Curtiss Ann Matlock

It came up all of a sudden– a trip to visit our dear loved ones in Mobile, with Bigstreetrod doing a lot of the driving.

What is lovely about now is that we have traveled by car so much over the years that we can gather all of our stuff in a matter of a couple hours and take off. I find the beauty of the second half of my life is that I do not fuss so much about things that don’t matter.

That’s Bigstreetrod-Papa in the swing with his little Sweetie-Pie, looking at the deep water creek and swamp and birds behind the house. It was a week of special bonding with our loved ones. A week of so many prayers answered, even those made long ago. I remember the years I prayed for a child, and how that prayer was answered– and who knew that 31 years later it would still be being answered with Mother’s Days with Dear Son.

My dream of moving to our Dream House has hit a sizable hitch. We have been unable to sell our current house, and tomorrow the contingency contract on our Dream House in Mobile is up. Strangely, I am not downcast. I am peaceful and know that things are being worked out for our good.

Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands. — Deuteronomy 7:8-10, NIV.

So we adjust our plans somewhat and hope for the sale of our house soon. In the meantime, we experience some precious blessings of being brought together in ways we never had imagined. Even this impromptu trip worked to help with my writing. I took a ten day break from the current book and have returned with a fresh eye. Today I completed six chapters of edits– and I am pleased with the book! Thus encouraged I work with new enthusiasm.

So often things do not turn out how we envision, but when we look back, we can see that what we are given is far wider, deeper and richer than imagined.

We have these cactus in several pots. That’s Punk’s tail. He was meowing around my feet as I tried to take the picture, but I managed anyway. The cactus– sorry, don’t know the species– began to bloom just today. Such magical blooms! Only a few days ago I saw the beginning of buds. They seem to come up overnight, once the are started.

The cactus make me think of my writing efforts for the past days. Nothing there, and suddenly all the growth comes to fruition and the work blooms. It happens as does everything, in the right time. One must simply keep on working and watching.

I’m continuing on with practicing The Artist’s Way, one month at a time. I greatly enjoy it, recommend it highly.

You will be led to new sources of support as you begin to support yourself. — Julia Cameron.

Dear God, today I am open to all gifts of support coming my way. I trust that the answer to every need is already on its way, that You are ever there moving on my behalf. Thank You. Amen.

Writers must fortify themselves with pride and egotism as best they can. The process is analogous to using sandbags and loose timbers to protect a house against flood. Writers are vulnerable creatures like anyone else. For what do they have in reality? Not sandbags, not timbers. Just a flimsy reputation and a name. –Brian Aldiss

I started out tired today. I know from experience not to push myself– I always back up when pushed– but I am impatient. Life is moving on, and I must do so, too. I am at the final chapter of my current novel in progress and eager to be done and get on with other things. I actually have been having the whisper of and idea for a new book. Amazing, considering I’ve been in a funk off and on about writing.

So I feed myself well both in mind and body, and carry my favorite fortifications to my desk– hot black Ceylon tea, savory gluten-free toast and blackberry jam, my necessary computer glasses, and this morning the great extra of fragrant Zephirine Drouhin blossoms. There next to them are gifts from friends, reminders of their cheering me onward.

I learned long ago that a writer does not wait to feel like writing. Start writing and the feelings will follow. Better yet, don’t even pay attention to feelings. Feelings are fickle and very often great liars. Feelings are what I call those emotions that go on from the heart upward to the head. They are rather like fluttery birds nesting in our hair. Gut instinct is different. My instincts are my true guides, and they come from my belly.

Today I try to listen to that deep belly voice, and I…hear a chattering.

Still, I start. Throw out and start again. Up and down in the chair. Then make myself sit in the chair and just write some more. It is all flat. I don’t like it. Where am I going? Nothing is working. Finally I get up and take a break. Look at mail, bake a gluten-free angel food cake, and read a couple of blogs– oh, in between eating almonds, gluten-free cookies, Vienna sausages, a banana and corn chips. (Heavens, just listing that is disconcerting.)

Something I read on Plant Whatever Brings You Joy sticks in my mind: “…the best way to learn about a plant is to work with it.”

So it is with anything we are writing. We learn what we are writing by working with it. Writing and writing again, trying this, trying that, discarding and writing again. And I learn about myself as a writer in the same way– working with me, seeing what interests me, what bores me, what inspires and invigorates me.

Writing is physical work. It’s sweaty work. You just can’t will yourself to become a good writer. You really have to work at it. —Will Haygood

Today little of what I write interests or invigorates me. Don’t keep trying the same thing and hoping for different results. I get up and do some other things. Come back and write some more, then it comes to me begin to read from the very beginning of my story straight through to the end. I have done this in the past, and all the missing pieces fall neatly into place.

Tomorrow I will begin again, learning about my writing, and about me.

So my normally planned sacred Sunday went blowing past with yesterday’s good Oklahoma breeze, when we came home after church and found out our real estate agent had an appointment to show our house to buyers. Yippee! Bigstreetrod and I scurried around (hopeful that these could be ‘the one’) for a couple of hours of getting things spiffed up. Finally I cleaned the clutter from the dining table and the kitchen counter. Oooh, I had blooming irises! The bulbs given to me way last year by my dear friend, Dee. I put them on the table, in my grandmother’s vase. Lovely and oh, so fragrant!

After all the cleaning, we looked around and beamed, then both of us went to nap. Ten minutes into this, we were awakened by the phone ringing—our agent telling us that buyers were out in our driveway and wanted to know if we would show them the house. I peeked through the blinds. Sure enough, there was a big three-quarter ton pickup truck. Since our realtor was in the city, Bigstreetrod showed the buyers around. He loves to do that. I sat at my office desk attempting to look occupied by the computer, while people went through my house looking at everything.

Later, after we had arranged to leave, it turned out that the buyer who had scheduled the actual appointment didn’t show up. This process of selling our home is certainly interesting.

This morning, I was greeted by both a clutter free home and the sweet scent of irises. Sometimes the most simple things are the most precious of all. And every day is really a scared day, meant to be enjoyed.

I’m as excited as a puppy with two tails– my Zephirine Drouhin is blooming! This is it’s second year. It is planted at the entry to our house and patio. While I sat on the patio this afternoon, I caught whiffs of the delightful fragrance, while I was enjoying sitting there dreaming and planning the next day’s writing.

Right now I am in bed writing this on my laptop. The sound of NASCAR on television floats up from downstairs, Bigstreetrod relaxing. It is Saturday night, the end of a week, and for me a time for shedding any disappointments, failures, frustrations, and the beginning of my Sunday, a day that I take stock of myself and my life, putter in the gardens, worship my God, and most of all enjoy the rest of just being.

It was not always like this for me. For many years, I could not tell where one week ended and a new one began. I wrote six to eight hours a day, most every day, even Sundays. Especially on deadline. Meeting the deadline was more sacred than worship of my God, than prayer, than family, than my own health. Saturday nights were simply nights to work extra late. I lived a life based on achieving and it was work that was sacred. Fitting in was also sacred. I was trying very hard to keep up with the writers around me, all such organized and disciplined people, who met their deadlines no matter what. I felt I just had to do so, too. However, let me be honest: “I’m CurtissAnn, and I habitually miss my deadlines.”

Otherwise, my whole career has just been flinging myself at whatever is most overdue first and letting everything else stack up. — Cathy Guisewite

Yep, that’s me, too. It is so funny now to see how my priorities have changed. I have in many ways made peace with my limitations, and changed my priorities. Sometimes. One thing I know, there is nothing more important than my peace of mind, and my sacred Sundays help to give me that.

I share below a meditation from a dear friend. I’ll be thinking of it this Sunday, enjoy visiting the beach in my mind, while I sit in my glider here in Oklahoma, enjoying being.

For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control. — II Timothy 1:7
The burdens I carry are the prayers I write in the sand. Resentment. Fear. Work. Finances. Relationship. Aging parents. My friend’s illness.

The waves wash my prayers away. Some prayers are snatched almost as soon as I finish writing them. Others sit for a while until the tide reaches out and covers them.

And so it is with God. My prayers are heard and answered, sometimes in a breath, sometimes sideways, sometimes a bit at a time, sometimes before I know it. God is faithful and trustworthy.

Each spring I am attacked by a flush of the gardening happies, but by mid-summer, I become very lackadaisical. Last spring I plopped a carnation plant into an old whiskey barrel, where I had long ago planted Asian lilies. Over the years, the lilies had faded away for some reason that never concerned me, so I dug the dirt and stuck in the carnation plant. With nearly no care the carnation has thrived, and then look here–

As I look at that lone lily, I am given to thinking that we can choose to grow, no matter how much other people or things or situations are pressing in on us. No matter how different we are from everyone around us. We are meant to be just what we are and to reach for the light, growing at our own pace, wherever we happen to be planted. This choice is important to remember in life in general, and especially as a writer.

I wonder if this lily will get a bloom?

I’ll let you know. In the meantime, it still gives me a smile.

Hello! I’ve been absent from this blog for a whole week. I spent a few days with Dear Son and Sweetie Pie! Lots of hugs!

It’s late now, but I want to relate a conversation from today.

I was telling my dearest friend of my trip and the experience one stressful day of having only 1 hour to find somewhere to eat lunch in a strange part of the town, where restaurants were quite limited. Because of my celiac disease, I have developed the habit of bringing food just to keep prepared for such situations (that’s a subject for another post), however, on this day not only had I forgotten, but I had not brought anything for Sweetie Pie, other than a few gluten-free animal crackers.

In the telling of my tale, I said to my dear friend, “I cannot believe I was so stupid. I assumed we would not be gone all day, and…”

“Please don’t call yourself stupid,” my friend interjected in a gentle tone, stopping my words. “It would be better to say that you did your best in a totally new and unfamiliar situation.”

The situation had been exactly that!

“And I really did well,” I said, seeing the incident in an entirely new light. “We went a short way down the street and came to a grocery store, where we bought Vienna sausages and bananas! Sweetie Pie loves both, and so do I. We shared!”

With this new slant on the situation, I also saw that not only had I been resourceful, but everything I needed had been provided.

I saw all of this because my dear friend lovingly reminded me to speak kindly to my best friend of all– myself.

Today I read a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt, who said it so well: Friendship with oneself is all-important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

Guess what– I received the E for Excellent blogging award from Brenda over at The Brenda Blog! Brenda blogs from Texas, sharing snippets of her gardening life, her wise and honest daily thoughts, and her absolutely delightful wit. I am just tickled to pieces, Brenda! And yes, you are a writer, a very talented one. I am charmed and spurred on daily by your posts.

What is really fun now is that I get to pass on the E for Excellent Award to ten more bloggers that I very much admire! No small task to choose from so many.

I start with, Dee, of Red Dirt Ramblings, writer, gardener, gluten-free like me, and dear friend in OK. Yes, I saw that Brenda passed the E to you, too; now you have it double, and well deserved. Your blog is an beautiful magazine– and it is helping me to rediscover both the gardener and the writer in me– and has me grabbing my camera all the time. You bless me and many daily.

Ann– Holy Experience is truly just that. A feast for the eyes and the heart. Thought-provoking, and kind, and reminding me of who I really am. Refreshing my soul.

Hollygee– gardener, gluten-free, writer and a daring soul. Hollygee @ Home in the West is delightful and interesting. I must check out the Six Word Memoir.

Becky, at Becky’s Carolina Journal. I have to say my first visit was just today, and I when I scrolled down and saw the flash pictures that brought up the Hatteras Lighthouse, I almost cried. It gave me a visit home to my roots. I’m from Elizabeth City, NC, and if you go out to Hatteras from the north, you go through my hometown. She has photographs of the beautiful azaleas– reminded me of my grandmother’s house. Your site is beautiful, but each time I go there, I’m about in tears. Oh, and we call the box for prayers a God Box. Friends and I have them well used.

Jamie, who shares easy and delicious gluten-free recipes at Gluten Free Mom, as well as very timely information about commercial gluten-free food. She has great photographs, and no wonder–Jamie is also an artist! Thanks for blessing my life, Jamie.

Ginger, over at Gluten Free in Georgia and Florida. I found her last week when I was looking for a pound cake recipe. She’s got a goodie! Ginger is about gluten-free Southern comfort food and a whole lot more. A good place to pass a good time.

Novel Journey– a collaboration of a number of spirit filled and talented writers. Here I have long gotten great lessons on the craft of writing, as well as help and reminders about navigating the writing life. It is one of Writer’s Digest’s top 101 websites for writers. Your blog is awesome!

Daily or Not– the blog of writer Cait London, a long time friend and best-selling writer of romantic suspense. Girlfriend, your wit makes me smile, and your photographs are delightful. (One time when I was newly gluten-free, Cait and I went to a banquet together, and she was not bothered by me eating Vienna sausage from a can.)

Recently discovered– writer blogs: Robin Bayne’s Between Sundays, and Robin Lee Hatcher’s Write Thinking. At both blogs, I find a connection to the modern, real world and wonderful inspiration.

While I don’t post to every blog, this is my chance to say: Thanks, y’all! by passing on the

Whoo-hoo! This blogging is fun– and I’m writing again! Now it’s your turn to pass on the E award!