More Than One Dream - Part 3

I continued to be active in the writing group and have been instrumental in the production of three anthologies of members’ work. I joined another writer’s guild and now serve on its board of directors. The guild has partnered with a regional community college and we will host our fourth Writers Symposium this year. Along with several other board members I’ve served on the planning committee for the Symposium all four years.

As might be expected involvement with these activities takes time away from writing itself. I have managed a few more publication credits and did actually finish a novel, though not the first one I began. Fulfillment of my writing dreams gave me a feeling of validation as a person, something I could stand on. I am very sure God knew I would need that a few years down the road.

Less than a month after celebrating our fiftieth anniversary my husband suffered a massive stroke. He never regained use of the left side of his body and his condition steadily deteriorated over the next three years. The toll on my own health and mental state was heavy as I watched the strong young man I married become a shadow of himself until his final release.

I had managed to keep up some writing activities even while caring for my husband. But after his death it took about eight months before I could get my head back into writing seriously. An essay was accepted for a literary journal. I worked on another novel.

The first Christmas after my husband passed away I decided (a nudge from God? I think so.) to work on several short essays and pitch them to a local newspaper for a weekly column. A few days after I sent a dozen to the editor he emailed me to ask for a headshot to run with my column.

When the column first appeared in print I, trying for nonchalance, posted the news to my Facebook page. The paper has a website and my column is (edit: was) published on it as well, but I didn’t think to post the link. I signed off and took a shower. When I later signed back in to Facebook I was bowled over by the comments and congratulations from family and friends. A cousin had looked for the website and not found it. My sister-in-law found it and put it up for them. I am so grateful for the family God gave me and their unfailing support. Never once have any of them even hinted that I have some nerve calling myself a writer. That, too, I consider part of God’s gift in fulfilling my writing dreams.
(edit/update) The Writers Symposium I mention was quite successful and was an annual event for nine years, tho after the 4th or 5th, I resigned from the Planning Committee because it was going well and I tired of the long drive. This current year the Lost State Writers Guild, my local group, sponsored a one-day writing workshop (another long-held dream of mine) and many attendees requested that another be held next year.) 

More Than One Dream - part 1

This post is the first part of a longer piece I wrote about my life and dreams. It was too long for one of my newspaper columns and I chose not to publish it in three parts at that time. I'm going to do so today and Friday this week and the last part next Tuesday. Just in case someone's interest is strong enough to want to read all of it! Most of the events in it have appeared in one form or another in my memoir, Eight Miles of Muddy Road or in other columns and posts.

* * *

    I always knew God gives dreams. The Bible is full of examples. In the Old Testament there is Abraham, told in a dream to leave his home country; his son, Joseph, dreaming his brothers would bow down to him; and the dream God gave Pharaoh and Joseph’s fellow prisoners. Jacob, who dreamed of a ladder to heaven. In the New Testament as well we find Joseph, Mary’s husband and his dream of an angel telling him to take his family to Egypt and then again when they could return.

     Are dreams from God today? If He gives us dreams while we sleep, are the dreams and longings in our hearts when we’re awake also from Him, too? I think the answer to both is – yes. Not all, of course. Sometimes it might be the cheese and pepperoni on the pizza we ate late in the evening. If we’re granted one dream, is that it? Or will God bless us with others? In my own life the answer to that question is also ‘yes.’

     A mother, grandmother and great grandmother now and can look back at a life filled with dream fulfillments, even though at the time I might not have fully realized it. We humans are so prone to attribute the realization of our deeply held desires as due to good luck, hard work, or just the way things worked out.

     I grew up dirt poor in rural Georgia. That I would ever fly in one of the airplanes I saw high above the cotton field was not a possibility even in my constant daydreams. But fifty years later my younger sister and I flew across the ocean as part of a group which toured Israel and also spent two nights in Rome, Italy. Forced early retirement from the job God provided twenty years earlier and a generous severance pay package made the dream trip possible.

     I dreamed that I’d grow up, strike out on my own, marry, become a mother. Time passed, I met a young man from Tennessee, we married, and God blessed us with a beautiful daughter. Amid the ups and downs of marriage, family, and job I always knew God was the Giver of answers to my dreams. But I didn’t consciously turn my dreams over to Him. And I had several that I never, ever mentioned to anybody.

     My older sister had dropped out of school and worked to help provide for our family of ten. I longed for college after high school graduation, but instead I found a job and also contributed to the family. Many years later came an opportunity for college, though I finished the last class needed for my degree after retirement.

     My husband loved to tell of my reaction when he told friends I’d earned my college ‘diploma.’

     I’d quickly correct him. “It’s a college degree.” God is indeed the fulfiller of dreams, but not necessarily on our timetable.

     I learned to read when I started school at five years old and immediately fell in love with books. That love only grew stronger as I grew up. Sometimes a fleeting thought that I might write something myself that would be published crept into my mind. No, too far-fetched. What did I have to say that anyone would want to publish? Or read.

     Over the years the thoughts of writing didn’t go away and I finally bought a used Underwood typewriter. I sent out a few things. Which were rejected. I worked on a novel, still unfinished.

     Sometime before my trip to Israel I had submitted a story to a small magazine. When we returned to the States we landed in Atlanta and I called my husband in Tennessee.

     We chatted a few minutes and then he told me, “A woman called, an editor. Something about wanting to publish your story.”

     It didn’t actually seem real to me until a couple of months later I held the magazine in my hand, my name and story title listed in the table of contents.

(next-part 2)

Frustration - redux

It's been more than a few years since I wrote the newspaper column below. A few things have changed, more than a few actually, in that time. Now living alone, so I have no one else to blame for many of the frustrations I encounter. Some are the normal aggravations in life that everyone encounters, of course. Some due to changes in the world around us, when we might prefer that things stayed the same.

Nowadays 'responsive' is the buzz word when it comes to web site building. An even steeper learning curve than first learning HTML code, I discovered. But, as with the coding, I've learned a smattering of the subject. And I'm glad I learned a little about coding. When my responsive design won't do what I want it to do, I can look at the code, and maybe, possibly, get a hint of the reason. And sometimes I look at the code and don't have a clue, to re-coin a hoary phrase.

* * *

I don’t deal well with frustration. So of course many things in life seem to conspire to frustrate me. Say I set out to tighten the drawer knobs on a small chest of drawers for which I’ll need several items. Can those items be found? Certainly not. That would make it too easy. Some gremlin has moved the screwdriver from where it has resided for years in the front of the junk drawer. After half an hour I locate it in the secondary junk drawer underneath the plastic baggie of tiny leftover screws from a DIY shelf unit.
Muttering inaudible, I hope, imprecations I clutch the screwdriver and go to the kitchen drawer which normally holds tools I use more often. I’ll need the needle-nose pliers to hold the washer inside the drawer while I tighten the knob. I use the pliers most often to rip open those tabs on milk and other liquid container plastic lids, another long-term source of frustration.
Frustration is not limited to the physical. It has been my daily fare for the last few weeks as I try to clean up the code on several web pages. I created the pages two and three or so years ago while attempting to learn the basic skills of website building with HTML code. I learned a little and made working pages, after a fashion. I kept learning in fits and starts as I wanted to make changes to the pages. Then other interests and duties kept me from working with code on a daily basis. Lately when I would look at my early coding in the source code I itched to do more than make minor changes, to clean and tighten it up. I just couldn’t seem to find time or feel I could concentrate enough to do it. Finally, housebound periodically by snow this winter, I tackled the job. Only to find that evidently my little gray cells failed to retain enough knowledge and I’ve had to dig to figure out how to get the pages to do what I want them to do. Perhaps another benefit for all this cerebral activity will be to keep some of the bugaboos of old age at bay.

Tuesday Chatter-What's in a Name?

I'll be taking the rest of this week and most of next off, so my grand plan to post to my blogs at least twice a week is already stumbling. But I'll pick up it again. This Tuesday Chatter is a rumination on names. My own journey to the proper name for my writing endeavors is ongoing. Currently, I'm searching for just the right name for the third in my Cameron Locke, PI series. The search for names for the first two pales in comparison to this one. But I'm not ready to publish it quite yet, so I still have a little time.

 What's In a Name?

Juliet: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet." Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

What shall we name the baby? Or in the case of a writer, what shall I name this essay, story, poem, novel? Sometimes we start with a name. Myself, not usually. Almost always the title grows out of the piece of writing.

Most of the stories and books, finished and partials, that are on my computer right now have names. But I'm thinking of putting a group of these Life Slices columns into book form. What to call it? Of course, Life Slices will be part of it, but I need a sub-title. Perhaps Life Slices: Ramblings of a Southern Writer. Nah, don't want it that long. Life Slices: Through Thick and Thin. Maybe. Or not. And it can't be too personal as many deal with other subjects than my own life though most impinge in some form. Comments or suggestions welcome.

The two novels I've finished have gone through numerous title changes. When I find a title I think fits, I know it. But getting there is often a lengthy process. I'll have sheets of paper with scribbled titles all around my workplace. Scraps of files on my computer hard drive with possible names,. first one moving to the top as first choice then another.

When my daughter was born a name was already decided on, if it was a girl. Can't remember if we had chosen a boy name. I suppose it was a given he would have been named for his father. That was before ultra sound pictures informed prospective parents of the gender of their baby almost before they knew a child was in their future. It was also the time when mothers were routinely knocked out with drugs before the birth. So as I was waking up in the recovery room a nurse asked me what we would name our daughter. I reeled off a name we had never even discussed, knowing as I did that it was not correct! Reason enough to avoid being drugged when having a baby!

Since I've hardly begun choosing the columns to include, I have time to choose just the right title. I hope.