2/09/2007

Finding Your Life's Passion- or Passion? What Passion?

The Truth Is...Continued

Here I am with my old "The truth is" writing prompt again. You start with "the truth is" and go on from there...

The truth is, if y'all have any good ideas for other writing prompts you'd like to hear from this writer, feel free to let me know...Except for you, Billy! You are a dear, dear sweetie, but you'd probably have me writing about goats invading alien spaceships or some such as that!

The truth is I have no idea what my passion is. You know when I was talking about visualizing your dream into reality? Well, every time I think on it lately, I come up with dead air.

Marti and I tried thinking together in the same room and we both had the same result- nada.

We've asked ourselves if we're just chicken shit. We've wondered if we're afraid of failure, so we're blocking our wish from popping up into our heads so we can go visualize it. We've analyzed, proselytized, finalized and idealized all sorts of notions, but it doesn't help.

This is as far as I've gotten...My dream reality is so far a plot of land on Kerr Lake where I will put 4 tobacco barns- two joined together to make a roomy and nice cottage, then the other two will each be transformed into little guest cottages for the boys and their families when they come home to visit.

When the boys aren't there, I can rent them out to folks like a bed and breakfast, thus supporting me in my old age. When the boys are there, we'll jump off the end of the dock, water ski, catch fish and raise a good amount of hell...Then, when we're done with the racket and the fussing, we'll send them off to their cottages with their families and lock the door behind them until morning.

I'll have a study overlooking the water, so I can write and look out the window at the red-headed woodpecker who's made a home in the tree ten yards away. I'll have a little, manageable vegetable and flower garden and perhaps a few rose bushes, but not the well-behaved kind, the old "found" rose type bush, the kind that still grows around the foundations of home places long ago reduced to their stone foundations.

There will be music and the smell of muffins and cinnamon rolls wafting out my kitchen window in the morning. The window will be the kind that you turn a crank at the bottom to open it and it opens out from the cabin, like tiny glass barn doors.

There should be a screened in porch overlooking the lake, too. The beds will have feather mattresses, pillows and comforters. Old quilts will be piled in a trunk in front of the overstuffed sofa. And my friends won't have to call before they come over, just pop in the back door...Unless I've stuck my little yellow "Not right now" flag into its holder off the back porch railing.

Bird houses. Bird feeders. Fresh zinnias on the old wooden kitchen table in the summer. Fresh tomatoes, shaved Parmesan cheese, balsamic vinegar, olive oil and basil for summer lunch. Thick vegetable soup in the winter time. The quiet stillness of a gray winter morning that heralds snow by mid-afternoon. Snow that clings to the cedars and looks like a Christmas card from my front gate.

A red kettle on the stove. Mismatched mugs hanging from hooks beneath the open-faced cabinets. A yellow hooked rug in the middle of the kitchen floor. Warm dogs snuggled beside me on the sofa for their afternoon naps. Someone who loves me, who loves to laugh, puttering around the place, sometimes taking the '48 Chevy truck into town to pick up one Bubba thing or another.

Bright, faded colors against old barn wood, soft, worn quilt fabric against ancient barn wood...and time, always more time. No one pushing me to do things I don't want to do. No paperwork or time clocks. Just the serenity of the sunlight hitting lake ripples, the quiet lapping of water against the dock, the scent of approaching rain on a hot summer day.

This is all I know of what I want and perhaps for now, it is enough.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"...but you'd probably have me writing about goats invading alien spaceships or some such as that!"

Perhaps, maybe, but maybe you should read a few chapters of this novel before you decide. (Yes, the title mentions a dog but it's a metaphor.) I think you'll find me far more versatile than you realize. As a matter of fact: about 100,000 people read that book last year.

Besides, why wouldn't you want to try your hand at writing about goats invading alien spaceships or some such as that? ;-)

Truth be told the creative process for me is probably different than for you. I don't try to write anything-- I go to sleep, dream entire poems, stories and novels, wake up and write them down. Sure, I write my waking thoughts as well but my best work comes to me like movies in my dreams. Sometimes it's a blessing, sometimes a curse. (Especially when it takes you 3 weeks to write down a dream while everything else in your world stops.)

I've got a new book coming to print any day now. I say any day but we both know how iffy release dates can be so until I get copies in my hand I'll continue to say any day now. I've got a contract so I know it will happen-- eventually. I think you'd like it. It's two novellas combined to make one book of action-adventure, mystery and comedy. And both stories are about Christmas.

I've also got some pretty steamy stories I've been sitting on for years. I guess I'll have to release them under a pen name as there are so many double standards in the world today-- more so than when we were children. For example: Dr. Suess was a Nazi sympathiser but no one was concerned when he wrote The Cat In The Hat. And my favorite poet, Shel Silverstein sold 18 million copies of his children's books while drawing naughty cartoons and writing for Playboy Magazine. Let's see an author pull that off in this day and age. And did I mention Silverstein's 700 songs that included some of the dirtiest songs ever recorded or the fact that he wrote or co-wrote every song ever released by Doctor Hook and the Medicine Show including the druggie classic, Cover Of The Rolling Stone.

I do have some ideas I could bounce off you. The one I was thinking of before is currently being tried by another female author I know. She's the 5th one to try it, the other 4 gave up as it forces people to see things in themselves that they might not like and wouldn't want to world to know.

I just thought of something very timely that might interest you and while I was thinking of a middle aged man as the lead character, a middle aged woman could fill the part. It's a war story of sorts, maybe you'd like to use my idea as I'll probably never get around to it. Fact is: If I had the money to hire writers to ghost write I could outline and let them write 20, maybe 30 stories a year.

Forget all that, I know how to fix your problem and let you dream up your own next novel. Just ask.

Now, before I go, think up a title for a poem and e-mail the title to me. Just a title, that's all. Go ahead and try to trip me up if you like. I'll write a poem based on your title and post it to my blog with a link back to you. I call them Exploding Dog Poems and their my favorite poems to write.

Anonymous said...

How to Find Your Purpose in Life
1) Take out a blank sheet of paper
2) Write at the top, "What is my purpose in life?"
3) Write an answer (any answer) that pops into your head. It doesn't have to be a complete sentence. A short phrase is fine.
4) Repeat step 3 until you write the answer that makes you cry. This is your purpose.
From the website StevePavlina.com

Teena in Toronto said...

I have no idea what my passion or purpose is either. I'll let you know if I figure it out!