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Of Daughters, Mothering, and The Willingness to Turn Inward…

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One of the most difficult aspects of being a mother is the requirement of self-reflectiveness.

As mothers we need to be able to look back upon ourselves, most particularly our time as children, and recall the difficulties and fears we faced in order to remain connected with our children.

Our willingness to do this is most particularly effective in nurturing our daughters.

“[D]aughters can model a great deal from a mother who is self-aware herself,” says Juanita Johnson in, Know Thyself First(Part 6 of Our Mothers, Ourselves: Mother-Daughter Relationships)

I address this at length in the blog post, Of Daughters, Actions and Self-Awareness.

While sons are

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Of Motorcyclists, Native American Sayings, and Words that Travel Across Time…

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If you want to practice patience, try shooting butterflies.
They are nothing, if not elusive. Beautiful and elusive.
“If nothing ever changed, there would be no butterflies.”

On the way to school one morning this past week our youngest child noticed as a motorcycle moving past our truck and other cars then still and waiting for the light to turn green.

The motorcyclist, like many, was moving through the small space between lanes.

It was a long line of cars and the anxiety of morning rush releasing its sting.

“Can you do that?” our youngest asked.

“Yes. You can do anything you want,” I replied. “But the bigger question asks, “Is what

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Of Bishops, Kindreds Spirits and the Dawning of Awareness…

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The Bishop in chess moves diagonally along the squares of the chessboard until it encounters another playing piece.

The various directions in which the Bishop can move create a cross upon the chess board. Less powerful than the Queen or Rook, one Bishop equals the strength of a Knight or 3 Pawns. Like the Rook, Queen, Knight and Pawns of the same color or player, the Bishop seeks to protect the King from capture.

Each player has two Bishops.

While one Bishop stands between the Knight and the Queen the second Bishop stands on the other side of the Queen and beside the King.

In this way the Bishop is the piece or character after the Queen to hold close proximity to the King.

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Of Intermediate Regions, Hunger and Thirst…

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There stands an intermediate region in the life and structure of a novel, that place between crossing the border of the opening and beginning and entering into a series of actions that lead to the penultimate center of the journey.

It lies between the edge of that vast new world of survival that constitutes the protagonist’s path of growth and transformation, the steps she or he makes towards achieving their goal. It is a land filled obstacles of varied sorts, and the ultimate crisis that manifests profound change.

This area operates much like the night before that big game, the minutes ticking up to giving one’s debut concert. For writers this can function much like reading one’s novel for those last times wherein we institute final edits towards bringing the work to its brightest hue

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Of Life, Physicality and Stories…

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Much of the ability to write compelling fiction comes from the willingness to sink one’s teeth into the substance of life, or that, which flows out of life.

Conversations, kind smiles, tilts of the head can reveal joy, simmering sadness, or the ache of a heart playing upon a crafted smile.

These are the human actions reflective of life and living that writers notice and expand upon either by writing a story or novel or tucking them away for later use in describing the response or motion of a character in the heat of conflict or a reverie of emotions stimulated by a memory.

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