JUST STEP OUTSIDEWritten by Arleen M. Kaptur
Ah! sensual pleasures. Step outside on a bright, warm morning and breathe in first morning air. Can you distinguish lilacs growing on edge of road, and sweet wet dew that is drying as sun’s heat intensifies? Coffee must be ready because aroma is seductive as you pass your kitchen window. You head down to garden to take a look at what night air may have produced. The moist strawberry leaves tell of jewels of sweetness developing in summer’s light, and distinctive, pungent aroma of tomato leaves let you know that these round globes of distinction will soon bring tasty delights to your meals. Your shoes are damp as you trek through grass and blades bounce back so that your footsteps soon disappear. A woodpecker is busy on some distant tree and a magnificent hummingbird flies past, with nectar on his mind. You begin to feel sun’s heat on your arms and cloudless, blue sky predicts another great day. The quick trip above may have taken less than 15 mins. but it awakened all your senses and raised your pleasure a couple of notches. The outdoors can seduce you out of slight bouts of depression and revive and revitalize your thinking. This journey into enlightenment and heightened awareness can take place in any setting - city, urban, rural. A city park, a peaceful, quiet lake, or a trout stream filled with life, can all attain miracle of clear minds and colorful thinking. Something as simple as watching a thunderstorm rolling in, and taking note of hush that envelopes area, as your heart skips a beat knowing that clap of thunder and brilliance of lightening will soon triumph through evening is an exercise in awareness.
| | ARE YOU WRITING FOR A CHANGE?Written by Mary Anne Hahn
Whenever you reach one of those writer's roadblocks, it helps to take some time to reexamine what drives you to write in first place.I submit, however, that regardless of your reason(s) for being, or wanting to be, a writer, or what kinds of writing you do, there is only one, true underlying motivator that will consistently send you back to your keyboard, or prompt you to pick up a pen, day after day: through your writing, you must want to change something. If you don't, I believe you'll remain stuck. "No, I don't," you might say. "I write because I want to make money." That might very well be true. But think about it--*why* do you want to make money as a writer? To leave your unfulfilling day job? To supplement your income so that you can travel more, or redecorate your house? To enable you to support your children through college, or your parents during old age? Note that all of these purposes for making money provide you with fiscal ability to make changes in your life, hopefully for better. Change is goal, not money. "Well, I write fiction. I write solely to entertain." And what happens to your readers if you succeed in entertaining them? You make them feel--you get them to laugh, cry or wonder. You send spine- tingling shivers of fear through them with your thrillers, warm them with your romance stories, entice them with your mysteries, leave indelible imprints on their memories with your characters. You change your readers; how they think or feel after they have read something you've written differs from how they thought or felt before.
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