Writer's Life Archives - Page 2 of 11 - View from the Front Porch

22 01, 2024

The Wet Suit

By judythemorgan|2024-01-21T12:42:11-06:00January 22nd, 2024|A Writer's Life, Writer's Life|2 Comments

The recent cold snap here on the Gulf Coast did nowhere near the damage of the Texas Ice Apocalypse of 2021.

Mainly because the sub-zero temperatures didn’t last as long and the power grid did not fail, but also because everyone heeded the warnings and prepared. Plants were covered. Faucets insulated. People didn’t drive on icy roads and conserved electricity.

The only damage affecting me was the frozen indoor pool heater at the gym I use. That was a bummer because I swim there two to three days a week.

As the temperatures warmed to the high twenties and low thirties later in the week, I was eager to go to the pool after days of no swimming. Only, with no pool heater, the water temperatures dropped well below my comfort levels of 85^o– 92^o.

Swimming in chilly water is not my thing. But I had a fix—my wet suit.

No, I’m not a diver or a surfer. I’m not even a good swimmer.

Years ago, I bought a wet suit to prolong the time I could swim in our backyard pool.

Cool nights in the fall meant the pool temperatures fell well below my comfort level. We did not have a heater so, wearing a wet suit, I could get my exercise and be warm.

I never could bring myself to get rid of it even though I haven’t used it in years.

I pulled it out and headed to the pool. At the gym, two other brave swimmers joined me. One, who is training for a triathlon, wore a full wet suit. The other woman who only had on a swimsuit didn’t last very long.

We’re not sure when the new part to fix the pool heater will arrive. Thanks to my trusty wet suit it’s not a problem for me.

8 01, 2024

It’s a Holiday Wrap

By judythemorgan|2024-01-07T07:20:52-06:00January 8th, 2024|Holidays, Writer's Life|0 Comments

Our holiday was a whirlwind that became a tsunami with twenty-three gathered before Christmas Day to celebrate and have a first-ever all-of-us picture taken, including our OES who was the best behaved.

Dealing with that many personalities was a challenge. The photographer had her hands full and did a fantastic job. Considering the drama surrounding it, it turned out well.

We all survived and the whole event provided writer me with lots of characterization and conflict ideas for future protagonists.

The tree is undecorated, bundled, and stored in the barn shed to await another year.

The treasured pinecone people and tiny village houses from my grandparents’ home are nestled all snug in their box and stored away in the closet to await next Christmas’s unveiling.

January 1 is the clear-cut start for another trip around the sun. Another 365 opportunities — 366 this year since it’s a leap year — to pause and think about how we can best use our time in this new year.

That usually means making resolutions or setting goals.

According to Forbes.com, New Year goals include quit smoking, fitness, finances, mental health, diet, work-life balance, more time for loved ones, learning a new skill, drinking less, meditating more, and traveling more. All of these are admirable goals and intentions.

The sad fact is most goals and resolutions will fail miserably and fail quickly. Statistics on how long New Year’s goals last do not put the New Year tradition in a favorable light.

Most goals will fail within 3-4 months. Only one percent of goals last twelve months. So, you’re not alone if your intentions peter out.

Give yourself grace when you do fail, “The beauty of goal setting is you don’t need a ball drop or cannons of confetti to signal a fresh start—you can recommit to your resolutions at any time.”

Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again, to paraphrase a song lyric.

Me, I’m going simple for 2024. Only one goal. Finish my new romantic suspense, DEAD BODY GIRL.

Frankly, I’m more than ready to settle into an imaginary world where the writer is in charge. 2023 is good and well gone, holiday stress is over. Time to move into 2024 with all its promise and clean pages.

What about you? Any goals or resolutions?

4 12, 2023

Christmas Card Time

By judythemorgan|2023-12-03T12:56:03-06:00December 4th, 2023|A Writer's Life, Holidays, Writer's Life|0 Comments

One of my favorite things about the holiday season is receiving Christmas cards from family and friends with newsy letters. I bundle the cards by year with a ribbon and store them in baskets. The baskets then become part of our holiday decorations.

I like to take a packet from the baskets, look at the photos, and read the letters. It always sparks memories. Some sad knowing the original writer is no longer with us. But mostly the cards trigger good thoughts. It’s almost like having the senders here with me again.

I’m not alone in my love of sending and receiving Christmas cards. As outdated as the practice may seem to some, others cling to the tradition along with me. Americans buy approximately 1.6 billion Christmas cards a year!

The tradition began in the 1800s. As printing techniques improved, and costs dropped, Christmas cards increased in popularity. Read a detailed history here.

When postage dropped to half a penny, more people were able to send greetings. I collect those vintage postcards. Some date back to the 1900s. I love reading through the handwritten notes and looking at the intricate designs.

Many people today send handcrafted cards or order family picture cards. Handcrafted ones are extra special. So are the ones with family pictures.

What is it about this old-fashioned tradition that appeals to me and so many others?

The Greeting Card Association research suggests: “The tradition of giving greeting cards is a meaningful expression of personal affection for another person…”

Some question whether that appeal will be compelling enough to survive the conveniences of the digital era.

I believe it will.

If you want to start the tradition yourself, create a Christmas card list. Gathering addresses is as easy as gathering email addresses and holding a card in your hand beats reading a screen, in my opinion.

My list is on a spreadsheet that I update every year. It’s an easy way to correct addresses and keep track of cards sent and/or received. Because I prefer holiday-themed stamps, I order seasonal stamps online https://store.usps.com/store/results/stamps/holiday/_/N-9y93lvZ1mzlvsg

To make the task less daunting, I use address labels and newsy letters. Some don’t like newsletters. I love them. Makes me feel like I’ve been a part of my friend’s world.

Christmas cards – sending and receiving – will always be a favorite part of the holiday season for me. They are a way to stay in touch, to share our lives even though we may live an ocean apart.

What do you think? Do you send Christmas cards?

27 11, 2023

Christmas Tree Time

By judythemorgan|2023-11-26T10:07:41-06:00November 27th, 2023|A Writer's Life, Holidays, Writer's Life|1 Comment

Live Christmas trees are standing outside my grocery store. I remember when you bought your tree from roadside Christmas tree lots like you see in Hallmark movies set in New York City. Nowadays grocery and big box stores in our area are the ones with fresh trees for sale.

Christmas décor has been out since Halloween competing with ghosts and jack-o-lanterns and pilgrims and turkeys. But there’s something about the scent of fresh trees that truly sends me into the Christmas mood.

My family went out searching for the perfect cedar along the rural roads in the hill country of Texas when I was young. We’d spot one and holler for Daddy to stop. He’d hop out of the 1957 Ford station wagon and check it out.

“Two trunks. No good.” He’d say as he climbed back into the car. Or “Too skinny” he’d mumble with a head shake not even stopping.

Finally, we’d find the perfect tree. He’d carry his ax over and chop it down. We had to watch from the car. We were never allowed to stand by the tree while he chopped. “Too dangerous, the ax could slip,” he said.

Years later, we learned the perfect tree was always on the other side of the barbed wire fence on someone’s property and he might have to run fast.

Fond memories.

Growing up my Aunt’s Christmas tree, fully decorated, always stood in the garage wrapped in a plastic bag year-round. Some time in early December she’d move the tree into the den to the same place it stood every year.

We call the trees pencil trees these days. Back then, it was simply a skinny, little pre-decorated tree. As the years went by, the tree lost most of its ornaments. It stood like a sparkling light tree. We never cared.

It wasn’t the tree we’d come for, but the family celebration.

We’ll be dragging our tree from the barn soon. It’s not fully decorated or the live cedar of my memories. We call it “Charlie Brown.”

Soon our three adult children, their spouses, eleven grandchildren, two grand-spouses, and three great-grands will be here building holiday memories around our little tree all decked out in its holiday finery.

I can hear them sharing their memories years later. “Remember Nana and Pepa’s skinny beanpole tree.”

They’ll have a chuckle and, hopefully, remember most of all the love and fun of family gathered like I do.

For some, the holidays have no fond memories. To you, I send a cyber hug and prayers.

To the others, are you getting your Christmas tree ready for your holiday gatherings?

20 11, 2023

Traditions at Thanksgiving

By judythemorgan|2023-11-19T12:58:16-06:00November 20th, 2023|A Writer's Life, Holidays, Writer's Life|0 Comments

We’re celebrating Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Time for family reunions, food, fun, travel, football games, Black Friday,

and expressing thankfulness

The American celebration of the day began during the Civil War when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

Football games and Black Friday were not included on that first Pilgrim Thanksgiving in 1621, but the basis for our modern Thanksgiving festivities remains the same.

Families will gather to give thanks for their blessings.

Our clan will bring all the Thanksgiving feast fixings to our youngest daughter’s home where her famous brine turkey will fill the house with yummy scents.

Years ago, she started a family tradition that has become our favorite part of the day. Besides being the best turkey cooker, she’s a professional photographer and scrapbooker. Every year when we arrive at her house, she hands out cards.

On that card, we write what we are thankful for that year. She snaps a picture with her Polaroid Instant Camera which we affix to our thankful card. Before we eat, we share what we’ve written on our cards.

At the end of the day, she gathers all the cards and puts them into a yearly scrapbook. The highlight of our yearly gatherings is looking back through Thanksgiving scrapbooks from years past.

We have a lovely day filled with traditions that remind me of Tevye’s words in the song from Fiddler on the Roof.

"Tradition. Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as... as a fiddler on the roof!"

Thanksgiving traditions, while lovely and touching, aren’t based on the things on the table or around the table but on the love that surrounds us.

May you have a blessed Thanksgiving filled with love.

13 11, 2023

Then this happened

By judythemorgan|2023-11-12T15:58:35-06:00November 13th, 2023|A Writer's Life, Writer's Life|1 Comment

I’m usually deep into an imaginary story dreaming up havoc to dump on my characters. Conflict is a critical component of storytelling.

The characters and the readers should be surprised when a writer “throws another bear into their canoe.”

That’s a direct quote from writer friend JoAnn Ross during a writing class she taught. It refers to adding twists and turns to complicate characters’ lives when plotting.

Bears can be good things or bad things, whatever adds conflict to the lives of the story characters.

This week Mother Nature dumped a surprise bear at our house.

The beautiful 200-year-old oak in our front yard lost a massive limb on a bright sunny day with zero wind. Just kaboom and it was on the ground.

We don’t know what caused the limb to fall, but the theory is that the hard freeze of 2021 followed by the extended, excessive heat this summer has weakened the massive oaks that populate our neighborhood. Several smaller limbs have fallen throughout the neighborhood and many trees have died.

Our tree disaster is a perfect example of how story-plotting bears should work.

All those limbs and leaves in our front yard are a problem. Ever since its fall, it’s been raining which makes it impossible to get a tree company to come out, and clearing it ourselves is impossible.

The branch will just have to stay there until we get some dry weather.

Plotting bears work the same for writers. They can be good or bad things that complicate a character’s life as things happening in real life can be good or bad.

Have you had any complicating bears drop into your life lately?

16 10, 2023

Dictionary Day

By judythemorgan|2023-10-12T08:43:54-05:00October 16th, 2023|Holidays, Writer's Life, Writing Craft|1 Comment

This day honors Noah Webster, the man who fathered the American Dictionary. It’s one of my favorite holidays because I love dictionaries.

As a child, I’d spend hours poring through the pages of my grandmother’s eight-inch-thick Webster’s New International Dictionary (of the English Language). It was a fertile resource for a blossoming logophile or, as I prefer to call myself – a wordsmith.

The ancient leather-bound book with its India-skin paper had leather alphabet tabs cut into the pages. The detailed illustrations and maps are gorgeous. There were diagrams, charts, and thousands of words.

With so many dictionary resources readily available online, it’s easy to believe a hard copy isn’t necessary anymore. I disagree. Every home should have at least one realio-trulio paper dictionary available.

All sorts of wonderful magical stuff can happen when you use a hardcopy dictionary instead of looking up definitions online.

Your finger glides over other words as it scrolls down the printed page. Words that you might never have seen right there at your fingertips. You can see a word’s origin and its root without clicking to a different screen for synonyms and antonyms.

Yes, all that’s included with online dictionaries, but do you scroll down to discover the rest of the entry?

Probably not.

Understanding meaning is important. I learned that from my British antiques business partner. His British accent and my Texas drawl tended to muddle discussions and complicate purchases for the shop when the English and American definitions didn’t match. The King’s English Dictionary he gave me saved us many times over.

Spelling can be a problem no matter what type of dictionary you use. I stump spell checkers 90% of the time. Plus, spell checkers don’t give definitions.

I keep 20,000 WORDS by Louis A. Leslie side-by-side with my dictionary for fast lookup of commonly misspelled words. This little jewel gets me through my writing day.

While you may never love dictionaries as I do, I still recommend you have a hard-copy dictionary handy. You never know what you might learn.

25 09, 2023

Farming and Farm Animal Myths

By judythemorgan|2023-09-22T12:19:46-05:00September 25th, 2023|A Writer's Life, Writer's Life|1 Comment

Recently we watched Clarkson’s Farm documentary. The series documents British personality Jeremy Clarkson’s attempts at running Diddly Squat Farm, a 1,000-acre farm in the Cotswold, England.

It was fascinating learning the details of running a large farm. Plus, the farm name intrigued me. If you’re not familiar with the word, it’s a slang term that means doing nothing.

I think Clarkson was making a play on words when he named the farm. He expected running it would be easy. In the end, he admitted farming was a lot more work than he thought.

The series, besides teaching me a lot about farming, debunked several farm animal myths.

Cow tipping isn’t really a thing. Cow’s eyes are on the sides of their heads, they can see about three hundred degrees around them without moving which makes them very difficult to sneak up on. Plus, cows weigh 1,200 to 1,600 pounds. It would take a bunch of people to push one over, assuming they wouldn’t move out of your way in the first place.
Brown cows do not make chocolate milk contrary to what my daddy told me when I was a kid. Interesting that seven percent of the American population believes the myth.
Pigs are not dirty animals. They roll in the mud to cool off and protect themselves from the sun but actually prefer to be clean.
Goats don’t eat tin cans. They may gnaw the tin can but they’re eating the label and glue, not the tin. Goats prefer what’s up high, like leaves and berries on trees, as well as grasses, weeds, and other things on the ground.
Roosters only crow at sunrise. Wrong they crow all the time, not just at sunrise. Their “cock-a-doodle-doo” asserts dominance, warns of danger, and communicates with their flock.

We see lots of cows and horses in the pastures as we drive into town for shopping and activities. My respect and understanding of what the farmers and ranchers go through increased dramatically for them after watching the series. I am disappointed that brown cows don’t make chocolate milk, though.

I recommend Clarkson’s Farm series on Amazon. It’s entertaining, informative, and filled with some laugh-out-loud moments. Watching it might debunk some of your farming myths too.

18 09, 2023

Hummingbird Watch

By judythemorgan|2023-09-17T16:48:39-05:00September 18th, 2023|A Writer's Life, Make Me Think Monday, Writer's Life|1 Comment

SOURCE: David Dilbert @Pexels.com

Hummingbirds – those tiny, colorful, thin-beaked birds, called hummers from the noise that occurs when they flap their wings – are back at our feeders.

Fall migration is from mid-July through August or early September, so they’re migrating. That usually means we fill our feeders every day instead of once a week like we do for the little flock that winters over with us.

There are lots more hummingbirds than usual this year and we’re filling the feeders twice a day!

We watch their shenanigans at the feeders and have learned a lot about the fascinating tiny birds . . .

They cannot walk or hop on their tiny feet. They can scoot sideways while perched at feeders. Their small feet have evolved for more efficient flying.
Their long beak does not work like a straw but they have a fringed, forked tongue to lick nectar up into their throat.
A hummingbird egg is smaller than a jellybean.
The average lifespan is three to five years.
They have no sense of smell but very keen eyesight.

About their migration . . .

The ruby-throated hummingbird flies five hundred miles nonstop across the Gulf of Mexico during migrations. They do not hitch rides on other birds.
Their maximum forward flight speed is thirty miles per hour but can reach up to sixty miles per hour in a dive.
Their wings beat between 50 and 200 flaps per second depending on the direction of flight, the purpose of their flight, and the surrounding air conditions.
Their wings rotate 180 degrees, enabling backward flight and stationary hovering.

About their behavior . . .

They have superior memories and will return to the same feeders and gardens every year.
They’re not always docile creatures and will regularly attack jays, crows, and hawks that infringe on their territory.
They consume one-half of their weight in sugar daily and feed on average five to eight times per hour, which explains why we have to fill the feeders so often.
One hummingbird will guard all the feeders, chasing intruders away. Here’s our little guard hummer protecting one feeder.

The most important thing we’ve learned is hummingbirds prefer plain, clear homemade nectar to red dye which may be dangerous. When we tested the claim, our hummers refused to drink the red stuff and disappeared until clear nectar reappeared.

My homemade nectar recipe: One cup of sugar dissolved in four cups of boiling water and then cooled before filling feeders. I store leftovers in the refrigerator.

Your hummers will love it too and you can enjoy a hummingbird show like we do.

11 09, 2023

9-11 and Memory Triggers

By judythemorgan|2023-09-07T10:22:35-05:00September 11th, 2023|Holidays, Writer's Life|0 Comments

Triggers are sensory reminders that can cause memories –painful or happy – to resurface. Triggers can be anything from a holiday to a perfume scent to a loud voice.

Years after certain events, whether we were part of an event or not, anniversaries of events can trigger feelings.

Dates like these:

December 7, 1941	Pearl Harbor
November 25, 1963	John F. Kennedy Assassination
August 22, 1966	The University of Texas Tower Shootings
April 04, 1968	MLK Assassination
January 28, 1986	Challenger Explosion
November 9, 1989	Fall of Berlin Wall
August 31, 1997	Princess Di dies in a car accident
April 20, 1999	Columbine High School CO shootings

And, of course, September 11, 2001

Today is the twenty-second anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in New York City, at the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania. Today we remember and honor those who died on that day and during the aftermath.

Memories may trigger for you as this day does for me. My husband worked in New York City for many years. Our photo albums are filled with pictures of the Twin Towers from our many trips to the city.

None of our before pictures can erase the scenes from what happened on September 11, 2001, or my fears that day. I couldn’t turn off the TV as the horrors unfolded.