At Black Dog Writers the other night, we used story prompts and wrote for 20 minutes. Most of us wrote in longhand, a few on tablets, a few on phones (how do they DO that?) and one of the best writing voices in the room was blocked; he hates prompts. We had a good time ... we encouraged each other ... we learned stuff.
Today at Hairtique, Denee rescued my eternal blondeness, Megan and Pam told funny stories, and the clientele that were in there added to the conversation. We talked about ... well, things that happen to us when certain body parts start to wear out, about how different men and women are from each other. We had a good time ... we encouraged each other ... we knew stuff.
Nan Reinhardt and I spent a few days in Nashville, Indiana. We wrote and ate and said "what's the word for..." at least a hundred times. We had such a good time, as we always do, encouraging each other, pulling stuff from buried memories so that we relearned it.
This morning when I was getting ready to go to town for blonde hair and pink fingernails, I was looking around in irritation because I had come into the room with two socks and now one of them was missing. I know socks get lost in washers and dryers all the time, but they don't get lost between the laundry room and the living room, do they? Well, no ... at least, not this time. The missing sock was on my foot, much like the missing glasses will be on top of my head and the phone I can't find will be the one I'm texting on while I'm looking. Being human and fallible is such a good thing, a good time ... because it happens to all of us and we encourage each other with laughter and empathy. It's how we know stuff.
Back to the meeting of Black Dog Writers ... honestly, we probably don't do our best writing in a 20-minute sprint with our handwriting getting less and less legible as we go along. But when we read the efforts aloud afterward, we did find out we had some of our best writing moments. Navi Vernon wrote a gruesome story that had her husband Joe giving her the side-eye. He wrote about how he would manage if she wasn't there for a day or two. Scott wrote a wonderful scene with his ongoing character "Nick." Emma's words, as always, were so beautiful I don't know where she found them there around that crowded table. Lee wrote in short sentences she didn't like but were lyrical in the picture they drew. If there'd been a contest for winning phrases, Paul would have won it with "My book's getting cold."
The days this week, regardless of some oopses along the way, were so full of moments, of laughter ringing in the cold air, of the ongoing quiet reassurance of we can do this that gets us through the long winter...both the actual one and the symbolic one. It reminded me to have a good time, encourage each other, learn stuff.
Wishing that for you this week. While you're at it, be nice to somebody.
You have a way of looking at the every day that's both funny and lyrical. Keep up the good work, Liz!
Glad you are finding pleasure in the everyday stuff--it's how we'll survive the next at least two years... hold fast! And yes, retreat was exactly what I needed--it always is! 😊❤️
Great post! I love writing sprints.
Loved this positive message and guffawed at the sock story! My Fitbit has a find-my-phone function that makes my phone give out a horrid sound so that I can find it. One day, I wandered around my tiny apartment making that sound for several minutes. I was always so close to the phone but couldn't see it. It was in my back pocket.