Photoshop - Believing is Seeing

Have you ever seen a photoshop picture? They can be pretty realistic can’t they? 

I was thinking about writing and how we embellish the truth, make up stories, color it with vivid imagination and call it fiction.

How come people can take beautiful pictures and get away without telling others that the photo is photoshopped? Is photoshopped even a word?

What IS photoshop?

“Photoshop is the leading digital image editing application for the Internet, print, and other new media disciplines. It is embraced by millions of graphic artists, print designers, visual communicators, and regular people like you. It's likely that nearly every picture you've seen (such as posters, book covers, magazine pictures, and brochures) has either been created or edited by Photoshop. The powerful tools used to enhance and edit these pictures are also capable for use in the digital world including the infinite possibilities of the Internet.”

With today’s technology, there are numerous things you can do with photoshop. I’ve seen pics of elephants walking on water, I’ve seen clouds turned into a monster storm-looking thunderous cloudburst, I’ve even seen Jesus in toast, clouds, trees, you name it, all thanks to the artists who can work photoshop.

If a writer took someone’s work and twisted it, and worked it into a totally different story, I do believe a lawsuit would ensue. But with pictures, it seems the norm to take someone’s picture and embellish it to their liking, put a caption on it, and maybe the original photographer doesn’t even recognize the pic as his/her own!

Now I’m not talking about someone re-inventing the Cinderella story, I think every writer has dappled with that tale as well as Snow White and many other fairytale's passed down through time. But when I see Lord of the Rings taken and re-invented into a “similar” story, boy it grates on my nerves!

We’re writer’s and we have our very own creative genius in our brains. We can create stories that might be general matches to other stories like say vampire stories. They should and WILL all be different from what is on the shelves now.

I’m so glad that photshop hasn’t found a way to doctor MY work, although, sometimes it does look like it needs a doctor. I’m just saying, as a photographer, a person works their tail off to capture beauty, the same goes for writer’s , we work very hard at our words so that we capture the beauty to tell a riveting story. A doctored pic to me says the photographer is too lazy to capture the REAL beauty and has to embellish it to make it shine.

If you’re a writer, you will not settle for anything less! You will make your work stand out and preferably stand alone. Sure magazines abuse airbrush, novel covers need a tricky photo to grab you, but writer’s? They walk along with only the English language (or whatever you speak) to carry their words.

Don’t photoshop your writing. Remember, you’re an artist of a different caliber. No technology is going to assist you in making it better. Use your talent accompanied with your mind to airbrush and dazzle, with WORDS!

Poetry Sunday ~ Grace

Grace

Darkness seeps in like a creeping fog,

drawing my energy to the pit it came from.

Sweeping my essence off the floor trying

to carry my spirit below the surface of my soul.

I stand firm with my faith as my strength

desires to be pulled in an upward flow

from an unnamed force; beckoning me

to come and be one with the Holy Grace.

I see the light shining in the far off place

I outstretch my hand in hopes that someone

grabs hold and pulls me into the warmth so

I can be free once again right where I belong.

He never left my side the whole time, standing

where I last saw Him with bright eyes shining.

Singing to my soul with the voice of an Angel

His embrace is all I ever seek in the looming fog.

Quotation Saturday

HURT

“The reason it hurts so much to separate is because our souls are connected.”
― Nicholas Sparks

“Some old wounds never truly heal, and bleed again at the slightest word.”
― George R.R. Martin

“here she is, all mine, trying her best to give me all she can. How could I ever hurt her? But I didn’t understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.”
― Haruki Murakami

“But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Because even the smallest of words can be the ones to hurt you, or save you.”
― Natsuki Takaya

PAIN

“It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

The marks humans leave are too often scars.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.”
― James Baldwin

Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.”
― Lance Armstrong

“One word
Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love.”
― Sophocles

INSULTS

You speak an infinite deal of nothing.”
― William Shakespeare

“I would rather a romantic relationship turn into contempt than turn into apathy. The passion in the extremities make it appear as though it once meant something. We grow from hot or cold, but lukewarm is the biggest insult.”
― Criss Jami

“The bottom line is, insults only hurt when they come from someone I respect.”
― Kresley Cole

“We should be careful of the insults we fling at others, lest they return and land at our feet, newly minted to apply to those who had first coined them.”
― Alexander McCall Smith

Obsession vs. Addiction

Obsession vs. Addiction

Am I an obsessed writer or am I addicted to writing? I had to do some research on this one. Let’s see what I discovered.

Obsession – the domination of one's thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, desire, etc. – Yes, I’m an obsessed writer.

Addiction - the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, *as writing, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.  YES, I’m addicted to writing!

* I took out, as narcotics, and replaced it with as writing.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder – A disorder characterized by repetitively repeating actions over and over, compulsively.  Meh!

The phrase obsessive–compulsive has become part of the English lexicon, and is often used in an informal or caricatured manner to describe someone who is excessively meticulous, perfectionistic, absorbed, or otherwise fixated. Although these signs are present in OCD, a person who exhibits them does not necessarily have OCD, but may instead have obsessive compulsive personality disorder.

Aha! My discovery led me to believe I am OCPD! OCPD is a chronic non-adaptive pattern of extreme perfectionism, preoccupation with neatness and detail. And I’m addicted to writing, seeing that when I’m not writing, it seems to cause me severe mental trauma. Each day I wake, I go to my computer, not to surf through the web, not to play facebook games, it’s to WRITE.

It has been in my blood since a young age. I began with pen and paper, journals and notebooks and yes, I have many saved notebooks cluttering my basement storage bins. It’s funny, I went through my bins a couple of weeks ago, to see what I managed to bring with me when I left home ten years ago. Lo and behold, I left with not much more than the clothes on my back, a few cherished nic-nacs, and loads of books and writings!

Being the sentimental fool that I am, I cried over the things I didn’t manage to bring with me, but I also cried over the things I DID manage to bring. I think I’ve told you of the time I left home, my son and I, for a safer haven away from a mentally abusive relationship. I left all my once cherished material possessions behind, and moved forward in life, whatever that entailed.

My writing is the only thing, locked up safely in my heart and soul that no one could ever get me to leave behind. Instead I dove in and never looked back. While I have family back home, they all but left me out here to fend for myself, and I’m okay with that, I had to grow up some time.

Now what I do with my time and my life is write. That is the only piece I obsessively control and will never let go of. While material possessions can always be replaced, what you have inside you can never be replaced, only crafted and finely tuned.

So to you my fellow writer’s who can casually use writing as a hobby, my hats off to you. But to you who are addicted to writing; waking, living and breathing the written word, then you know what I mean when I say I’m addicted to writing! As to my OCPD, I love being meticulous and a perfectionist in my writing, so all is well in the written world of words for me.

The WINDS of Change

“The trouble is not really in being alone, it's being lonely. One can be lonely in the midst of a crowd, don't you think?”
~ Christine Feehan

Waving Hi, from the windy state of Nebraska. Sure Chicago can claim “the Windy City” but I am here to unofficially lay claim to the name Windy State of Nebraska! As weather forecasters will lie to you and say, it’s going to be breezy, I’m here to say, 25mph sustained WINDS with gusts to 45mph does not make it ‘breezy’; where I come from (Baltimore, Md.) that is downright WINDY!

The winds have been sustained for more than a week now, I’m sure of that, which hinders any time in the garden even though I’m loving the cool temps. Last week we had record-breaking heat with temps reaching 97 and in some places 100-104! A few days before that we had SNOWFALL and today it is struggling to reach 60!

These crazy weather shifts gives rise to tornadoes and some storm-wreaking havoc. It’s made me think of the winds of change sweeping over my life as well as this lovely state of Nebraska. Living out here in isolation – yes, a closed down turkey ranch with one other house is sheer isolation for me. While I love the beauty, solitude and quietness of the place, it sure can elicit a solid empty feeling of loneliness.

An overly friendly person I am, who sees the outside physical world maybe once every two or three weeks (that being a trip to the food store or church, twenty miles away from my house) can sometimes feel the isolation as smothering. This is where my writing garden comes into play. And to think ten years ago I never TOUCHED a computer, I have now taken up one of my beau’s famed addictions and that is, life on the computer!

In this windowed world, there is no wind! There is a collage of friendships to be had and thus I find myself clinging to the writing world and the sites that have anything to do with writing, and the daily dose of facebook, mind you.

THIS is why I chose to dive headfirst into f2k again. Even IT has taken on the winds of change. Once a free writing course, now a FEE writing course, which will enable serious writer’s to take the plunge into the writing frenzy that they so desire. F2K is the birth of a silent muse. That’s right folks, as your muse lay dormant, f2k can fire up the silence with seven weeks of active writing.

Whether it is making new friends, feedbacking and critiquing others, f2k is the place to put your money where your words are. You’ll suddenly feel the winds of change in everything from writing, confidence, all the way through to a finished short story.

You too will see why I find inspiration in a fallen tree (due to winds), sprouting seeds, flowers bursting forth, the aroma of newly fallen rain (when we get it) and the humming of tractors to the hissing of pivots making their rounds.

Isolation can bring about the winds of change, as well as a lost feeling of loneliness but that is why my only ties to the enormous outside world lay right here…at my fingertips.

“Lingering is so very lonely when one lingers all alone.”
~ Mervyn Peake

The Writing Garden

It’s been a while since I’ve had a post on writing. It’s because I haven’t watered my garden lately and feel since it is spring/summer, it is high time I get to watering.

Have you ever hit a writing slump, where you want to be writing but then nothing happens? You sit day after day tapping on the keys, then you realize nothing really makes sense of what you wrote? That could be considered writer’s block, but wait, no it can’t because you did write it just didn’t sound right or make any sense.

Here in Nebraska we get very little rain. That depresses me because I love the rain and cool weather. My whole body responds and I get a lot more writing done that makes perfect logical sense. When it’s dry and you go from winter and jump right into summer with ninety-degree days, my body shuts down. The sun is scorching the land and my body responds with aches and pains I didn’t feel in the cool crisp weather.

Here’s what I noticed: We recently got out and planted our garden. Seeds sprinkled here, plants positioned there and the garden now needs tending. Miss one day of watering and a droop falls over the plants as if hanging their head low wanting to be refreshed.

Writing is a lot like that; you’ve planted the seeds whether in your heart and soul, or on the blank page. You’re all set to sit down and tap away. Blank, you draw a blank. Water, you need water, you’re in the drooping phase of your writing garden, and you need nurturing.

Slap me upside the head with a wet rag, I’ve decided to spark my muse with a little watering from an f2k session again. F2K WAS a free course, but now it is offered at a ten dollar fee, a sixty day membership with WVU, and a book Pumping Your Muse, by Donna Sunblad, author and member of WVU.

It is free to members, which I am a lifetime member so it is free to me. It looks like a promising session since a lot of the people who signed up for the FREE course, really just came to see what it was all about and soon would leave when they knew there was work involved in writing. Yes people, writing involves work, just as tending a garden.

Writer’s Village University, WVU, is a writing school that I began studying at many years ago. It has helped me tend my garden of writing. Sure I’ve had ups and downs throughout the course of my stay but really there has been more ups than downs.

I am no longer a mentor which gives me hope in a promising course after being told I would be allowed full access to all the classrooms, not just sitting in a lone room, where visitors would pop in, and classmates would dwindle. This session when the class gets low, I can actually roam the halls and visit other rooms and comment and help writer’s as I’ve been known to do in years past.

There is always hope in the Garden of Writing. I’m sure I’ll keep you abreast of what is happening and how it’s all going, so stay tuned…the garden will soon be in full bloom soon.

Quotation Saturday

ISOLATION

“Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?”
~ Haruki Murakami

“It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.”
~ Stephen Fry

“If you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.”
~ Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“Not Waving but Drowning”

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.”
~ Stevie Smith, Collected Poems

LONELY

“I'm lonely. And I'm lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely, and how deep this feeling runs. And it scares the *crap out of me to be this lonely because it seems catastrophic.”
~ Augusten Burroughs, Dry

“The trouble is not really in being alone, it's being lonely. One can be lonely in the midst of a crowd, don't you think?”
~ Christine Feehan, Dark Prince

“You're reaching out
And no one hears you cry
You're freaking out again
'Cause all your fears
Remind you another dream has come undone
You feel so small and lost like you're the only one
You wanna scream 'cause you're
Desperate
You want somebody, just anybody
To lay their hands on your soul tonight
You want a reason to keep believin'
That someday you're gonna see the light
You're in the dark
There's no one left to call
And sleep's your only friend
Well even sleep
Can't hide you from all those tears
And all the pain and all the days
You wasted pushin' them away
It's your life, it's time you face it ”
~ David Archuleta

“Half of the time I don't know what they're talking about; their jokes seem to relate to a past that everyone but me has shared. I'm a foreigner in the world and I don't understand the language.”
~ Jean Webster

ALONE

“Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.”
~ Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

“The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration. ”
~ Pearl S. Buck

“And the danger is that in this move toward new horizons and far directions, that I may lose what I have now, and not find anything except loneliness”
~ Sylvia Plath

“Lingering is so very lonely when one lingers all alone.”
~ Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan

“Outside the window, there slides past that unimaginable and deserted vastness where night is coming on, the sun declining in ghastly blood-streaked splendour like a public execution across, it would seem, half a continent, where live only bears and shooting stars and the wolves who lap congealing ice from water that holds within it the entire sky. All white with snow as if under dustsheets, as if laid away eternally as soon as brought back from the shop, never to be used or touched. Horrors! And, as on a cyclorama, this unnatural spectacle rolls past at twenty-odd miles an hour in a tidy frame of lace curtains only a little the worse for soot and drapes of a heavy velvet of dark, dusty blue.”
~ Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus

Poetry Sunday ~ If

People are like stained - glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

If

if on scorched land i fall

will someone carry me through

will i find relief  through it all

parched lips will cease to be new.

if on the flaming fire

i search for seeping rain

will someone see the mire

and save me from the pain

if on knees I crawl

can you come to clear my mind

while all along i maul

i seek but cannot find

if all alone i fail

to the Lord i will confide.

on the seas i sail

He will be my guide.

Poetry Sunday ~ Soul Sisters

Soul Sisters

I know she’s there

across the sea from me

Where the wind ripples
through her hair

causing a stir in the waves.

I know she cares

as I sit drawing in

the emotional bond

that led me to her

as her spirit is lifted.

Isolated from the sand

that laps the shore

the current rides the tide

bringing me to a place

in her heart.

My soul sister thinks

an anchor holds me

in place so that I

can feel her thoughts.

We are kindred spirits.

I watch as the sun

drinks in her essence

filling her with light

a luminosity that is emitted

from the two of us.

Our bond is there

while no despair will

bring us to our knees

we’ll please the heavens

that call us.

We’re enmeshed

to the one beauty that

fills our spirits.

We cry, we sigh, we fly

into the night.

You are there

across the sea and

think of me as the wind

stirs my hair causing

a wave of emotion.

My soul sister is one

with the light and beauty

of the world.

I am here, she is there

together, we sweep the ocean floor.

Note: This also goes for my soul brothers who have connected with me. Whether across the pond or on the soil of America, you all have touched my soul, and prayerfully, I have touched yours! ~Joni

My Angel: A Poem

My Angel

4-26-13

In my mind I watch her grow

the little baby I’ll never know.

I held her nestled in my womb.

her ringlets of hair I’ll never groom.

I watch her in the grass to play,

I swing with her on a sunny day.

Her fancy purple Easter dress,

her softened skin I often caress.

She sinks into the books she’s reading

finds sheer joy in our yearly seeding.

I watch with her as the seedlings grow.

Dances around when they make a show.

Twirling and spinning I often see

some little part of a younger me.

I long to hold this small-framed girl,

My angel, my daughter, my pleasant pearl.

Some things in life are not meant to be

As with my baby, little Astri.

Motionless I held her in my arms

A lifetime of beauty and earthly charms.

But lo and behold He needed her more,

She took with her a piece of my core.

I find solace in her place above,

Knowing heaven is her garden of love!

The Miracle Pumpkin Story

Acts 4: 22 “For the man was above forty years old, on whom this miracle of healing was shewed.”

I’ve noticed that still sitting around my house, I have two pumpkins still healthy looking from last October. We just got rid of two last week and as my readers know, we had quite a display of our homegrown pumpkins around the house. There HAS to be a story in there somewhere, I thought. So now I give you, The Pumpkin story.

It was October 2011. Steven had gotten his cornea transplant in Omaha, where we stayed a couple of days. The first thing he saw that day the bandages were taken off was my beautiful face. He looked around the office, at the Doc who had been caring for him for months while he was blind, and I just sat there with tears in my eyes (and a few already wet Kleenex, if you must know.) We went back to the hotel and as you can imagine, people who saw us leave, Steven holding my arm, were quite puzzled when they seen him walk back in, not needing assistance, and no cane in hand!

We made a couple of trips out to the front of the hotel so he could look at the sky, the flowers, the cars and people. He was like a kid in the candy store trying to pick out just one thing to look at but as you can imagine, being totally blind for three years (wondering if you’d ever see again) there was a lot to look at and behold.

The next morning we left for home three and a half hours away. Steven just stared out the window with his heavily tinted glasses. On occasion he took them off for a better view. It was such a joy to bring him home to SEE the house he had lived in for almost three years, without ever SEEING the place.

Finally the moment came when we pulled up to the house. Right by the front steps were two pumpkins left by his mother who had taken care of our dog while we were away. His mom and sis live pretty close by, so they enjoyed helping in that way. I called them our miracle pumpkins because they were received during our time of a miracle happening in our life. We entered the house and there was balloons welcoming us home and a note from Sassie, our dog, saying she missed us.

It was a little overwhelming as Steven was now a sighted person again, and I was busy not being so busy. It wasn’t long before he began cleaning up things and making this home, his home. He was finally touching and feeling AND seeing everything for the first time in three years!

Months had passed by but one occasion as we arrived home from Church, we noticed the pumpkins getting soft and leaning to the side. It was quite a few months sitting in the cold brisk Nebraska air and it seemed like forever, but those pumpkins endured and looked as if they were never going to die!

We told Adam (my son) to scoop up the soggy miracle pumpkins and throw them in our garden, where they lay for months on end until spring, with a splash of miracle, took hold of them. That is when we noticed our miracle pumpkins had taken root and decided to flourish.

We separated all the plants into tidy rows, and as the summer months came and went, we had an abundant assortment of different sized pumpkins. Now keep in mind, we’ve never grown pumpkins in our life, but my newly sighted man took it as his project to see these pumpkins become something wondrous rooted in a miracle. He tended them daily and nurtured them to fully grown pumpkins.

Our miracle pumpkins had multiplied. At this time we were also experiencing a bountiful amount of blessings in our life. Steven had gotten his license back, a job, and all was going right in the world AND my garden.

Then came time to harvest the miracle pumpkins, one here and one there. We sat a few on our steps but knew the cold would sweep them away and a few, it did. But many were salvaged and saved and brought into the house in October 2012!

And here we are April 25, 2013 and I have two remaining very much-alive pumpkins! How’s THAT for miracle pumpkins?

Jer. 33: 6 “Behold, I will bring it health and cure, and I will cure them, and will reveal unto them the abundance of peace and truth.”

Poetry Sunday ~ The Path I Take

The Path I Take

As curious winds dance about

snow lay at my feet

swirling in my mind is doubt

for all the world to meet.

Take my hand and walk me through

the life that has a muddled hue.

Swift soft whispers of the day

spin my life around

stellar are the stars I see

they lift me off the ground.

Hold me now for I am weak

my Father’s face, do I seek.

Step lightly as you pass.

on wilted willows bough;

Windows open breath falls in

I’m here amongst you now.

He breathes new life into me

I share for all the world to see.

Quotation Saturday

Fort McHenry ~ Baltimore Maryland

* ~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~ *

 

TERROR

“You've faced horrors in these past weeks... I don't know which is worse. The terror you feel the first time you witness such things, or the numbness that comes after it starts to become ordinary.”

~ Tasha Alexander, A Fatal Waltz

“Have we raised the threshold of horror so high that nothing short of a nuclear strike qualifies as a 'real' war? Are we to spend the rest of our lives in this state of high alert with guns pointed at each other's heads and fingers trembling on the trigger?”

~ Arundhati Roy

“There is a loveliness to life that does not fade. Even in the terrors of the night, there is a tendency toward grace that does not fail us. ”
~ Robert Goolrick, The End of the World as We Know It: Scenes from a Life

“The more you approach infinity, the deeper you penetrate terror”
~ Gustave Flaubert

LOVE

“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”
~ Mother Teresa

“Sometimes God allows what he hates to accomplish what he loves.”
~ Joni Eareckson Tada, The God I Love

“The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.”
~ W. Somerset Maugham

“From childhood's hour I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

JUDGMENTAL

“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”
~ Mother Teresa

“When we make judgements we're inevitably acting on limited knowledge, isn't it best to ask if we seek to understand, or simply let them be?”
~ Jay Woodman

“Even god doesn't propose to judge a man till his last days, why should you and I?”
~ Dale Carnegie

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you”
[Matthew 7:1-2]
~ Holy Bible: King James Version

HOPE

“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
~ Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“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

“The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination.”
~ Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Fall of Atlantis

“Plant seeds of happiness, hope, success, and love; it will all come back to you in abundance. This is the law of nature.”
~ Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

A Wellspring of Imagination

On days like this, where the wind is howling, a late spring snowstorm is sweeping across the state, and a mug of coffee in my hand, this is when I have a wellspring of ideas. In this setting, the birds have risen early and are all scattering about getting caught up in a wind gust, the sun is refusing to come out and play and school buses are plowing through the snow-covered roads filled with children wishing they could have just stayed safe at home.


It’s mornings like this when I look out the window and see the trees come alive, eerily walking in the cornfields only to realize it is the wind sweeping branches across the field and the crane hiding within them for a brief break from the gusting winds.

It is at this time my imagination is full of ideas wandering into a different realm that normal man and women dare not go. But writer’s, we’re of a different caliber; we see a story in every waking moment. Upon every tragedy that faces the nation we climb into our imagination box and create a story. Hiding within every triumph and selfless attitude that shake the people’s psyche to the core, a story is born.

Inspiration is the doorway to the Wellspring of Imagination. While normal (or not so normal) folk gripe and grumble of each aspect of their lives that bother them, the writer instead digs in and finds a story to tell. While journalist go out and seek a story to give to the people, the writer need only to open his eyes at sunrise and see a story unfold right out there window of inspiration.

As a writer, you know full well that the story is right there, tumbleweeds roll, thunder claps, lightning blazes across the sky, houses topple, trees sway, the music is words that have come alive in your imagination which sends you to the keyboard, tapping out a tale for readers to catch a glimpse of in the quiet of their day.

As you, the writer, are filled with inspiration from the previous days events, the glorious sunrise that puts shadows across the fields, the chaos communities endure places you smack in the middle with a story to unfold. You are going to write a fictional story or non-fiction that sheds a new light in the wells of darkness sweeping the earth.

You writer, have the Wellspring of Imagination right at your fingertips waiting to be expelled. There is no need for you to be dismayed because you can express what you imagine other people are feeling at the moment. The wellspring of imagination opens up to you just as a new day dawns each and every morn.

On April 18th, 2013, the snow blowing in has caused me to be inspired in ways you cannot imagine. It has awoken in me the need to write, relay the anxiety people are feeling with such  storms in supposed Spring. This is the season where trees burst forth seed, plants come alive; life, as we know it takes on new meaning. This is the season earth has taken on new tragedies, new eruptions of turmoil. This my friends, is the Season of the Writer!

Poetry Sunday ~ Seasonal Change

Pss. 102: 26 They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed:

Seasonal Change

* ~ * ~ *

The winds came briskly at the start of the day

sweeping the fields while out to play.

The sun partially hidden by bold dark caves

peeking out in increment waves.

The dormant trees bend to and fro

as new spring blossoms hang on and grow.

Shivering in winters seeming last touch

deadened limbs break off and such.

Just as in life wild storms erupt

making the soul feel somewhat corrupt.

Wrestling with the maniac season

calmly you pray for a justified reason.

Slowly you’re rid of worn out sorrow

you’ve reached a path to a better tomorrow.

Reclaiming your soul you fuse with God

standing strong upholding the rod.

Rejoicing now with hymns of praise

the cloudburst passed with sun-swept rays.

There’s only one storm you’re sure to win

The realization that your God’s within!