IWSG January 2025 She Led the Way

 

Welcome readers, writers, authors, and bloggers!

Happy New Year!

We're glad you're here! It's the First Wednesday of the month; when we celebrate IWSG Day in the form of a blog hop featuring members and guests of the Insecure Writer's Support Group. Founded by author Alex Cavanaugh (Thank you, Captain!) and fostered by like-minded associates, IWSG is a comfortable place to share views and literary news as we record our journeys. Check out the monthly newsletter here.

The awesome co-hosts for this month’s posting of the IWSG are:     Rebecca Douglass, Beth Camp, Liza @ Middle Passages, and Natalie @ Literary Rambles!

 Today’s entirely optional question: Describe someone you admired when you were a child. Did your opinion of that person change when you grew up?

When I was growing up, most kids had grandmothers; most of whom were widows who lived their remaining years with the families of the children they had raised. Most grandmothers cooked and cleaned, took care of laundry, and maybe tended a small garden out back while collecting a monthly stipend from the government for their husband’s military services.

My grandma was different in that her own two daughters had long been raised and gone as she worked full-time at a local grocery store where she stocked shelves and ran a cash register while raising two grandkids. By the time she was Lead Cashier, she had to soak her aching feet every evening. She didn’t have to have her hair done at the Beauty Parlor every Monday, but it was a treat she awarded herself after long work weeks and very busy Sundays when she took care of things a “good man would do if there was any to be had.”  Instead, she built the fence that encompassed our yard herself, serviced the evaporative cooler every year, painted the house, and changed the oil in her pride and joy; a light-blue Chevy Corvair.

Between arranging canned goods “just so” on store shelves all week and maybe rotating tires on the weekend, I imagined the little pink pillow with the silk pillowcase she slept on felt pretty good.

Grandma never complained and said it wouldn’t do any good. “Arm yourself with solutions to problems you want addressed by someone else.” she’d say.

No. Grandma didn’t cook or clean. But she ruled the roost and kept the bills paid while her own Mother (Mamo) took care of the household chores and kept us kids fed and on time for school each day. Mamo had coffee, toast, and the morning paper ready for grandma to read each day before she went to work. Grandma read the evening paper every day as well, while she soaked her feet at night. She seemed to know something about everything, and was interested in any subject I ever brought up. If she didn’t have an answer, we’d find out together. She taught herself to read sheet music (whereas Mamo played by ear) and sometimes filled in on Sunday evening piano concerts. I was in junior high before I discovered Grandma was a closet poet, too.

In retrospect, all we had to do was follow along as she led the way.

Any changes that ever occurred in our relationship over the years could only ever have been in the intensity of the love, respect, admiration, and gratitude that remains ever-vibrant in my heart today, long after her passing.

In closing, I’m sharing a quote my grandma, and I thought was pretty spot-on ;-)

 

Patience is the ability to count down before you blast off

IWSG June Secrets and Cover-ups

Hello there!

Whether you’re just passing through, or looking for a comfortable online group in which to share your writing journey, you’ve come to the right place! The Insecure Writer’s Support Group offers resources, tips, timely news, how-to’s, and don’t do’s – all the support we writers can use to make the most of our craft.

We meet on the 1^st Wednesday of every month. Feel free to browse around and mingle. As in the words of IWSG founder and “Cassa Series,” author Alex Cavanaugh, “Your words may be the encouragement someone else needs” Join us!

This month’s gracious co-hosts are:   Pat Garcia, J.Q. Rose, and Natalie Aguirre!

This month’s Optional Question is:  Writers have secrets! What are one or two of yours, something readers would never know from your work?

bookriot.com

How’s everyone doing out there in Quarantine Land? I’ve begun to talk to hummingbirds, and occasionally, the refrigerator when it spits out ice cubes for no apparent reason. The wearing of masks by pretty much everybody everywhere these days presents a conundrum for me. Who are these people? I met a new Ortho surgeon last month, and all I can tell you is he seems nice and has blue eyes. A young friend of mine suggested we might be better able to identify the looters if they didn’t have to wear a mask (!) I got the strangest look when I explained that people like that always wear masks – because they’re not exactly proud of what they do.

And that thought lead to another:

I could give you a handful of examples of a writer’s dauntless ambition. They ‘re stacked neatly on a corner of my desk, full-length manuscripts in various stages of completion - awaiting final approval. So why haven’t I dressed them in their Sunday best and sent them out into the world? Oh, I’ve more excuses than manuscripts to submit. Up until, and even including this year, I’ve promised (myself) that this is The Year I will accomplish these goals. Then, with sudden shortness of breath, I drop another file on top of the stack, so I can’t see the manuscripts anymore. Way to go, right?

But then, a funny thing happened on my way to abject depression. I called my own bluff! Had I that little faith in myself to spend (or waste?) all those hours, years weaving thousands of words only to leave them listless in the shadowy realm of dust bunnies? Of course not.  My summer mantra is now officially “Publish or Perish” whatever it takes. But first, I’ll need a mask (grin).

“Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen,” Brene’ Brown says in her book Daring Greatly. She has a lot more than that to say, and I recommend the book. Here’s a site that seems to agree: fourminutebooks.com

 

“Spring being a tough act to follow, God created June” ~ Al Bernstein

 

Who Am I?

Welcome, all! You’re just in time for the monthly (1^st Wednesday) on-line gathering of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, where you’ll find helpful tips, handy resources, the latest trends in publishing, and a comfortable place for hundreds of writers – just like you and I – to  share our writing journeys! 

Feel free to meander and mingle. Our gracious co-hosts this month are:

Diane Burton, Kim Lajevardi, Sylvia Ney, Sarah Foster, Jennifer Hawes, and Madeline Mora-Summonte!

In a recent newsletter, Sci-Fi author and IWSG founder: Alex Cavanaugh, shared a cautionary post on the subject of writers voicing opinions on controversial issues and the possible effects of doing so while hoping the world will still love and buy your books. Having witnessed (along with the rest of the world) the devastating consequences of controversy, I agree with Alex on avoiding it altogether.

However, I do have one question: should the same precautions be taken with regard to a memoir? Do you dare tell generations to come that you always hated the holiday ham (not to be confused with Uncle Whoever) or that it was, in fact, Uncle Whoever who burned down the barn that fateful summer night? Of course, if you’ve been chronicling your life all along you have essentially recorded history; yours as you knew it. In attempting to write my own, and ghostwriting for others, I find there are contemporary constraints in recording life in retrospect. Should there really be an issue?

Of Quotable Note:

“Wherever I go, I’m watching” ~ Richard Scarry; renowned children’s book author and illustrator would be 100 years old today!  “You spell dessert with two “s”es cuz together they look like whipped cream!”  I still have a few of those Little Golden Books around the house. How about you?

“Girl in the wind blowing wide open the closed doors of my life,” ~ Christy Brown Irish author and painter whose autobiography was made into the Academy Award-winning film “My Left Foot.” He would be 87 years old today!

Optional IWSG Question: “Of all the genres you read and write, which is your favorite to write in?”

That thankfully brief, and sometimes painful period in life; so often referred to as “coming of age” when one day a stranger stares back at you in the mirror. Parents won’t ever admit that this is the real ‘Stranger Danger’ they were afraid of (ha!), and you won’t admit you’re more afraid than they are. So, you soar headlong into the realm of uncertainty, through failing grades and heartaches, dust-ups and break-outs, learning to swim on a bicycle, until the day you recognize that face in the mirror as having been yours all along, you’d just been away for a time – absorbed in self-discovery.

Fun fact:

Editor Bennett Cerf challenged Dr. Seuss to write a story using no more than 50 different words. The result was: “Green Eggs and Ham”

Happy Writing!

Come Again?

Welcome Readers and fellow Writers, to the May 2019 online meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group! Founded by author Alex Cavanaugh and comprised of writing members just like you (and me), featuring writing tips, resources, articles, contests, and IWSG swag! See what we’re all talking about here and join us as we share our writing journeys.

*We meet on the first Wednesday of every month – join us and enjoy!

Visit our gracious Co-hosts, and let them know you’re here: Lee Lowery, Juneta Key, Yvonne Ventresca, and T. Powell Coltrin! 

Happy May Day, Lei Day, International Workers Day, and congratulations to all who survived the April 2019 A to Z Challenge!

It’s “Get Caught Reading Month” Will you? I’m reading my fifth book of the year so far. I haven’t started writing anything new yet, though I am plowing through my WIPs like a champ. So far, so good ;-)

The world is full of new ideas with prevailing meanings:

I’m not sure what to think of cover re-designing – after your book has been published. Has anyone had any experience with that? 

While enlisted in the military during WWII, Joseph Keller discovered a troubling paradox involving the subject of insanity with regard to he and his fellow bombardiers; which inspired his novel “Catch 22” the eventual success of which exceeded that of his later works to the point that when critics asked why he hadn’t written a second best-seller, he responded wryly: “Who has?”  

Well, there was Orson Welles who, after convincing every listener that New Jersey had indeed been attacked by Martians in the radio drama “War of the Worlds” went on to write “Citizen Kane” a critically acclaimed Box Office bust; which ultimately defied all dismal odds, and in 2011 released its 70^th Anniversary Blu-ray edition.

“The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today” ~ August Spies 1886 - As true now, I think, as it was then, though for different reasons.

IWSG Optional Question of the Month:

“What was an earlier experience where you learned that language had power?”

The power of the spoken word clicked for me the first time I realized how much quicker you receive what you ask for by merely saying “please” how rewarding a simple “Thank you” feels, and the healing effects of “I’m sorry.”

Raised in a home of avid readers, it wasn’t long before I followed suit and was immediately enamored with the notion of relatively private entertainment or instruction obtained through written language; words intentionally assembled to describe, enlighten, entrance or forewarn – What a concept!   I still feel that way, and I guess that’s why the practice of changing (except in good-natured jest) the time-honored meanings of words at random or whim seems so disrespectful. Especially for writers who strive so hard to get it right. Can you imagine today’s definition of snowflakes dropping softly to the ground near a grand woke oak throwing shade on a hangry squirrel? It’s enough to crash a GOAT grammar app! I don’t even want to think about what my human editor would say.

Moving along…

Do you have a special Mother’s Day tradition? I’m thinking of proposing a couple for our family. Perhaps a Family Comic Strip? A Lip-synch Tea Party? A backyard Bug Safari? (These ideas all came from Parents.com   I suspect my family could use a break from playing Bingo every year ;-)

Have a wonderful month of May!