It’s not fair. We all know that moms and dads are equally important in their children’s lives, but the days we set aside to honor them – Mother’s Day and Father’s Day – are very different. I read online (so it must be true) that Americans spend $7 billion dollars more on Mother’s Day than on Father’s Day. The Hallmark cards are funnier on Father’s Day. Churches treat Mother’s Day with reverence and sensitivity and Father’s Day is an opportunity for sermons on “how to do it better.” I know it probably bugs me more than it does the men, but it does bug me, so I wrote about it in one of my books. That’s an advantage of being an author. You can spout off your opinions and attribute them to fictional characters. In my story “Baggage Claim,” Ben Taylor goes in search of his biological father. He finds Jonah Campbell, who is delighted to learn that he has a son and four young grandchildren – and he especially likes the children’s nanny, Agatha. This is a scene between Agatha and Jonah, getting in the car after church on Father’s Day. It’s a work in progress, before editing. Remember: Read More
Category: Writing
My Happy Valentine Quilt
The observant reader will realize this isn’t actually a quilt; it’s a quilt top. I will not have time for quilting before Valentines Day, but I want to enjoy it, so I pinned it to the front of another quilt and hung it up over my fireplace. My goal is to get it quilted by next year. In the meantime, it makes me happy to look at it. The picture makes me feel a little sentimental for another reason. Most of the items shown are special because of their personal associations – my husband made the fireplace for me, the framed Scripture is a gift from a friend, my granddaughter created a few of the items, my mother decoupaged and painted the birdhouse, and I was shopping with her when I found all those little sisal birds and the hedgehog, too! On top of the piano I have pictures of family members, a cross-stitched sampler from a niece, and a beautiful box I purchased while shopping with an old friend – our one visit in over ten years, and we spent much of it at JoAnn Fabrics! I don’t collect a lot of things that don’t have that kind of Read More
Don’t Quit Your Day Job
That’s usually good advice for an aspiring novelist, but my day job isn’t all that profitable, either. I teach quiltmaking. I have been teaching for twenty years, and I love it. Teaching is something that blesses me. I also make quilts for sale on etsy or by commission and do some custom dressmaking. Although I learned to sew clothing over forty years ago, I didn’t take up quiltmaking until I was pregnant with my second child. That first quilt was very sweet, with pink and blue lambs on a muslin background. I appliqued the lambs with a zigzag stitch on my sewing machine and used a puffy batting. I decided I enjoyed quiltmaking and started looking for more information. We were living in a tiny farming town in Germany, and it was hard to find calico fabric in the local stores. The Air Force Base Exchange had some fabric, although none of it matched, and they had something even more interesting: a rotary cutter. There weren’t many quilting books in the base library, and they were all too old-fashioned (I was 24), so I used graph paper and colored pencils to design a little wall quilt to insulate the bathroom Read More
NaNo NaNo
I’m feeling good about this year’s NaNoWriMo story. I thought it would be lighthearted and fun, but it’s been surprisingly emotional – even sad – so far. I think I’m all done killing off characters, though, and I only have one more serious emotional scene to get through before I can make it fun again. 17,746 words as of this evening. I wrote 4000 today, because I didn’t write at all yesterday.
Happy NaNo!
NaNoWriMo is an annual challenge activity: Write 50,000 words in one month. Ideally, a complete fictional story, start to finish in 30 days. There are always a few rebels who want to write poetry or nonfiction, but NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth was intended for fiction. From their website: National Novel Writing Month is also a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (formerly known as the Office of Letters and Light) that believes your story matters. Our mission statement: National Novel Writing Month organizes events where children and adults find the inspiration, encouragement, and structure they need to achieve their creative potential. Our programs are web-enabled challenges with vibrant real-world components, designed to foster self-expression while building community on local and global levels. This is my 5th attempt at a “win”. I have only finished twice before; I was working full-time during the other three Novembers. So if you don’t see me very often, it’s because I am typing away in Scrivener, creating a story that I’m getting really excited about!
Why Write Right Now?
When I was a little girl, growing up out in the country, I read a lot. (I believe that if you listen, you can hear my mother laughing hysterically.) I read a LOT. I liked to be outside, though. I tamped down nests for myself in the hayfield and hid there, reading. I piled up leaves around me like walls and read in my little leaf house. I read while swinging on our backyard swingset (So why can’t I read while I use the treadmill?) and laying in the sun on the beach at the lake. My sister and I created our own library. We had a lot of books, so Dad made us shelves and we stamped and put cards and pockets in all the books. I still have some of those books. I read a LOT. And I knew that someday, I would be a writer. I wrote poetry and little stories even then, but someday I was going to be a real writer. Mysteries, like Carolyn Keene, or maybe something along the lines of Anne of Green Gables or Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm or Laura Ingalls Wilder. My tastes were eclectic. Then I grew up. I married Read More