Even as a little girl my imagination was huge and ever-changing. I walked most places I went, creating stories, bits and pieces along the way. Though early on, I never wrote them down, I was lucky to remember most of them when I got home after walking for hours. But I enjoyed the “what next” process I would play as I walked along the sidewalks, careful to stay out of the grass and just as careful to place my main characters in impossible situations. I was gifted.
What I did write down was my poetry. Something about that rhythm, those feelings, the word choice… something about it screamed: “capture me!” My poetry in its young stages believed in its own greatness but like many of us, as it matured, this somehow leaked out. The finished product would meekly sigh. “Bury me with the other trash,” it would say, and I would blindly obey. It felt good to write but I imagined it would ache to be criticized. So I became notorious for killing my work before it could take its first breath. In hindsight, I wish I would have been more nurturing, more charismatic and positive. Instead, spineless, I folded over and over again giving in to its request, my tiny trash can overfilled with my dying dreams. The agony of its slow death lingering in the air like smog. Sound sad, I assure you it was.
This didn’t slow the current of ideas coming in. This didn’t stop life from gently reminding me around every corner I would bend, that I had the spirit of a writer. And, it most definitely didn’t dull or diminish the therapeutic effect a nicely placed word or scene could have on me.
As time would pass I would become more critical of what I would let in. I befriended constructive criticism and hung out with negativity less and less as it often brought uninvited guests to the party. Powerlessness, self-doubt, small-mindedness, and lack of adventure all tried to catch a free ride on my fragile ego taking advantage of my need to please those around me. I decided to make a concietous effort to no longer make it so easy.
Something beautiful happens when you don’t give up on that unique little piece of you that has always been there. Something organic and quite critical happens when you water the seed, when the people you surround yourself with help you to nurture the seed, and encourage you to speak life into it. Something supernatural transpires when you put the seed in sunlight and give it ample room careful to never stifle its growth with your prenotions of how big it will get. This is me putting what has sprouted from my seed into the sun. This is me putting my seed out in the field giving it a chance to outgrow what I ever thought possible.
I am a different person now. I have children and a place I go to trade my time for money five days a week. Things have changed. All the things I am interested in writing are not all made up anymore. I am extremely proud of the family I have created with my husband, the individual ones we both came out of and the friends we’ve chosen to join us on our wacky adventures along the way. I like to write of these adventures, I love to relive them. But my passion is writing fiction. A good old realistic story I conjured up myself. That type of art takes my breath away. Having someone else enjoy it would make the months of frustration born to the unwed union of writer’s block and life’s ease of stealing time with inconveniences and clocks that don’t fit my lifestyle, worth it.
Please see the menu headings at the top of this page to peer into my personal happenings which I will place under Motivated Mommy in a Marriage. My marriage is a shoo-in for the term his, mine and ours. We each entered this marriage with two of our own children from previous journeys. Those four would become five when I decided that my life wasn’t challenging enough. My husband was so good at being a daddy why not try and kill him by giving him another daughter. Click the heading if you want to see if he is still surviving. I will say this, here and now. I am unsure about a lot of things, but I am certain about this — we (the entire family, extended included) needed this baby and we have been enjoying her ever since she graced this earth nearly two years ago. I will also say, despite this “terrible two’s” is a real phenomenon.
There is also a menu heading entitled Creative Space. I am trying this one out. Back home, in a small city outside of Cleveland, Ohio, I would enjoy writing at a peaceful sushi bar. I would sip my warm saki and ride the waves to wherever my keystrokes would take me. Now that I am in Atlanta, I have to find new corners or creative spaces. I am looking forward to it. I will post those pictures, and at times descriptions, there.
My short stories, poems, and brief scenes will be placed under extraordinary pebbles like the gems that they are! I hope writers that visit my page get a spark of excitement, more than a tinge of encouragement and an overabundance of inspiration under that tab…
Tony Morrison said that she wrote her first book because she wanted to read it. I have a lot of stories that I am dying to read. Join me…I’ll be in the sun.
D's Quest for Extraordinary Pebbles 