Write with TLC

Transition or Rupture? Yesterday as I read Mama Gena's blog post Immobilized and Falling Apart , I felt uncomfortable when she referred to what she described as "rupturing" because of bad things happening in life in order to come back together stronger. It's not that I haven't experienced traumatic experiences or dealt with heartache, betrayal, and loss. It was that, while at some point in my life, I may have identified with the idea of it being a rupture, I've come to a different place. I now think of these "ruptures" as transitions. They show me the bits of me that remain in my core regardless of what happens while showing me what I need to release. I am connected to the trauma and I feel it deeply, I don't believe it destroys, or somehow defines, me. I  acknowledge it, feel it, search it for possible lessons it holds, but I put my focus on what in my life I can actually heal or change or control. I don't fall apart, at least not in t...

I loved hopscotch when I was a little girl. My favorite hopscotch didn't follow the usual pattern. It had a block in the middle with triangles so small they required us to tiptoe even as small children. I loved it. Throw or roll the stone to the right block and then hop according to the lay of the stone, one square at a time starting at one and going to ten. If time permitted, we returned from ten back down to one.  We sometimes switched the game up and did a "random roll" where we had to skip whichever square we landed on instead of rolling to the squares in order. Sometimes we played a random roll version where we didn't pick our stones on the return and we had to skip every square with a stone. Or we had to hop the number of times of each square. One hop on square one, two hops on square two, three on three, nine on the four/five combo (or we took these individually and did the number on the square) and so on. I never bored of hopscotch even w...

Remember that childhood argument that always started with an insult and quickly degraded into the exchange "Am not...Are too... Am not...Are too" continuing endlessly and growing louder with each "Am not... Are too..." accompanied by the sticking out of the tongue and other not so kind gestures? As adults we sometimes have this argument with ourselves. Or at least I know I do. We argue with ourselves about who we are as we look in the mirror. It becomes increasingly clear I'm not alone as I communicate with friends who struggle with the dichotomy of who they are. We argue with the person we think we are, the person we want to be, the person others think we are, and the person others expect us to be. Far too often we stare in the mirror and the image staring back says something we don't recognize. I've been there a few times in my life. We feel strong, but we see weakness. We feel vulnerable, but we see protective. We feel exhilarated, but we see ex...

As  a writer, I'm well aware some people will like it and some people won't. There's a part of me that wants everyone to like everything I write no matter how unreasonable I know that desire to be... I work hard to write words that will speak to my readers and enrich their lives in some way, however large or small. I often reign in my writing so as to not break some rule or the other, but particularly the "rule" that the prose in fiction shouldn't be noticeable. Without even realizing it, I've let this "rule" stifle my writing progress for far too long trying to fit the idea of writing commercially. I have an unfinished novel, a finished but unedited novel, a nonfiction book about gratitude, and a collection of short stories that are all suffering because I have let this notion that writer's prose shouldn't be noticeable when the reader reads control me. I fear that if I write the way my heart and soul tell me to write, people will ac...