My reflections while on the train back to the military base in Germany I call home.
If you're like me, you love the idea of writing stories. Having your words be read by others. Publishing your work. If you're like me, you've figured out how difficult that can be, especially if you're creating characters and a story line from scratch. Today can be the very start of this journey - the seed that will grow into something beyond you. Let's start with a character.
Ahhhh, another Wednesday writing session. This is a time where you shut off the white noise in your life, reflect, and hopefully end up with writing you're proud of. Since we are focusing on life writing still, we're now honing in on intrinsic and extrinsic qualities of character building. The twist is, you'll be writing about someone you intimately know.
Read more Life Writing Practice: intrinsic and extrinsic character traits
We're officially in another week of life writing practice, this time focusing in on including those key sensory detail that make your writing come alive.
Need ideas to unblock your creativity? Interested in writing but you don't know where to get started? You can follow this life writing playbook with a friend, a group, or by yourself.
Read more Life Writing Practice: exercises and prompts to energize you
1. You don’t have to tell everyone when you’re making a big decision. They might try to include themselves in ways that aren’t welcome. 2. Sometimes you have to give in and get the damn puppy. 3. It only takes a few days to completely fall in love with something. 4. A dishwasher and laundry…
I’ll never forget a statement made by Damien Echols while leaving prison after surviving death row, wrongly convicted, for 18 years. He said that he was already forgetting what life was like behind bars. Only a few minutes of separation removed himself from those decades of hardship. I stop. Is that how quickly humans can…
You open your eyes. Out the window of the train you see gleaming cities in the sunlight, sunflower fields stretching into the horizon. Glassy lakes and mountains extending into the clouds. Sights that knock the air out of your lungs and make you remember why you’re on the train in the first place. There are…
When people think about Edinburgh, they think about the historic architecture, the cobblestone roads, and the haunted legends. Personally, I think about how many Innis & Gunn beers I drank at the Black Bull in Grassmarket. I also think about how I had to explore this iconic city with virtually no funds – due to…
Read more how I saw the best of edinburgh for free (and you can too)
It was my favorite night of the year. As my mother had me turn off the lights, she lit every single candle we owned and arranged them in our family room. In my mind, it felt like hundreds of tiny flames that patiently waited a full year to come back to life. On a typical…
This question proved to be harder to answer than a simple yes or no, as most questions are. I suppose we should start at the beginning. After a stressful rearranging of flights, I landed in my favorite city late at night, the place I have been living in my mind for over a year, Edinburgh.…
Read more should you return to a place you once loved? // part 2
To me, memories exist as a warm, blurry, slow-motion filmstrip. They live and breathe in the past, but I find it difficult to leave them in that spot, often remembering and comparing to my current life. I live in a constant state of nostalgia. I did this a lot – too much – during my…
Read more should you return to a place you once loved? // part I
J and I sat in our small car while driving back to base, over hills and valleys, an expanse of fielded German landscape surrounding us when he said something that stood out to me. We had just driven to a nearby town to buy a crockpot and coffee maker from another military family who was…
As a fourth grade teacher last year, we read the book Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech in my classroom. If you’re in my age bracket, I can guarantee that you’ve read it as a ten-year-old. As I read the book aloud to a new generation of ten-year-olds, they grasped onto one of the main…
With this in mind, I realize that the majority of the population doesn’t know what it’s like to live on a military base, especially as an “SP” (spouse). Learning the lingo is an entirely different thing altogether, which I don’t think I will ever fully grasp. There are abbreviations for everything. Seriously, everything. CAC, SOFA,…
Feeling blocked? Pick one of the following prompts at random and get those creative juices flowing again. If you have suggestions for more, or want to share your writing, do so below!
