Life's Simple Pleasures

 

Finding fun in simple ways makes the happiest days. (Unknown author)

Are you happy? I hear you. Some of you are out there saying nobody can be happy all the time, and of course, you're very right. But do you seek and find an underlying happiness that brings joy to life in many little ways? Like the fun of jumping into a pile of crunchy leaves with an abandon that doesn't worry about getting leaf crumbles down your shirt or landing on a spider or... Well, you get the idea. Maybe even more fun is being the grandmother raking up the leaves for the happy fun of watching the grandkids enjoy toys that only nature can make. I didn't jump in the leaves. I do realize that me landing on the ground in a pile of leaves is no longer one of life's simple pleasures. It would be a jarring ouch. I don't land as soft as the little grandkids. But I do get a lot of simple fun just walking through a layer of fallen leaves and seeing them stir around my feet, hearing their rustling crunch, and catching the scent of autumn. Simple pleasures.

The plaque above names over some other simple pleasures - all gifts of nature. Watching the sun set. The wind across a field of wheat or grass. The waves against the sand. The glitter of the stars when the city lights are far away. Sometimes we just need to get back to the basics of nature. 

At times nature can slam us with disasters the way the hurricane did last week and bring hard times that have no joy in them. So if you're suffering from the aftereffects of that, you might not be feeling too generous toward Mother Nature, but I hope there are still little blessings finding a way into your days. 

The real joy of life is in its play. Play is anything we do for the joy and love of doing it, apart from any profit, compulsion, or sense of duty. It is the real joy of living.  ~Walter Rauschbusch

May life bring you joy this week. And go kick around a few leaves before you get out the rakes or the leaf blowers. We'll have to do something with our leaves this weekend - probably mulch them with the mower. But my husband did leave them for the kids to play in at least one time because a kid and a leaf pile is definitely one of life's simple pleasures.

I'm going to have a writer's simple (or not so simple) pleasure this weekend and get to meet and talk with readers and other writers at the Kentucky Book Fair in Frankfort on Saturday. Over 150 authors and their books. A great place to do some Christmas shopping. If you're in the area and decide to come, please stop by my table and say hello. And then I can say, in person, thanks for reading!    

Drinking From My Saucer

 

 

 

Drinking from My Saucer by John Paul Moore

I thank God for the blessings
That His mercy has bestowed.
I'm drinking from the saucer
'Cause my cup has overflowed.

That’s what I was doing this last weekend as I attended a Christian Writers’ Retreat. Drinking from my saucer because my cup of blessings was running over. This has been my year for retreats since it hasn’t been but a few weeks since I came home from a writers’ retreat hosted by Books & Such Agency for its clients. That retreat was great out in California, but because I was working toward a deadline I wasn’t able to relax and enjoy quite as much. First deadline has been met. Second deadline was met last Tuesday which freed me up to enjoy these days getting to know lots of new writers. Well, not writers new to writing, but writers I hadn’t met before. Two days of great discussions and workshops about the business of writing. But some of the best parts were the late night conversations in the hotel rooms or the getting to know each other over the tables at lunch or dinner.

I’ve been writing a long time. My first book was published in the general market in 1978, but for most of that time I wouldn’t have been able to name over three other authors that I knew well enough to speak to on the street. Then I began writing inspirational fiction and that changed. Just as there is a brotherhood and sisterhood in the church, there is that feeling among Christian writers. I feel that connection with a few other writers in the general market now too. I’ve met a few people at book fairs in the last couple of years that I love sitting next to so that we can talk. This weekend that number mushroomed as I met so many new friends. Encouragement was popping up everywhere as well as great advice like being present in the moment. Rick Pitino used to say that a lot when he was coaching Kentucky. He probably still does, but I don’t hear his coach’s show now, but he called it the “precious present.” We can’t always be looking back or looking ahead. No need in robbing today’s joy with yesterday’s sorrow or tomorrow’s worries. Revel in the good things of now. And if the now is a hard time for us, give it over to the Lord.

But my “precious present” this weekend was good. It was a blessing. Such a blessing that my cup is running over and I’m drinking from the saucer. The above quote is one verse of a poem written by John Paul Moore some years ago and was then turned into a song. Great words to the entire poem. But I’ve also heard some people say that if you’re drinking from the saucer because your cup is overflowing, maybe it’s time you shared some of the goodness from your cup with others. The writers at the retreat were doing that as we shared with one another and tried to keep everybody’s cups overflowing with encouragement, wisdom and inspiration.

Hope your cups are overflowing with joy too so that you can drink from your saucers.



Halloween Tricks and Treats

What says Halloween like pumpkins? And what's more fun than kids in a pumpkin patch? Actually my young granddaughter here is just hefting the pumpkin to show me. We were at the Shaker village near me and this pumpkin had turned loose of its vine and was too big a temptation for my granddaughter to pass by. She did put it back where she found it so perhaps it still found its way into some pumpkin pies or muffins at the Shaker village restaurant.

What did you do on Halloween when you were a kid? How you answer that might show your age. Kids did go trick-or-treating when I was a kid, but I didn't. Well, I did once with a school friend when I was maybe ten. I don't remember how old I was, but I DID NOT like going up to the doors of people I didn't know and saying trick-or-treat. It seemed too much like begging. Even the candy I got didn't taste all that good and I loved sweets when I was a kid.

My dad hated Halloween. Back then, the farm boys played real tricks and didn't worry about treats. One year they took my dad's gate and wired it across the front door at the elementary school. Dad was not amused. Gates keep cows in the field. Missing gates don't. 

After I married and had kids, the church had parties with candy and games for the kids. Once when I was taking them and my nieces and nephew home from one of those parties, I drove up on triple high row of rocks across the road. They must have dismantled an old rock fence. A lot of work carrying all those rocks out in the road. It wasn't much fun me having to move them either - in the dark on a lonely country road with six kids in the car. Spooky.

Here's a bit of spooky writing by Ray Bradbury from his book, The Halloween Tree. He really invokes a great atmosphere here. 

..Until they stood at last by a crumbling wall, looking up and up and still farther up at the great tomb yard top of the old house. For that's what it seemed. The high mountain peak of the mansion was littered with what looked like black bones or iron rods, and enough chimneys to choke out smoke signals from three dozen fires on sooty hearths hidden far below in dim bowels of this monster place. With so many chimneys, the roof seemed a vast cemetery, each chimney signifying the burial place of some old god of fire or enchantress of steam, smoke, and firefly spark. even as they watched, a kind of bleak exhalation of soot breathed up out of some four dozen flues, darkening the sky still more, and putting out some few stars.”  

Is that the kind of Halloween you want? Spooky? Or do you just enjoy standing at the door and watching the Tinkerbells and lions and camouflaged soldiers come to gather their suckers and candy bars?  
 
I got a rock. ~ Charlie Brown

Hope you got better treats than Charlie. Thanks for reading.

A Different Kind of Whittling

The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile.  ^__ Robert Cormier

Last time here on my journal I talked about whittling – the real kind of whittling where you take a pocketknife to a piece of wood. But there are other sorts of whittling and one of them is what I’m doing this week.

I had that deadline for my Christmas Shaker book that kept my fingers attached to my keyboard for several days straight as I tried to race to the end of my story. I did find the end finally with a couple of days to try to make the words sing a little sweeter tune. A couple of days are not enough. Especially when I knew I was too wordy. It seems wrong somehow to be working so hard to dig enough words out of your head to try to get a story down and then realize that you’ve dug up too many words.

 

Sometimes editors don’t mind a few extra words, but Christmas books are different. They need those stories to follow the length guidelines a little closer. I knew the story was coming in too long. I even pulled out my contract to see what the word requirements were – 50,000 to 55,000. To give this a little perspective, most of my recent books have come in at over 100,000 words. Sometimes 120,000. I love words and it takes a lot of them for me to tell a story. So even with the knowledge that I was over my contracted word length, I had to keep writing in order to finish the story. I couldn’t worry about how long it was until I got it written. I trimmed a few words here and there, but the deadline came and I sent the story in.

 

Happily, my first reader, my editor likes the story. That’s always good news. But she did notice those extra words. So now I have a new deadline to find and eliminate the unnecessary words. Tighten. Rephrase. Make better. The delete key is my best tool right now. So I’m whittling out the extra words to make a cleaner, slimmer story. Not as much fun as whittling a piece of wood, but maybe more fun than trying to whittle down a waistline by not eating all the good stuff there is out there to eat.

 

I don’t really mind editing. I sort of like it if I’m not having to totally change the story. This time I don’t have to do that. I just have to hunt down those extra words and whittle them away, one by one. Or sometimes a sentence or paragraph at a time. Good words that I thought were needed on the first run through of the story, but everything can be made better. The delete key works. 1,000 or so down. 500 to go.

 

Do you need to whittle down something in your life?

 

 

Whittling in the Mountains

 Have you ever done any whittling? Do you even know what it means to whittle? I suppose a whittler could be making something out of the stick of wood he's working over with a knife, but most of the time when a person is whittling, he's just making wood shavings. Men are the ones I usually see working their knives on a piece of wood, but women can whittle too. I've even curled a few shavings off a piece of wood at times when one of my sons wanted to show off a new pocket knife. 

Do you have a pocket knife? For years, my mother had a miniature pocket knife about the size of a one inch safety pin in her coin purse. While a pocket knife is optional for a country girl, it's almost as necessary as a comb to a country boy. Maybe more so. And for men who have reached the "let's tell some stories" age, it's indispensable. It keeps a man's hands busy and his eyes occupied, but his ears are ready to listen. Plus, he can just think better when his hands are occupied. 

It's almost a cliche to mention older men sitting on a bench outside a store talking and whittling away the afternoons. Those men have made many an appearance in books, movies, and t.v. shows. The image brings to mind a simpler time when life moved slower. Now we're more apt to see men and women sitting with their phones in their hands checking out what's going on all around the world instead of just watching what might be passing on the street in front of them while the wood shavings pile up around their feet. But is that progress? Well, maybe. At least for me. I'd probably just shave my finger with a whittling knife, but I can take pictures with the phone to share the places I've been. 

This week we went on our annual trip with my husband's brothers and sister and their spouses to the Smoky Mountains. The weather was gorgeous, the leaves colorful, the food good and the company the best. A great way to catch up with what's going on with our families. And the guys did a little tale telling and whittling. 

Thanks for reading, and now that I'm back from the mountains, I'll get those books sent out to the winners of my giveaway.  

Winners, Deadlines and Notebooks

A pen and a notebook still work. Years and years ago, when I first began writing, that was the way I started – with a wirebound notebook and an ink pen.  Not a ballpoint like this, but a real fountain pen that I filled up out of a little glass jar of ink. The jar had a little well at the top where I dipped my pen point in. Then I had to pull out this little lever that pushed in the rubber ink holder inside the pen. When you let the lever go, the ink was sucked up in the pen. I loved filling up that pen even if I did get ink on my fingers nearly every time. You know, that might have just made it better. Ink stained fingers surely meant I was a writer. Do you remember those kinds of pens? How about those that had little replacement cartridges of ink. I guess they were all replaced by gel pens.

Time went on. I got a typewriter and since with three kids, writing time was precious, I told myself I had to learn to write using a typewriter. I did. More time passed and I entered the computer age. The keyboard became an essential piece of my creative equipment. I still journaled in a wirebound notebook with any pen handy as long as it had black ink.  I hadn’t written any fiction in longhand for too many years to count. But deadlines can make a person desperate. So with a deadline looming for my work in progress and a long airplane flight to and from California, I stuffed a wirebound notebook in my purse. I sat next to people on the long flights who had no interest in talking. So I went back in time and started scribbling words. Lots of scratch outs and inserts, but I found out the pen still works. Words came that when I did get to a keyboard weren’t all that bad and I got through several scenes that helped me almost meet my deadline. I only had to beg a couple of extra days and that was for reviewing and editing. But without that notebook and pen, I would have never made it across the finish line.

Am I going to keep writing in a notebook? No. I like my keyboard and my backspace key when I think up a better word. The delete key comes in handy too. Of course, a black line or scribble through a few sentences works too.

After I finally got that deadline met, I drew for my winners in my birthday giveaway. Sorry I’m a few days late, but had to get that story written. So drum roll please. Wanda S of Iowa won the first prize of the NIV Bible and she picked my book, Summer of Joy. Ann H of Pennsylvania won second prize of the prayer journal and she choose, Orchard of Hope. Jayne R of Ontario, CA was the never won before winner of Liz Curtis Higgs book, Mine is the Night, and she picked my book, Angels at the Crossroads. Then I chose a bonus winner out of the never won before entrants. So Tisha of Indiana won a copy of her choice of one of my books, and she picked Angels at the Crossroads, too. Thanks to all of you who entered. I enjoy giving away books and I’ll be doing another book giveaway soon.

Thanks for reading. Hope you have a good week.

Frogs in the Bathroom! Oh my!

Do you like frogs? This little fellow has some explaining to do. I was sweeping the bathroom this morning when I noticed what I thought was a gray rock on the floor under the step stool. Rocks in my house are not unusual. The grandkids are always collecting rock treasures. And I sometimes carry in rocks I find interesting. Carried one home from my walk today. So a gray rock was not a worry. That is until it started hopping! Then the rock got a little more interesting.  

For starters, how did a frog get in my bathroom? Back years ago, when we lived in an old farmhouse with lots of air holes for sneaky critters to discover, I wouldn't have been so surprised. Snakes sometimes made it inside. Mice thought the old farmhouse was a winter hotel. Even an occasional bird showed up in a panic when it didn't see the first tree branch to light on. Can't remember any frogs though. 

But now I have a nice, tight brick house with doors that close all the way together. No holes in any of the corners that I know about. So how did this frog come inside? A tree frog at that. I did bring in some plants before I took off for California last week. They were warning about frost. I've had toads that liked making homes in my flower pots. Once I carried a big old toad about a mile away to a creek to keep him from burrowing down in my flowers over and over, but I've never had a tree frog make a home in a flower pot. Still, that's what must have happened. Either that or I have a frog entrance I don't know about. I am happy that I saw the frog in the daytime instead of the creature hopping on my foot in the middle of the night. That might have really gotten interesting.  


So I gave him his freedom. But I doubt he went to hide under these toadstools. Tell me have you ever seen a toad under a toadstool? Or a frog? How about in a bathroom? Frogs in my bathroom. Oh my!