Power Of A Name

Yesterday I read an awesome blog from one of my blogging buddies, Crazy Train To Tinky Town, about what’s in a name. In fact, she was talking about how she came to be named. Oddly enough, I’d been thinking a lot about that exact topic as I’d recently come across one of my old journal books that housed my poems. In there was a poem I wrote for a creative writing project.

What do names and my project have to do with each other? Well, the project was to ask your parents how your name was selected, then write about it. As it turns out, I come by my poetic streak naturally. In fact, I remember that when I was younger, my mom would write long, long poems…usually church and God related. This meant that the words she used to describe how my name was selected were very strong and artistic. The teacher never specified HOW we had to write about our name selection, so I chose one of my favorite mediums. It was a creative writing class, afterall.

The parents-and me, incubating in Mom’s belly

Baby Girl

The angels in heaven
must have joined me
in my
celebration
on the day you
were born.
A beautiful,
perfect
baby girl
entering
an imperfect world.
I prayed
that God
would grant you
strength enough to
stand tall
in the midst of
the despair
you would
one day
face.
So I named
you
courageous.

Spaghetti Face Me

I wrote this back on May 6, 1992. It’s the meaning behind my name. I hope you found her awesome explanation of how she arrived at my name interesting. Funny, it wasn’t until that class that I bothered to ask about why my name was chosen. I was 18 at the time.

You know, she’s always treated me like I was brave and strong. I don’t know if it’s because of the name or how she treats me, but most of the time I’ve felt that way…a bit like a lioness. I think she’s proud of the person I’ve grown up to be. I just hope she thinks I’ve done justice to the name she chose for me.

Back in Germany

What about you? How did you come by your name? Do you think it has any bearing on the person you are today?

Life Themes And Power Songs

A friend of mine texted me in a panic last week.  His college requires he take a creative writing class to graduate with his bachelors degree, so he’d enrolled for this semester. He’d already warned me that he might be coming to me for a little assistance, so I wasn’t in complete shock when he sent me:  “WTF does is a theme song of my life?”

I’ll admit it.  I chuckled first.  Then I called him.  Apparently, his professor’s instructions were to come back on Monday with a song to play for the class as the theme song of their life.  She’d stated she didn’t care about obscenities or content, but that they must have one.  Now this friend of mine is a “rock the boat” kind of guy.  He’s creative, but more the conniving sneaky kind of creative. When he was younger and less mature, he was the guy that his friends would call for revenge schemes.  Of course, whenever I think of revenge, I laugh…because I always end up thinking of Norm McDonald’s Dirty Work and his revenge for hire business.

Now my friend may be capable of being devious, but most of that was youthful indiscretion.  But when it comes to his creative mind, he’s a bit too literal minded for the directions she gave.  She’d have been better off asking him to create the perfect murder.  I’m sure he’d have been able to write that quickly.

I didn’t leave my explanation to the potential misunderstandings that can happen through text.  He’s not great at reading “tone”.  I called him.  It turned out that he wasn’t doing anything, so he swung by to take me to breakfast and talk about his project.

I explained to him that theme songs can mean different things to different people, but at the end of the day, it’s always something that is meaningful to the individual.  I know athletes who pick their theme song based on tone and energy and the ability of the song to motivate or drive them…especially when they get tired are are ready to quit.  I know other people who pick something that they associate with their family because it was a favorite they’ve heard their entire lives.  Still others pick songs that represent the different aspects they’re going through in that moment. The reality is, as life changes, your theme song usually does, too.

Now my friend…he’s a huge Pink! fan…so I half expected his theme song to be something like Raise Your Glass or if he was feeling particularly raunchy…U+Ur Hand. But, like people tend to do, he surprised me.  Instead he picked the following video.  I think it’s great!

Me? I’m sure it’s no shock to anyone…even before he called me about his assignment, I had my theme song down.  For me, it’s more about how I view life and the way I choose to attack it.  Mine is designed to inspire me and remind me of where my true power has always been.  Inside me.

So what about you? What do you think of my friend’s choice in songs? Or mine? When you think about your life…what theme song comes to mind? What makes your song meaningful to you? How does it relate to your life today?

Excited About Everything E!

There’s been this fun game going around involving letters of the alphabet. I’ve been fighting myself from asking to join in, but as you can tell by this post…it was a losing battle. How could I resist when people like Myndi Shafer came up with Bodacious B-words…that don’t end in itch. I couldn’t resist…I’ve always wanted to use the word Bodacious! Then there’s Kathy Owen who had R, and another favorite, Natalie Hartford and her very cool ideas of what makes J so loveable. Then, on Jenny Hanson’s blog yesterday I discovered Marcia Richards‘ ‘L’ words along with Jansen Schmitd‘s D’s!

So with Jenny’s Tantalizing Thoughts on T, I finally asked for a letter….and received E. At first I thought, crap! This is going to be tough…and then I found that I kept coming up with more and more words or things that started with E that I absolutely loved. Not wanting to leave anything out, I found a way to categorize my top ten ‘E’ words to share all my favorite things.

Here goes nothing!

Eggs- My favorite meal of the day has been, and I expect, always will be…breakfast. And I like eggs…done any way from scrambled to fried to boiled or poached. But I also like lots of foods that start with the word egg…like Eggrolls (Filipino style) or Egg drop soup or Egg noodles or Egg salad sandwich. (unfortunately I’m not a huge fan of Eggplant or Egg foo young).

Exotic Locales- I couldn’t make my mind if I wanted to put Egypt down (would love to visit the pyramids) or Europe which includes England (where my gram is from) and Estonia or Ecuador or El Salvador, so I found a way to incorporate them all!

Eleanors- Strange, right? But my heroes are women like Eleanor of Aquitaine & Eleanor Roosevelt. Women who know what it means to be strong way before equal rights became cool. They also knew that a sense of humor about life in general was important. My best friend in Jr High also happens to share the name, though we just called her Norie.

A Blogger’s Choose Your Own Adventure?

So a few weeks ago I’d brought up the thought of playing a story game much like one I’d done in high school.  Several of you expressed an interest in playing.  Through the comments it became clear that we’d need to come up with a way to do this successfully and to make it as people friendly as possible.  We didn’t want the chance that two writers may be simultaneously coming up with the next part of the story and one person might not get included or both would get posted and simply confuse the storyline.

So I’ve been chewing on this thought trying to figure out how we could do this story game without such craziness.  Here’s what I’ve come up with so far.  I’d kick it off by writing the first paragraph or two.  Next, what we could do is this…make it kind of like choose your own adventure.  Each participant could post the first sentence or two on my page then link back to their own blog to write their part of the story.  This way, readers would have a choice as to which path they want to go with the story!  From there, the same rules would apply.  Anyone from your blog group that would like to participate would just put in their first sentence or two and link back to their blog with their part of the story and so on and so forth.

Gosh, I hope that’s clear.  As I’m thinking it it makes sense…but I don’t know if it’s making sense to you, the readers/potential participants.  The cool part of being able to do it this way is that it can go in any direction you want to take it.  You want romance…it can go there.  You want racy…it can go there.  You want suspense…there’s room for that, too!  And our readers can join in the fun…and maybe find new and interesting blogs along the way!

So what do you guys think?  Could this work?  Does it make sense?  Do we need more rules?

Creative Lyrics and Word Games

I’m one of those people.  You know.  Those people who look for the fun or game in everything?  So way back in the day, this song caught my eye.  Why?  Because as I listened to the song I found a cleverness to the lyrics.  Other song titles had been embedded into it.  The songwriters were very cool about how they did it.  And it flowed so naturally.  Lover of music and poetry that I am, it stuck.

So I started counting to see how many titles I could find.  Am I the only person that does that sort of thing?  How many titles do you hear?  Isn’t it such a sweet sad song?  (Yes, I’m also a sap!)  Are there songs that you feel that way about?  What are they?

And speaking of games…there used to be a game a couple of friends and I used to play to get ourselves through gym class back in the day.  One of us would start a story.  The next person would add a part.  Followed by the next person.  You get my drift.  So I’ve been kicking around the idea in my head of playing a similar game on here.  Would there be any takers?  I’d kick it off, then you guys could just add a paragraph through comments…  We could make it as silly or as serious as we wanted, but we’d all have to feed off of each other.  Stuff like this can get very good or very funny…and we’d all just get to go with the flow.  Just a thought…

“All About The Wordplay”

Isn’t that how the Jason Mraz song goes?  Feeling a little playful, I started thinking.  Isn’t it interesting how one word, either misused or misspelled, can change the whole dynamic of a sentence?  Think about it.  Isn’t that why Their, there and they’re drive most of us so crazy?  Or why to, too and two can be so frustrating?

So I decided to have a little fun interchanging right and write.  Afterall, isn’t writing the passion that guides many of us here in the first place?  Let’s see how some of these common sentences or phrases change when we interchange the words.

“You’ve got the write stuff”- New Kids On The Block  song (for those of you who don’t know)

Doing the write thing

Finding the write words to say

Write about now

You get what I’m saying.  Oddly enough, changing out the words sometimes not only changed the meaning of the phrase or sentence, but became a little inspirational to the writer in me.  Maybe that’s why I chose that particular word!

What about you?  Any phrases come to your mind that you’d care to share?

And if you were looking for a serious post from me tonight, you’re probably sorely disappointed!  😉  Hope everyone is enjoying their holiday weekend!

 

Look, I Did It!

The lovely Up and Comer Mae Clair has tagged me to take part in the “LOOK” challenge. Mae’s story revolves around a marine archaeologist and a woman 10 years his senior and a treasure hunt. Intrigued? So am I! She has submitted her WIP to her publisher for consideration, so my fingers are crossed for her.

So how does the LOOK challenge work? ‘Tis fairly simple and a lot of fun!

1. Find the first usage of the word ‘look’ in your WIP and paste the surrounding paragraph into your blog.
2. Tag as many people as you want to take part in the challenge with you.

My current WIP is still as sketch and has not yet been given a title.

My first use of the word look appears in the first page. My heroine, Fiona Barrett, had just boarded a redeye after a very long day of missed flights and being stranded in airports. She’s tired, cranky and wants to get home. So, of course, that means it’s time to introduce her to the hero. This is from her POV. :

~ooOOoo~

It had been several minutes since the gate attendant had made the final boarding announcement and the flight crew appeared to be making their final arrangements. She looked back toward the main cabin and was glad to see that everyone appeared to have settled in. Grateful she’d had the forethought to pull out her iPad in advance, she figured she’d be sitting solo on this flight. She had just crossed her legs, the swirling pattern on her teal and white cotton skirt riding up to mid-thigh when a man’s voice, like smoke and crushed velvet said, “Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am, but I’m gonna need to slide past you in just a moment.”

~ooOOoo~

Yes, the hero is from the south and comes with a delicious accent. There’s nothing more delicious than a southern voice calling me “Darlin'”…except maybe an Aussie voice. Aussies can say whatever they want, and they’re pretty much guaranteed I’ll find it sexy. It’s my Kryptonite!

Like I said above, this is just a sketch. It’s not yet a full story, nor is it fleshed out. Feedback is always appreciated! Feel free to leave a comment.

According to the rules I can tag anyone I want, but the problem is, I’m new to this particular blog and don’t know very many people yet. The only person I probably would’ve known to tag is Mae Clair, and she tagged me!

So I’m not officially tagging anyone, however, if you’re intrigued or enjoy these challenges, or simply feeling daring…go for it and come back and let me know you did it!

Rainy Nights

The gentle pitter patter of the rain against my window pane tonight calls to mind sweet memories; wet kisses in the rain, long conversations in the dark. Such love and nostalgia surround my memories of the rain, so I looked for a picture to suit my mood.

The young lady in the picture found it in an old photo box. These are her memories:
As young lovers we snuck out in the rain to meet and…

I close my eyes and see you,
The soulmate of my youth
Sweet, sexy conversation
Soft sighs, low moans
Cocooned in darkness
Naked, laid out on a bed of grass
Rain cascade down our bodies,
The gentle,
Cool caress of nature
Slide over me.
You surround me,
Arms hold me tight
Keep me safe
Your hard heat throbbing inside
My other half
Making me whole,
Filling me with your love.