Writer

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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Do you hear crickets?

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I’m in my office, at my desk with laptop ready to write for 10-minutes. My watch timer is set. Ready, set, GO!

No writing thoughts are happening. Maybe I need a 2nd cup of coffee.

OK- back to my desk with coffee. My trip to the kitchen took about 20 minutes (I made toast with honey-butter spread) so I reset the timer to 10-minutes – Ready, set, GO!

Crickets.

Guess I could write about how much I’m enjoying this delicious, hot, aromatic coffee in my Grand Canyon souvenir mug. But, hold on, just saw the FedEx truck go by. I need to go look on the porch just in case the driver left a package.

False alarm – no package. I forgot to stop the timer. Should I reset it or just keep writing?

Wait, did CJ feed the feral yard cats this morning? I better ask him.

Morning sex is the best!

My 10-minutes is up.

Me and Tom vs. ChatGPT

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My good friend Tom, is an excellent expository writer. We met while working for Boys & Girls Club. Tom was hired to write grants although he had no previous experience in grant writing. We were impressed by his lengthy resume of writing and editing for newspapers and colleges and he passed our writing exam with flying colors. We felt he could learn to write grants and he did so with great success. I consider him an expert in punctuation, grammar and word choice.

To me though, Tom’s writing is a little superfluous. Doesn’t mean I don’t like his writing; in fact, I totally respect his writing abilities and greatly value his approval, editing and suggestions of my writing.

Tom and I met for lunch a couple of months ago. I brought several entries I had written for my blog – www.mytruelovelist.com – and entries on the same blog topics “written” by ChatGPT. We had been talking about ChatGPT and what it means for writers like us and others such as students and advertisers. It was pretty clear which was which so I didn’t fool him at all, but he did give me some helpful guidance on using AI programs. And he’s using AI himself but lightly, carefully, focused.

Here’s a link to an excellent article about finding your writer’s voice written by Estelle Erasmus for the ajsa (American Society of Journalists and Authors.)

My 10 minutes is up. Wishing you a wonderful writing day!

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…

Re-write for 10 minutes

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michenr

Here’s a photo posted on by one of my favorite websites/apps/editing program – www.grammarly.com. So, yeah, you don’t have to write new copy for 10 minutes every day. Re-write something you’ve written already. Re-write your to-do list, your long-term goals, or your business plan. Re-write your About Me, bio,or resume. Look back through your journals and pick an entry or two to re-write and expound upon. Like most writers, you’ve probably got a few unfinished stores or articles in your files. Whip them out and write for 10 minutes.

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.

10 minutes of “I love it when…”

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love-957023_1920 (2)Today is Sunday. For me, a day of rest and retrospect. A day to re-fuel my inner strength to face the week ahead. It’s a popular thing to write a gratitude list every day as a way to center your spirit. But my gratitude list has become repetitive. Every second of every day, I’m grateful for my family, my husband, my friends, my health, home, brains, beauty, freedom. That list is carved in stone and I can refer to it every day. So now I write, “I love it when….”

  • I love it when my cat, Rebel, sleeps next to me.
  • I love it when the sky is so blue that it sears my eyeballs.
  • I love it when gas is only $2.01 per gallon.
  • I love it when I see my friends on Facebook.
  • I love it when my mom, sister, and friend Alicia spend time together.
  • I love it when my husband, CJ, makes sarcastic remarks that make me laugh.
  • I love it when CJ and I watch TV and eat ice cream together in bed.
  • I love it when I spend time preparing my calendar and work for the coming week.

I love it when I write for 10 minutes every day!

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.

Becky’s rant

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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!