Benefits

Donna Judy Curtin 1 Comment

A few weeks back, I got a text,

“Coopers hurt. Can you check him out when you get home?”

Cooper had a deep and dangerous puncture, high up inside his back leg. It tracked into his groin and was only a breath away from puncturing his abdomen. It could have been life threatening. Considering our walking track and their playground is our zig-zagging forested trails through our maple sugar bush, I surmised Cooper must have snagged a branch in the wrong spot, at the wrong moment. Read more

All Hallow’s Eve

Seana Moorhead Leave a comment
Image by esudroff from Pixabay

Hallowe’en’s origins date back over 2000 years to the Celts when they celebrated the end of the summer, the completion of the harvest and the start of the winter season. Have you realized that this ancient holiday is the mid-point between the fall’s equinox and the winter solstice?  It is a time when you begin to truly feel the change of light and shorter days.

Samhain, the name of the Celtic festival, was celebrated for three days around the end of October. It was believed to be a time when the boundary between the living and dead was thin and ghosts from the dead could cross over for a short time. Celtic priests used the night to make predictions about the future and had huge bonfires as part of the celebrations. The Celts would dress in costumes to ward off the evil ghosts who might kidnap them.

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