Category: Writing a Book

This is a writing accountability blog. I have committed to publishing a book by March, 2024. I invite you on the journey as I plough through the internal and external obstacles I face. As the great Bette David loosely said in the movie “All About Eve.” “Buckle your seatbelts. It’s (likely) going to be a bumpy (ride.)”

Sometimes, Ya Just Gotta Laugh

These sayings/insults are incredible gems from an era before the English language got boiled down to 4-letter words! I hope you delight in them as much as I have. 😅♥️

1. “He had delusions of adequacy. ” Walter Kerr

2. “He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”- Winston Churchill

3. “I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure. – Clarence Darrow

4. “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”-William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

5. “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”- Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

6. “Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.” – Moses Hadas

7. “I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” – Mark Twain

8. “He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.” – Oscar Wilde

9. “I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one.” -George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

10. “Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second… if there is one.” – Winston Churchill, in response

11. “I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here” – Stephen Bishop

12. “He is a self-made man and worships his creator.” – John Bright

13. “I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.” – Irvin S. Cobb

14. “He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.” – Samuel Johnson

15. “He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up. – Paul Keating

16. “He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.” – Forrest Tucker

17. “Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?” – Mark Twain

18. “His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.” – Mae West

19. “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.” – Oscar Wilde

20. “He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… for support rather than illumination.” – Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

21. “He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.” – Billy Wilder

22. “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But I’m afraid this wasn’t it.” – Groucho Marx

23. The exchange between Winston Churchill & Lady Astor: She said, “If you were my husband I’d give you poison.” He said, “If you were my wife, I’d drink it.”

24. “He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.” – Abraham Lincoln

25. “There’s nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won’t cure.” — Jack E. Leonard

26. “They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.” — Thomas Brackett Reed

27. “He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them.” — James Reston (about Richard Nixon)

—Robert L Truesdel

I’ve Been Outed

My deepest, darkest shortcomings have been outed yet again by someone sharper and more insightful than me.

To be fair, I did submit one short story to a competition in the past year.

It did bupkis in the contest but the editor/readers did say good things about my submission. It did encourage me to submit to other contests.

That’s something, I guess.

“I have a young friend who dreams of becoming a novelist, but he never seems to be able to complete his work.

According to him, his job keeps him too busy, and he can never find enough time to write novels, and that’s why he can’t complete work and enter it for writing awards.

But is that the real reason? No! It’s actually that he wants to leave the possibility of “I can do it if I try” open, by not committing to anything.

He doesn’t want to expose his work to criticism, and he certainly doesn’t want to face the reality that he might produce an inferior piece of writing and face rejection.

He wants to live inside that realm of possibilities, where he can say that he could do it if he only had the time, or that he could write if he just had the proper environment, and that he really does have the talent for it.

In another five or ten years, he will probably start using another excuse like “I’m not young anymore” or “I’ve got a family to think about now.”

He should just enter his writing for an award, and if he gets rejected, so be it.

If he did, he might grow, or discover that he should pursue something different.

Either way, he would be able to move on.

That is what changing your current lifestyle is about.

He won’t get anywhere by not submitting anything.”

Ichiro Kishimi

(Book: The Courage to Be Disliked [ad] https://amzn.to/4aAyXmO)

Good ‘Ol Chuck Bukowski

This was too good not to share.

(I lasted exactly two whole weeks on my blog publishing break. More, maybe, on that later. I did promise not to overwhelm you…. )

Looks like poet Charles Bukowski said a few years back what I finally came to believe.

The message certainly bears repeating.

So much truth in this poem: death before death, dead-in-spirit.

Or as I once heard it put: “When you grow old and die, dear, how will you know you’re dead?”

Don’t do that. Don’t be that. Save yourself! Save yourself!

In perpetuity if needs be ….

Nobody can save you but

yourself.

you will be put again and again

into nearly impossible

situations.

they will attempt again and again

through subterfuge, guise and

force

to make you submit, quit and /or die quietly

inside.

nobody can save you but

yourself

and it will be easy enough to fail

so very easily

but don’t, don’t, don’t.

just watch them.

listen to them.

do you want to be like that?

a faceless, mindless, heartless

being?

do you want to experience

death before death?

nobody can save you but

yourself

and you’re worth saving.

it’s a war not easily won

but if anything is worth winning then

this is it.

think about it.

think about saving your self.

your spiritual self.

your gut self.

your singing magical self and

your beautiful self.

save it.

don’t join the dead-in-spirit.

maintain your self

with humor and grace

and finally

if necessary

wager your self as you struggle,

damn the odds, damn

the price.

only you can save your

self.

do it! do it!

then you’ll know exactly what

I am talking about.

Charles Bukowski, “Nobody But You” from Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way, 2002

The Last Post … Sort Of

Happy anniversary to me.

I started this blog a year ago today. I wasn’t sure then whether I would successfully make it to today or not. Publication wise.

But I did. I published a post every day of varying quality and length for a whole year.

Mission accomplished.

Do you know the haunting musical lament The Last Post? Usually played on a trumpet and followed by two minutes of silence, it is meant to honor those who lost their lives in the Great War.

It is a standard offering at the annual Canadian Remembrance Day services on November 11th across the country. (Known as Veteran’s Day in the US.)

It is a musical thread of continuity that, when we hear it, can snap us back to a particular time or place.

My strongest memory of The Last Post was hearing it played at my father’s funeral in 2005. A couple of his Legion buddies showed up at the service to pay their respects.

When the eulogy and all other elements of the service had been delivered, to close the ceremony, they played The Last Post to send Dad onwards.

The two minute scratchy trumpet solo was played on a handheld cassette tape player held aloft for better hearing by the gathered mourners. It was both moving and comical.

It could have been a scene in a TV series about an old soldier who had lived and died in the countryside among unsophisticated folk who were salt of the earth. And a touch salty, too, if memory serves.

In the end, all that mattered was that Dad’s old buddies showed up to send him off. The low quality of the recording notwithstanding. They showed respect to an old veteran who had done his bit when called upon to do so.

None of us really knows what happens when we die. It is – outside birth itself – life’s biggest mystery. There is no end of speculation about consciousness continuing after we die. Maybe.

I am inclined to think consciousness does continue in some form even though I have no clue what that form might be. Energy doesn’t die only transmogrifies. (Love that word~!)

Reincarnation and its variants are a preferable alternate to the “once and done” end of life theory that so many realists expound and insist upon with just as little evidence for their certainty.

If we don’t really know anyway, what harm is there in believing the more comforting scenario?And then there is that Ouija board session that utterly convinced me there is another side. That is a story for another time however.

I say farewell today in a similar low-key fashion. No big production or insights to share. Just a wistful sense of gratitude and completion in achieving a goal.

I’ve promised to share posts occasionally going forward as and when moved to do so. If a new writing venture develops, I’ll share that news with you, too.

Next week, I am going to a writing retreat. Today and tomorrow, I will rest and see what fills in the space this blog occupied in my life all this year.

Other than that, no concrete plans. Blessedly.

As with most aspects of life, the future is not completely in my control anyway.

I think I’ll just settle in to enjoy the ride wherever it leads.

Thanks for following along.

I’ll likely pop up in your inbox now and then as promised.

We’ll see what happens next

Maggymac out, with much gratitude for the ride and the company.

Plus One Year’s Eve

Well, folks. I made it. This is my 366th post in a row having officially started writing this blog one year ago tomorrow. Happy anniversary to me.

Funny how anniversaries and life just seem to creep up on you. No fanfare or fireworks. Just progression.

I started this blog as a place to gather my thoughts while I committed to writing a book. There has been a book sitting in me for years, or so I’ve been told. I finally wanted to let it out.

So did that book get written? That depends on how you look at it. I wrote enough copy to fill a book certainly. But the technical aspects of book writing were never brought to bear on this project.

A beginning, middle and end to start. No. I chose to share my thoughts and insights into a range of eclectic topics as they arose or came to my attention. In that sense, I honored my own unfolding process and not a publisher’s checklist.

It has been an opportunity to share wisdom I’ve gleaned over the years through the writings of others.

It has been an opportunity to explore and share where I came from and how I healed from it.

It has given me a chance to publicly grieve the loss and raise up some people I admired.

I have a better sense of what matters to me and what I will no longer tolerate. Peace is top item on the list of goals these days. I have turned my back on drama.

This has not been a journal. I’ve done that before. In journals, I shared my deepest fears and insecurities. I bitched and wailed and generally pursued a story line of “woe is me.” This blog was deliberately something other than that.

I distilled the key learnings and strategies that kept me going on my “woe is me” days. I shared what I did to endure and prevail over “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” I worked at learning to forgive myself.

The gap between intellect and emotion can be vast. Such is the process of learning and growth. All of us seem to be slaves to unconscious programming we work our whole lives to understand and overcome.

I have carved out a little niche. An intellectual mini-garden that I can nurture and visit frequently. I don’t yet know what my next steps are. I will write a final post tomorrow just for the symmetry of ending on the same date I started last year.

I will once again this year attend the Getting Away to Write workshop in New Smyrna Beach, Florida next week. A geographic coda to this writing exercise as I started this blog there last year.

I must thank all of you who subscribed and read what I wrote. The comments were usually spot on. Insightful and helpful. The likes were encouraging and kept me motivated. I’ll pop up again from time to time in your inbox like other bloggers.

It’s time now for coffee and morning meditation. Time to ground myself and prepare for the day. It will be deliberately low-key as most of my days are lately. Such a welcome gift.

I love living this way. Forgiving myself as well as forgiving those who trespassed against me. Marinating in the memories of a lifetime and looking back with gratitude. Enjoying the living environment I’ve created whilst living with someone I love who loves me back.

Above all else, I’m certain that my journey – like a billion other journeys taking place in the world out there at this moment – is but a single cell in the vast corpus of life on our planet. Both unique and utterly ordinary.

Whatever is ahead, I plan to enjoy the remainder of the ride to the best of my ability.

Thank you for sharing part of the journey with me.

Winding Down

Two days to go before my one year blog writing anniversary.

Here’s the most important thing I’ve learned this year.

Sayin’ ain’t doin’. I could wax on about why and when and how I learned this but that is a much longer story. It is a story I have already told in this blog in one form or another.

Basically, it means putting your money where your mouth is. It means, in effect, that words aren’t worth much of anything unless they are followed up by meaningful, demonstrated action.

I play freely in the world of words. They are my friends. They are my guides. They have been my saviors. That may sound like hyperbole, but isn’t.

Had I not had words to capture what I was seeing unfold around me and what I was going through and putting those things down on paper, I am not sure what other outlets I might have found.

Well, I actually do know. When I was younger and not writing as much and devoid of self-esteem, I drank like a fish and regularly ran from pillar to post with the childish conviction that the succor I sought was somewhere “out there.”

It wasn’t. I came from a background of madness and learned a lot about madness and acted out madness. Though I didn’t know at the time that that was what it was. Madness is sneaky that way. It looks a lot like other human behaviors if it exists within accepted social parameters.

Didn’t all of us think at one time or another that slamming down a case of beer or a 26 ounce bottle of hooch was prerequisite for having a “good time”?

Didn’t all of us at one time or another really truly believe that we could “save the world” or at least make a significant contribution that would land us in the history books? Okay. Maybe that was only me.

As you skim these blog posts because a title caught your eye, maybe you picked up a perspective you hadn’t thoought about. Or maybe your own thoughts were validated and made you feel less isolated. Or maybe you realized that your life has significance, too, and is worthy of sharing with others.

I have learned that from reading the blog posts of others. Nurse Patty regularly shares anecdotes and frustrations about her profession. Anthony Robert (whom I think is a marketing guru – forgive me if I got that wrong, Tony) regularly shares witty, succinct insights into life.

Climber Margo Talbot tackles and shares a wide range of healing insights on her occasional posts. Always helpful and enlightening. I skim other blogs once I have established a relationship with the author as someone I admire and appreciate.

In all of these words that I produce and others produce, they are a reflection of living and not life itself. Margo can only write about her relationship with ice because she has been out there doing it and is an integral part of the climbing community. Nurse Patty’s perspective and insights come from caring for actual patients.

And me? I wrote a blog post a day for a year [almost] to see if I had what it took to write a blog post a day for a year. I set out to see if I could write a book. And if I were to write a book, what would I write about, I wondered?

Being a writer is about digging deep for honesty, and truth and integrity and facts. But as I‘ve often said, and gratefully have found other authors who agree with me, I write exclusively for myself. Author/columnist Joan Didion explained that she wrote “to find out what I am thinking.”

I do the same.

Yet, today, when this post is finished and published, I will get up from my chair and reenter my life again. The words I’ve written inform my actions and hold me to account. But I am human and far from perfect. Very far. Still, I have claimed my voice and present it as my own.

There is little to no artifice in what I write these days. I did that to make a living for years. Some pieces I produced were truly cringeworthy. But this blog has felt more like having a chat with chums. A little one-sided, I grant you.

But if we got together in person, you’re likely going to hear more of the same. And that’s a good thing. By reading my blog, you can decide in advance if I am a person you deem worthy or someone you want to stay far, far away from. Either choice is valid.

Much like life after you earn a degree or acquire a trade or other marketable skill, you still need to move forward and apply that learning to real life. It is no use talking about how to make the perfect omelette. The proof, they say, is in the pudding. Or, in this case, the omelette.

We cannot pre-think our daily life much less how it will unfold. Inevitably, there will be surprises and challenges and work that needs to be done every day if we’re lucky. Our value system informs what we do and well, or badly, we do it.

We can never really know for sure. In the end, it comes down to how we feel about how we did and are doing. Whether we are meeting our own goals and honoring our values and standards. That is very individualistic.

I am contemplating all of that at the moment. I accomplished a goal I set for myself [well, I will have in two days’ time]. I found out a lot about what I really think and feel about some subjects.

The other learning I will take away from this daily writing exercise is that I got, and get, to determine, “When is enough.” When you achieve that to your own satisfaction, I’d say you’ve done pretty well.

The Constancy of Nature

It is something of a snickering stereotype among the younger generation. As people get older, their energy often turns more deliberately to pursuits in nature.

I figure there are a bunch of reasons for that. It could be the happy result of having vanquished internal demons and accomplished important life goals. So they get to choose to do what they enjoy doing.

Some may see a turn toward nature in later life as a giving up on society and withdrawing from the world. Maybe. But I prefer to see it as a symptom of acquired wisdom.

All of the important lessons we learn in life are internal. Even if there appear to be others involved. They are merely triggers and tests in human form.

So whether your “opponents” are parents or lovers or children or colleagues or random members of your community, they all have something to teach you.

They won’t necessarily teach you lessons you want to learn. But in my experience, that was never really up to me.

I had to keep taking tests until I passed them. I am hard at work studying for the next one that comes up. As long as we live, they never end.

Another reason I think we start to turn toward nature and natural things is the certainty of it. Put seeds in good earth, water them and they will grow. Either to nourish us as in food or to delight us as in the beauty and form of flowers or shade from a towering tree.

My Aunt Anne wanted to die in an apple orchard. I regret that I was too young and didn’t have the power to make that happen for her. She simply wanted to sit amongst the bounty and take it in the fragrance and beauty of the apples.

I get it. I am feeling a similar pull towards nature though my death is not imminent (as far as I know.) I am feeling a need for simplicity and certitude. There are no great acts of nature that most of us can’t prepare for. Even at her most furious, the cycles of nature are fairly predictable.

We don’t know for sure if the seeds will germinate and grow. We anxiously try to control the conditions for growth with various levels of success. We don’t know when death will put an end to our earthly progress.

But we all know the rules.

Farmers had a deep understanding of nature’s cycles and needs. They lived with those rules. As our lives in the twentieth century moved out of the countryside and into the cities, the rules of living started to change.

The rules of nature did not. We live in a world today where the rules are under constant attack. We are trying to live longer. We are trying to hang on to youth and beauty by more and more extreme methods.

Many people today are painfully self-absorbed. They are drifting farther and farther away from the basics of living. And we are paying the price.

So cleaving closer to nature makes sense to me. It checks a lot of boxes for creating happiness.

I like the puttering, the decision-making, the time in the sun and praying for rain. Time in nature gives me a sense of peace, groundedness and a connection to something greater.

That has a whole lot more appeal to me as a way of being than the artifice of navigating tricky social situations, and workplace politics. It always did.

So maybe it is age that brings on a deeper appreciation for all things in nature. But I think it is simpler than that.

We are – if you buy into the biblical description – made from dust and to dust we will return. Which is as about as simple an explanation of the origins of life as I can come up with.

I will leave a more complex analysis of why and how we got here to younger and more nimble intellects. As for me, I’ll plan to head back to the garden with a cup of tea and uncluttered mind.

Getting Real

I have only a few days left to say whatever I might have been holding back this past year. I’m going through the list to see what I might have missed as issues of note.

I have come to realize I write to stay sane. Was I ever insane? Well, no. Not in a clinically diagnosed sort of way. But I definitely drifted far enough away from the piers of nice North American female normalcy that caused many, and me, to wonder.

I didn’t have you would call a “normal” childhood. At least, I now know what a normal childhood means. A set of parents (or caregivers) who were consistent, available and sober.

Children knowing what bed they were going to sleep in every night. Kids who had a right and got to enjoy their privacy. They could slap a “no boys allowed” sign on their bedroom door and expect it to be respected.

Nope. Didn’t have any of that. So forgive me if you have read all this before. Essential backdrop if you haven’t. My father was an abusive, alcoholic, womanizer. My mom got through the marriage with countless bottles of “Mama’s little helpers.”

No one was there to answer my questions and help me sort out difficult situations. Just as often when I would bring an issue to my mother, I was mocked and invariably silenced. A very dry well.

It wasn’t so much that my parents were not interested in listening. For the most part, it was more that they simply weren’t there. Booze and pills are famous – and relied on – for taking you far, far away from your troubles.

Looking back on my life from this vantage point, I can see what was missing and forgive myself for the things I did to stay alive. The caregiving gaps in my early childhood affected me. What I did to make up for those gaps was rarely what I wanted or needed.

Booze couldn’t take the place of genuine love. Sex was a particularly transient and unsuitable substitute for comfort and belonging. I was a very poor conformist, no doubt partly due to my upbringing.

I never could happily adapt to the 9-5 life. I did one mindless contract after another over the years with the single intention of keeping body and soul together. No joy. no sense of purpose.

I didn’t have the courage to follow my dreams of international photojournalism. I had limited faith in the Universe at that point. My great dream of international media stardom never came to pass.

Truth be told, fame was never a real goal. Most of the time, I was just happy to have the press credentials to get me behind the scenes at a lot of big travel events. The official opening of Disney World’s Chautauqua Institute as one example.

I look back with some bemusement on the doggedness that led me to do a deep dive to see why I landed where I’d landed. I learned a lot. For starters, no man is an island. We are all part of a bigger story. Our people were working-class stock through and through – a fact I believe chagrined my mother.

To compensate for the lack of family pedigree, she imbued her three daughters with an undeserved sense of specialness and entitlement that could never have been sustainable in the real world. Even the best and brightest will falter and fail to thrive without safety and careful sensible nurture.

What I realize today is that above all else, I needed stability and safety to grow. I am only just finding it in my life. The stability gap between my life today and where I came from is vast.

In retrospect, mine was a story of survival that grew into eventual stability. It is not the sexiest script out there, I realize. But it is mine.

From the age of fifteen, I tried to find the source of my constant emotional discomfort and deep insecurities. I swung from one vine on the healing path to the next and the next.

I learned a lot along the way, including the importance of my famous catchphrase, “sayin’ ain’t doin’.” There is lots and lots of talking in the world. Backing up what people often say with action, however, is just not as common.

So this year of daily writing has been about seeking answers and finding my own authenticity. What matters to me and what most emphatically doesn’t.

It has caused me to look back on many of the roles and work I tried on just to get by. Some of it was ridiculous. A lot of life is actually if we give it a hard look.

Now I am planning the next phase. The final one. And mentally exploring what I think I want to do and where I might go one day.

I now have the time now to pursue any dormant passions. I have cleared most of the interfering childhood crud out of my psyche.

The future beckons and is also right in front of me.

Armed with my emerging sense of a solid self, I say, “Bring it on.”

Make Up Your Own Mind

I wrote something exactly like the excerpt below lately. Being an adult means thinking for yourself. And acting on what you actually think. Not what wins you a popularity prize.

So I was pleased to stumble across this quote from Erich Fromm that validates my point of view.

We are all saturated in the cultural and familial ambitions we were raised in. For many, life becomes a series of dutifully and somewhat mindlessly following in someone else’s footsteps. Either by choice or by gentle – and not so gentle – coercion. “My son, the doctor!!”

It is one of life’s great ironies that we accept as real that which we learn from our environment. And more, we come to believe that we are making choices and decisions on our own. While we are conforming to beat the band.

“We”, in effect, become “they.” We believe what “they’ believe. We do – in the main – what “they” do. We think what “they” think. Or close enough to it to keep our membership viable at any one of a number of social settings.

I always had trouble with this way of thinking personally. I think a lot of current North American values simply suck. Inequities always jumped out at me. The stacked deck that shapes the lives of the rich and the not so rich.

The easy intercourse of hatred between different groups. The worship of money and raising its value above all else. Even, and especially, above human dignity and integrity.

Nikki Haley famously quoted Margaret Thatcher on the occasion of her withdrawal from the 2024 US Presidential race: “Never just follow the crowd. Always make up your own mind.” 

That’s a tall order these days as pressure to conform and consequences for not doing so are predominant.

Still, it is important to remind ourselves of our individual power and our own ability to work through a problem or issue and come up with our own conclusion.

So sayeth Erich Fromm. And fittingly on International Women’s day today, so does former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Thatcher wasn’t known for mincing her words or pulling punches. A great female role model for our time.

Most people are convinced that as long as they are not overtly forced to do something by an outside power, their decisions are theirs, and that if they want something, it is they who want it.

But this is one of the great illusions we have about ourselves.

A great number of our decisions are not really our own but are suggested to us from the outside.

We have succeeded in persuading ourselves that it is we who have made the decision, whereas we have actually conformed with expectations of others, driven by the fear of isolation and by more direct threats to our life, freedom, and comfort.

Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom [ad] https://amzn.to/438Pn3g

Happy International Women’s Day!

The Universe

Funny isn’t it, how concepts creep into our parlance?

“Gifts from the Universe,” is one.

I get the theory of energetic interconnectivity between all living things.

I get the theory that our planet is just one heaving, breathing, undulating organism trying to stay in balance like the rest of us who are temporarily parked here.

Vague platitudes – if that is what they are – are comforting. Or can be. Sort of.

“Everything happens for a reason.” “Nature leans towards balance and harmony.” “That was an unexpected gift from the Universe.” “We can do hard things.”

I have had more gifts from the Universe in my life than I can count. For that, I am grateful. And I feel so undeserving. Ergo, the gratitude.

With this post today, I am exactly one week away from the one year anniversary of starting this blog. That’s significant to me. A goal achieved. A target hit. Barring any unfortunate developments over the next seven days.

I have been wondering internally and on these pages, what’s next? I have committed to hanging up my computer keyboard for a while and taking a break. Airing out the brain cells, Maybe seeking out some new inspiration.

So when an email invitation arrived last night, I was as bemused as I was surprised. Peter Murphy, founder of the Murphy School of writing at Stockton University in New Jersey, was writing with a proposition.

“Would you consider coming to the annual weeklong Florida “Get Away to Write” workshop that starts on March 19th?” he wrote. There are still places available and he added a financial sweetener.

It was at the Get Away to Write workshop in New Smyrna Beach, Florida on March 14, 2023 that I started this blog writing exercise.

I like the implication of coming full circle by attending this year. It is almost as if I had been assigned a yearlong research project. Now I can attend again this year and report on what I learned from that exercise.

This time I will be able to take part in the memoir session. It was fully subscribed last year and I attended the retreat as an independent writer. Whether the memoir I set out to write when I signed up last year, or another memoir emerges, only time will tell.

If nothing else, the writing flame within me continues to be fanned. Which is how creativity works in my experience. Slow and steady regular effort prevails over intermittent flashes of brilliance and insight. Much like life.

There are good writing days and there are bad writing days.

So yes, I’ll go to this writing workshop if the stars align. Not sure what that means or what it would take. Surmounting entropy likely.

But my calendar that week is clear. Hubby says he’ll come with. As an end of blogging for one full year celebration, five days in a setting with other creative people at an arts retreat center set in a jungle in a charming Southern oceanside town may be just what the doctor ordered.

Or the Universe.