Understanding

Understanding. Do you understand? How often do ask that question. After giving instructions,

perhaps after sharing how we feel about something.

Do we understand?

We have to understand what we are trying to say in order for the person we are talking to understands our point

of view. Sometimes they have to understand what we aren’t saying as much as what we are.

When writing you have to understand the point you are making or the character you are creating so well, that we get what you are saying as well as what you are not.

We misunderstand when we are in our own minds relating it to what happened to us or what we think will happen to us or what we want to happen.

Say, you have a character trying to tell their spouse they are pregnant. She says all the usual things trying to bring to to mind the fact that she is talking about a baby. Their baby. The spouse hears all the hints and blurts out, ” We’re getting a getting a dog!”

This happened because his book was on the wrong page.

Her book didn’t take into account where was in his book.

When you write make sure you know where you are and where you want to take your character. You also have to think of your readers. Will they make the leap with you or will they think they are getting a dog?

One of the ways to make sure they leap with you is to set the stage by taking them with the lady maybe to the doctor or looking at baby clothes or maybe even telling her best friend before she tells her spouse.

Wherever you take your story, try to make it clear where you want them to be. Where you want them to be may very well be getting the dog, especially if you are trying have a funny moment.

In understanding our story, we help our readers understand our mind, just a little.

Do You Keep Your Promises?

We promise all kinds of things: to be at a child’s performance; to be home for dinner: to finish what we start.

How are you doing with promises to yourself? Do you keep them? Do you come up with reasons/excuses as to why you haven’t kept them?

What about that glorious promise to yourself that you will write a novel? Or failing that that you will write 50 words a day or 500 or 1000?

I am not keeping my promise to myself on a regular basis. Why? Because I don’t care. Or so it would seem. If I cared, wouldn’t I keep it?

Oh, I keep it for a few days and then something happens, I don’t feel like it or company arrives or a rerun sounds way more inviting.

I promised myself I would write a blogpost everyday. Well, five out of ten ain’t bad.

Maybe.

The point is I didn’t keep my promise. I am trying to figure out why.

The only thing that makes sense is I let other things take its place.

What kind of things keep you from following through on your promise to write?

I seem to not have my tools at hand when it feels like a good time to write, like when hubby is putting his puzzle together, I am not allowed to help or touch, and the tv is on, I could write. But I don’t.

I will make a promise here, to all of you that I will write a post everyday. Some days will be short and some will be long and rambly.

Come back and see if I keep my promise. Maybe knowing that at least one of you will check back will keep me honest and on point.

Finally Friday

What does that mean to you? To most it means a cessation of work and freedom weekend. No getting up early, no dashing for plane, train or automobile to get where you need to be and finally, you can do what you want.

We think that is what we are getting when we grow up. And when we become our own boss.

We forget that there are still must dos in life. We need income to live, so one of the biggest must dos is how do I do that? Am I going to take any job and make do or do I want to write? If you want to write you may have to take a job that you hate to have the support while you write. And then you need to decide where writing fits.

Is writing a must do or a do when I find a big chunk of time when I can do 1000 words at one time? Most writing is done in bits and pieces. The habit comes from doing so many words a day rather than so many words in an hour, because seconds and minutes are easier to find than hours in your day.

You have to decide how you are going to handle your writing. If it is a when I find the time, then don’t worry about how much you write. Just write when you. Or when you think of it. Don’t expect to make money with it if this is your attitude about it.

If it is a must do because you love it and you want to get your words out there and make money with it, you have to DO it.

Get up early before everyone and everything starts the day. Stay up late and do it after everyone is asleep, or at least in bed.

Educate yourself on writing. On reading. And how to put together a story.

All writing is story telling, whether fiction, non-fiction, or poetry. It has a beginning, middle and end. You need to learn how to do it.

Some of us wait till “finally Friday” to do this. Some of us do it in seconds, minutes and hours whenever and wherever we find them.

Memories

I should have said remembering.

I have a problem with that sometimes. Remembering to take the time to write.

Remembering how to get into my blog.

Remembering what day it is.

I am trying to get in the habit of blogging everyday. It is something new to me. I have blogged on a weekly time frame. And I have done a monthly one.

Since I was away from blogging for a while on any consistent level, I will do the daily thing.

Writing takes more than a thought of doing it.

You have to do it.

You have to remember to come up with an idea to write about. What you are going to say about that idea and decide if the idea can be fleshed out enough to be a blog post.

It really doesn’t have to be very fleshy to be good. Just solid.

Do you have trouble remembering to do something? Anything? Like taking your medicine, doing your exercises, or even fixing something to eat?

I have no problem with medicines. I have a husband who sees to it we take them in morning, religiously. I have some I have to take at night. Again, he sees to it.

Exercises are a little dicier, because I don’t like them. However, I have just had a knee replacement and the exercises are

imperative. If you don’t do them recovery is longer and perhaps, not as good.

So, I am making my writing imperative for my good.

Come join me on my journey to a good habit of writing.

Finding Time

There never seems to be enough time.

Time to cook. Time to pray. Time to write.

You cook when you have to.

You pray constantly, whether a full fledged stop and pray or a short Thank you.

You write ALL THE TIME.

That sounds wrong. It isn’t. Writing is not just putting the words on the paper in a coherent manner. It is thinking it through before you write. Thinking it through may only be a thought, “I need to write that down” and writing as the ideas come. Whether you are in front of your computer or tablet or paper and pen.

You have to do it consistently. Either at a designated set aside time everyday, or taking the time out of the middle of the day to put down that annoying idea that keeps knocking on your door. They don’t all knock. Some of them come running through and you have to capture them where you are. So, always be ready to throw the net.

While sitting down to eat in the park, or in your favorite restaurant you see a man with his head down shoveling in his food and you wonder why. Take out your pad and pen and write it down. Your character may need that stance sometime and now you know what it looks like from the outside and you can supply the inside his head portion when you write his story.

The pandemic has been hard on writers, creatives in general, because we need people to populate our ideas. We don’t need to talk to them, but we need to see them. See how they greet, how they eat and how they look.

We write to bring a different perspective to life. Right now we all have the same perspective: surviving. In the past you could call a friend and say man, what a day. The kids tore the carpet up in the bedroom, the stool over flowed and the dog got out. You would get commiseration from friend and a help to get through it. Now, we all have the same thing: no toilet paper to buy, is that cough Covid, how do I live in isolation? It is better, but the spectrum of EVERYONE getting Covid is wherever you go.

Writing something totally unrelated to that fear is what we need to do. Go inside yourself and dig deep. What fear is really keeping you up at night? Fear is what we all share. We fear we will never go back to a time when we freely gather together and hug and laugh, even with strangers.

Write about that fear. What it looks like. What it feels like. Put it in the protagonist’s way. Is that fear of the snakes in the cave that Indiana Jones has to jump across? Is it the fear of climbing the shear face of the mountain to get to the child hanging above you?

So, what fear drives your story?

Writing

I have been not writing for no known reason, other than I didn’t. I woke up this morning with something on my mind, and as these things happen, when I went to write there was nothing on my mind.

I had totally lost my thought.

The thing to do in that case is to write what comes.

I went out for a stroll around my yard and weeded a flower bed, said hello to my morning glories. I have discovered that I have two colors of morning glories. You never know how morning glories will make your morning glorious.

I talked to my tomatoes. We have only about five plants, but they are glorious this year. We have such a problem growing them to any size. The plants get big, but we only get cherry tomatoes. We don’t plant cherry tomatoes, but that is the size of our Big Boys! Maybe this is the year of the big tomato.

We have wild flowers in that bed I weeded, and we thought they would return every year. Will today I discovered that they are returning. Just a bit late. It is late July. It may be their usual time and we are just impatient.

Strolling may not seem unusual or cool to most of you, but in the last year or so I have had both knees replaced and I live in the Ozark Mountains, which means, level ground does not exist except in places where they have scraped it level!

So, strolling by myself, is a treat. I am getting stronger, and braver everyday. If you have never been sick or impaired for a period of time, you may not understand the bravery it takes to do the most ordinary things. When I got to the point of going up stairs like normal, I made it to the top and pumped my fist in victory. My knee was still in the same place, not bent in the opposite direction, nor was my leg pointing my foot to my backside. Good time all around.

After taking a time away from my writing it has taken a lot of bravery to write this.

This may not seem a piece on writing, but what I hope you get from this, is write what comes and write what you know.

Just write.

Getting Back to It

Sometimes it just seems you have to take the bull by the horns and get back to it.

I have left my readers in the lurch recently, and I am about to change that, by getting back to it.

It is so hard to go back to something. New seems better. More fun. And you don’t have to worry about what you have done, because it is all new. Don’t have to try to do better or hipper or sweeter. Just do it.

When you have been away from something you have to relearn how you did it, or if you want to learn how you did it.

This is a blog about nothing and everything.

That is why I named it Somethings on My Mind. Sometimes it is with an apostrophe and some times it is plural.

Christmas has been on my mind lately, as I am sure it has been on yours.

Do you end it on Christmas evening and take down all the decorations and put away the new toys and gifts? Or are you like us and let it linger for a few days? We don’t let it stay through Epiphany all the time, but close. It just seems like we should take some time and let the Christ child enter in. Now that all the hoopla is over and done with, we can enjoy the sparkle of the new toy, whether toy truck or new computer. We can figure out if we are smarter than the average bear when putting the toy or computer through it’s paces.

Mostly we will learn that we have to learn. The computer will be different from the one you are used to. It will still have the same parts, but NOTHING will be in the same place.

The toy truck will have the requisite wheels and maybe a power switch, but it will have added things: like a dump bed, or working lights. The fun is in the trying out of all these things and discovering why we like them.

Here is to a New Year of trying and accomplishing. Whether they are new or just different.

Sadness

Today is ringed in sadness.

We had some young friends give birth to a set of premie twin girls a little over two weeks ago. One of them has struggled with brain bleed, bowel problems, breathing problems and being able to tolerate her mother’s milk.

Today, her earthly struggles ended and she went to be with Jesus.

Being a Christian doesn’t mean you won’t have pain, loss or depression. You will. You just have someone you believe in that can see you through all that.

I believe he puts people in our path to help us through all these things. They are also there to rejoice in the fact that, in this case, they still have a daughter to hold and love and watch. Prayers are that she continues to improve.

Have you been through a loss? How did you get through it?

Going through a loss is the only way, there is no getting over it, you just get through it and go on.

Thank you for reading.

Vacation

Vacation: A respite; rest

I have been in a rest period of writing. Resting meaning I haven’t been doing it. I have taken a respite from thinking about it, talking about it and doing it.

In so doing, I have found I miss it. I miss the feeling of putting in words my thoughts. Now, sometimes, they need to be unsaid or deleted. I can’t unsay them, but I can unwrite them.

I have returned to this vocation from a vacation and hopefully will find joy and enjoyment in doing it again.

Vacation is over and I am listening to the much needed rain pattering on my roof, enjoying it and knowing that in every life rain must fall. When it falls on the trees, grass and flowers something beautiful happens. They green up and get beautiful.

When rain falls in our lives, it sometimes feels bitter rather than better, but it washes away the unnecessary and lets us see the real. The beautiful in our lives. Sometimes we have to have a vacation and a storm to let us see what is important to us and see the path to that thing.

I learned that to get better at something, you have to do it. Not just once, but many, many times. The more words you put down the easier it is to put them down. You become less censorious it seems. You will still think it all stinks, but you will leave more standing and less in the delete column as time goes on. It is for me, anyway.

I make greeting cards and write the verses. I have found that the more I make the less likely I am to just toss it all to the side and declare it trash. I find it harder to throw away my cards than to delete my writing. I practice my words on throw away paper and don’t do my art until I am pretty sure what the words will be.

All of the words thus far are leading up to this: Please take the time to go through the storms, enjoy the vacation and come back ready to take up the path that is revealed.st

Hearing Aids, Part II

I have finally gotten my aids to full power or to goal as the lady said. I didn’t know that at each appointment to up the percentage would take me to new worlds of sound and sometimes wish I had taken them out or covered the mics in them. And then I would settle down and enjoy being able to hear my daughter talk to me from the other room without her shouting.

I love them. I love that I can understand what people are saying to me from across the table in the restaurant.

I can tell you that with hearing better comes the necessity of LISTENING better. When you aren’t sure what someone has said you either smile and nod or just tune in to someone next to you and don’t listen to the other person.

Now, you know someone is talking to you and you need to listen to what they are saying. I have read hundreds of words on being an attentive listener, and thought I was. Now, I know I might not have been.

I will try to listen better and be more attentive.

Hear is to be better listening.