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Mushrooming Through Life: A Fresh Take on Aging

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I don’t like the phrase “growing old.” There’s no “growing” as you get older (unless you count hairs in your nose and ears.) Actually, there’s a lot of shrinking – your lips, boobs, muscles, and spine for beginners. Add that to your shrinking bank account, friends still living, and eyesight.

Anyway…not to be totally negative about aging, I’m looking for another description to replace “growing.” Thesaurus.com lists these synonyms for growing:

burgeoning, developing, expanding, flourishing, spreading, thriving, viable, amplifying, animate, augmenting, budding, crescent, dilating, enlarging, fructifying, germinating, living, maturing, mushrooming, pullulating, sprouting, stretching, swelling, waxing

Some of these made me LOL! I particularly like “mushrooming” old.

Advice from a Mushroom

  • Be down-to-earth
  • Sprout new ideas
  • Keep a low profile
  • Know when to show up
  • Stay well-rounded
  • Start from the ground up

My 10 minutes is up. Hope you have a mushrooming kind of day!

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10 ways to squeeze in 10 minutes

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ostriches-838976_1920 (2)Here in the States, we just celebrated Thanksgiving Day. It’s a busy week of grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, and visitors. My sister, her four adult children and their children came for the week. We had so much fun! But it was a challenge to write for 10 minutes every day with so much company. And, in the midst of all the activities, I got a great idea for a fictional character and a scene for a book or short story. So I had to write! I had to squeeze in 10 minutes between the cooking, shopping, playing, talking, visiting, etc. You can too:

  1. Add 10 minutes to your day by setting your alarm 10 minutes earlier than usual.
  2. Write at the kitchen counter while you’re waiting for the water to boil or the potatoes to cook or the rolls to get burned – I mean browned. (I learned that 10 minutes is too long for rolls to be in the oven!)
  3. Lock yourself in the bathroom for 10 minutes. (Note: this doesn’t work very well if you have children in the house because they see the closed bathroom door as their opportunity to have a conversation with you!)
  4. Sit in your vehicle in a well-lit parking lot at the mall or the grocery store and write for 10 minutes.
  5. Or, sit in your vehicle in your driveway or parking lot and write for 10 minutes.
  6. Invite your company to go with you to the library or a coffee shop where you can write for 10 minutes while they read or enjoy a snack.
  7. Write while your mother/sister/husband/niece/nephew is talking. Look up occasionally or nod your head to appear as if you’re paying attention.
  8. Announce that you’re going to take a 30-minute nap. Write for 10 minutes; sleep for 20.
  9. Ask whoever you’re with to write for 10 minutes with you. My sister Becky and write together and sometimes we read what we wrote out loud.
  10. Before you turn in for the night and go to sleep, turn off the television, tablet, computer, smartphone and then write for 10 minutes.

I’m re-reading “How to Write a Nonfiction Book in 21 Days That Readers LOVE!” by Steve Scott. He writes for 2-hours every day and tells how he does it in this book. Someday…

I only have 10 minutes

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squirrel-567858_1920 (2)I only have 10 minutes to write today so please excuse my unedited rambling. Sometimes this happens when you write for 10 minutes every day – you just write – without editing, correcting, changing. You write quickly, off the top of your head, in the now.  I’m currently reading Eckhart Tolle’s book, The Power of Now  (I know, I know, everybody’s read it already). He explains why and how to live in the now. So today I’m writing in the now – not about the past or the future, just what’s going on in my head at this moment – which is dinner – whole wheat spaghetti with meat sauce and zucchini. We’re having an early dinner and then going to our writer’s group.

Sometimes when you write for 10 minutes every day, it’s not what you write that matters, it’s that you write at all.

This is personal

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beagle-995637_1920 (2)My heart aches today. My nephew Adam was murdered 18 months ago. Shot in the head while sitting on the couch in his family room. Luckily, his parents had just left the house, his two children were sleeping, and his wife was at the store or they might have been murdered too. The trial ended yesterday. The murderer, a man who was married to one of our nieces, was found guilty by the jury of second-degree murder, child endangerment, and running from law-enforcement. The family is disappointed – shocked – that he wasn’t convicted of first degree murder, but at least we know he will be locked up for a long time – hopefully for the rest of his life.

I intended this blog to be about writing. But some days, like today, writing for joy just isn’t forthcoming.

My 10 minutes are up…..

What can you write in 10 minutes every day?

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UTSometimes it can be a challenge to write for 10 minutes every day. What do you write about?

If you’re writing a book, you obviously have a clear assignment everyday. An average page has 250-300 words. Can you write one page in 10 minutes? In the article, Word Count for Novels and Children’s Books, Writer’s Digest editor Chuck Sambuchino advises that 80,000 to 89,999 is an acceptable word count for a novel (if you are not J.K. Rowling.)  I did the math – if you write 250 words every day, you will write 80,000 words – a novel – in just 320 days!

A member of our writers group, Ellen Gillette, wrote a poem every day for 1,000 days. You can read her body of work at http://www.ellenpoems.blogspot.com/. I love reading something – like Ellen’s poetry – that brings on feelings.

Me – not writing a novel, poetry, short story or thesis. Just writing ’cause I like to.

What about you – pen or keyboard?

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snowy owlDo you prefer to write by hand with pen on paper or on a keyboard? Does it affect your creativity? We had this discussion at our last Use Your Words writers group meeting. We were talking about writing every day – some like to write in a journaI while others prefer the keyboard.

I write both ways (sounds kinda sexy!). For work, I hand write copious notes and lists in my work notebook and then write copy for newsletters, brochures, social media, etc., on the computer keyboard. I like writing for work on the keyboard because I type lightening fast and can edit/correct/change as I write.

But, because I have a tendency to edit/correct/change while writing on the keyboard, I prefer to write my personal stuff by hand. I write by hand in my Travel Journal.  And, every morning, my sister Becky and I write for 10 minutes in our journals and then read out loud what we wrote. Unedited handwriting is raw, not so pretty, truthful.

I found an interesting article on the I-net about the benefits of writing by hand http://mentalfloss.com/article/33508/4-benefits-writing-hand. In the short time I spent searching, I saw lots of information about the benefits of writing by hand but none on the benefits of typing. We’ll just have to make up our own.

Last year, our writers group read “Writing Down Your Soul,” by Janet Conner. One entire chapter is about choosing your writing tools. I had never thought about the physical connections between our hearts, minds and hands when writing.

What about you – pen or keyboard?

10 reasons why I write for 10 minutes every day

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  1. I’m a writer and writers write.
  2. Writing every day is good mental exercise.
  3. My sister Becky and I write for 10 minutes together and then we read out loud what we wrote.
  4. Writing frees my mind of some of the many thoughts clanking around in there.
  5. Lawrence Block, author of Write for Your Life, suggested writing for 10 minutes every day
  6. Blogger and author of Choose Yourself, James Altucher, challenges his reader to write 10 ideas every day. Sounds easy but it’s not.
  7. Sometimes it’s more effective to express/confess/reveal things in writing than speaking.
  8. Writing is a GOOD habit.
  9. I like to make lists so 10 minutes of pure list making is very satisfying.
  10. I’m a writer and writers write every day – even if it’s just for 10 minutes.