Welcome to And Now You Write. We are grateful you are here today to write alongside us. Before you read the lesson, allow the prompt of the day to seep into your mind. Don't actively seek the words yet, instead allow it to just be there, settling into your mind, as you go through the lesson itself.
Monday Morning's Tele-Writing Session will be held, as usual, at 8:30 AM Pacific time and will go until right about 9 AM Pacific time. It may be accessed by dialing (712) 432 3100 conference code 440137. I look forward to connecting with each and all of you!
Today I offer you some pure, unedited, raw, "throw it on the page and present it" kind of writing I splattered on the page a while back.
It illustrates a couple things:
1. Amidst the rambles, beauty (and great nuggets of gold) may be found.
2. Writing anything is better than nothing.
3. Daily writing practice is a brave endeavor.
and what else? Find out by reading and then writing.
What does this illustrate for you?
And more importantly - what is your perspective on "Bountiful..."
Today's Writing Prompt: Bountiful: What do you see, hear, feel, smell, taste, touch, know of "bountiful"?
Read... and then... write...
The writing prompt that day was "Bountiful".
I felt sort of ambivalent about it yet it kept knocking on my writing mind so I leaped in as I sat down at 750words.com and here is what came out, almost unedited for your... entertainment.
Today I am writing bountifully. Bounty. Bountiful as in applesauce, a favored topic from yesterday
when I did write my words but I didn't write those words into a keyboard. I feel my shoulders holding my arms high as I don't have the proper ergonomic table but hell if I am giving up on this. I will tappity tap tap my way beyond the 750 words if it is the final thing on my epitaph:
She died typing 750 words (bountifully) to erase away that horrific proclamation at the top of September's page. Sheesh. Really? Me? She who reached 750words on many more than 100 consecutive days? She who has written more than 100,000 words on that site so far? Don't they give some sort of grace for traveling in people's homes where there is no internet available to you? Don't I get some leverage for that rather than the big old goose egg?
And why am I wasting all my words in worrying about that, anyway?
Bountiful, applesauce. Friendship. We are bounty, my friends and I. Water. Projects. Unfolding.
I wrote for some reason, randomly, in my notebook as the sun rose today: "Finding your place. Place in the natural, creative world." Concord was pencil making. Two factories. My chest hums at the thought of being in a pencil making capital. A pencil making capital that shares the name of my birth city, only on the other coast. Concord.
The sun started her daily ascent. She never complains about it like I complain about clearing the kitchen counter or lamenting the sore that has formed (inadvertently) on my ankle.
Back to bountiful writing. Bountiful writing. Bountiful writing. Bountiful writing. Bountiful writing. Bountiful writing. I feel my pencil slowing. I watch its movement, seemingly without me it writes. Projects. Space. Time. Quality.
I started my ezines to always have an audience to whom I write. Subscribers, waiting. I picture them sometimes. My ezine arrives. They open it. They anticipate. I write something. They scoff or guffaw or puzzle or applaud. I need to remember this. Rewrite, Resubmit. Stretch my voice more, forget or don't forget, but take away the grip of that August - that August with heartbreak at its core. Three years ago. It is gone now. It is barely an echo or an etching. It is a teacher, Julie. it is
only a jailer of you allow it to be a jailer.
I heard a bunch of no, I heard the call of my cell phone. Text messages line up, waiting for my attention. I stay at the page. I write more about the sun which I transcribe here. The sun met
my eyes. Not piercing. More like stroking my shoulders, gently lifting my chin, hoping I would look up. I keep my head down. I gaze anywhere but not up.
Write - for one minute or five minutes or fifteen minutes. Play the time game and look for the point of diminishing return. Make everything about writing into a celebration, a place to splatter
paint or mold clay or throw a party. This isn't arduous this writing, it is a vow to sacred play. To dance. To take what you have and sing it. Or something like that. I keep typing because there is more there. Can you imagine it?
A drought and now this.
My writing is scattered.
My bountiful writing is settled in. It isn't settling, it is finding form, like a mattress that remembers and offers itself up to be forced into YOUR position. Bountiful writing is moving the pencil into peace. It is finding subjects to write about in every nook-and-cranny experience. It is in the eyes of
the stubborn preschooler and in the hands of the patient grandma. Bountiful writing lives in Bob the tomcat with oddly shaped ears. It is in the soft comforter of contentment that offers itself up to me, that covers me, gently. It tucks me in.
Bountiful writing is in the sunrise with its finger, lifting my chin, whispering "Witness life all around
you and report page to the page. Share your reports widely, unabashedly. Feel the cool almost autumn morning after a blistering summer and write that feeling, bountifully." This, my loves, is
bountiful writing.
The door shuts, twice, as people pass through it. Samuel shares his dreams with me. I share only
my dream of plentiful sleep.
I realize the a-ha's I have been having lately are glaringly obvious to the people who know me.
I watch the school bus swallow my son.
The timer cries out, releasing me and my pencil though I am not so sure I want to go.
Bountiful writing, each word.
Today's Writing Prompt: Bountiful: What do you see, hear, feel, smell, taste, touch, know of "bountiful"?
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