IT'S NEVER TOO LATE!

In the Literary Living course I am taking one of our assignments was to read, or listen to an audio or watch a video of authors, and report what we felt about what they had to say.  I had only done five authors and the assignment called for at least six, so I had one more to do.  I had originally intended to do Julia Cameron, and Salman Rushdie, but since several others did those two authors, I decided to find one that I had not seen anyone comment on and picked Walter Mosley.  I am glad not all of the material from the authors was as long as the first couple I read.  His was only two pages and I liked it enough to print it out, as well as Richard Ford’s.

Mr. Mosley gave the best description I have read on why it is important for writers to write every day and how our “muse” as it is called operates on our subconscious so we need to get the thoughts down before we lose them.  He spoke of ideas coming to us in dreams and how quickly those can be forgotten but did not recommend keeping a pad of paper and pen or pencil handy to write down a dream that wakes us up while we can still remember at least a portion of it.

I have gotten entire poem stories from one sentence of a thought that was in my mind when I woke up, or a piece of dream will become a scene for a story, or a character we had not planned to create.  It is a fascinating process.

On Valentine’s Day I officially became a Senior Citizen, so it was a special birthday for me.  I spent Saturday through Monday with a friend in the suburbs and returned home Tuesday afternoon.  Either that day, or Wednesday, I wrote a double acrostic poem called Valentine Birthday because I wanted to have something to share with the poetry group and that was still the most pressing thought on my mind.  They all said that they liked it.  I also posted it on the Literary Living site.  I was not at the journal writing group on Thursday though, because I am taking an 8 week computer refresher course which meets during the time of their meeting.

I did not blog about the first time I began to rewrite my short story.  But, this is the second day I have worked on it.  I was up from about 12 AM to 3 AM writing.  But, I wasn’t finished.  I still had to do the Morning Pages as suggested by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way.  I did some more book reviews for Institute of Children’s Literature some time ago too.  I my have blogged about that already.

Reading and commenting on the material in the Literary Living course and making comments on other writer’s comments keeps me pretty busy for at least a half a day.  I am behind on the material too.  It is too much to take in that quickly.  I want to start reading the book on motivation soon.  We are to think about that and what motivates us as we read it and share that with the others in our group.

Although we have been divided into small groups, four in ours, there are not that many participants that we limit our interaction with only our group.  At least ours does not.  The four of us are all close in age and three of us are retired.  The other woman is looking for work and in the meantime developing a daily habit of writing.

There’s a board for us to share writing with others and I have put on a couple of the poems I wrote on writing and writers and one religious meditation.  I admit that I have not read what everyone has posted yet.  I plan on doing so though before the program ends.

Well, thanks to the snowfall yesterday and today, the senior center I go to was closed and classes cancelled, so I had no reason to go out.  I would not have anyway when I saw how bad it was.  They were good days for reading, writing, and watching movies.  I just thought of adding a picture of the snow to this blog but it is night already and I do not have batteries in my camera, besides you have probably seen pictures of it in the news. 

 All I read so far though was my Bible and devotional book and emails.  I am amazed at how much time I can spend on them.  I did do two books reviews today for Children’s Literature.  The books I reviewed were Cool Down and Work Through Anger,  by Cheri J. Meimers and The Smith Family’s New Puppy, by Dina  Smith-Mansell.  I enjoyed them both.

As I have been noticing with all of the books they send me, they are being written to teach some kind of lesson and may be used at home or in a classroom.  So, if there are any writer’s reading my blog who think they would like to write for children.  Keep that in mind.  Since children’s books is my focus now, I need to see how I can do that.  Writing these reviews gives me a good opportunity to see what is being published without having to go to the library or book stores.