Welcome to our blog and thank you for stopping by. This is our dialogue with readers as well as writers.
Stories are as old as humankind. We all have them, we live stories. The oral tradition of storytelling is essentially extinct in modern cultures. Since the advent of alphabets, people have chosen to preserve their tales in writing. As a writers’ group, we support and encourage individual flights of fantasy, rockets of remembrance, and paeans of poetry, that lead us on voyages of discovery into ourselves and the world at large. We writers thrive on words. We gobble them up, we inhale them, we cherish and revere them. They are the building blocks of our understanding. As an equation is to a mathematician, a word is to a writer. All the scribblers of the world understand why writers write. It is not necessary to earn your living by penning symbols on a page to be a WRITER. A very select few can do that. The rest of us use the written word as a pilot through our past, a magnifying glass in our present, and a crystal ball into our futures. Notes jotted on napkins, letters to friends, journals, and diaries are all ways of preserving stories. Life is Story. Write on.
Our book Telling Tales and Sharing Secrets is a memoir of our writers’ group over two decades and a guide for other groups to learn, write and stay together. With this blog, we will continue our story. We invite you to share your comments and experiences with us.
Oh I love this first post! Write on!
i love your website and these posts and can’t wait to read your book! i’m also excited to follow your weekly prompts and see where my words wander…. Best, Shannon
thank you Shannon. You know you were an inspiration.
Thank you Shannon
Thanks Diana! You’ve inspired me to ‘get it done’ more than you know! <3 S.
Ditto Shannon. I love talking with you.
I have only written one book, so my perspective could rightfully be labeled “isolated”…just like the experience itself.
It took me four years. Four lonely years. I felt like the proverbial shipwrecked guy on a putting green-sized island. Just me and the computer, or the computer and I. Whatever.
Maybe it was more like taking a trip abroad and going alone. Fun but you can’t share it with anyone until you get back home. But if you don’t please yourself, you have no one but yourself to blame. Yes, the writing sessions were always fun, but lonely none the less.
Post-release, I must confess that I miss the experience of writing, re-writing, and re-writing some more. I have never been such a perfectionist in my life. But this was my baby, and I was not about to leave her on the freeway. Thoughts like “maybe there’s a better word…” or “ will the reader understand this?” might drive some people crazy. I feasted on them!
I never ended a writing session completely satisfied. Many times I said to my co-writing angels, “that’s the best I can do tonight, but it is NOT finished…
I never finished a paragraph without re-reading, not just that paragraph but the two or three that preceded it. Context was very important to me. I never wanted the reader to say “hunh?” On the other hand, it was perfectly O.K. with me if they said, “hunh!”
Now that the book is “out there” I am learning to resist the urge for positive feedback and reviews. I can’t control that, so it is a constant effort to “just let it go.” Of course, I want the “whole world” to love it, but I know that is not realistic. The right people will get the message and I can live with that. I know that what I wrote is honest and from my heart, so I wouldn’t change that for anything some “authority” had to say. The book is complete and will live forever as long as there is no global fire. It is a tangible expression of my story. And I’m adhering to it!
Thank you, Tim. I ordered your book and look forward to reading about your mission. We three were fortunate to have each other in the editing process so it wasn’t as lonely, but I understand the need to go over and over something you write. I don’t think it is ever finished. When you look back you can always find a new way to say something or a different word that might fit. At some point, as you said, you have to let go. I’ll be in touch after I read your book.
Hi Tim. I am part way through your book and love it. What a good message about the shells in which our souls reside. They change and wither but our souls survive and it is important to recognize that within each person. You are doing God’s work and I’m sure the reward is with you daily.
About writing. I know the feeling of never finishing a piece. I think that is why I never really wanted to be published. My writing never feels “finished”. I can go back after a day or two and find a new and better way to say something or describe something. I like to write for myself for that reason. I had to let go of that when my co-authors wanted to write and publish book about our group. We were encouraged in the project by several of our teachers. In real life I am far from a perfectionist. I’m a rather random sort who forgets and loses my way a lot – never tidy. But I love playing with words. It took years of collaboration, rewrite, and editing to be satisfied enough to see it in print. I am not privileged with a purpose for my writing – it is just me. You definitely have a message to share and God bless you for doing it.