A Novel Creation www.WatersWords.com

I’ve decided I am indeed blessed to have a farm heritage. My maternal grandparents were, for the most part, subsistence farmers, raising the food they needed for themselves and their livestock year by year. My paternal grandparents were commercial farmers, growing crops to sell and maintaining a herd of dairy cows for the milk. We always had a garden. In fact I think nearly every member of the extended family had some sort of garden. Gardening provides food, yes. But it is valuable on so many other levels.  Preparing the Soil: Hard Work Of course if you’re going to plant a garden you need to prepare the garden bed. It may involve clearing the area of unwanted weeds or grass, getting rid of rocks or debris, and breaking up the ground with a tiller. It’s hard work.  But isn’t that true in other areas of life? We have to prepare the way for relationships. We even use the language of gardening: friendship grow, love blooms.  And how about in business? We ta...

It’s that time of year. Back-to-School time. Want to have a little fun? Thank You Pixabay! Well, remember when you entered your high school English class and saw a writing prompt scrawled across the blackboard?  Okay, maybe that wasn’t all that much fun. You knew your teacher was going to make you write about your summer vacation, right? But the simple truth is this: Getting your brain muscle active with any sort of writing exercise engages your thinking in a new way. It can help you reset your the ol' mindset, get you refocused on problem solving, and give your brain a much needed rest from other work or issues. I have an idea but I would never ask you to write about your summer vacation. I am so beyond that. Never would I ask my readers to write something so lame. So…the teacher in me coupled with the writer in me came up with something a bit different. I love Yankee Candles. The store selling them smells wonderful. One thing I’ve found myself doing from ...

This boy. This man. My oldest grandson will graduate from high school this year. I was privileged to tag along with him and my daughter to a photo shoot for his senior pictures.  J.T.  The “T” is after his grandpa, Thomas. He’s like him in many ways. He’s thoughtful and kind. And he’s smart. Both of J.T.’s parents are like that, but when I see this man-child, I see bits and pieces of Tom.  J.T. was the first of our grands. Tom and I couldn’t stay away. We would head to our daughter and son-in-law’s house the minute we were off of work. It was J.T.’s arrival that revealed Tom was a baby-hog. He never changed. As each little one arrived, he was quick to grab the baby out of my arms or whoever was cuddling the child when Tom came on the scene. I understood. And while J.T,’s parents had to worry over feedings and diapers and such, Tom and I took our job of  “drinking in the moments” quite seriously. It was like that at this photo shoot. My youngest...

I’m often asked to speak for church events, women’s organizations, and book clubs. This next month I have two local speaking engagements. One group has asked me to offer a talk about living in Kosovo. I love to talk about my stint in the Balkan country.  The other group has asked me to speak about how I’ve reinvented myself after age fifty-five. I’ve been giving that one a lot of thought. I suppose I see myself as an unfinished novel. Like the characters in my books, my life is always being revised; sometimes by choices I make and other times by events I never saw coming. I know the group’s leader, Connie, wants me to share how I made a decision to become a published author. We talked about it. I’ve often shared on this blog how I researched the writing world and how I created a rather crude business plan to move from being a professor at a college to a novelist.  I had prayed about what I would do when Tom and I left our jobs. The decision to move to Kosovo ...