Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘dreams’

Apr 10

6 Comments

Dream On

These days come. Halcyon days was the phrase favored by Rosamunde Pilcher in her novel, Winter Solstice. She repeated it in there more times than I imagine she meant to, enough that I laughed. (Even so, I have enjoyed the book enough to have read it twice, so highly recommend.)

I am experience some days of high mood, when all is right with my world. I know you have them, too. They out of the blue and for no seeming reason. There are still the challenges and frustrations and worries, some small and some quite large. Facts have not changed. It’s only that I’m not looking at them. I have convinced myself that I have enough inner strength at this time to meet any of the challenges.

Never give up, and never under any circumstances face the facts. ~Ruth Gordon, actress and author.

This sort of day is great for writing down dreams of things I want in my life. I did a detailed written picture yesterday in my journal, pretty much lassoing the moon. By the time I had to quit writing, I had dreamed up great abilities and success, piles of money to spend and giveaway, a wonderful housekeeper on par with Shirley Booth’s Hazel, an elderly wise gardener, and a new Lincoln. At the end, I wrote the sarcastic phrase: “Dream on.”

Today I recognize the good advice. Do Dream On. Dream the highest and best things you can imagine. Dreaming expands us with possibilities. Dreaming is living, if only for a space in time, unencumbered by facts and smack dab in the highest possibilities.

Starting Tuesday out right:
Thank you, Father God, for my ability to dream and imagine the very best in life. Thank you for every bit of my life. Thank you for the hard times that lead to the good times. It’s all good. Thank you mostly for today, which builds strength for tomorrow. Amen. So it is.

Celebrate your life and hear your spirit sing. ~Elisabeth L.

Dec 30

Questions to Carry Me Forward in 2011

Do any of you feel like I do–My gosh, 2011 already!?

With a cup of tea, my blue ink pen and my Hopes and Dreams journal, I settle into my chair and think about questions to carry me forward into the new year. I have boiled them down to three. I like the number three–any more questions and I tend to forget them. Here are mine this year:

What do I want? What do I really want. I listen to the still, small voice inside, and make a list. Drawing detailed pictures with words. I’m bold and ask for the moon. Now is no time for censure, for ‘shoulds’ or ‘have-tos’ or ‘what-would-people-think?’ Just as when allowing your voice to speak in writing, allow your voice to speak, and simply take down what it says.

The questions focus on our intentions, and intention held is prayer. “Ask and keep on asking, and it shall be given you; seek and keep on seeking and you shall find…For everyone who asks and keeps on asking receives; and he who seeks and keeps on seeking finds…” so reads Luke 11:9-10 (AMP). And so I’m in there asking. I have learned–I am astounded and humbled to see things on previous years’ lists have come about in my life far beyond anything I had imagined. One thing on my list from 2007 had been a painful difficulty of some thirty years standing. It is resolved and most joyfully!

A note of caution: we do not bring about our desires. We enjoy and learn from them.

What outstanding lessons have I learned the past year? There’s no since in wasting those hard life-lessons. Let me celebrate my triumphs of learning. I think about Mary in that stable long ago–“But Mary kept all of these things and pondered them in her heart.” Luke 2:19. That girl had been through some stuff. She was probably thinking: What now? And she was tucking the lessons she had learned deep down as a way to carry her forward.

What three things can I consistently do to energize me? Or what three things make me really happy right this moment? I’m continually working on this with my list of Things I Love. (Hello, Linda, I’m up to 100!) This question helps me to see where I waste my life by not doing those things that contribute to my wellbeing. Right now the three things that energize me are a clean desk, made bed, and taking time to center myself with a cup of tea whenever life gets going too fast and furious. Why is it so hard to do these things for myself? (I got up and stripped my bed to wash the sheets. There, I feel better.

It is interesting to note that these questions work for helping us not only find our way in our lives, but also for finding our way as writers: What do I want as a writer? What lessons on writing and as a writer have I learned? What three things can I consistently do to energize me as a writer?

Blessings for a very good New Year–the best yet!

CurtissAnn

Feb 8

3 Comments

Don’t Know Where I’m Going, But I’ll Know When I Get There…

…or writer with a cup of tea and random quotes.

I had occasion last week to pick up Dwight V. Swain’s book, Techniques of the Selling Writer. (click here to read my post about writing instruction books at the RWA-Women’s Fiction blog) Mr. Swain gave this definition of fiction: “A story is experience translated into literary process.”

The title of this post comes from my heroine, Rainey, in Lost Highways, the first book of the Valentine series. She expresses her confused determination with the statement, “I don’t know where I’m goin’, but I’ll know when I get there.” The quote surfaced from memory while writing the scene. I have never been in any of Rainey’s circumstances, but I certainly have felt the way she did a great deal of my life.

“The best thing about writing is to repeat the ordinary experience, and by putting that experience into language, it makes it available to the person who reads it in a way that it hasn’t been available before.”~ Walker Percy, interview, Parting the Curtains.

~

Writing, the creative effort, the use of the imagination, should come first–at least for some part of every day of your life. It is a wonderful blessing if you will use it. ~ Brenda Ueland, writer and teacher.

~

One accepts one’s limitations and works within them at the same time one studies and practices to improve. ~ Jack M. Bickham, best selling author and teacher.

~

Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go. ~ Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones.

~

I had forgotten, but just like always, the writing itself reminds me. Writing is what helps me find me. ~C.A.M.

« Older Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 939 other followers

%d bloggers like this: