This week: Of Strokes and Writing: There IS a Link! Edited by: fyn  
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Writing means sharing. It's part of the human condition to want to share things - thoughts, ideas, opinions. ~~Paulo Coelho
Writing, to me, is like kayaking a river. You are paddling down, and you come to a walled-off canyon, and you make a sharp turn, and you don't know what's around the corner. It could be a waterfall, it could be a big pool. The narrative current carries you. You're surprised, and you're thrilled, and sometimes you're terrified. ~~Peter Heller
Writing is like a 'lust,' or like 'scratching when you itch.' Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I, for one, must get it out. ~~C. S. Lewis
Life throws surprises, sorrows, sadness, and hardship, and I think that writing has actually grounded me. It kept me grounded when everything else was falling apart.~~ Sandra Brown
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Any time one is dealing with ( yourself or a loved one) a stroke or cancer or any of the insidious diseases that rampage through a life, it has a tendency to take over. It (and its accompanying detritus - therapy, meds, stress, doctors, innumerable 'what ifs' and the changes all of these things bring) becomes the focus. Everything else seems to fall by the wayside until you reach a point where you forget little things like getting milk or sitting in the sun or taking the dog for a walk. The world becomes a narrow, small, place with incredibly high walls, no windows, and worse, no doors.
Recently our lives (my husband's and mine) have become enmeshed in speech and occupational therapies, innumerable exercises he must do (and I must encourage, cheer on or push and shove for him to do), doctor's appointments, missed deadlines, an ever-growing pile of medical bills and a total change how my sixty-seven year old husband (and me too, because it is simpler) eats. As he put it, he ate rabbit food, took meds, did therapy, took his blood pressure, did his home exercises, took meds and then hit repeat. He wanted to be playing his drums, eating ice cream, mowing the lawn, fixing the truck or taking down the tree that needs to come down. Add the frustration of a normally super active guy being forced to take it easy to the mix.
The concepts of baby steps, one day at a time, reminding his thick-skulled head about muscle memory: these meant his thinking about what he always does and did that now takes focus and thought. The blood pressure machine keeps track of each time he takes it. (It is so we know should it skyrocket or something.) He interrupts me every time to tall me what it is. (Like I don't check the readouts!) He tells me each time he does one of his (seriously) 146 different therapy exercises. He comes in to complain (yet again) that rabbit food is for rabbits or that he will not, repeat, NOT eat kale or noodles made from cauliflower. <---Both of which he has, indeed, been eating, but are well disguised and he hasn't figured it out yet! He will come in to tell me that he'd MUCH PREFER to be eating a bowl of ice cream or chips to a small handful of nuts, or a tiny bowl of 'pseudo-ice cream made from coconut milk.
Meanwhile, I'm terrified when he leaves the house, can't focus when I can work uninterrupted and sleep seems to have vanished over the horizon.
This weekend, we took a break. We went to Home Depot. He was happy slowly wandering the store. We got away from everything. So he's wandering down an aisle where there are bins of screws, nails, bolts and washers and realizes that there are nails in the screw bins and washers in with the bolts. He spent fifteen minutes fishing out the intruders and popping them back where they belonged. "Look, I can pick up the individual nails and screws!" Therapy is where you find it, I guess. He was happy, so who am I to complain?
My mind was on writing a newsletter, several edits I need to finish, reviews I am so late on and it made me think. One thing was a friend of mine who can't seem to get back into writing - whether something new or finishing up her last book or, (Horrors!!) writing the blurb for the book she finished.
She and I need to narrow our focuses. (foci?) Regardless of the whys and wherefores surrounding a task, we need to focus. Step One: One step at a time. If the whole of something seems overwhelming, break it down into sections. Repeat step one! One review. One paragraph. One stretching exercise. One chapter edited.
Perspectives: Something isn't a stumbling block. They do not exist. Instead, think of something as a stepping stone to something/place else.
Failures are an option. Triumph is just some extra UMPH added to TRY. A failure is simply an opportunity to begin or try again. The world will not end if a word is mispronounced or a review isn't brilliant!
Revision is an exercise in making something, anything (!) better. Writing or rattling off tongue twisters. He could never run through 'Peter Piper picked … before, but he can now! Then again, the peasant one is hilarious. It should be "I'm not a pheasant plucker, I'm a pheasant plucker's son and I'll sit here plucking pheasants till the pheasant plucker comes!" Go ahead. Try THAT three times fast! I think he screws it up on purpose, but it sure is funny!
Which leads to another thing I've learned. (Well, I knew it already, but think about it more these days!) Laugh. Laughter has got to be one of the world's best stress busters! Writing isn't going well? Turn it inside out and try from a different direction. Just as there is more than one way to hold a drumstick, there are multiple ways to approach any problem. When one way doesn't work, chances are the second or third way will. Besides, no one is keeping track! There is no score card! (Yes, I know … except for the ones we, ourselves, keep.) Well then, throw them away!
Keep on keeping on. In other words, giving up is the only nonacceptable action. No one ever learned to ride a unicyle the first time they climbed on, could play 'Wipe Out!' blindfolded the first or the fifteenth time they tried, or write the perfect paragraph without much revision. Life changes whether or not we want it to, whether or not we accept that fact or whether or not we are ready for it to change. The only thing we can control is how we deal with those changes, how we adapt to them and, most importantly, how we move forward.
Shortly before heading downstairs to do, as he put it, drum therapy, my husband told me to feel free to listen, just don't listen too hard; he was quite sure a deaf person would be able to tell when he screwed up. I responded by saying that at his worst it was massively better than anything I could do on them. But that I knew he'd eventually get as good as he was going to get at 'getting it back' and that would have to suffice. Keep on keeping on.
Aren't most things in life a simple matter of practice? Revision, Trying a new way, Adapting? Keeping on? Anyone can learn the differences between its and it's. Or the correct usages of they're, there and their. Just memorization. Anything worth doing is worth doing well. To the best of our abilities. And that takes practice, some old-fashioned gumption and a bunch of tenacity. And, as my hubby said, "I'm a drummer. I need to drum. Good, bad or indifferent, I need to play." I need to write. Same goes. Then we had a good giggle! |
I'm a big fan of using the 'real' and incorporating it in fiction. Here are some nonfiction tales that one day may be a part of someone's fiction!
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#2193982 by Not Available. |
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#2190257 by Not Available. |
| | BLAVATSKY'S BUS (E)
Inspired by Carl Sagan, a personal journey that had stimulated the core of my psyche
#1676003 by DRSmith  |
|  | Trunk (E)
True title is My Grandmother's Grandfather's Trunk
#947871 by fyn |
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LBova  says: When I read the first entry about Memorial Day, I understood the pride the author felt about veterans. After all, my father and my mother were veterans of WWII. However, I grew up during the Vietnam War and saw most of my friends come back in body bags. These young men did not choose to fight, they were drafted. The Vietnam War was a useless war and now I question every war we have been involved in. I know WWII was necessary to stop Hitler, but I don't understand all the wars we are now involved in.
It has been my experience that there will always be those who will question or flat out disagree with any war fought. I appreciate the arguments against the Vietnam war/draft. We each have our personal reasons for supporting or not supporting. As a veteran, myself, my take might be very different from others in that I believe that one should be willing to fight to support and defend their country. But that's just me. Part of what makes America great is the freedom to disagree! :) |
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For Authors: June 26, 2019 Issue [#9624]
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