Greetings and Happy Monday to everyone! My writing retreat went wonderfullly and I got so much accomplished. I took part in a virtual writer's retreat with Donna Kozik ,"Write your book in a weekend" leader. Many of the participants were writing books to market their businesses's ,like a big business card.I on the other hand am I writing an very inventive book which will take longer than a weekend. About a year ago Donna and I became facebook friends and I noticed that her writer's were all publishing books and some in a big way. One of the items on my life list is to publish a book, so I decided to take part in this wonderful weekend and it was just that,.... wonderful, incredible and productive.
Donna has all of these templates that help to organize all the information in one's head. She has this rapid fire system to get everything into place. You might be thinking,"That's not real writing, real writing takes sweat and suffering." Well I'm here to let you know that it is real writing, which all of us were sending to Donna throughout the entire weekend. One of the greatest discoveries for me was the actual writing process. It all started with my power outline where I discovered that I actually had been holding an entire book in my head for about 10 years. From my outline, I gathered all of my notes and references and then I started writing the parts I wanted to write first. By the end of the first day I had the first 3 chapters of book written. By the end of the second day I had 45% of the second part of my book written. A huge unveiling for me was that I hadn't realized how easy this was going to be. In my head I had always put it off. My little cerebral voice would say,"One day when you have all the time in the world you can write a book." This weekend was proof enough that I didn't have all the time in the world, just a weekend's worth and I can see the end of this project in sight. To finish this project I have set up some more writing days to get this project done. When it is, I will absolutely let you know about it.
So now that I'm back from my retreat, it's Thanksgiving week. It's time to get ready for the big cook-off that my friend Ruth and I do every year for all of our friends and families. We usually have anywhere between 20 and 30 people depending on the year. I arrived home to the evening news stating "Knoxville has a canned pumpkin shortage. All stores have been sold out." Not to worry we told our panicked children. We're from Oregon and Michigan respectively and we know how to take an actual pumpkin and get it into a pie.
7:30 this morning.......went to store.......no pie pumpkins. We are now calling farmers and I will spend the rest of my day hunting pumpkins. I think we found someone who has a barn full. It just feels so dramatic to say that we are going to fetch some pie pumpkins. If the fog would lift it would be a beautiful drive.
I'll be back tomorrow with cheerful tales of our adventures in the pumpkin patch as well as if my house got clean . Probably not. Oh well, we do what we can.
This sweet little cat is saying"Where you goin mom?" To the pumpkin patch katten.
