Snippets

By -
Last night, for Family Night, Meg chose watching family videos for the activity. Instead of watching one of our favorites - like Meg eating seaweed at Carlsbad beach - we watched a disc we've never watched before... one that only has videos from our old picture camera. These were videos that I usually took instead of Justin, and rather than documenting vacations or birthdays they showed little tiny moments from our past. Ellie dancing in the kitchen. Meg throwing towels at her sister. Grant learning to roll over.  It made me smile to remember these moments, and made me wonder which moments from today I'll soon forget. Like Spencer kissing my big fat pregnant tummy and then saying in a happy, wishful tone: "doggy," or Grant declaring - when I asked what he wanted for lunch - McDonalds! - even though we were home and his options were peanut butter or cheese tortillas.  Time slips by quickly, and there is no catching it. I am glad there are opportunities to remember.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Le Guin Writing Exercises #3 - Sentence Length

By -
*I have been reading Ursula Le Guin's book Steering the Craft and completing the exercises here to give myself some accountability.

Ursula Le Guin's Third Exercise - Sentence Length Practice

In this exercise, the writer is asked to write one paragraph with many small sentences (no longer than seven words, no sentence fragments), and one paragraph made up entirely of one sentence. Different versions of the exercise are offered including:

1. Using the same topic for both pieces.
2. Using different topics for each piece.
3. Using topics meant to be fast paced for both short and long sentences and seeing what changes.
4. Using topics meant to be slow paced for both short and long sentences and seeing what changes.

I plan on using the same topic. The topic I will use is from @anndeecandy's Instagram account giving memoir prompts. I will turn my memoir prompt into a fiction prompt and use it for this exercise. This particular prompt asks the writer to address the idea of growing…
Read more

Le Guin Writing Exercises #5 - Chastity with Adverbs and Adjectives

By -
Image
August has been my month of painting. We are changing our kitchen, and my job has been to make our oak cabinets into grey cabinets. Every afternoon, in the time I normally use for writing, I paint. the color is Dorian Gray... so at least I'm keeping the literary mode. I told myself I would paint for all of August, and then, no matter how far I'd gotten, I'd be done.













Let me just say, painting is not nearly as fulfilling as writing. Perhaps it helped the Karate Kid out, but I am ready to be done! I'm glad I bought a paint sprayer, or I would have had to give up on the project entirely!

Today, I administered my last coat of paint to drawers and cabinets. Alas, my kitchen is not done being painted (trim and cabinet backs elude me) but I cannot start another project that will be finished in one day, so I am done. All the other fixes will have to be finished in leftover moments, not in my precious afternoon hours.

Which means today I had time to write. And it came a few days…
Read more

Thoughts on Editing a Book

By -
Image
This is a writing blog. It's a record of my thoughts on writing. 
Ironically, I've often struggled with what I want to write about in this space. Time spent writing at my house (six kids, remember!) is limited, and I can't spend hours blogging "about writing" while I fail to work on my writing. As I've thought about this the past few months, I've had these thoughts:


1. I want the content on this blog to be useful to other writers, or interesting to those who want to know more about the world of writing.
2. I want my time spent here to be improving my own writing craft. Let's hit two birds with one stone, amiright?
3. I want to be able to share my writing, rather than horde it on my computer (even if/when agents/editors aren't ready to do the same). Writing is interactive, it needs to be coupled with reading, and I shouldn't have to give that part of writing up because of the faraway opinions of people I don't know.


Sooooooo, I started a f…
Read more