October Open Thread 2023

 

                    Hello October!  

Fall cooler days are around the corner here. Also our new coffee station is open.  Looking forward to putting holiday lights on it and making it festive, as there are quite a bit of holidays just around the corner. With any morning, first coffee is a must. Or tea if you prefer. At least the coffee grinder back up works. Just hammer the beans in a bag.

 

        As we go through walks and drives to see fruity pebbles of fall on trees, their branches growing ever barren, it is a nice change to the hot summer here in the South. Sometimes we get snow, other winters it is just cold with rain.   A great hush settles over the land as the forest animals take note and start their storage.   They know more than we take notice.    

                Adventure is calling at the corn maze with bluegrass music, gem mining, and tasty eats courtesy from the food trucks.

                                          

    

                        

                                                            

                                

                          

                           

         Check out the local fair that comes by. Seeing everyone have fun, hearing children's laughter  to their sense of wonder brings on a nostalgia when we were kids.  County fair food from funnel cakes, hot dogs, slushies to frozen fried icecream to accompany the fun with our sweethearts and families. Try out one of the many games to win that stuffed unicorn or bear.  They look way too easy is deceiving.

                                

                                       

       Don't forget to walk through the forest in its change of colors to gaze at the splendor and hear the forest speak to us in its language with the wind.

        Thank you for visiting and passing on the word to follow.  Take a break. We're getting more coffee from the stockroom after this incident below.

Writer's Corner: To Show or Tell

Showing in writing is a technique that writers use to elaborate and express to the reader in a way that hooks them into the manuscript.  

A first rough draft maybe telling before the second draft is more specific and detailed to make the

story more effective. 

Examples of telling.

He picked up the sword.

The town held a festival. 

Examples of showing:

With a grin, the warrior in silver picked up the sword as he gazed over the gathered host. 

Green and gold tents nestled in the valley below lofty mountains as the annual Renaissance festival opened people in costumes. Merchants lined the paths for eager spending customers to explore hand crafted trinkets to fine woven clothes to fit the special occasion.  Blue skies with a warm sun added the beginning to a perfect day.

Showing is reeling the reader into the writer's world, closing out the outside world just for awhile

and if successful the reader has that connection to the writer with their world in words of description

and paragraphs with unforgettable characters to make the story work.

Writers create a picture in our minds

by the beauty of expression of the written word.

Know some writers with great showing in works of literature?  Share them with us. 

Thank you for recommending us to help us grow and add one more contributor.   

 

June Open Thread: Summer Days Ahead

 

Summer is around the corner for many, but it's already started here in the South.  Temps are soaring into the upper 80s making it feel like 100.   Pool is open.

As usual there is something even in the summer that
catches a writer's or artist's eye

Go to that little place by the seaside to grab a sweet treat

Or the diner that serves handspun milkshakes with hotdogs or hamburgersas you deck it up how you want
it with a side of fries or slaw

There's nothing else like them, just like the

good ole' days!

Check out new places to take solitude

Watermelon is ripe and ready to eat

Listen to great music or read a catch up on summer reading

Rerun movies with a flare of laughter as

 Summer days put us into a daze 

As summer cookouts or a seaside or go to the square for a summer meal to relax and 

hear open mic music, new songs to first reads of a story to see how others respond. Do it if you dare!

Most of all, have a fun safe summer!

Try a Writing or Sketch Journal

 

We are all creative in many ways. We use critical thinking to tasks everyday, every moment.  What if journaling could enhance your skills even more?  Whatever you write in the journal is between you and the pages. It's a way to clear out the static and mental stagnation or emotional spirals we fall into.  Truly it's normal and natural to express what's within.  Go on get it out on paper.

What kind of journal do you have or thought of having in your possession?  A leatherbound journal with thin pages and a nice fountan pen?   I prefer just an ordinary spiral bound notebook and I write with a nice black ink pen and churn out a couple pages on anything and everything.  Some may call these freewriting pages too.  One thing to overcome is your own censor.  Yes, it's the inner dialogue that crops up and tells you it's no good and so forth.  Ignore it and go on.  Eventually you'll catch yourself when you do it.

As you start out on first few days of journaling, you'll notice a change to making goals happen and have a better starting point.  It reduces anxiety as well stress.

Find a quiet place or a time that all is still around you to give it a go.  No one is grading you on it.   Make that step and journal, get it all out.  Unlock the creativity and you'll find yourself accomplishing more than you ever thought of before. 

Try journaling, go out to the store and select the pen you like and the journal and let the change begin.

Even better, try a sketch journal. Whether it's words or brush, take a moment, your quiet reflective moment.

Writer's Corner: Flashbacks

 

Flashbacks in crafting a novel can be helpful or harmful to a novel.   Sometimes a writer uses inferences from a scene in the story to create a    flashback based on the past experience of an event in a character's life.  It maybe pleasant or traumatic.  

                                         

It seems flashback if expressed well make the novel more successful  if done  correctly.  When it comes to literature, there are many  contrasts -- including "literary" novels vs. mass-market ones,   long-ago classics vs. modern fiction  and   chronological novels vs. non-chronological onesThe last is the subject of this post.jumping back and forth in time, of course, is a hallmark of some modern fiction. I haven't found many pre-20th-century novels with frequent flashbacks, but more recent literature is full of them. To name just a few books: John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany (which I just read), Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin, James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, Don DeLillo's Underworld, Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, Fannie Flagg's Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, Toni Morrison's Beloved and Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things.

Meanwhile, the classics of many years ago tend to mostly take chronological approaches. Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Jack London's The Call of the Wild, L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Mary Shelley's The Last Man, Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, etc., etc. Even Herman Melville's Moby-Dick and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, which both include informational chapters not directly related to the plot or characters, are essentially chronological.

Modern books can also be chronological or mostly chronological -- Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits, James Clavell's Shogun, Andre Dubus III's House of Sand and Fog, John Grisham's The Client and many others.

I like both chronological and non-chronological novels, and see advantages to each.

From past reads in books, flashbacks can be confusing and break the novel in segments that can make it hard to understand.  A writer can loose the reader this way so it is essential not to overdo it.   

    As we are individuals it is natural to cope by blocking out a traumatic event, but it precedes in every aspect of the person's life until they face that trauma and deal with it.  It's getting over the precipice to promote healing and change.

If the flashback is subtle, the characterization strong with the elements crafting the novel, all the more to keep the reader absorbed in another's world through their world.   

Any books or movies or shows with excellent flashbacks? 

                 

  

 

                         

 

Novels With or Without Flashbacks | HuffPost Entertainment

Weekly Open Thread, October 4, 2021

                Everything is pumpkin, leaves and change of weather during October.  This year is going to be a good season to celebrate together.  As it gets cooler, there is the phenomena of dogs loving the leaves.  

                    

                                           

Fun crafts can bring happiness and a diversion from the usual routine we go throughout the day.  These here are toilet paper tubes.  All you need is construction paper, ribbon, scissors and glue to make these.  Might be a fun table topper. For more effect use a hole puncher to make the eyes and a battery tea light to make a neat effect when you turn off the lights.

                                    

Another fun thing is picking up leaves or flowers and lay them flat on the table.  Place copy or white construction paper over them.   Peel a crayon and rub flat over the paper.   If you have a color printer, get some transfer paper and you can iron on the design on a T shirt. Just a neat project to do and lasts a long time.

                             

                                       

         

And a little something for those that decorate their homes. Pretty neat sound effects, if you recall childhood days trick or treat          

Cooler season means movie binge watching. Coffee's ready and hope everyone has a safe good week!   

                                           

Monday Open thread

 

Good Morning and happy Monday!  Although we are a creative bunch here and content with simmering ideas to create something,  let this is our way to say hello. Got coffee?  Ready for the day?   What are you working on today?  

  Or you never know this might happen with coffee!  

Our kids had a five day weekend and there's nothing like family time.  Today the goal is continuing on the current scenes in book 3, I need to reconstruct it with some free writing. Working on the villain's ending in progress. Have a great day!

Tuesday Story Outlining

Good morning and hope it is a great Tuesday.  I'm in serious concentration planning out a major action scene.  For this it seems better to see my drawings and my notes to handwrite it out.   

The scene which the good guys take back what was taken from them, yet things won't be the same.  A story is a story and the reader, the audience I keep in mind always.  During the cooler times I get up to take a break and see our enormous Joro spider on the deck.  She is getting much bigger and gives me the creeps as though she is watching me, wondering if I am something she could eat. Joros are invasive and their numbers have increased. They have surrounded our house with their webs.   They get much bigger than this.

To which on the other side of our porch is the native writer garden spider.  She is quite amazing, and much larger as she tucks her web out of the Joro's sights.   

While working on your literary piece or artwork, don't forget to take those little walks and marvel at the simplicity of things life has to offer us.  Whatever inspires you.  Oh and don't forget the coffee and yoga in the morning to start your day off.   

                            

  Does anyone still have one of these?  An old dinosaur typewriter..