Tag Archives: Writing

Song of Songs

14 Monday Sep 2020

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Some of the best poetry ever written appears in the Bible in the Song of Songs: the Song of Solomon. One of my favorite lines is SOS 6:4; Thou art beautiful, My Love, as Tirzah. There’s something musical about it and, while musing on it, I wrote this poem.

Love Song

Thou art beautiful, My Love

There is none to compare to Thee

Thy face shines upon me

I am amazed

Thou art gentle as doves, My Love

There is none like Thee

Thy love surrounds me

I am awed

Thou art water to my soul, My Love

There is none beside Thee

Thy hands hold me

I am safe

Thou art my desire, My Love

There is none over Thee

Thy heart calls to me

I am consumed

Thou hast prepared a place, My Love

You bring me to Thee

Thy blood has bought it for me

I am loved

Thou hast written my name, My Love

There it reads before Thee

Thy book is opened for me

I am known

Gaining Strength As I Go

01 Friday May 2020

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After a two year hiatus, I am back to blogging!  Before I made Renaissance Woman public again I went through all of my old posts updating, checking links, deleting (a lot of deleting) and I found it apropos that my final blog post in April of 2018 was about making forward progress even if it’s at a turtle’s pace.  Two years later and the theme of that post is still valid.

The last two years have been fraught with difficulty.  My biggest obstacle occurred at the end of 2018: a major surgery I spent what felt like all of 2019 recovering from.  My neighbor described his wife’s last surgery to me and said it is a fight to come back from such a thing.  I agree: it felt like a battle and it became obvious early on it wasn’t one I was going to win in a day.  My first post-surgery walk went no further than the mailbox on the corner of my block which is an embarrassingly short distance.  I’d love to say I made more progress the next day but I didn’t.  My recovery was one of two steps forward, three steps back, and then at last four steps forward.

It took months but I finally walked a full mile.  I even took a trip to the mountains with a friend in July of 2019.  I admit I was grateful for late snow storms that kept hiking to a minimum as I had overestimated my ability.  Still, I’m never one to turn down a chance to be in God’s Creation and I didn’t collapse during our hike at Fish Creek Falls. I call that victory!

Falls Two

I had to learn to be gentle with myself.  I am still learning to be gentle with myself because I have found that six weeks might be enough for incisions to heal but the rest of me is on my own clock.  I can do nothing to alter the speed of this passage of time.  All I can do is surrender and take one day at a time one step at a time.  I still wear the turtle pendant I mentioned in the last post and it has been a tangible reminder to me that any forward movement, even if it is just one step, is better than stagnation.

Stagnation is a terrible thing.  When I think of stagnation in a physical sense, I think of my lymphatic system.  This amazing system running through my body is so important for my health and yet it has no ability to move itself.  What do I mean?  The lymph has no heart to aid it as it moves upward through my body to my subclavian veins and thus relies on the motions of the muscles and joint pumps.  I must move or my lymphatic system is unable to do its job and my immune system suffers.  This pumping of my lymphatic system doesn’t require insanely difficult exercises. (I always think of Tae Bo.  Is that still something exercise lovers do?)  All I have to do is move a little bit throughout my day.

I found this quote:

“Life is never stagnation. It is constant movement, un-rhythmic movement, as we as constant change. Things live by moving and gain strength as they go.” ~ Bruce Lee

I think that’s beautiful.  “Things live by moving and gain strength as they go”.  There isn’t an aspect of my life I can’t apply that to: especially writing.  Writer’s speak of the flow of words and so I write to keep that flow constant.  I will write here on this blog, in my journal, in my notebooks, in my manuscript (manuscripts now-I had to put my series aside to conduct research on a few things and I’ve been working on a stand alone book since April of last year).  I write, I walk, I move to keep stagnation at bay.  I seek merely to gain strength as I go.

River

 

 

 

 

 

 

Celebrating National Poetry Month

30 Thursday Apr 2020

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The poem below is one of mine I’m posting for National Poetry Month.

It will tie into tomorrow’s blog post.

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Epiphany

Three miles-less will mean defeat

The gravel’s crunch beneath my feet

Each step propels me down the track

Yet I’m aware of all I lack

My body falters-lungs constrict

It fights against all I inflict

I answer all my pain with rage

My heart thuds-panicked-in its cage

I will not fail. I won’t give in.

I won’t be beaten. I will win.

I stop.  I breathe.  Confront the myth-

Of Who am I competing with?

Begin Again.  Take it slow

Let lungs expand inside my chest

It matters not how fast I go

My racing heart returns to rest

My muscles slide beneath my skin

Feel sun and breeze upon my face

There is no race that I must win

I do not fight to keep this pace

A bird takes wing, soars overhead

So much is waiting to be seen

To my right, a flash of red

A single apple midst leaves of green

Now that I do not resist

I see all I would have missed.

 

 

 

A Resolution I Can Keep

07 Sunday Jan 2018

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The first week of 2018 is coming to a close.  How are everyone’s resolutions going?

I don’t usually make resolutions but, moving forward, I am resolved to be kinder to myself.  I tend to be hard on myself, demand a great deal of myself, and then fall into negative self-talk when I can’t meet my own expectations.  In 2018, I resolve to say positive things about myself and focus on what I believe is my calling.  Writing.

I didn’t always think writing was my calling and, by ‘calling’ I mean the one thing I loved to do above all other things.  Writing was a hobby, nothing more.  After all, there were many other worthwhile things I could be doing.  I liked reading, enjoyed words, and always wrote even if it was just in a journal but it was always the thing I did to keep myself sane while I pursued that worthwhile (i.e. more important) thing.  And yet, there was always an image in my head: an example a friend set for me that always had me asking myself, is this worthwhile thing something I love doing?

That friend is Tara Novak and the example she set for me occurred on a New York trip we had opportunity to take with our High School drama group.  Tara is an immensely talented violinist and she brought her violin on that trip.  In the early morning, Tara was practicing her violin in the stairwell of the hotel our group was staying in.  That has always stayed with me.  With her talent, no doubt Tara could have taken a few days off practice and no one would have ever noticed.  She didn’t.  No matter what others might think or say, Tara was running scales before breakfast, honing her craft.  I never asked her if she did so because she loved violin too much not to play: whatever her reasons, her example is the standard I have measured my choices against.

I have taken enjoyment in many things and, perhaps they were worthwhile, but none of them was the thing I’d do in a hotel stairwell.  The only thing I’ve never wanted to take a day off from and, yes, would do in a hotel stairwell, is writing.  I love words.  Reading them, writing them, finding that one word that perfectly expresses what I want to say.  Words are my passion.

Pursuing that passion isn’t always easy.  I have some physical limitations from the car accident that can make writing difficult and I am not always nice to myself when I come up against those limitations.  I tell myself if I was a better writer, more talented, I would be able to write less drafts and my book would not be taking so long to complete.  I find Tara’s example a comfort in these times.  She wasn’t in that stairwell playing Bach’s Chaconne from Partita in D Minor (though she could have done if  she wanted!): she was playing scales.  I like to think of my writing that way.  I have thousands of words and, even though they aren’t yet honed into the manuscript I can look at and say “it is finished”, each word is like a note in a musical scale: the necessary practice for the manuscript that will come.  I remember Tara in a hotel stairwell on those days writing doesn’t go well or I’m especially tired.  She reminds me to never give up and I am able to show myself kindness.  I will always be grateful.

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Not a stairwell but I did recently get some work done in a hotel room. It came equipped with a lounge chair.

If you’re interested in how practice truly does make perfect, you can find Tara Novak on Facebook    as well as her website.

Developing My Writing Brain

21 Sunday May 2017

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Writing Shelf

I would love to be a word genius: stories spilling out of my brain with no need for editing or grammar checks.  That’s not how my writing process goes, unfortunately, so I do a great deal of reading.  Reading is my favorite thing and, among the amazing fiction I read for fun and the history I read for research (and fun), I also read about writing.  Some of the books I read are craft and others are writers writing about writing.  Most I read and put back on my shelf but I just finished a book I thought worthy of mention: Fire Up Your Writing Brain by Susan Reynolds.

This book doesn’t cover craft-not really.  Rather, the book contains tips and tricks derived from neuroscience to take what I already know as a writer and make it work more efficiently.  This is a book I’ll have to study and my favorite part were the quotes included from different writers.

There were three things I read on my first pass through this book that stayed with me:

First, a little blurb about Mark Zuckerberg was included stating he buys multiples of the same shirt in order to minimize how many decisions he makes in a day.  He’s quoted as saying; “There’s a bunch of psychological theory that even making small decisions about what you wear, what you eat for breakfast, etc., can make you tired.” (Fire Up Your Writing Brain, page 162).  The TBI I sustained in my car accident years ago means it’s easy for my brain to get overwhelmed.  Planning my meals, multi-tasking at my job, researching, writing my manuscript, posting to my blogs…it can get difficult for me to keep it all straight.  This quote struck me.  I’ve already been looking for ways to simplify my life and reading this has caused me to make doing so a priority.

Two, no one is perfect and yet I keep expecting my writing to be so.  The section entitled “Your Expectations Are Too High” on page 194 spoke to me.  In it, Ms. Reynolds states “The best advice anyone can give inexperienced writers is to write a first draft as quickly as possible, as good books are not written, but rewritten and rewritten and rewritten.”  This is something I’ve heard many times from many sources but perhaps, this time, I was ready not just to hear it but take it to heart.  I finished a first draft years ago: all 612 pages of it.  It’s been whittling and paring and cutting that mass of research and character background into something more readable that’s been a problem.  I have difficulty not tweaking this, re-writing that, what if this, and would it be better if… What Ms. Reynolds’ book is helped me realize is it’s still too early in my process to expect perfection.  I need to turn off my editing brain for a while. Easier said than done but I’m pushing through.

Three, it’s important to have a writing space.  I’m fortunate to have an office downstairs where all my books are neatly on their shelves, I have a desk, a comfy chair, and a place to put my feet.  While simplifying my life, parts of my office have become a dump site for papers I have to scan before I can shred, blank cards I have yet to fill out and send to friends and family, and other detritus I’m can’t throw away before I look at it.  Writing in this room feels different than writing anywhere else in the house.  Because of my books?  I can’t really say.  However, I need to get the room organized so I can work there without feeling anxious about mess.  This too is now a priority.

I gave this book 5 stars on Goodreads.  The information in it is bound to be more useful than I yet realize.  This is one that definitely goes on my bookshelf; just as soon as I get the shelf dusted and sorted.

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