Quotation Saturday ~ Thankfulness

FAITH

“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.”
~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas but for scars.”
~ Elbert Hubbard

“Faith is not the belief that God will do what you want. It is the belief that God will do what is right.”
~ Max Lucado, He Still Moves Stones

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
~ Søren Kierkegaard

“The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply because they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.”
~ J.M. Barrie, The Little White Bird

GRATITUDE

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”
~ Seneca

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”
~ Epicurus

“Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.”
~ Maya Angelou

THANKFULNESS

“Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.”
~ Holy Bible: King James Version

“The unthankful heart discovers no mercies; but the thankful heart will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings.”
~ Henry Ward Beecher

“The gift was not large as money goes, and my need was not great, but the spirit of the gift is beyond price and leaves me blessed and in debt.”
~ Robert Fulghum

“I've started to look at life differently. When you're thanking God for every little you - every meal, every time you wake up, every time you take a sip of water - you can't help but be more thankful for life itself, for the unlikely and miraculous fact that you exist at all.”
~ A.J. Jacobs

May every day you sit down together as a family be a day of Thanksgiving. Don’t allow one day a year to define your THANKFULNESS.

~ Joni Zipp

Poetry Sunday ~ This Day...

This day…

A day set aside for honoring Vets,

So no one lives and ever forgets.

We mourn the dead and the living,

those that served with endless giving.

Thunderclaps sound the heavens speaking,

A choir sings out, their voices leaking.

All sit perched looking down on us,

Wondering why humans cause such a fuss.

We go to war where blood is shed,

pride ourselves in who we left dead.

We fill with anger when it’s one of our own,

taking for granted this Earth on loan.

In war you’re bound to win or lose,

human souls allowed to choose.

The world is full of hate in layers

among us fight the innocent players.

We lay them out like falling leaves

Left behind are all who grieves.

Bitterness held by a storms eruption

Ego’s lifted by political corruption.

Bound are we by God’s own plan

Quickly we judge, His dose on man.

He is in all and all is in me.

Do you abandon or do you see?

We’re living zombies in our own illusion,

our God is not master of confusion.

Never forget all the ones that you love,

We’re intimately formed from the One above.

Quotation Saturday

POETRY

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”
~ Plato

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”
~ Leonardo da Vinci

“Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.”
~ W.H. Auden, New Year Letter

ART

“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”
~ George Bernard Shaw

“A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.”
~ Leonardo da Vinci

“I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.”
~ Anaïs Nin

“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.”
~ Vincent van Gogh

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
~ Pablo Picasso

PASSION

“When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You know that your name is safe in their mouth.”
~ Jess C. Scott, The Intern

“As if you were on fire from within.
The moon lives in the lining of your skin.”
~ Pablo Neruda

“Passion has little to do with euphoria and everything to do with patience. It is not about feeling good. It is about endurance. Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer.”
~ Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“There is scarcely any passion without struggle.”
~ Albert Camus

A WRITER

“You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander. We build this place with the sand of memories; these castles are our memories and inventiveness made tangible. So part of us believes that when the tide starts coming in, we won't really have lost anything, because actually only a symbol of it was there in the sand. Another part of us thinks we'll figure out a way to divert the ocean. This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.”
~ Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“He was a writer and words were his weapons.”
~ Christopher Moore, Bloodsucking Fiends

When you write about what you dream, you become a writer.

When you dream about what you write, you become haunted by a curse.”
~ A. Saleh, Poetry Eyes

“Literature always anticipates life. It doesn't copy it but moulds it to it's purpose.”
~ Oscar Wilde

How to Help a Writer

 Our Pumpkins from our Garden

In my many years of mentoring writers I’ve learned what it takes to really help a writer. I’m here to give you some tips on a writer helping writers.

1) Encourage: This one should be a given, but there are some writers out there who think it is their task to bombard a writer with malicious critique. Which only disillusions a writer and makes them run for the door. My mother always told me, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say it at all.” I think my mother, along with many others are right on this one.

2) Support: This is also a given. A writer that doesn’t have the support she needs to get through writing say her novel or short story, may never make it through 500 words nevertheless 50,000 words.  Stand by the writer in the family, group, or friend who only needs your support to get them through.

3) Critique: This is one where you tread lightly. While all of us love an honest critique, I have never met a writer who welcomed harsh critique. That goes against a writer helping a writer.

4) Be nice: What? You need ME to tell you to be nice? That’s sad. But I have ran into quite a few mean-spirited people in my day who want to claim to be a writer, but they go against EVERYTHING in this list of how-to’s, who target one writer, and tries everything in their power to take a person down. Shame on you! And you call yourself a writer?

5) Befriend: Befriending a writer is a good thing. If you surround yourself with like-minded folk, then it can only benefit your journey and keep you moving forward instead of backward.

6) Respect: Respect others opinion and take it with a grain of salt. That has helped me the most in writing. Not all people are going to be positive but even the negative, when turned into a positive, can be beneficial.

7) Network: Yes sir, you’re going to need a network of writers to help you especially when it comes promotion time of your work.

8) Gentle criticism: This is needed for all writers. Yes we want to hear our work is good but we also might need assistance in the grammar department or punctuation rules. Be gentle in offering assistance. Don’t throw your hands up in the air when someone misses a comma, or has lousy punctuation skills! Be gentle with your words. You KNOW the affect words have on people.

9) Motivate: Motivating a writer is essential. When you see someone not getting the encouragement he or she needs, they lose their ability to be motivated in continuing their writing journey. A lot of times writers block will set in and it is hard to get out of that slump. With the proper motivation, they can be led back to their writing, thus fulfilling their desired destiny.

10) Be there: Be there to see them through all ten of these steps. You do realize that it is you that is going to make or break this writer. I never met a writer who did not benefit from all of what I’m saying.

I Voted for Christ

Titus 3:1-6  Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work,To speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, shewing all meekness unto all men. For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.
 But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared,
 Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour;

***

Today I woke up with a song in my heart, ‘How Great Though Art’. Why, you might ask? Because I took a stance in this great world we live in, I voted for Christ.

After a bitter year of campaigning, name-calling, dividedness, hate and ignorance; and that's just among Christians for starters, I decided to cast my vote and that was for Christ. I had told a friend recently that I don’t swim upstream with all the other fishes; I swim downstream to see what everyone is running from. It couldn’t have been truer than when it came time to vote.

If I hear one more time, “Get the Muslim out of the White House”, “My God is greater than his God”, “He’s going to abandon us like he did Benghazi”. I mean really? Has voting come down to this?

I was born and raised Catholic, but I am not a Catholic. Again, I chose Christ and became a Christian. I didn’t choose a Religion, I chose a FAITH, a faith that has taught me to love my neighbor, even if he is different from me. I can’t say the same for my fellow Christians this morning because instead of understanding what God has placed before us, they sit judging the colors of the rainbow.

I saw before me bickering and biting over money, race, religion. I never saw people actually wanting a leader, they wanted someone who could either give them more money, or put religion in the White House, get race out of there, and let us move on.

My faith also taught me something about sacrifice. I’ve always been one to sacrifice riches for humility. I always embraced the poor, wretched of society, without bragging rights. I do everything in humble adoration and repeat over and over again, How Great Thou Art!

I know our economy isn’t great, but with sacrifice comes the light you were searching for. I wonder, how many people are without jobs, and are ANGERED because they have to accept less money than they did in prior years? How many are NOT willing to make less, and sit at home complaining because all the jobs making good money are a thing of the past?

I remember my mother once telling me, “Well that kind of money isn’t going to put food on your plate, pay your rent, etc. etc.” But you know what? My faith taught me:

Matt. 6: 25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

And guess what? I have never gone hungry, never been without shelter, and never NOT had clothes on my back and shoes on my feet. No, I don’t wear the BEST shoes money can buy, I don’t have the fancy clothes to show everyone “Hey, look what I bought at Macy’s”. No, my clothes are oftentimes bought at the Goodwill, a place where I can get $70 dollar jeans for $8 bucks. My clothes are often from the WalMart $3 seasonal rack.  Ashamed? No, humbled yes. I live for Christ and all that that entails.

Jesus was not rich with money. His ministry did not work on campaigning and tossing out money to people. He actually FED the poor and hungry, and his shoes never wore out, and he was well fed, without the riches money can buy. Jesus was NOT about monetary wealth. He was not about Religion. He was about faith and love! Spiritual wealth is worth more than you could EVER imagine. And yes, this day and age, we must ALL come to realize that, and quit judging! I didn't vote a 'white man' into office or a 'black  man', I voted for JESUS!

So as I boldly went to the voting booth with every intention of voting, where it said OTHER, I cast my vote for Jesus CHRIST! Hate me, judge me, burn me at the stake, because as I die, my last words will be, “How Great Thou Art”!

Poetry Sunday ~ Mighty Oak

Mighty Oak

They tried their best to take me down

with nails like claws they wore a frown.

Gnashing, taunting, pawing at me

why won’t they just let me be?

With all my might I stood strong

like the Oak who has lived so long.

Weathering any kind of storm

branching out for new life’s form.

The tree goes through a dormant season

fulfilling life with rhyme and reason.

Bursting forth with fancy flair,

the mighty Oak's still standing there.

They tried so hard with no success,

they now are lost in worthlessness.

Karma goes round the weak and cruel

like a pattern fired with fuel.

Be kind to one who is tried and true

Blessings will come back to you.

But do not seek to weaken the oak,

You’ll soon find out, it’s you who choke!

Quotation Saturday

HUMANITY

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“If you're reading this...
Congratulations, you're alive.
If that's not something to smile about,
then I don't know what is.”
― Chad Sugg

“You can talk with someone for years, everyday, and still, it won't mean as much as what you can have when you sit in front of someone, not saying a word, yet you feel that person with your heart, you feel like you have known the person for forever.... connections are made with the heart, not the tongue.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

POLITICS

“And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”
― Groucho Marx

HOPE

“It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.”
― Emily Dickinson

“The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places.
But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now
mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“I like the night. Without the dark, we'd never see the stars.”
― Stephenie Meyer

Note: Stephenie Myers is quoted as saying this, when Martin Luther King, Jr. said it many moons BEFORE her.

“Only in the darkness can you see the stars.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

IMAGINATION

“Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.”
― Terry Pratchett

 “Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.”
― John Lennon

“There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun”
― Pablo Picasso

Rapunzel ~ A new spin

As I stated earlier, I wrote a story called Rapunzel. While it sits idle in an empty room, I thought I’d share this tale with you, grammatical errors and all. A good flash fiction piece if I do say so myself.  I will take this down after it goes through editing.

Thanks for reading!

Wc: 986

Rapunzel

Her bare feet press into the moist soil as she steps ever so closely to the heart of where the sounds of laughter are bellowing. Looking ahead she sees them all playing, in a circle with balloons of smiley faces bouncing from one to another. She approaches in a whisper of wind, no one paying her any mind as one step becomes lighter than the other.

Her long white silken gown blows in the breeze appearing to be a mighty wave on the ocean. She nears the commotion to see many standing and playing ball, all with a smiley face on them. This must be a dream. All dreams will come alive here in this village of laughter and fun. She’s cautious with her approach.

“STOP!” a voice cries out, “you don’t belong here!”

The circle takes notice of her and all come to her side exclaiming in a joyful tone, “You’re here, Z!”

Z is the pleasant nickname they’ve bestowed upon Rapunzel. Her arms raise to embrace the ones who are welcoming and her eyes are not unaware that off to her left in the midst of the trees, there sits awaiting dark looming creatures with snarling mouths, claws on their fingers waiting to gouge the bark off the trees.

No words spill from her mouth as in a sudden quake of lucidity, she realizes they are all staring at her. The mist in the forest thickens as she begins to turn and walk away, but not before the cold clammy hand reaches her shoulder. “You’re coming with me,” he mutters in a raspy hoarse voice.

His hand feels like an arctic glacier that causes a shudder throughout her now chilled body; his eyes are as piercing as a daggers blade of fire. His body towering over her shadowing her in darkness, running is not an option as the minions that seek to lead her away from the happy circle outnumber her.

Her long flowing hair is full of the mist that surrounds her, her feet are damp from the soil as she walks with them to the shrouded castle. The aroma of a foul marsh assaults her nose. Her insides are turned like churning butter as she wonders what fate has dealt her this time. The laughter and joy that bled to tears and angst is off in the distance as the woods encircle her and she is led deeper into the cauldron of naysayers.

“To the tower,” he bursts out in fleshy tone, “away with you, until we see fit to release you.”

Rapunzel uttered not a word as she knew her punishment and hatred was unwarranted. The dark force holds no power over her, and fear is certainly not of her being; she walks on, knowing that this is not the end.

She waits in the tower until those below decide what to do with this deemed atrocity. She listens intently as the echoes filter up the spiral stairs into the one tiny room with a window that she has been locked in.

From the depths below, calamities of voices are sounding out.

“She doesn’t belong here, she’s nothing but trouble.”

“Little miss drama queen, what is she going to drum up next?”

“I fear she’ll ruin this place of unity that we’ve built.”

“SILENCE!” comes from the leader of the pack, “remember, she has helped in building this place, she was essential and vital to its growth. I can’t bear to feed her to you as you all obviously wish from me.”

Silence now holds the echoes of chains and celebratory clinking glasses and bouncing hungry voices. The silence deafens, as a harmonic song is lifted in the tower. Rapunzel sings a soft song as they all turn their weary heads. The argumentative stance is now loosened as they move closer and closer to the steps, leading to the tower.

“My one true voice, I shall find

among the sighted not the blind”

Her voice is as fleecy as a feather, floating weightlessly down the stairs melting like wax in the ears of those who are listening.

“To all of those who wish to bind

Will never know me and my kind.”

Her voice is fading ever so gently into the distance it rides…

“I am me, only one of my kind

You’ll never steal

the dreams in my mind.”

“RUBBISH!” one angry voice spits out.

A hush stirs the room to silence. So quiet, the mouse in the corner stops his search for a crumb, awaiting them to spot him at any moment. As a pin drops it belts out a thundering slam to the floor.

The minions all push and shove to get to the top of the stairs. One trips and is crumbled beneath the boot of the Master; another falls to the side as an army of hatred pushes her there. They reach the top with bated breath; swing open the door to find… the room is empty.

On an eagles wings Rapunzel can be seen soaring atop the circle of laughter and cheers below, through the thick forest trees, swerving in and out as if to carry her to a lighter path, one which she is all to familiar with, peace.

“Look, she left this,” claims one of the seeds of trivial hate, “but how…” the voice softens. A tear climbs over her eye as she realizes the wrong done to Rapunzel. They begin to lament as a brewing storm portends to wreak havoc on the forest and the fire that was in their weak minds erupts in a calamity of destruction, leaving them forever trapped in the infernal tower that they alone created.

The note says, “Alone, one voice is nothing. Together they become a choir. One voice to tell the world. Two voices will bind them. I have hope to see in the dark, and all at once I’ll find them.”

How to...

Remain a writer!

**************

I’m here to tell you that YES, I am a writer. It has been proven by the long hard struggle I had after never wanting to write again, and as I faced the dark, the fear of writing again, I gained clarity that I had never expected.

I wanted to throw in the towel of writing, as ripped to threads as the towel was; I was tossing it in and giving up. But like I said, something happened, I went back to where my love of writing began.

I signed up for the class, and ask anyone around me that knows me personally and supported my ups and downs, knew I was resurging again and my love of writing would return. Granted it was not the session I had foreseen, but then again, is anything really as we foresee? No, that is why we have the unknown.

I was stepping into the unknown not knowing how old and new friends alike would receive me. I was coming out of the dark and allowing whatever slapped me upside the face to do as it pleased. I walked out with my head held high and continued the journey that I feel; God himself had set me on.

You see, God gave me this gift of writing and when I was down, I knew I had to rest and sit back a ways from it all and drink in everything that had happened. I meditated, prayed, and asked for something that would surely fill my life again.

Sure enough, as beau got his license back after being blind for three years, he found a job, and here I was not writing? Well we can’t have that now can we? So the class was my first step in reclaiming what was rightfully mine, my writing.

From the very first week I was bubbling with words. I was blogging again, writing my poetry, and I was feeling whole. Yeah there is always something that wants to knock you back down a few rungs, but I was determined to keep on climbing! While being isolated and kept away from the rest of the course and what could have been an exciting re-entry into the world of writing for me, it turned out to be less than the glitter in my step that I sought. If you can say BORING, it was that and so much more.

I kept climbing week after week, writing and enjoying my time writing, everything and everyone else disappeared into the backdrop of my mind. As the classroom dwindled to barely anything there, I kept going on, encouraging the two or three that was there still plowing ahead, and I myself was feeling like a hermit, alone in the catacombs of life.

Instead of allowing myself to feel bitterness and vengeance, I chose to ride above the clouds, and saw to it I had an end. Closure is what I feel now. I never got that last year because I was too busy being hurt, so in this session, I sought closure and I got it.

I can now turn and be the writer that God wanted me to be. If He wants me to teach you all, that is fine. If He wants me to be a novel writer, I’m going to be the best novel writer I can be. As many will now move on to NaNoWriMo, I will stand back and let them frolic, while I soar. I might do it alone, but I am doing it from a much better place. I’m HEALED and I AM FREE!

Welcome back to the writing world Joni!

Journey's End

Is. 40: 31 But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

***

 Well I did it. I took the six-week free writing course. Yes it was the one I had sworn never to step foot in again but there was a reason I went back. I had to prove to myself that I was as stable as I was last year when all the attacks took place and put me on the outside, looking in.

The assignments were the same: Characterization via your character, conflict, dialogue, senses, POV, and the finale of a short story. Whew, what a seven weeks it was. The first week was getting to know people and the new site, and that was interesting to say the least.

I was locked out of all the classrooms, except one, so the fun and excitement of the course was wiped right off the slate from the get go. I met some new folk and caught up with some old who actually accepted my friend request after last years fiasco. I was feeling welcome until I realized everyone else had the privilege of running the halls and basking in the classrooms, getting to comment on others work while I was like a prisoner, a castoff set aside in the Ripley’s Believe It or Not, to be visited and gawked at.

This was a test of my stability of mind. I could have flown off the handle, damned them all to the pits of hell, but lo-and-behold, I kept my head. I kept my head and acted like a grown woman, and respectfully continued with the lessons. My classroom was active at first with 22 students eager to learn and I could not help but wear the mentoring cap that I had donned for seven or so years prior. I was in the student’s chair and had to remember that. Even as the mentor only appeared once a week, to give tips and answer questions, the intern had his/her own college studies to attend to; the classroom dwindled, while others were as active as week one.

As one week turned into five, I found myself published in the not so famous ezine, which is really a pick of the best lessons put on display. This is where I saw others work yet I yearned to see the other classrooms, my old friends, to be a part of a community, but there I sat, idle in my classroom, twiddling my thumbs, that had three people left (so many to choose from for the ezine, eh?)  By my fifth week I was feeling hurt that no one but newcomers (and one old friend) came and read my lesson, expecting me to do the same to them, but I bit my lip and told maybe two people, I was a caged bird.

I felt on the inside that all the mentors were well aware of my status, seeing that many did not want to return because of all the DRAMA that *I* supposedly caused? One mentor, a MAIN asset, bailed on this session and has told me he may never return, or at least not for a while. Even he was sickened by the treatment I’d received.

The funny part of all this is, I was not the dramatic one last session. If my memory serves me correct, I was attacked, they spit horrible words at me and all wrote the administrator to tell him I had lost it. So he believing them, set me free from the course, but allowed me to return this session as a student, but in a locked cage, protecting himself, the mentors and myself, from BIG BAD ME! Funny isn’t it?

 
Lesson six, the short story I had in my mind from the get go, Rapunzel, was woven and spun. While my lessons were about another short story I’m writing, Rapunzel was being saved for lesson six. I’d like to post it tomorrow, grammatical errors and all. I just wanted my readers to know, this bird may be caged, but on an eagles wings, I soar!

Poetry Sunday ~ I Am

Ps. 51: 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

***

I Am…

I am but a flower dancing in the sun
protected by light since my life begun.

I am but a flower blowing in the warm breeze

safely sheltered by the low hanging trees.

I am but a flower with a purpose in life

I grow and learn through trials and strife.

I am but a flower planted firmly in soil

too much water and my roots will spoil.

I am but a flower please understand;

my duty in life is to beautify land.

I can not be plucked and placed where one needs

I have to grow to nurture my seeds.

I’m am but a flower reaching up to the sky

some days I wilt and never know why.

I need some nourishment to replenish my soul

to make this flower feel beautifully whole.

I am but a flower rained on from above

given to life by my mother’s true love.

Although as I grow I have high ambition,

Remember this rose has a sweet smelling mission.

Quotation Saturday

WRITING

“The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.”
~ Anaïs Nin

“Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.”
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

“The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.”
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

“If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”
~ Ray Bradbury

INSPIRATION

“The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all.”
~ Walt Disney Company

“Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.”
~ Neil Gaiman

“It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it.”
~ Lou Holtz

“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.”
~ Vincent van Gogh

DREAMS

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
~ H. Jackson Brown Jr.

“Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”
~ Oscar Wilde

“Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.”
~ Douglas Adams

READING

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
~ Groucho Marx

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”
~ Dr. Seuss

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
~ Oscar Wilde

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”
~ Charles William Eliot

Poetry Sunday ~ Soul's Descent

The Souls Descent

***

Plummeting downward I watched it fall;

the deep abyss the shadowed wall.

Gripped by pain and tidal emotion;

wrought with fear an inner devotion.

In this fissure of my being,
analyzing all I'm seeing.

The foulness of vengeance lurks throughout,

seeds of hatred sprinkled about.

Where once there lay a fluent stream,

drought and hunger fuse a team.

Lust it lingers in this pit,

I try to flee...but here I sit.

Liquid anger claws at me,

my very essence squints to see.

Howls and screams ~~ a wailing sound.

crimson walls melting 'round.

Fires racing torments edge;

keeping me from realities ledge.

I struggle within this master's plane,

as wilted red walls fall down like rain.

My soul has found a resting place,

torrents of tears stream down my face.

Trickling along like glistening sand,

I hold my pain in the palm of my hand.

Quotation Saturday

RELIGION

“God has no religion.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

“Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand.”
― Dan Brown

“My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.”
― Abraham Lincoln

PHILOSOPHY

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
― Albert Einstein

“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Teh Ching

“It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

 "I never swim upstream with the fish. I swim downstream to see what everyone is running from."

-- Joni Zipp

POLITICS

“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.”
― Ronald Reagan

“The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”
― Ayn Rand

“Seven Deadly Sins”
Wealth without work
Pleasure without conscience
Science without humanity
Knowledge without character
Politics without principle
Commerce without morality
Worship without sacrifice.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

Grip 'em! Grip 'em Good!

I like to think of what happens to characters in good novels and stories as knots --- things keep knotting up. And by the end of the story --- readers see an unknotting of sorts. Not what they expect, not the easy answers you get on T.V., not wash and wear philosophies but a reproduction of believable emotional experiences. ~ Terry McMillan

***

This week we’re learning the technique of utilizing conflict in a story. I think the above writer, Terry McMillan, has said it much better. It’s like tying your words in knots and placing the knots in the hands of your readers and letting them slowly do the unraveling of sorts until they walk away with an emotional experience for having read your words.

Conflict in a story? Sure you can call it that, but I like the knot theory much better. Conflict sounds so aggressive and can be. Do we want to write an aggressive scene or a scene that has your stomach in knots as you turn page after page? I’m leaning towards the knots, myself.

For conflict to be effectual, you need the inverted check mark is what I’ve been taught. You need to slowly build up the scene, place a few knots in the rope, or tension, as the scene grows and mounts the highest mountain.

Instead of having your character jump off the other side of the mountain, you need to bring your reader down slowly as if releasing the pressure out of a tire. It doesn’t deflate immediately; it slowly comes to a flat. But wait a second now, you don’t want your ending to be flat, you want vibrant life to be in the ending, so don’t deflate your tire completely. Give your reader an emotional release.

This is why I like the knot theory more than I appreciate the conflict. Sure you can give the reader an enormous amount of conflict but giving them knots is like handing them a fully inflated tire, and releasing the pressure slowly so that your reader is gripping their stomach in anticipation, the knot has been built and you’re slowly releasing them. By not allowing the tire to go completely flat you’re saving room for the completion of the heartache in the tale, the happily ever after, so to speak.

All in all your reader is what counts. If you can tug at THEIR heartstrings, bind them up in knots, and give them a welcomed conclusion by untying the knots, I think you’ve achieved your goal in your story.

Chapter by chapter should have elevated the heart rate so that they continue reading each and every word, dangling by a thread; they are waiting for you, the writer, to make them feel as though their visit to your world of words was worth every thread.

Giving them conflict, you might be giving them aggression. Giving them knots, you’re filling your work with the drama that carries the story. Remember that as you’re building your characters and story. Drama is GOOD; it is a writer’s best friend!

Book Bites:

Elements of Fiction Writing - Conflict and Suspense by James Scott Bell

Elements of Fiction Writing - Conflict, Action & Suspense by William Noble

Building a Novel ~ One block at a time

So you want to write a novel, eh?

I’d like to throw out some tips to you to get you started:

1)     Characters - You absolutely have to have characters planned out for your novel. Either in your head waiting to be birthed, or ones you’ve written for but never really gave them a home.

2)     Define these characters - give them hair color, skin color, clothes that suit them and facial features that define them. Give them personality and a voice that can carry a novel.

3)     Environment - Okay, so now you have characters, now you’re going to need a setting in which they’ll live or a world to wander through (You never know, you might be writing a sci-fi novel and you really need to discover the worlds in which they live)

4)     Premise - This is where you’ll define what your novel will be about. The beginning, middle and how you see it ending. You don’t have to adhere to the premise entirely but this will get you started in the direction you wish to go.

5)     Outline – You can, if you want, outline each chapter; again as you wish to see the story develops. You needn’t stick to this outline like crazy glue to your fingers, you just need a basic outline of all you see happening with each chapter.

6)     Timeline – As you work on the outline, this might be where you put forth a timeline. Have you missed years’ perhaps dates? Are they consistent/inconsistent with the rest of what you wrote?

7)     Editing – Not by paragraph, not by chapter, not even by the time you reach the middle. Save all edits for after you’ve written THE END can you go back and edit.

8)     Seek feedback – This is where a writing group comes in handy if you have one. I myself don’t have one these days, so my editing is done in my spare time. I read and fix things I think I miss, I read it out loud to myself because this is how the reader is going to hear it in their minds when they read it. Fixing things means my consistency and imagery and such.

9)     Edit some more- I go through each chapter doing the above. Making sure I have my handy dandy timeline ready for viewing, then I check for any grammar mistakes I may have made and tweak them to my liking.

10)  Edit some more - After the two edits to your liking, you’re going to want to give it another trip down the reading lane.

There you have it. Your novel should be a complete novel instead of a work in progress.  I know many writers do many more edits before being satisfied with a completed work, so be sure you’ve done enough to satisfy you. Then get searching for publishers! 

Book Bites: 

 Outlining Your Novel by K.M. Weiland

 The Essential Guide to Writing a Novel by James Thayer