Coming Home to Writing

Last Thursday was the final class for the Firefly Creative Writing workshop I participated in. It was called, Coming Home to Writing and it was like no other writing experience I've had before. I really enjoyed it.

The facilitators were amazing. Midway through the seven week session they even mailed out some awesome treats!


I've cut and paste some of the nuggets that I wrote during the workshop (below). I wanted to keep them somewhere other than in a dusty, old word file that will soon be lost or forgotten on my computer. 

Some of the writing starts with a prompt given to us by our facilitator, some of it is poetry built from our own writing or from a poem read to us during class, and some of the writing was prompted by looking at a picture.

These days I’ve been thinking about...

These days I've been thinking about writing. It got away from me for a while and I want to get back into it. I’m doing just that tonight with my fellow Fireflyers. 

I was going over some of my writing today and thinking about what holds me back in my writing. It’s the thought of having to have direction and purpose in my writing. The feeling that I have to become published, or recognized in order to be successful in writing. But my first few sessions here with Firefly have shown me that writing is very therapeutic and it’s okay if that turns out to be the purpose behind why I write. I believe that it may lead to more, but if that’s what it is for now, I am going to work very hard to accept that.

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It doesn't have to be...                                           

It doesn’t have to be perfect. Whatever it is that you do, you need to accept that you are not perfect. You have flaws. You make mistakes. You are human. It doesn’t have to be the same as everyone else. Everyone’s situation is unique. Everyone does things in their own way. Everyone is different. Do what is right for you. It doesn’t have to be measurable. It can just be. It can happen without being rated or compared. It can just be.

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Bear with me I want to tell you something about...

Bear with me I want to tell you something about life. It has a way of knocking you down, of blindsiding you, of taking your planned destination and putting up a roadblock. Just when you think you’ve got it all, you get sent in a totally different direction from where you thought you’d be going. You discover a road less travelled and on that road there are stops along the way that you never would have seen had you followed the planned route. You meet people you never would have met and you have experiences that change you and shape you and build you up.

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This is what life does. It takes you by surprise.

It serves things up like an order of burger and fries.

Your order was, hold the onions, but when the burg arrives

It’s piping hot and looking good but the no onions just didn’t jive.

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Now the ears of my ears are awake

When your footsteps they come in on the take

Every night you come calling

My sleep level falling

Now the ears of my ears are awake

Now the mouth of your mouth it lies still

Speech as we know it won’t fill

The halls like your feet do

Speech will evade you

Now the ears of my ears my heart breaks

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Believe, Encourage.

He is different, not less.

Presume competence.

(Haiku about Carter)

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When I see the words take my hand run away I think about running away from it all, from the struggles and monotony of everyday life, from the never ending demands and neediness of others.

If only for a moment.

To catch my breath with you again.

Take my hand and run away.

But if we ran, we would come back, wouldn’t we?

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I see myself in this picture. My boy Bentley watching out for me. He’s got my back. He’s my sounding board. He’s my companion, my pup who pushes me to get out the door and get moving, to take care of myself so I can take care of everyone else in my family.

Bentley is the pup who loves unconditionally. He gives me so much, but what I love the most is that he gives my boy a best friend. When my other two are off on play dates or at birthday parties Bentley is the one who is here giving my boy what doesn’t come to him like it comes to my other two children.

Boy’s best friend indeed.

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Where the singing resides is where I go to unwind. The dancing often follows. It is in this place that I let it all go. I stop the world around me and let the music take over. I sing like nobody’s listening and dance like nobody’s watching. Music becomes my escape, if only for a few brief moments of release. And then I get back to it all again, this time with a skip in my step, and humming a tune until it becomes time to unwind again.