Creative Writing

February 25, 2010

I was just writing about some interesting dreams I’ve been having… and I realized how much fun I was having, writing about them.

I really do need to get back to writing (creative, fun writing – something other than all the pretty serious blogging I’ve been doing lately on my various blogs and in my journal!). I always loved those stories in the series “Stories From Grandma’s Attic”(by Arleta Richardson). But I always thought that I don’t have old-timey-enough memories that would interest young people…

But of course I am a grandma myself now, and when I was growing up we actually did live in what we considered a very modern world – albeit one devoid of personal/ desk-top computers, video games, even hand-held calculators! Not to mention cell phones, or even phones unattached to their settings (but at least we never lost them around the house nor ended up with dead buttons … and, oh my goodness, those calls on eight-party-lines could sure be interesting, lol…) … and of course we had no digital cameras … or even digital clocks or watches! And we had cars you could fix yourself, easily, in the back yard (lol… we still have cars pretty much like that … Big Red and Little Red, both 1990!). And black and white TV with only one, or at most, two channels, much of the airtime being dedicated to “talking heads” … but the programs we did have were funny! Beverley Hillbillies, Hogan’s Heroes… of course today many of them would be seen as “un-PC” but then life was “simpler” in many ways…. Perhaps with chores… and a more “homogeneous” society… we just didn’t have time… or reason… to think about such things (yes, I know, not necessarily a really “good” thing, but…)

LOL! Look at me go on! All those memories could take me in a million writing directions – some just fun story-telling, others interesting historical/ philosophical directions. Ha! Maybe I’d write so much quasi-history that I’d become famous and get an “honorary” PhD in history! Without having to go back to university, lol…. Or maybe I’d get so into history that I’d just go back to university, after all, and get a PhD in history to me with my research for my writing! After all, my Grandpa always said I’d be the first PhD in the family… and the Dean of History at UBC did urge me to stay at the University and pursue a PhD in history, instead of going teaching. LOL … I’ve always had that lingering on the edge of my mind… just won’t go away and leave me be!

Oh, and we had one speed town bikes – and now they are selling them again at the bike store for $600 plus! My parents bought me a hand-me-down (several generations by the look of it!) balloon-tire, heavy, strong, woman’s bike very much like those pricey new bikes – and they paid, I believe, $5 for it (which would have been fairly pricey even so, at the time, on our family budget!). Wonder what happened to it? Those old bikes surely didn’t just break down or rust away – though they bought me a brand new leather seat for it (very hard and uncomfortable), and one of the neighbor dogs loved the smell of it, and chewed it to pieces! So then I got a much more comfortable modern soft plastic seat. LOL – that’s how we replaced things – by replacing the broken parts. Of course the “throw-away” mentality was already coming in, but our parents grew up in the “dirty 30s depression” and during World War 2, and our grandparents had started their lives in a previous century, many of them as immigrants and/or homesteaders, and they also lived through the depression and both World Wars, so they were all still attached to values of thriftiness and – well! “environmentalism,” even before it was invented!

Ha! It is already 5:38 am (I started at 5:05), and I have done my 20 – actually 30 – minutes of daily writing without even thinking about it. Now I’ll have to type it up… sometimes I do wish for a really light, portable laptop, just for writing… but I suspect that, even then, I’d still be using pen and paper a lot… yep, I’m a pen-and-paper-mama, brought up in a pen-and-paper generation (and ha! manual typewriters! I remember when electric typewriters came out; it was a major technological breakthrough!)

I definitely think – and remember – better with a pen. It slows me down enough, I think, to bring in more complex, detailed memories… and deeper reflection, too. That may be why a lot of old-time writing, when we read it today, seems too “heavy” … but what a shame that we’ve seemingly lost the ability to remember and think deeply… Sometimes I think that “Readers Digest Condensed Books” and all manner of other dumbed-down literature, is a great curse and shame to our modern generations… and that a great majority of on-line drivel falls into the same category (including, no doubt, plenty of my own writing, oh dear!).

On the other hand, though, some of the modern blogs are, I think, an attempt to delve deeper once again… and perhaps at the same time try to attract a readership that often seems incapable of sitting down and focusing for more than a very few minutes at a time on anything that isn’t moving fast and furiously (accompanied by pictures/ graphics of course, which assumes that people no longer have the ability to “imaginate” their own mind pictures to accompany the prose…)… anything that doesn’t race across the surface of the mind, rather than stopping to delve deeply and seriously…

(You can read more on this line of thought at “My Church Journey” at http://normajhill.blogspot.com/ under the topic “Has the world really changed that much?”)

February 20, 2010

Thursday night was the Writers meeting. I handed out personal invitations to each person who attended. So far I haven’t heard back, but I’m keeping the group going…. Hopefully it will grow.

Yesterday I scanned and loaded a bunch more pictures of relatives onto facebook. They do seem to be quite popular. I was looking through mom’s geneology papers and again through my photo albums….

And I am feeling inspired to get going on the Family Tree stuff again, and on writing our family stories – finish my childhood and youth ones, catch up “our family” … and so on.

The challenge for the next Writers meetings is to write a “creative non-fiction” story up to 1500 words. Well, that is right up my alley! I have such a long list of ideas I’ve been jotting down…

And the past few days I keep getting emails from the Zen Habits blog, which encourage to really get at what you really want to do – so I’m thinking it really would be easy to write one story each day!

I’m also thinking I’d like to start a specifically family history website, with lots of stories and pictures…

Yesterday I went to the “Heritage Week” display at the mall and got 3 local history books – signed right there by the writer – at the Archive society display… and also got encouragement from the Historical society people to write articles on local history (with my pictures) for their “annual report” books!

I just feel, more and more, that You are leading me into writing more full time – maybe for a living too??

13 February 2010

I just noticed that there are some papers in the back of my journal, and so I checked them out. They are a couple things I wrote (on computer) on Wednesday and have already posted on one of my blogs! Here I was thinking I haven’t written anything since Monday (today being Saturday), and I wondered how that could be.

LOL… I’d probably have to be in a great emergency of some kinds not to write anything at all for 4 or 5 days. Sometimes I don’t write in my journal for a few days, but in those cases I would have been writing stories or NaNoWriMo or some long emails to friends or whatever!

January 7, 2010

I way just laying here somewhere between sleeping and wakefulness – though I’m pretty sure it started out as a dream – and thought of this: What if I write up some samples of a newspaper column called (perhaps) “The Penticton Pedestrian” … I could model it somewhat on my old “Masset Sounds” column (and even submit a couple samples of that to the newspaper publisher, as well). It would be based on my observations as I “walkabout” town… people, places, activities, sights and sounds… snapshots in words, that catch the soul of our community.

I could start by going back through my journals to pick up things like that which I have already written about our town… and then start writing down new ones. Certainly I could come up with enough material for a weekly column. I’m not sure of the exact “flavor” yet … but after writing a half dozen or so “potentials” I’m pretty sure I’d find a pattern… Hmmmm… Papa??

(I’d also be interested in observing local “faith-based” activities and such… but I wonder.. is that another column…?)

Yesterday when I was walking along chatting with my friend, we were talking about the goodness of the sun for our bodies.. and for our spirits… and this morning I read: Eccl 11:7 “The light is pleasant, and it is good for the eyes to see the sun!”

Oh my goodness: Here are some words of wisdom I would be wise to consider!

Eccl 12:4 In addition to being a wise man, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge; and he pondered, search out and arranged many proverbs. 10. The Preacher sought to find delightful words and to write words of truth correctly. 11. The words of wise men are like goads, and masters of these collections are like well driven nails; they are given by one Shepherd. 12. But beyond this, my son, be warned: the writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body. 13. The conclusion, when all has been heard, is to fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person.

According to my thesaurus:
Pedestrian: foot-traveler, one who walks, hiker…
Walk: step, pace, march, tread, amble, stroll, hike, saunter, wander, ambulate, ramble, for for an airing/outing, take a walk (go walk-about), promenade, trudge, tramp, trek, tour, take a turn, roam, rove, perambulate, meander, traipse, patrol, knockabout, hoof it, job, toddle along, shuffle, wend one’s way, bend ones steps, locomote, cruise.
Walker: pedestrian, hiker pilgrim, wanderer, wayfarer, trekker, rover, rambler, roamer, straggler, foot passenger, passerby, hitchhiker.

(You don’t even want to begin to read the list of word’s from the “P” section of the dictionary that relate to my potential Penticton pedestrian prattle!)

LOL!!!!

December 10, 2009

My daughter approves of my new blog look!
I did figure out how to upgrade and back it up!
And I added a couple widgets too!
Of course, I backed it up before upgrading – so theoretically need to back up again…

Went to Christmas potluck at F’s last night. Always fun to go there. We were telling stories… and I thought, time to start story-writing again. Which I also thought when I spotted a challenge R tossed out the other day: write about Christmas memories… and immediately I was “telling stories” in my mind… and I’ve really been wanting to do another round of A to Z challenge!

MORE NANOWRIMO-ING!!!!

November 15, 2009

Well, I checked my fb and email when I got home from church-in-the-park (you can read about that at http://normajhill.blogspot.com ) … and now I’m going to spend some time in Your word, Papa, and then do the NaNoWriMo thing (if that is Your plan for today, for me)…  I realized I need to stop and go back and put in the references for the quotations etc, before I go any further!  Then I can carry on.  Yay!

Thank You, Lord J  Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit – my dear Lord God!! Praise Your Holy Name!  Amen!  Wow! J TY! PTL!!

Time to write.  Today’s goal is to get to 15904 words…. (later) …. Oh my! It has taken me nearly 3 hours just to insert all the scripture references, and to make a few corrections and improvements!…  (BTW:  28 single-spaced pages in Word.  Quite a bit of “imaginating” for 2 ½ quite short chapters in the Biblical book of Ruth!)

November 16, 2009

Just finished the book of Ruth!  Where I am?  18,022 words!  And tomorrow I think I’ll go back to Genesis and check out Eve!  … (later)…. I’m 36% done on my NaNoWriMo 2009 50,000 word goal.  I’m sure my imagination will conjure up the words I need, lol!  Or maybe – better yet – YOU will bring YOUR words to my heart to put into this story – which truly is YOUR’s, after all!

(Hmmm…. Now that I’m “finished” Ruth (almost) – it might be time to look up some historical information from other sources??) (Or should I wait until I’m finished NaNoWriMo-ing before I go back and start editing like that?!?!?)

November 18, 2009

Hocus Pick!  I am finally finished my rough draft of Ruth (with the historical information I researched).  And I am up to 19,865 words – “just” 583 words short of yesterday’s goal!

I am working on the story of Eve now.  I did not find the commentaries regarding Eve to be nearly as helpful as for Ruth.  Historically speaking, they gave little useful information (of course the events did occur in ancient history, and even the written records were prepared thousands of years after the events.  And then of course, there is disagreement about the “historicity” itself, ranging from a totally literal acceptance of the events recorded, through to seeing them as “myth” or “allegory” or “metaphor”!  … not to mention supposed difficulties between “revealed/ inspired” accounts and modern scientific theories).   So I think the best thing to do right now is to go straight to the scriptural record, and my imagination, and what I already have “gleaned” in the past – as I actually did when I started with Ruth.  I suspect that in the end, the “Eve” account will be shorter than that of Ruth – though Eve certainly lived a lot longer than Ruth and had more children.  I wonder about working in later scriptural references/ information about Eve – well of course that’s acceptable – probably more-so than some of the commentators’ musings, lol!

It is WAY windy outside – it is battering around the building!  I like it!

(later)… Time flies!  I have been writing steadily, but it feels like I haven’t gotten far.  At the same time, though, I do feel as though by this exercise I am coming to know my God in a deeper way, to appreciate Him, to be grateful to Him, to understand more of His love and compassion for the messed-up human race – of which I am so surely a part!

(Thank You for Your love and mercy, my Lord and my God!).  Thank You!

I really do believe this “topic” is from You – and You are helping me!  Might it be that this might really get published in some form, and be used of You in the lives of some people?  I would love that, Papa!  (But not if would make ME proud… Please keep me humble, and help me always give YOU ALL THE GLORY!!!).  thank You!  In Jesus’ name, Amen!

45% finished!!! Yay!!!

November 13, 2009 – again! – later!

I have the TV on (but the sound muted).  I find being alone at home, after so many years of having a busy, happy family around me, is hard to take.  (Of course, hubby is asleep upstairs, and my son is heading to work… it does seem so quiet.  It’s the same at work – I love it when someone drops by or even just phones!  I was talking to hubby this morning again about restarting the Sunday soup thing… or some alternative version of it… but again he said, “Not yet.”  Well, Your timing is always best…

So I did my reading, made pancakes for my son, did dishes and laundry, and then tuned the TV to a “folk roots” music channel … nice music and no pictures to distract me!  Yay!  It’ still windy and gray outside, but not snowing.  The snow did not stick down here in the valley, but there is snow on the hillsides. J

I’m going to type up my journal notes to post sometime today, then will read the book of Ruth in the Bible, and then work on my NaNoWriMo – as soon as the laundry is done: I can’t focus on story-writing when the laundry machines are going.

… later… So I had a nice phone chat with one of my daughters; and then my son left for work.  And I’ve typed up my blog notes to date.  Skipped some of what I’ve hand written – and added other parts I didn’t handwrite.  That’s unusual for me, but it’s okay.  I’ll probably be doing more of that; it will help me keep my blogging up to date, eh!

…. Later still…

Good grief!  Still not NaNoWriMo-ing!  But I folded laundry, posted on my blogs, and did a quick fb and email check.  And now – finally! – I’m going to read the rest of Ruth and start writing!  Yay!  Beginning word count: 5312.  (ha! See I DID write yesterday after all: 20 words, lol!).

… later again…  Well, I was typing away, and then I got a call from the Purolator guy who was trying to deliver a parcel to my workplace, and no one was there – and I had, in a spacey moment put my phone number on the bulletin board poster of the church contact information, instead of the church’s number!  So I had to go and get the parcel.  Then, since I was out, I went to the store and got some pain meds for hubby, since he’d asked me to do that today.  Finally I got home, got a snack, and here I am!  The word count on my NaNoWriMo Naomi/Ruth story is now 8834 words – and I have just reached the end of chapter 1 of the Biblical Book of Ruth which is the basis for this historical fiction (except for the last verse in the chapter, which I haven’t yet covered).  So let’s see: I wrote 3534 words in about 2 ½ hours of writing today.  Hmmm… I started writing on November 9, and now it’s the 13^th (I started a different story on the 1^st of the month, but it just wouldn’t “go” … and I got discouraged… and didn’t get started again till the 9^th, so now I have to write an average of 2,272 words a day to reach 50,000 by the end of the month!).  I should be at 11,360 words at the end of today, after 5 days of writing.  Ha!  Well, I have only 2,514 to go before bedtime – so now I’m just a bit over one day behind in my 3 week NaNoWriMo novel!  My daughter just phoned to say they are coming over.  She’s going to go shopping while I watch my grandson, and her hubby tries out my son’s new video game.  There goes my writing plans, lol!