Category Archives: Writing

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Tell Me A Story Tuesdays – Stepping Stones

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“How could you serve me with divorce papers when I told you I just wanted time away to think?”

Josie took a deep breath after she said this keeping her tone even and her voice calm an action that took all of her control when what she really wanted was to scream. She wished she’d gone back inside to take the call from Paul instead of staying where she’d been standing while watching the beach. As he began again to list all the same old things she could never seem get right, she found herself tuning out the sound of his voice as she watched a family setting up their umbrella chairs just past the sand dunes near the water.

She wished for a moment that she could be back here again with Paul the first time they’d seen the beach house. Everything had seemed possible then when things were new and love seemed like it would last forever. Josie had wanted a family with this man, children like the two she saw on the beach squirming and giggling as their mom tried to spread sunscreen over them. She watched the woman rubbing what looked like Coppertone on the little girls thinking perhaps she might actually be able to protect them from the damaging rays of the hot Florida sun. Josie knew she was writing a script for the young mother based on her own fears. She too had once believed that protection from skin cancer could be had for a few dollars in a tube of zinc based cream. It wasn’t until her doctor had said melanoma that she’d stopped believing the marketing hype. She’d never liked Florida before, not even as a kid when she’d gone to Disney World the summer she turned twelve, but there was something different about this place. This sliver of island off the eastern coast of Florida was far enough north to see the seasons change and some of the older houses built years before even had fireplaces, something you didn’t see anymore since the laws had changed and people worried more about clean air.

Watching the children chase the waves that rolled up on the beach, she smiled as the older girl slipped past the reach of her younger sister squealing with the delight of the victorious in a game of tag. Josie forgot for a minute what Paul at been saying and the anger in his voice. She thought instead about this place, this piece of beach where she’d fallen in love with the mismatched round stepping stones on a path between the grassy dunes in front of the beach house. Weathered and grey made from some pebbly mixture, it was the stones that had sealed it for her. Right from the beginning there had been something magical about the odd spacing of the stones that stretched across the sand. Laid out by someone with a longer gait, the distance between them made it so she almost had to leap slightly like a child skipping from stone to stone, dancing in a way through the dunes to the beach.

Remembering all this, she let the divorce papers she’d been holding slip from her hand as she dropped the phone into sand at her feet. She thought for second she heard Paul’s voice calling out to her from somewhere …just before she stepped out of her shoes and onto the path, leaping as she went from stone to stone on her way back down to the water’s edge.

Thanks to Red Pine Mountain for her opening sentence that I used to do this bit of practice writing for the first TMAST .

After you read this, please go here to leave a sentence for next weeks challenge and perhaps some of you will join me by writing one yourself and posting it on your blog on Tuesday. It you let me know you’ve posted a piece for TMAST, (Tell Me A Story Tuesday) I’ll link to it here with my story. Thank you to everyone who left a comment last week over at the TMAST site. I really enjoyed reading them and had a difficult time deciding which to use today.

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A Room Of One’s Own – Week 4 – Update

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This post is mostly pictures because I managed to get some (arty ones) I really liked of Brian and Bob while building this past week. While they may be used to the odd snap or two by a property owner while working, I think they’re beginning to become a bit more aware of when the camera is around. Both have been such good sports, answering my too many questions at times and flashing me an occasional smile when I’m moving in with my camera trying to get just the right shot to keep things interesting.

No one is safe from the camera not even the people who deliver the big stuff.  Interestingly none of the drivers with the large deliveries seem to even notice the woman with the camera snapping photos from different angles like it’s a red carpet event.

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You can see by the delivery what Brian and Bob worked on for a fair amount of  this past week.

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Brian is putting brackets in place to help anchor the trusses while Bob is doing the same on the other side in the shot below.

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When that’s done, they put the trusses into place.

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I did a little climbing to get this one.

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Brian

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Bob

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That’s all for this weeks update, but remember, tomorrow I’ll have the first TMAST posting so if you’re writing along with me be sure and post yours on your site and send me a link so I can include it with my post tomorrow. If you need a reminder as to what I’m talking about go here and here to join me.  Remember it’s practice writing not perfect writing and it need not be lengthy to post and participate.

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A Word From The Bird

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About a year ago, just before I began blogging, I sent a piece I’d written about my daughter to Leon, my brother-in-law. Until very recently, Leon worked as an editor and writer for several large newspapers and while I’d been somewhat reluctant to show him anything I’d written, on some level I think I needed a little feedback as to whether my writing might appeal or be good enough to interest anyone other than myself.  I must admit that I was a bit worried about my punctuation and grammar when I sent my essay off to him. I tend to get what MJ O’Shea, one of my writing instructors at Oswego State University referred to as “comma happy” when I write and I was a bit concerned this might be the only thing he would notice when reading my words.

I cannot tell you how delighted I was by the magic of his words when he wrote back and said, ” Elizabeth, that’s REALLY good. That’s Bird by Bird good. It’s the kind of writing I strive for.”  With words of encouragement like that to boost me, I pressed publish for the first time on June 27, 2008 and never looked back.

In Anne Lamott’s book, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life she addresses the fears and frustrations of would be writers and acts as a guide for those of us who are intent on having our say. With her direction and encouragement, she teaches you how to break down the storytelling process into manageable parts by focusing on what is honest and real about the story rather than the results.

Delivering good readable writing that touches the reader in some way is part of my goal in writing what I do. To have someone I respect tell me what Leon did that day about a story I wrote totally from my heart…well that’s almost as good as standing in front of America with my Oscar in hand saying, “I’d like to thank….”

I was extremely delighted a few weeks ago, when I received an email from Diane Hayman, who is Editor-in-Chief of Powder Room Graffiti.  It seems after leaving a comment on a post there by Expat Mum, Toni Summers Hargis, a blogger and author that I read regularly, Diane noticed my comment and popped over to Gifts Of The Journey for a look around. The result of which led to her kind request asking if I might like to be interviewed for Powder Room Graffiti.

My interview can be found here…revealing a few more secrets you may not have known about me. Thanks to Diane and the folks at PRG for their interest and thanks to those of you who keep coming back to Gifts Of The Journey.


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Tell Me A Story Tuesdays

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Years before I ever read my first blog or considered writing these words, I spent a week in a workshop in Taos, New Mexico with a group of people who came together to study with Natalie Goldberg. I can’t say that I know what everyone else’s motivation was for the week, but I had longed for a chance to be in the same space with the woman who had intrigued me with her book Writing Down The Bones since I’d first read it in 1986. The picture above was taken in 2000 at one of the communal meals we shared three times a day in between a good bit of time spent writing and sharing our written words with each other. As you can see by my smile, I was pretty happy during my week there. In Writing Down The Bones, Natalie Goldberg gives the reader her six rules designed to help free the writer within.

After deciding how long to write, as in ten minutes or twenty, whatever time you set for yourself, you must keep writing for the whole time without stopping.

The Goldberg Six:

1. Keep your hand moving. (Don’t pause to reread the line you have just written. That’s stalling and trying to get control of what you’re saying. Don’t stop until the time is up.)

2. Don’t cross out. (That is editing as you write. Even if you write something you didn’t mean to write, leave it. Don’t     backspace.)

3. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. (Don’t even care about staying within the margins and lines on the page.)

4. Lose control.

5. Don’t think. Don’t get logical.

6. Go for the jugular. (If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has lots of energy.)

While I’ve been writing for years, my internal critic made it almost impossible for me to actually let anyone read what I had written. This workshop was gave me a chance to break free and share my words without fear of criticism. What we wrote we read aloud and according to the rules, we made no comments as to what we had just heard so no one had to worry about having their writing critiqued.

The best discovery in doing this daily is how quickly to find your real voice and how easy it is to begin writing thinking that you’re going in one direction, when the true story develops somewhere further down the page than you first imagined.  I’d like to incorporate a bit of this into my writing again and I would like to offer anyone who wishes to join me a chance to do it too.

With that in mind, I’ve created a new site called, Tell Me A Story Tuesdays and it is my hope that you, (my readers) will join me there on Tuesdays and leave a little of your creative thought behind.

On Tuesdays, I’ll post three photographs along with instructions for those interested in participating to leave a sentence behind with one or all three and I’ll use them to do a bit of free writing. The goal will be to create a story which I will share on Tuesdays. I’m inviting anyone interested in doing a little storytelling of their own to join me by taking a sentence or two to turn into your own creation. Then on Tuesdays, post it on your blog and send me a link the night before so I can include a link to your site with my own Tuesday story.

Since I don’t have a writers group here, I thought this might be a good way to fill that void and have a bit of fun.  Write as little or as much as you’d like and remember the six rules above while you’re writing. I plan to edit my writing before posting, but only after my practice writing time is up. Remember, the goal here is practice writing, not perfection.

Please go to Tell Me A Story Tuesdays to begin and I look forward to seeing what you’d like to share next Tuesday.