Guard dog on duty

Anger sustains you. It makes you defiant and strong. It defends your pride, gives you courage, and enforces your will. It keeps you safe behind it's abrasive shield; it conceals your vulnerabilities and weaknesses from your enemies, and it keeps your self-esteem intact. But hide behind it for too long, and it will grow, feeding off the very weakness it protects. It will disguise itself as justified indignation, and soon it will convince you that there isn't anyone you can trust, gorging itself on your resentment and self pity until it completely conceals not only your vulnerabilities, but your virtues as well.

I've done a bit of tidying up

Not in my house,(although my partner would dearly love to see that happen) but here, at blogger. I originally thought I would post each story I published in it's own separate blog, but today I got to thinking, I intend to post as many short stories as I possibly can, so that would mean, many many individual blogs to manage... well, I'm hoping it would mean that :). Anyway, today I decided to create just one blog for my stories. I posted 'Molten Lava' and 'Making it Right' in my new blog,'Out of My Head'. My apologies to anyone who wrote a comment or clicked on the little reactions thingie. Believe me, deleting those was one of the hardest things I've ever done. :(

Today I'm just a paper carrier

... hoping that my muse returns soon.

Should I stay, or should I go?

When those around you don't seem to accept you for who you are, you have two choices, either accept that and hang around, or accept that and move on. Which would you do? (Title for this blog respectfully taken from the song: 'Should I Stay or Should I Go?' by The Clash)

What is a paragraph, anyway?

Over this last little while, while editing my stories, I've noticed that I tend to write very short paragraphs, and that has given me cause to question whether or not I actually know what a paragraph is. Generally I just wing it. I have this idea in my head that a sentence is a complete thought that can exist on it's own, and a paragraph is a collection of thoughts that all work together to create a single concept, or in fiction, a separate scene, or scene element.

The thing is, paragraphs are all suppose to connect to make a story, and each paragraph is meant to be connected somehow by a thought, so it's difficult to judge sometimes where you should break your paragraph and begin the next.

I make those breaks whenever my narrative interrupts the flow of the story, or when my writing takes a time leap over a bit of uninteresting or irrelevant facts that would have no bearing on the story. And of course, I break for dialog, separating each person speaking. Often though, because of my self imposed rules, I end up with a lot of single sentence paragraphs, and I'm wondering if that is correct, and if I shouldn't try to flush out the thought more.

Can a single sentence be a paragraph? Does having too many short paragraphs in a story make that story seem choppy, and would my writing improve if I tried to flush out those short paragraphs more? I've been trying to find a more accurate description of what a paragraph is suppose to be, but so far, I haven't found anything in the books that I have or online. I remember seeing notes on stories or essays I wrote in school, where the teacher wrote something like, "this thought should be a separate paragraph", but how did the teacher know that herself? Do we all just wing it based on that simple rule that a paragraph is a self existing concept?

Making it Right

Today I decided to share a short story that I just finished writing. It is not a feel good story, but it's a true story, true because there are so many people out there who have grown up in much less than ideal circumstances, and for many, it takes a life time to put that past behind them. People need to hear these stories; for those who lived through such things, so they know they are not alone, and they are not to blame, and for the rest, so that they might come to know and understand.

The story is called 'Making it Right' and you'll find the link to it, on the right, under the heading, 'My Stories'.

While sitting near the top of a very tall tree

I think I was around ten years old when I finally understood what death meant. Someone in our family, I don't remember who, died. We all got dressed up and went to the funeral parlor, and we all lined up to look at the dead body of this relative. I remember thinking that it wasn't the person I knew anymore, but it looked like him, and that puzzled me. All the relatives were crying and consoling each other, and then we all sat down in a room that looked like a tiny church. Then a man, who didn't know the dead person, spoke wonderful things about him, even though what I had remembered overhearing about the dead man when he was alive, didn't seem like that at all.
For a long time afterward I thought about this, and then one day while I was sitting on a branch not far from the top of a very tall tree, it hit me; dead meant that you didn't exist anymore. It meant that if you had lived a bad life, you no longer had a chance to fix it, and because you couldn't, others tried very hard to remember you that way. I then looked down at the ground far below me, and I climbed down the tree with considerable more caution than I had used climbing up. Since that day I've had a fear of heights, and the older I get, the more pronounced that fear becomes.

Fizz, times two!

This is so cool, I just have to share it. We just met another dog named Fizz! My partner and I thought we were being so clever thinking up the name Fizz for our West Highland White/ Scottish Terrier pup. The name suited her well, and we thought her name would be unique. What we didn't realize was how wonderful it would be to meet another dog with the same name, and all the way from North Wales too! Thank you Ellen for dropping in and introducing yourself and your Fizz to us. Here's a link to Ellen's Fizz: http://coffeegranules.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html

Write what you know

Today I feel like a writer again. Imagine that. Last night after spending the day swirling around in the a dark hole of self pity, I remembered a story that's been niggling at me to be written. The subject of the story is something I personally relate to, and I've been apprehensive to write something that reflected so closely my own experiences. I've always believed the advice that we should write from what we know, but I've taken that to mean something more general, like drawing bits and pieces from our life experiences and using those bits to give substance to what we create.

I stayed up until two am last night writing, and today I know how the story is going to end, I just have to get it down. Maybe staring at the lint in my navel isn't such a bad thing to do occasionally; after all, it's what I know best, and if I'm not writing from within myself, who's voice would I be using anyway?

Reality check

Today I feel like a fake, that I shouldn't call myself a writer at all. I feel like I've been fooling everyone, or trying to, including myself. Sure, I can wax poetically about what it's like to have the soul of a writer, but I haven't a single story to tell. I've got nothing to say, nothing to write about but the lint in my own navel, and I'm getting tired of staring at it. If it's true that I love to write, then why can't I do it? Why aren't there stories all lining up inside of my head, pushing and shoving to be the first to get out? Why doesn't it just happen?

It's just me dreaming again, a story I've created in my head to give meaning to my life; well, at least that's one story.... Dreaming is easy, but making that dream a reality, now that's something completely different.