Monthly Archives: January 2010

Inspiration is where you find it

Where do you find inspiration to write?

Today Donna asked a similar question in her blog (link in my blogroll at right) and my reply came in poetic form.   I had fun writing the poem so now I am posting it here so maybe you can get a chuckle out of it, too.   I hope you enjoy it. 🙂   And, btw, where DO you find inspiration to write?

Inspiration Is Where You Find It

My deadline’s coming up too fast
I cannot think, my muse flew past
and I am left bereft and dry –
so much I cannot even cry!

What shall I do, where can I look?
I’ll scrub a floor, or should I cook?
How can I find what isn’t there? …
I know! I’ll sort my underwear!

But that will lead to “need to shop”
Dainties I’ll buy until I drop.
What then? will I inspired now be? …
Or maybe I should just have tea.

But look, it’s such a lovely day
to go a-walking while I pray
that out there I will find my clue
for what to write, then start anew.

How sweet the breeze that calms my mind,
as Nature’s beauty brings a kind
of peace to me that takes away
the stress of having naught to say.

I listen now and breathe it in
I listen more … such peace within.
Fresh new ideas start to stir
Great words and thoughts all in a blur.

So fast they come, so fast I write
I really must be quite a sight
As I now quickly write words down
Out on the street in my nightgown.

What can I say? The need arose
to find my muse where’er she goes
Today she took a Nature walk
And I’m again a laughingstock.

Pacing, mumbling, brow in furrows
Thoughts now scrambling from deep burrows.
Neighbours knowing, gathering ’round
“I am writing, don’t make a sound!

Don’t interrupt, I’m on a roll!
This will be good, it’s from my soul!
Then who stands here you soon will see
is more than I appear to be.

Inspiration is elusive,
doesn’t mean I am reclusive.”
(At least I am not standing here
In my, still-tagged, new underwear!)

Good thing that I just stayed at home …
Now, .. what was that word ..??
mumble … mumble …
scribble … scribble …

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings!  🙂

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I won a book!

This evening I was in a writers online chat room, the same one I mentioned in my last post. Each Sunday evening they have a guest speaker invited to share with us there. Since I am a newcomer I have only attended two Sunday sessions but I am finding great information is being shared. At least, it is interesting to me.

As each chatter arrives, his/her name is written down by the moderator and at the halfway mark a name is drawn. Well, tonight my name was pulled out! I was so surprised! My prize? A copy of A Black Tie Affair by our guest speaker, Sherrill Bodine. How cool is that? 🙂

Have you read it yet?  Or any of her others?

Tonight I added another title to my list of books that I’ve read since Dec.  ’09. 🙂  I am also reading Gone With The Wind, a copy I have had here for years but could not get into until now.  I loved the movie which I saw in the theatre so long ago and now I’m really enjoying reading the story.

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

What do you write when you’ve nothing to write?

Are you a person who writes a little every day?  If you are or even if you are not … what do you write when you have nothing to write about?

I was in a chat room this evening ‘listening’ to what the guest speaker had to say, and she basically said to keep writing because when inspiration hits you’d better be ready for it!   That got me thinking and wondering …

What do writers write when they can think of nothing to write?  What do writers say when they can’t find any words?  What inspires a writer when nothing is inspirational?

So, I am putting these questions out to you —

What do you write about when you have nothing to write about?

How do you get inspired?  Do you ‘brainstorm’?  Do you just start writing words and connecting words that lead to connecting words until you have a theme developing?  Or .. what DO you write??

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Have you read these 100 books?

In Nov. ’09 I read the following article, and when checking it over I found  that I can easily check a dozen books that I have read completely (inc. the Bible), a couple I’ve read in part and another dozen that I’ve seen on TV – but that doesn’t count.  So, which ones do you believe are must reads?

The BBC believe most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?
Instructions: Look at the list and mark the books you have read.


1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible –
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philis Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34.Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings!  🙂

What or who inspires you?

Do you have a circle of writing friends?  Do you have people around you who stimulate your ‘muse’?, cause you to see things in a different way?, evoke new ideas for stories?

As yet I have not found a local writers’ group, but now I don’t know if that is something I can manage or not.  What I did find this past week was two online writers’ groups, both of which I joined.   Both have a chat room.  One group meets on Tuesday evenings but they will meet if available any time someone wants to chat – which they did for me Sunday.  The other group meets on Wednesday evenings and again on Sunday evenings for a Q & A forum with a special guest.  I couldn’t get in there last night so I went to the first website I mentioned and had the fun of taking part in chat with newbies like myself, and up-and-coming writers, and well established authors – some who have one book or several books published, and some who won awards for their writing.  There also were agents and editors there that evening.  What an amazing world is the world of writing and publishing!  I sat here quietly impressed, and in awe at the fantastic ideas, and tips, and experiences of those sharing.

I have to keep reminding myself that everyone had to start at the beginning.  Each writer had to find her/his voice.  We are not all cut from the same pattern, so for me to compare myself to others is foolhardy, I’ll never get anywhere doing that.  I am me and I can only do what I can do.  What influences me comes from where I am at the time and who and what is around me.

SO, my question is … what – or who – inspires you?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Hello and Welcome!

Hello and welcome to my blog!  Now that you have found me I hope you will continue to visit.

Here at WordPress I plan to keep a sort of journal of my renewed journey into becoming a real life published author.  I already have a small collection of rejection letters from several years ago.  Back then I didn’t know much about how to go about things, but I did know that I wanted to write for children.   Since that time I have taken a couple of excellent writing courses so that I have a better understanding,  and now I am trying again.  Last year I received my first two rejection letters in my new beginning .. so I am on my way!  🙂

Following the tip of Laura Best who has a blog here, I sent off two of my stories to two different publishers.  (Thanks, Laura!)  The wait has begun anew.  But, I am not just waiting and doing nothing else.  The ideas are coming quickly right now so I keep paper and pen by my bed in order to capture them.  It seems that when I lie down to rest is when my ‘muse’ comes alive!  Perhaps that is when my mind is not as preoccupied with the things of life and the ideas are free to flow through.  Strangely, I have beginnings of six stories and only a few vague ideas for them, and one very dark poem which is not for children.  In fact, the stories I have started are suited to different age groups, and perhaps not all are for children.  That I expect to learn as the stories develop.

So, enough for my first post.  I welcome you to travel along with me on my journey.

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings!  🙂