About

Check out my dog’s site: http://www.graciegoesrving.com

I am a writer. I know that. I have so much I want to say but I let life get in the way.  Like today. Sitting in the sauna at the Y I realized I needed to expand this “about” page and, in my head, wrote a lovely piece. You won’t find it here – it is gone, vanished just as the timer on the spa stilled the bubbling jets.  Instead of coming right home and getting something written while it was fresh on my mind – I filled my car with gas, did my October budget sheet, updated my TO DO List, made some great tuna salad for lunch, did some laundry, read a chapter in my book club book, checked Facebook and Instagram along with the Neighborhood Watch site, and changed the sheets on the bed.  Am I a writer?

On these pages you will find poems.  I have a great friend who provides a word each week as a challenge word to include in a poem. I usually run about a week or two behind the challenge.  Check our Elisabeth’s site here: http://elisabethsharpmcketta.com/poetry-for-strangers/.  After I posted several of poems on my site I realized that I needed to indicate the challenge word, but alas, too much time and trouble.  Use her site and you can figure it out.

On other pages you will find my entries into the Flash Fiction  and 53-Word Story competitions.   I have entered several photography contests and have had selections picked for shows and even had a photograph published in a book about a cemetery.  The Flash Fiction is my first ever entry in a writing competition. Not winning. Not losing.  I find that I like the challenge and I like the writing. I have gotten feedback that has been insightful.  Better than the feedback I got from my first creative writing attempt in graduate school where the professor said I sound like a lawyer. Yes, I was working in a law firm at the time.  I have entered a second year and have found other sites to submit my writings.  I have a wonderful young friend who is supremely artistically talented. Walking on the beach we talked about whether or not he should major in some art form in college. His insight:  No.  I want to create what I want to create. If I like it, then it is good enough for me. I don’t want to be conformed to another’s opinion of how I should create.  Pretty fabulous for a 19 year old.  So there you have it. I write because I enjoy it and I write what I enjoy. Take it or leave it.  It is good enough for me.

Currently, I am working on two projects. They are laid out in my son’s room – a room he cannot possibly use as it is full of boxes, paper, another computer and stuff. One project is a history of the Pine Mountain Trail.  I have twelve boxes of primary source materials – a goldmine of documents including letters from presidents, photographs, government documents, hand-written lists that will surely  make a wonderful story.  A friend, who has actually written a book and has an ISBN number [my dream], told me to take my time. So I am.  My other project is a children’s book about a goose that has lived with us for about three years. It has a broken wing so it cannot fly away.  This goose, I have named Lucy, loves oyster crackers – she eats them out of your hand – and hates my dog Gracie, a beagle. I have a title, Gracie and the Goose, and a few sentences, but nothing else.

I have a Writer’s Market, a book of writing prompts, and a plethora of websites on how to write daily. Life just gets in the way.  It’s not the new year year, well it is for the Jewish faith, so  I will set a resolution to write daily. Wish me luck!