One Week in the Life of One Writer:

• On May 1, 2023, I began writing my story. And you know one of my problems with it? 

My age. 

 Not that I tell my age in the story, but having my father enlist in WWII rather gives me away.

When someone asked my mother-in-law her age, she responded, "I'll forgive you for asking that personal question."

 I have followed in her footsteps. 

I'm not ashamed of my age. I am, in fact, proud of it. I just don't want to be judged by it. When I told my Naturopath how old I am, she gave me a Palliative page to fill out so the hospital would know what to do with me if I came in unconscious.

Crimmeny.

See what I mean?

• Okay, besides having the nerve to allow my age to be known, I decided that after accumulating a life of observations, teachings, and study, those learnings shouldn't be locked up in a trunk and buried 150 feet down. They are to be shared. Something I say will make a difference in a reader's life.

Imagine strips of paper upon which you have written your insights. You throw them into the wind. Other people, like children, arms outstretched, running through their first snow flurry, instead of catching snowflakes on their tongues, catch those paper strips. If they like what's written there, they keep the scrap. If not,they throw it back into the wind to be picked up by someone else.

My strips will contain my life plus plain talk about magical things. (I use the word magic metaphysically.) I know physics is at work. I also understand that something divine is swirling around us. Although I was motivated to write a memoir, I wanted it to be about something other than me. I want to encourage self-growth and writing as a healing device.

 I encourage people to write their own stories because their life is important.

(I'm not talking about the "Ain't it awful story. " Rather, I'm saying, "I stand as One, but I have 10,000 behind me." story. )

• My manuscript, soon to be a book, has not been professionally edited. And on a keyboard, I'm accident-prone with tunnel vision. (Metaphorically).

Yesterday, however, I read that beta readers might give it a shot and tell me if I'm blowing smoke. Volunteers are happily accepted.

• This morning, I was inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) when I read her responses to age questions. She has decided to honor her age. She recently buzzed her hair and doesn't fuss with her face because she's tired of all that. If men can get by with it, she figured, women can. (She's cute all bare faced and hairless.)

• I apologize to all who checked into my Substack site. While I dinked with it, I didn't know if it was going out to subscribers each time I changed it. I'm trying to master this site before those throngs of subscribers come bursting in. I'll embarrass myself to a few, sorry if it's you. I was having trouble with my images.
  

I have gone back to Joyce Davis Substack when I saw many Jo's Substacks there are. But then there are many Joyce Davis, too.

 

https://joycedavis.substack.com

 

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• This week, I've been grieving over a lost love—a house we built, I designed, and General contracted. It's been sold for a time, and that's fine; it's the new owner's house, but it was my baby. When I saw the clear-cut of our once forested property and the renovation/remodel, I felt he had not only ripped the forest but also the heart of the house. The logs needed to be tended, though; that's great. It's the interior I'm suffering with.  The property will go on sale next month.

 

            

 

Your Story Matters

 

"The first draft stinks," so say the writing gurus. They also say that when you finish a book, go back and rewrite it, for you will be a better writer. 

 

Yeah, but how often can I do that without my head exploding?

 

Most excerpts offer the beginning of their book as an introduction to the work. I'm offering the end. 

 

This comes after my race with the Pink Dogwood Tree's blossoms, where I tried to write 50,000 words before the flowers fell off the tree. 

 

The tree won.

 

However, Mom's Pink Dogwood tree in the front yard came to the rescue. She held her blossoms until June 4.

 

 

 

Chapter 66

 

May 31,2023—50,000 Words

 

Last night, we watched Hetty Lawlor, a 17-year-old fiery red-haired portrait artist, one of the three finalists on the TV show "Portrait Artist of the Year" (2018). She had beat out tried and true professional portrait painters and was my favorite. Her colored pencil portraits were exquisite, the likeness of her subjects uncanny. I loved her. 

 

And then a strange thing happened. As the final selection to win "Portrait Artist of the Year," where they would receive a commission of 10,000 £ and have their painting hung in a museum in Britain, I was suddenly torn. I had a twinge of desire for Samira Addo, another artist. It was a neck-to-neck race. I held my breath.

 

Samira Addo won.

 

Addo came through like a student who aced the final exam and got an A.

 

Lawlor's likenesses were second to none. And yet, and yet I saw the artist in 

Addo.

 

I tend to like realism and exquisite rendering of features, but suddenly, I was thrown into an abstract world. How did Addo do it? How did she capture the essence of a person with so few brush strokes? Faces were not flesh-colored, gray even. Yet there was an artist.

 

I have been rendering my life in Word pictures. I am a painter with a pen and have endeavored to fill in my pen and ink drawings with watercolors. But as I close this page, I am throwing aside the pen and the ink, and instead, I pick up the brush only. I dip it in water, and then the paints. I begin a smear across the canvas—aquamarine, aqua, seafoam green, blues, and green—the seafoam green of the sea, aqua of the reefs, green of an Oregon forest. A girl runs barefooted through the surf. Her filmy dress is white, wet, and plastered against her body. Water flies up from her footfalls and lands on the page in starbursts of white, pink, violet, and orange—sunset colors. 

 

The running girl's hair is entangled with the air-driven water, and with the splatters and sparkles, golden strands among the green and blue.

 

You can't recognize the girl specifically, but you see a resemblance. My hair isn't long, and my face isn't blue, but it's there among the peacock colors.

 

 

 

PS. What would I like for you to carry away from this reading? 

 

Oh gee, I really want to instill in as many people as possible, me included, the wonder in which we live. We're here. We have life, medical care, the freedom to roam and travel, milk and eggs, fingers, and opposable thumbs. We have built monuments, homes, cathedrals, airplanes, books, computers, clothes, a way to go to the moon, and a way to get back home. We can fly in a plane through the sky and SCUBA under the sea. We have eyes to see, ears to hear, and an imagination that goes to the stars and back. 

 

Bless all you have: a roof over your head, plumbing, appliances, a computer, clothing, your ability to see, feel, and taste, friends, money, and the ability to walk, talk, and imagine.

 

I applauded when I read Jen Sincero's (You are a Bada**) comment on the Universe. "What more do I have to do to wake these bitches up?" she wrote, "Make water, their most precious resource, rain down from the sky?"

 

 

 

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