Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “One Writer’s Journal”
I love book fairs. That’s because I love talking books with other writers and readers. The only bad thing about book fairs is that I want to carry a heavy load of books home with me when I go. Of course it’s fun seeing readers adding my books to their armloads as they walk around looking at the offerings too. …
Leaves or no leaves, the sky is always there. The firs up on top of the Smoky Mountains are being killed by a very small insect. They say it is so small that it’s hard to see, and yet it has destroyed forests of fir trees and denuded the tops of the mountains in places. We sometimes think if we …
“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.” ~Edward Abbey Sometimes clouds matter. In a landscape photo or in a story. This is one of many photos I took this week on a visit to the Smoky Mountains. For the last five years, we’ve …
“I have been correcting the proofs of my poems. In the morning, after hard work, I took a comma out of one sentence…. In the afternoon I put it back again.”– Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Last week I got the pages of my book, Words Spoken True, scheduled for release in February. That’s what’s in the photo along with a list of …
If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk? (Dr. Laurence J. Peter) I had a goal last weekend of cleaning off my desk. I put it off as long as I could Saturday. Even washed windows instead of tackling the piles of accumulated papers, book catalogs, notes and cards, …
”Where do you get your ideas?” This is surely the question most writers hear the most. At least this writer does. How do you think up stuff? How did you think up this particular stuff? Those are all good questions and ones that are not always easy to answer. I’ve written a lot of books. Some of them have been published, and …
Me and Mom “In Alzheimer’s [disease] the mind dies first: Names, dates, places-the interior scrapbook of an entire life-fade into mists of nonrecognition.” – Matt Clark My mother has dementia. Perhaps not quite the same as Alzheimer’s but definitely closely related like fraternal twins. I haven’t studied up on any of it, but I have seen the memory thieves in …
“Homecoming means coming home to what is in your heart.” We had homecoming at Goshen today. That’s where I’ve been going to church ever since I got married a lot of years ago. At the time, my husband’s family lived just a mile or so down the road. When all these little churches were started up, people were coming to church in buggies …
What to wear? What to wear? That’s a question that many of us ask as we stare into our closets every morning. But it wasn’t a question that bedeviled the Shaker faithful. They knew what they were wearing. It could be they might be able to choose between a green dress like the one pictured or a blue dress or …
Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. Albert Camus Summer departed last week and autumn came into her own. When I walked last week, I found leaves beginning to show their colors. I like fall. I like seasons. I’ve never wanted to live where it was summer all through the year – although a year in …