Rants

Becky’s rant

triciajenkins2001Leave a comment

Rant goat

“Yeah – that bothers me.”

Becky woke up with that thought. The bothersome thought woke her an hour early and nagged her until she got up and wrote about it.

Here’s Becky’s Write for 10 Minutes rant:

America is sending and spending billions of dollars on a situation that has gone on since right after WWI. In the last year, $160 billion to Afghanistan and $120 billion to Iraq. We keep sticking our noses into other people’s business. It’s costing us our sons daughters fathers mothers. When there are things we could do so much more for our own people here in the US. Especially the military veterans. This is gratitude to those who have sacrificed their minds body and souls. It is not right for us to give money to people outside our country when we have so many who should not have to wait even 5 minutes for a doctor or hospital to take care of them because of the service they did for US. The collective people of our nation need to rethink what we are here for. 

We both have sons in the US military so I understand and share her frustration.

BUT – when Becky announced that she was writing a rant, I expected it to be about something else – like how her boyfriend forgot to tell her that he changed the locks on the doors to their house, or about our sister Beth (Becky’s twin) who went back to live with her abusive husband, or about the issues she’s having with Windows 10 on her laptop.

I’ve known Becky her entire life (she’s 12 years younger than me) but I’m constantly surprised, delighted, inspired  by all the things I don’t know about her! Love you, Becky!

What about you – pen or keyboard?

triciajenkins2001Leave a comment

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?