My Reason to Be...

Words are my personal, "raison d'être," even in my everyday life.  It's funny how our English language, whether in writing or speaking, is so intimidating to most people here in the United States.  So many I know tell me, "I can't write!"  Knowing how writing has been and is taught these days, I have to admit that I really can't blame them.   

There have been so many years I've asked myself the question of why written words mean so much to me and there really isn't an easy answer.  I've always been a prolific reader and I think that's where my love of stories and writing began, but i've also had a journal where I wrote stories and sometime simply about life as I saw and see it. 


Well, I have been away from my computer and my writing for quite a while, but will hopefully be returning in the next week.  I did not know how much I would miss it, but it has also given me a great deal of time to look seriously at who I am and what I want out of it in this faze of my life. 


See you soon with something new!  

Who Am I?

Right now,
I am no author.

Right now,
I am a writer
of actions!
of anger!
of events...

Yet I write
only for
one.

I am
content.

One
is enough.

My Muse

January is a season unto itself and I love the snow and cold swirls and moves with the winds that frequent our spot along the Lakeshore here in West Michigan. This year has proved not to be as cold or as snowy as many previous years which is good for many...but bad for me. My muse usually comes with the falling snow and the storms that continually buffet our part of the world and make it look and feel like another planet here in the depths of winter.

For me the most productive time of the year as a writer has been one that often kept me in seclusion and clothed the world in a deep quiet which was something unheard of on the street where I live. So I am writing and tossing almost everything these days. Nothing seems to make sense or come together very well at present. I will get through it since I am writing even though not much is getting beyond the first drafts but I am continuing the effort.

For those of us who no longer write for a newspaper and aren't in the throws of book, getting one piece of writing out every month or so is a pretty, "good thing," as Martha is wont to say. I hope to have a new article on my main site (Writing and Beyond) by the end of the week at least and that feels pretty darn good!

Hope

Another day, but certainly NOT another dollar - at least not for me. The writer in me keeps blogging and sending out those written pieces of my life, but at the moment nothing has exploded onto the scene. But, hey the time is still ripe and I can smell that bit of hope rising like spring through those ever present cracks in life. These days I live on hope, and that is a really magical four letter word. In fact I have lived with it for a very long time and through quite a few career twists and turns in my life.

Sometimes, hope can be a real pain to live with when nothing happens and you seem to be left hanging out there with nothing to hold onto but hope's anemic hand. In these days of little or no work it can often seem like I'm holding onto such an undernourished hand sometimes and that makes it hard to continue holding on.

So here I still am, out there still searching for my small place in the world of writing and continuing to hang on to the hand of that four letter word.

Good Writing - Or Not...

I just jointed Twitter, even though I am totally unsure what the site actually does besides offer up one liners! I did find a line of conversation about the editing of Michigan newspapers interesting (Or lack of editing!). It use to be that if you were an editor it meant that you read through and either made changes to make pieces of writing more grammatical and correct or gave some ideas that could make a piece more understandable. That was of course a million years ago!

Even my work needs editing! We who write always need an extra set of eyes to see those mistakes our eyes miss (And brains too!). If you read my two spots here on Blogger you know I come back and edit periodically, and I still miss things! How can any columnist or reporter catch all the mistakes?? If you give yourself time between the edits (like 24 hours), it does help to see some of the mistakes, but we still miss things, and it shows most in the newspapers in our part of the state.

I kind of have a feeling that it shows all over, actually. Frustrating for those of us who want to be good writers, and for those who read our word works.

Rejection is the Pits! (Wanted to use another word, but couldn't!)

Got another rejection. Most of the time I take it and just throw it in the heep that I have and go on submitting, but somehow today it just stopped me dead. Those who work are lucky there...I hate the feeling of rejection that goes with those, "Thanks but no thanks," letters or emails.