Writing Classes and Reading

I read a book last night, a light quick read.  I found every
mistake the author made.  Passive voice.  Omniscient
POV.  Way too much telling, very little showing.  Not
enough dialogue, and the dialogue that was present was
strained, forced.  Characters too one-dimensional.
Secondary characters, under-developed.  Switching from
one part of story to another without warning the reader
which resulted in my going back and trying to locate what
I had missed, but there was not indication that the main
character had switched locations (drastically, as in countries)
or that 4 months had passed.

All these classes I have been taking at SavvyAuthor.com has
enabled to see and accurately describe what is wrong with a
piece of writing--including my own. This has resulted in more
professional writing on my part.


Kate Thorn

Word Clouds

I was working on my word cloud page last night.  The focus
was on emotions--the first being anger.  OK, I confess  I am
working my way through Ann Hood's book Creating
Character Emotions.  Since the first emotion dealt with was
anger, that was where I started.  I had just finished with it,
re-read it for accuracy--and forgot to save or publish.
A post is automatically saved.  But when you hit edit to add
content to an existing page, it is not saved.  So the content
was gone, forever.

This morning I am re-doing my exercise.  Just a reminder
for those who add pages and want an endless supply.
Color me content greedy, but I intend this to be more
than just a blog, also a resource for ideas, words, and
quotes.  Since it is steady raining this morning,
perhaps, I may add more emotions than I first thought.

Kate Thorn

Roadblocks in Creativity

Recently I became stuck while writing on my series.  I was in
the middle of an emotional quandary; for me those are usually
the easiest for me to write.  Not this time.  I continued with my
work on re-writing.

Then one day after writing in my morning blog--the reason hit
me like a ton of bricks.  It wasn't the book that was stuck.  I
was on the edge of realizing some uncomfortable details about
myself,  personal issues that I had not faced or even realized
prior to this time.

How did I become unstuck?  My main character is working
through all this now--bless her heart.  She had enough issues
without taking on one of mine, but it fit perfectly.

People write books, and, unless non-fiction, instill parts of
themselves within the pages.  The more you know about
yourself, the more balanced your book will be. Great tragedy
can reveal great inner strength and a strong character.

Kate Thorn

Loving Life and Mindfulness

I love life--all of it,not just some of it.  I love the birds as
they sing their morning songs and wake me up.  I love
trees, flowers, green grass.  I love storms, rain, and
snow.

So I just love life. And one of my writer acquaintainces
recently died  suddenly of Lou Gehrig's diease. He had about
three weeks from diagnosis to death--which is unusually fast.
Another writer friend posted some links to his site--and he
had become a Buddhist in recent years.  A vegetarian.
And he wrote that on his last physical that his doctor said
his vegetarian diet had lowered his blood pressure and
reduced his cholesterol level.  He remarked that he felt
the best he ever had.

That was the first spark, because I really do not even
like meat.  Once in a great while I will actually enjoy it,
but I had rather have salads, pasta, and veggies.

The second spark was from my daughter--it was more
of a fire really.  She related a story of helping her
husband kill some roosters--for the feathers to use
in crafting flies for fly-fishing.  I flew hot then. To kill
needlessly, cruelly, with no thought for the creature--
well, I was furious.  And she claims to be a vege-
tarian.  She is just a picky eater--no true vege-
tarian would take part in such an act.  And suddenly,
I knew I was giving up meat and becoming an herb-
ivore.

I have been reading quotes from Zen sites.  Three,
in particular resonated within me. I will share them
here:

1--"Love is, above all, the gift of oneself."--Anouith

2--"My life is a series of defining moments."

3--"Miracles take us beyond the limitations of our
      thinking."

Thus far, those are so very applicable to my life.  It
has been a roller coaster ride at times, but a very
definite adventure in learning.  Miracles are words
to some people; I have seen then throughout my
nursing career.  These events have changed my
viewpoints, my philosophy of myself and of my life.


Kate Thorn

Connectivity and Resulting Actions

Trying to write without being around people at certain times
is not possible for me. It is not a connection with friends so
much that I seek, but that with strangers.  Each person I
meet has a story, or more than one. to tell.This interaction
of exchanging information and personal stories takes less
time than one might realize, but later,when writing, small
details leak into dialog and character traits--all provided
freely by random strangers and connecting with them for
ten to twenty minutes.

I am gifted to have recall of conversations verbatim-
without writing them down.  Sometimes I do write the
where, how, and when--and even the actual dialog
between myself and another, but usually my mind retains
even those conversations I would choose to forget.  On
a humorous note, I can never remember jokes--even
when I write them down, I really flop on the delivery.
I would starve as a stand up comedian--no, they would
ask to take a seat in the audience.

I was at the library and met two interesting people,  the
first, a woman doing research on autism and non-profit
groups.  The second was a man I met while hunting
the stacks for books-he and I had a lengthy conversation
dealing with crimes and research.  His name was Gerald
and her name was Molly.  It was a very spontaneous type
conversation with each.  I came home with ideas swirling
through my head--and isn't  that what creativity is all
about?  Ideas?

I remember a quote from a friend in the 60's:  "Ideas
won't keep; something must be done about them."
--Whitehead.

This was said to me by an older friend who was in
college who I have lost and am still trying to re-locate
after this so-many years.  She was friends with another
friend during that same time period.  There were in
college; I was a Senior in High School, only 17 at the
time.  The second friend and I were closer; we had made
plans to go shopping one Saturday.  I called her back, and
her father answered.  He was out of breath, said he was
mowing the yard, and Jerri (my friend) had already left for
Winston Salem, so we must have got our wires crossed.
He told me that Jerri would be back by 12:00.  I said I would
call her back then.   I hung up the telephone.  At 12:00 and
1:00 there was an answer.  At 2:00 I reach Jerri--and learned
that her father had a heart attack in the chair where he
sat while talking to me on the telephone.  And she was
distraught.  I had no words of usefulness to offer.
Emotionally, I was still a teenager doing my best to
figure out me and my place in the world. The friendship
ended because of this event, not right away, but
within six months.  She blamed my phonecall for her
father's death.  Having worked as a cardiac most of
entire nursing career, I know now his coming in the
house to answer the phone was not the cause.  But
she never knew about my nursing career. The
friendship ended over that phonecall.  Definitely never
forgotten.  Nor was the conversations afterwards.

Kate Thorn

Nature

Nature is a fabulous source of inspiration with a rich color
palette man can but hope to imitate.  I was recently at the
coast of North Carolina with an oceanfront room.  I
watched and studied the ocean a great deal.  There is a
sense of timelessness about the ocean.  Never fails to
comfort my mind and spirit.  One day it was sunny with a
wide array of blues and shimmering golds and silvers
splashed on the waves. The next day was cloudy, even
foggy at times.  One would think that would not have
been an exceptional day, but it was more so than the
previous one.  I have never seen that many shades of
gray.  There was one time, that only lasted, perhaps, 15
minutes--but what a 15 minutes.  The ocean appeared
more like a drawing done in charcoals than a real life ocean.
I took pictures, but I don't think they could even capture the
essence.  I would watch it change every 10 minutes or so;
it was difficult to leave the ocean to go for lunch. 

I have been so many beautiful places, so I have decided to
devote an entire blog just to my travels and communion with
nature.  Nature is definitely a cornerstone of my creative
process.  The most intense experiences with nature occurred
in the Mohave Desert, by most people's standards, a most bleak
place.  The desert taught me about strength of spirit, about
how we need no one but ourselves.  Only a whisper of a light
sprinkle of rain and the desert would burst forth in bloom. It
was amazing to see, but even more amazing was the visual
lesson that taught me that all we need to grow and flourish
is within us.  We do not need money, things, homes, or
relationships.  Everything we need is given to us at birth.
Learning that so simple but difficult lesson took me to my
mid-forties.  It required leaving everything I knew and held
dear to my heart and somehow ending up in one of the most
desolate dessert the US knows.  It was there, along with the
desert, and a friendship with a very wise Navajo medicine
woman, that I flourished, bloomed, and grew.

Even now, when great difficulties seem insurmountable,
the lessons of the dessert come back to me, and I am
assured that everything will be OK, that whatever is
happening in my life is for a reason, a positive reason,
no matter how unlikely a positive outcome seems
possible,  The cactus have no worries in regard to rain;
they are assured it will come, and when it does, leaves
and flowers appear in the cactus and express their
joy and appreciation.  Listening to the cactus lessons
should be mandatory.  Those lessons leave one forever
changed.


Kate Thorn

Changing Habits and Increasing Creativity

Changing habits is not an easy thing to accomplish.
In fact, initially, one sets out positively to eradicate all
habits not deemed as positive.  By doing this, that very
desire ends up being the roadblock to completion.  It is
difficult to change just one habit.  When trying to change
many simultaneously wheels will spin in frustration.

I once worked with an individual who made a quiet and
private decision to lose weight.  She laid out a personal
plan to achieve this goal.  She told no one.  She brought
her lunch in from home and no longer ate at the cafeteria. 
No one really noticed the differences; she did
not advertise her plan.  It was one year later when I
commented, "You've lost weight."  She had lost 50 pounds,
gave all her larger size clothes away, and continued to eat
healthy.

Habits are part of the way we have come to adapt to the
world around us.  Some habits are decidedly positive; some
are very much counter-productive to our goals.

Habits are not who we are.  They were put in place by each
person for specific reasons, and each person has the power
to change or eradicate a habit.  Pretend you have a list of all
your habits, positive and negative.  And all you have to do was
drag and drop these habits--habits to keep, habits to delete.
But if only it was that easy.

Starting with one habit is not overwhelming, but even just one
change demands a daily commitment to that change.

There is a book, that can be found on Amazon--Change One
Habit, Change Your Life.  Embarrassingly, I neglected to write
the author's name down.

Creativity requires certain habits, certain nurturing.  Besides a
morning blog, I endeavor to begin the day with positive
quotes. In closing of this post, I am going to share some of
these with you.

---------------------------------------------------------------

"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity."------A.  Einstein


"We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence,  then, is not an act, but a habit."--  Aristotle


"A stong positive attitude will create more miracles than any wonder drug.--Patricia Neal


"Worry does not empty tommow of sorrow.  It empties today of its strength."--Corrie Ten Boom


"Treasure this day and treasure yourself.  Truly, neither will ever happen again."--Ray Bradbury


Kate Thorn