Wordless Wednesday | The Beach

Taken at Maumee Bay, Ohio (Lake Erie) during our vacation two weeks ago by my iPhone.

I wish I had remembered (!) my good camera - the colors and light that day were phenomenal. Still, it's a fantastic picture.

For more Wordless Wednesday fun, be sure to hop the links over at 5 Minutes for Mom.

An Explanation of Sorts

While we were on vacation (and oh, was it lovely and a true respite from the crazy edge of daily life), I scheduled a stop on our mail because while I don't believe that the letter carrier (or mail carrier or postal worker - what is the current politically correct term for mailman?!) is casing our house, I didn't want to leave it to chance.

That, and there is something just plain fun about getting a huge pile of mail to sort through after being gone for a week. Seriously. Or am I just weird like that?*

One of the treasures I found hidden in our bundle of bills, catalogs, and junk mail was my latest copy of Writer's Digest. I recently subscribed...again. I've been a subscriber to Writer's Digest on and off for the past ten years. Here's a chart that best describes the pattern of my behavior:

Note that I didn't have room to add the delays in my writing career due to creative procrastination**.

Anyhow, I put WD to one side, waiting for that blessed hour after all of my small people would be tucked away in bed and the daily tasks of laundry, emailing, dishes, and prepping the Mr. Coffee for early am duty would be done. An issue of WD is something to savor, peeps.

To savor.

I flipped through it idly first, reading snippets about markets here and agents there. I ignored the BREAKOUT author section (see chart above, *cough* GAG), and simply skimmed the first time through, making a mental note of what articles I wanted to come back to and read more thoroughly, more carefully.

But one small thing caught my eye, one line that gave me complete pause.

This line:

"Every word on your blog is a word not in your book."

Ouch.

It's true, though.

For me, at least, the simple truth is that fiction and blogging are two very diverse and almost incompatible forms of writing. As I mentioned to my friend Lynn the other day (a real life friend who is a mom, a writer, and a blogger so she understood what I meant immediately), there is only so much room in my brain. I'm the classic example of why multi-tasking leads to lower - not greater - effectiveness.

So, I've been doing some noodling and organizing*** over the past two weeks since we returned from vacation, thinking about writing and blogging and what it is I want to do. And, the trickier, $64,000 question, what it is I'm supposed to do.

I've also been writing - WRITING - and while my pace has been glacial, it feels promising. Dear God, I hope I didn't just totally jinx myself by saying that. Do me a favor - if you see me soon in real life, don't ask. Just pretend I'm the still the slightly dippy blonde you know and love. I promise to let you know when I type THE END, k?

So, blogging. I'll still be blogging here because it is such excellent therapy for me and because every once in a while, my offspring do something so stellar or so stellar-ly silly that it's worthy of recording for prosperity.****

But my other blog will be mothballed for the time being. Which is fine and good and necessary. There are only so many hours in the day and so many days in a lifetime.

And if I don't swing for the fences doing what I knew at the age of five that God made me to do, I know I'll always regret it.

*Probably.

**This little graphic would have taken half the time to create if I hadn't needed to hide in the laundry room after failing to locate my 4 year old's paper airplane that became wedged under the oven on it's maiden voyage. I did, however, locate a broken rubber band, six cheerios, and far too many dust bunnies to enumerate here.

***Including my makeshift writing space in the laundry room where I sit perched on a bar stool with my laptop on my dryer. It's not terribly comfy but it is small, quiet, and tidy.

****Me: Tom, you cannot, you simply CANNOT take off ALL of your clothes when you go to the bathroom at preschool. PROMISE me!
Tom: Ok, ok. {insert sly giggling cackle HERE}

7 Quick Takes {The Vacation Anticipation Edition}

I'm writing this on Saturday night; on Sunday, we leave for our first ever family vacation. We'll be back just before this publishes so I plan on adding some afterthoughts in italics.

1. I should be sleeping. We're getting up for 7 am Mass, I still have to pack the food, and we hosted a family event here today which meant oodles to do for me. I need some rest and yet here I am, typing away.

2. I should be writing. If I can be this dedicated to scheduling my blog posts in advance, surely I can dedicate myself to writing.

3. Dear God, Please spare me from timeouts during the next four days. Amen. I want to enjoy our vacation and spend some time relaxing without sibling quarrels or mini-meltdowns.

4. I'm looking forward to walking on a beach again. I grew up near the water and then married a Navy man who I followed from port to port. Beaches were a part of my life for the first 25 years or so but it's been over ten years since I've felt waves break over my toes.

5. I hope the kids don't get bored. I'm actually hopeful that this won't happen - they're so excited about the chance to build sandcastles and the thrill of traveling.

6. I hope Knute and I get time to just talk. You know, talk - that crazy thing people who love each other occasionally do? We talk now, don't get me wrong, but we are constantly dealing with little ears listening and little voices interrupting. I have visions of laughing over beers on the screened-in porch late after the kids are in bed.

7. I hope nothing crazy happens. You know you're a parent when you google "Local Hospitals" as you finalize your vacation plans. Let's hope I don't get to tour any distant ERs.

Wordless Wednesday | Bountiful Harvest!

Scenes from my kitchen last Friday.

A friend of mine has an awesome mini-farm north of Lebanon and my kids and her kids (schoolmates) spent the morning cleaning up the downed apples and picking pears and peaches.

Four pies later, I still have GONZO fruit - yum!

For more Wordless Wednesday Fun, be sure to visit the links over at 5 Minutes for Mom.

How Can You Be Nine?!

Becky, 1 year*

It doesn't seem possible - how can it be that my daughter is nine years old today?

I swear, she was a little baby just a second ago.

The day we brought her home from the hospital, I snuggled her in the recliner and held her through the night. Before Knute turned in for a few hours of sleep he asked if I was ok, if I needed anything.

I told him no, I was fine, then I looked at him and said,

"She is so amazing. We should have done this years ago."

Becky, you have blessed us in so many ways just by being you. Truly you are a gift from God.

Happy birthday sweet girl!

*I love this picture of her; she clasped her hands on her own and was so calm and composed. All I could think as the photographer took her picture (and still think to this day) was that she looked like she was praying.

Writing Conferences - Your Thoughts?

I've been thinking for quite some time now about attending a writer's conference or at least a one day event locally.

Really, I've just been thinking more and more about writing. Writing rather than (or simply before) blogging.

Here's a few things I'm thinking about:

:: Women Writing for a Change. My friend Lynn told me about this group; I like that they run the gamut from semester classes to one day workshops to retreats.  It's local to the Cincy area so it's doable for me.

:: Women Writer's Winter Retreat.  A mid-winter retreat plus writing workshops - sounds lovely.

:: Erma Bombeck Writer's Workshop.  This is every two years and won't be available again unit 2012 but it's literally just up the road from me.  Am I funny enough?  Hmmmm......

Of course, before I go signing up for anything I need to ask myself the hard questions.

Can I balance blogging and writing?

Can I put myself and my dreams on the "Priorities" list that consumes my time?

Can I put aside the fear of failure and just do the hard work?

I'll be mulling over those questions while we're on vacation this week.  I'm hoping a change of place and pace as well as a break from all things online will help me.

Now, a question for you:

Have you attended a writing conference?  Do you belong to a writing group?  Have you gone to a writing retreat?

If so, what have you taken away from those experiences?

From Left to Write Book Club | Capturing a Life in Words: If You Knew Suzy by Katherine Rosman

Back in July, the From Left to Write Book Club posted their thoughts about If You Knew Suzy: A Mother, A Daughter, A Reporter's Notebook by Katherine Rosman*. I was a little too late to get a publisher copy but the book sounded so good that I splurged and ordered a copy from Amazon.

I didn't make the deadline for the call for posts (you can read the reactions from other From Left to Write Book Club members here) but I still wanted to share my two cents.

After her mother's death (a long, and hard-fought battle with cancer), Katherine Rosman reached out to her mother's friends, co-workers, colleagues - anyone who knew her mother who had a story to share about her.  The result was this book - those stories interwoven with the author's own stories about her mother, about their relationship, and about facing death.

Reading this book - all the different facets of her mother's life that Katherine Rosman discovered and collected for herself and her own daughter - I couldn't help but think about blogging, about all of us out here connected by our words and stories, all of us capturing and sharing bits and pieces of our lives. 

Most people who keep a personal blog will never be BlogStars.  They aren't in it don't make gobs of cash.  And many bloggers don't even blog under their own name, preferring anonymity as they blog quietly for years. 

And yet we continue.  Why?

To speak and be heard, to tell our stories - both the good and the sad, to grab and keep in one place the fleeting moments of our lives in words and pictures; we are all driven by some combination of all of these.

It's a good read.  And if you're a writer or a blogger, I think you'll appreciate it all the more.

*My personal Amazon affliate link, just so you know.  ;-)