In the A-Z Blogging Challenge, I chose a theme because I couldn’t imagine selecting a word from Wordland each day without a method of filtering some of them from the big pool. My theme is gratitude, and I chose it so it would force me to remember to be grateful for even little things. But, during this 26-day vow to put the rest of my life on hold, I haven’t always focused on small blessings: God’s voice is sort of a big one that I chose for “G” and I …read more

Quiet is an old friend who used to visit me as a girl. When I lived at home and my life was uncomplicated Elvis records and hot chocolate, I found him in the fields where we had bicycle dirt tracks and polliwog farms, or at my grandma’s house when I’d cut flowers; he followed me home from the school bus each day and was my faithful companion during my bath, in my bed at night, and when I dreamed. As I got older, we started to grow apart. The world …read more

I don’t travel a lot, but if you’ve been reading this blog longer than during the A-Z Blogging Challenge, you might beg to differ. By evidence of the frequency of travel posts, it appears that I fly more than I write. That isn’t so. Anyone close to me knows that I hate flying—more specifically, taking off and landing—so I do it as infrequently as possible. However, for whatever reason, when I do fly, stuff happens. Stuff that I can write about. So for that, I am grateful for PLANES. Things …read more

I am O-ficially dragging now in this challenge. Even coffee isn’t helping. But here’s why: I am editing two incredible novels, one of which has been requested by NINE (and my writing friends will understand how BIG this is) different agents. Most of us are delighted when just One agent wants to read more, but nine?? Her novel is a hot potato in my hands: I have to toss it back to her as fast as I can because we don’t want to keep the agents waiting. Isn’t that the …read more

I have no choice today–I must write. I took my mulligan yesterday for “M” so, although this task has turned out to be much harder than I initially expected, I will force myself to push through. My “N” word could easily be “None” or “Nada” and I could go about my other writing and editing tasks. Alas, I’ve committed to this blogging challenge. “N” isn’t an easy letter, at least for me, so I have chosen a broad topic for today: New New is not for new house or new …read more

I’m finally feeling the effects and pressure of this task. Vowing to write every day (minus Sundays) for the month of April taxes the creativity and writing fitness—can I keep doing this so many days in a row? Today I feel like I’ve pumped so much literary iron that my writing muscle is fatigued. I’m like a soccer player who expends all her energy sprinting in the first half of the game. It’s halftime now and the game is tied with no one on the bench. When I contemplated all …read more

Just thinking about this word makes me laugh. As I poured coffee today and thought about the possible “L” words for which I am grateful, laughter came to mind–and I nearly started to laugh. Prior to actually finishing the first cup of coffee, though, I’d say grinning was probably the best I could do. That isn’t true. I Laugh. At. Everything. And I don’t need coffee to get me started. I wasn’t always aware that I laughed at everything. It took years of living with someone who did not laugh …read more

When I first considered joining this A-Z blogging challenge, I seemed to focus only on the early letters: A, B, C, D… and I thought, “Gee, this will be easy!” I purposely forgot that the alphabet comes with prickly letters, too–the ones that don’t happen at the beginning of words very often: I, Q, U, X, Y, Z… and K (today’s letter). And when you’re blogging with a theme (gratitude), your word choices are even further limited. Kettle chips. I love them. That was the first “K” word that came …read more