Blossom where you're planted.

 

 

 

 

 

Make your writing stand out like this wild Gerber daisy flourishing among the weeds.

 

 

 

Don't allow fear of failure or success to frighten you into NOT doing it. Don't let those deadlines slither away.

 

 

 Don't think that just because your submission was rejected, it can't be resurrected. Among all the dead blossoms on this "butterfly bush" one last bloom erupted making everyone take notice.

Hubby and I discovered a wonderful, new, paved trail along the Mississippi River. I will post more pictures later, but these snapshots spoke to me as a writer. Make your writing shine. If you are not a writer, shine your light into the world another way. A smile, a kind word, eye contact with a street person, a gentle touch can make someone's day.

Sometimes you just have to smile and nod

Fair warning, this might make you blush.

I took a walk this evening and noticed a small white tube from a feminine hygiene product on the ground. I snickered. Thank goodness no one saw or heard me. They'd have thought me an immature senior, or a bit daft. I snickered because it made me think of an incident that happened to me about twenty years ago when I was teaching in a public school.

A community meeting room was next to my classroom. On this particular day the room was being utilized by the Young at Heart, a neighborhood senior citizen group, comprised of two dozen gussied up women reeking of Evening in Paris perfume. They loved it when I brought my class in to sing for them. After our presentation they gifted each of the students with their craft project, a rocket ship made of a Tampax. They had decorated the white cardboard tube with red, silver and blue stars and a little triangle top. The string hanging down, one woman pointed out, was for "blast off".

Sometimes you just have to smile and nod and say, Thank You. My coworker and I couldn't contain our laughter and dissolved into fits of hysteria when we got back to our room.

Really? You're curious as to what I did with them? I blasted them right into the trash can.

Old Man River

Overlooking the bluffs of the Mighty Mississippi River last evening, we could see evidence of this summer's drought. That sandbar is about 1/4 of the width of the river, and for a while barge traffic was at a standstill. These barges were hugging the shore where the channel has been dredged.

Watching a tiny tug boat shove a dozen loaded barges against the current reminds me of being a writer. Some days you inch your way along, chugging slowly and other days the channel's open and creativity flows.

I hope you are busily writing, hopefully toward publication. Like the squirrels scampering about these days storing nuts for winter, you should have a stockpile of stories, poems, ideas to draw from.

Ladie's Home Journal is having a contest on the topic The Day That Changed My Life, maximum of 2,000 words. Contact LHJessaycontest@meredith.com. Deadline December 7th.

Jot something about a river and leave it as a comment. If I choose yours, I will credit YOU and link to your blog.

Clowning around

This evening St. Louis Writer's Guild held its monthly open mic at Kirkwood Train Station. During the two hour session there are ususally four or five trains that roar past. The reader pauses in mid sentence and waits for the engine to chug by. Tonight I saw a few clowns! The fourth train came whizzing by and stopped all of US in our tracks. It was the Ringling Brother's Barnum and Bailey circus train! What an awesome sight to behold.

When I was a little girl I hated the three ring circus. There was just too much going on for me to concentrate on any one particular ring. Also, I used to think that clowns were a separate species...men, women, children, clowns. I felt sorry for the caged animals. The tight rope walkers made me worry, but those trapeze artists sent me to knew heights. I loved the way they flew through the air with the greatest of ease. If I could have, I would have swung higher and higher from the trapeze bar and then dropped into the safety net below.

Do you like the circus?

Train Facts

• Ringling Bros. is divided into two simultaneously traveling unit trains: the Red Unit and the Blue Unit.
• Maximum train speed is 60 miles per hour.
• The stock cars, for the elephants and other animals, ride directly behind the locomotive where the ride is the smoothest.
• Individual stock car water tanks and electrical generators provide continuous water and power supply while the stock cars are separated from the coaches for unloading. 

Special Accommodations for Animals

Ringling Bros. stock cars are specially designed and custom-built to meet the needs of each animal species. Elephants face each other in railcars and are tethered for their safety and that of their handlers. At each venue, elephants disembark the train and are led by their handler to the venueÕs animal facility, where they remain for the duration of the stay in each town. All elephants will then board the train right before the circus leaves for the next town.

The elephant stock cars have the following special design elements:

·         Fresh supply of water available in every car

·         Food storage locations that are accessible to animal care staff while en route

·         Fans mounted in roof for air circulation; windows and doors open for cross-ventilation

·         Heating and misting systems for climate control

·         Direct access to the animals for handlers in all cars and working/living facilities for handlers in some cars to provide uninterrupted supervision of the animals while underway

·         Specially treated, non slip flooring to allow for fast, easy cleaning and disinfecting

·         Drains in car floor which function regardless of whether the train is moving or standing still

·         Specially designed ramps for loading and unloading animals

·         Additional generator to supply electricity to the stock cars when separated from main power source

 

Let me get my lasso!

Woo Hoo!

I feel like Annie Oakley right now, a notable cowgirl in the wild west. I used to watch the TV show Annie Oakley when I was a little girl. When I had my own little girl, I dressed her as Annie Oakley for her first Halloween. I put yarn braids on my little two year old baldie, gave her a fringed vest and little turquoise blue skirt and a six shooter. I have a picture of her looking at the gun with an expression of HUH? And what was I thinking?! Giving a toddler a toy gun. Then again, that was forty years ago.

This morning I received an acceptance on my four sentence flash Western story from Brett Cogburn, great grandson of  Rooster Cogburn the real person, portayed by John Wayne. It will appear with other short-short Best Westerns Never Written in Cactus Country III, an anthology published by High Hill Press.

Hop on over to Pen and Prosper and show Jennifer Brown Banks what you've got. She's running a "chocolate" contest. Check out the details and read my entry. Jennifer has been widely published. I discovered her article in a writer's magazine and have followed her words of wisdom ever since.

I admit it, I did it!

One of my favorite writer quotes is by William Wordsworth ~
Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

I am witnessing love at first sight with my almost 16 year old grandson who is filling the phone with texts of his heart. I have never seen a boy so smitten. He was texting during a funeral! His usually glum mood is elevated; his smiles are free instead of forced. Ahh, young love. He thinks it's the real deal ;)

I am so mad at myself. I was served a one pound, 1,000 calorie-laden gourmet brownie at  the funeral luncheon. I was too full to eat it there, so I took it home. I was going to be good. I cut it into eighths and froze it. I intended to nibble a nugget at a time. I did nibble a nugget at a time...all the time...a bite with a cup of coffee to start my day... a nibble with my lunch and then, after the hectic day and several interruptions at school ... a few more bites. The debates did me in ... I shoved every last piece into my mouth. Ugh. If I had more ...

Don't Even Go There!

The weather was incredible yesterday, overcast, breezy and 75 degrees. It reminded me of all the times we sat on a bench overlooking Lake Carlyle, walking around the camp circle or riding our bikes across the dam. Those fall campfires and camping weekends collected in my mind like a bunch of comfy socks wadded up in a suitcase. Maybe it's because yesterday when we finished breakfast at Cracker Barrel, we walked next door to a camper dealer and browsed...remembering when. No, we don't want to go back. We like the outdoors, but appreciate a real sized shower and softer bed these days.

One year we had tugged our camper to the Lake of the Ozarks. Next to us there was a man about fifty who moped around. I told Bill that I thought he was recently divorced or widowed. Bill said, "You and your writer's mind!"

That evening around a campfire, the guy spilled his life story and everything I had suggested flickered like ashes. When we climbed into bed, Bill asked how I knew. I think I am intuitive, nothing more.

We saw a young fellow with a preschool boy pull in and set up his tent across from us on Wednesday. He had a roaring campfire going that evening, and sometime early in the morning he roared off in his pickup truck and didn't return. Not that night, or the next. I strolled over to his tent and glanced in the camp fire where I noticed a singed and torn letter. I read what I could. It was obviously a Dear John.

"I bet he committed suicide."

"Then where's his truck?" the thinker who should have been a cop asked.

"I don't know, but it smells bad over there, and I'll bet he's dead in that tent."

"Stay out of other people's campsites and rest your writer's mind."

I couldn't. For three days I pondered as the stench grew worse.

"I'm going to tell the conservation agent when he comes around."

"Tell him what?"

We debated endlessly and then, Saturday night, the guy came roaring back in his pickup truck. I watched him unzip the tent and run to the dumpster with a pack of rotten uncooked hamburger.

"See? See!" my honey grinned with superiority.

I saw.

But I still think that having a writer's eye/mind comes in handy, sometimes. How about you?

Are you intuitive? Do you create scenarios about strangers?