Flash Fiction Chronicles

BY SUE ANN JAFFARIAN

reprinted with permission from InkSpot, January 27, 2010

Every time someone asks me what it takes to be a published author, I give the same answer: Commitment.

Commitment to plant your butt in a chair day after day, week after week, month after month. Commitment to the process of submitting your work to agents and publishers. Commitment to publicity and marketing. You can’t just go through the motions. It will show.

With the Winter Olympics coming up in about two weeks, we will be hearing a lot about commitment as the personal stories of the athletes unfold between the televised events. I love hearing the stories of these dedicated men and women who have sacrificed so much, juggling family and jobs to pursue their particular discipline and dream. It makes watching the events much more dramatic and personal.

As writers, we’re participating in our own Olympics. I’m not talking about competing with each other for prizes, but competing with ourselves for each book to be better than the last. The Olympians, while vying for medals, do that. With each luge run, slalom or triple jump, they are competing with themselves to better their last performance. Only commitment will bring improvement.

Then something occurred to me. Being committed is also the term used when someone is placed in an institution for mental problems. In that instance, being committed is equated with being crazy or at least unbalanced. That led me to that old saying: The definition of insanity is doing something over and over and expecting different results.

Hmmm, does that mean the Olympians are insane? Or that we’re crazy for pounding out book after book and expecting each one to be better than the last?

I’ve been called insane for the schedule I keep, and crazy for the number of books I’ve agreed to write each year. In a few days I will deliver Murder In Vein to my publisher. It’s the first book in my new vampire mystery series and I wrote it in just over two months. My manager thinks it’s the best book I’ve written to date. I’m not sure about that yet. To me, it’s still a blur, like the faces of a crowd standing in the snow watching me race downhill towards the finish line.

I made a commitment and will deliver on it. In the meantime, I feel like I’ll be ready for a straight jacket when it’s over.

VIVA LE NUTS!
 

Like the character Odelia Grey, Sue Ann Jaffarian is a full-time, middle-aged, paralegal. She lives in Los Angeles.

Sue Ann heard the siren call of writing early in her life, but did not make the commitment to become a novelist until about 1995. After completing two novels (still unpublished), she turned her attention to the mystery genre, and fell in love. She continues to write both mysteries and general fiction, as well as short stories, and belongs to two very supportive writers’ associations: Sisters In Crime, and Mystery Writers of America. 
Sue Ann Jaffarian
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Never shy about giving people the benefit of her opinion (whether it was asked for or not) my old gran was always telling someone their ‘but’ was too big.

On the face of it, that seems a little rude, even for my old gran, but she wasn’t talking about pants’ sizes. She was referring to those built-in excuses we like to keep handy, in case our sub-conscious starts prompting us to chase our dreams.

“But I’m too young/too old.”

“But he/she’s out of my league.”

“But people might laugh at me.” [Not a problem if your dream is to do standup comedy]

Writers’ buts.

Writers too, have built-in ‘buts’ as it were:

“I’d love to write, but I just don’t have the time.”

“I’d love to write, but I don’t know anything about grammar.”

“I’d love to write, but there’s no writing group where I live.”

If you ask me, none of those ‘buts’ matter. They’re all just a way of avoiding the real problem, the biggest ‘but’ of them all:

“But I might fail.”

The fear of failure can stop a person from even trying. Have you ever almost pitched a story to a high-paying magazine, almost sat down to write a novel, or almost entered a writing contest? If so, then join the club. I imagine just about every writer has had that experience at some point or other.

I’ll bet there are thousands of great (or potentially great) storytellers out there who’ll never get published. I suspect for most, it’s because they let their ‘but’ get between themselves and the chance of success. You’ve probably met some of them.

Be wary of such people. Many of them carry a virus, Excusitis, a mental affliction which can kill writing dreams by causing the person suffering from it to doubt themselves and their ability. Symptoms include excessive use of the phrases like ‘I wanted to be a writer, but…’, ‘I’ve always thought I had a book in me, but…’, ‘I love writing, but…’

While not always contagious, many sufferers become bitter, unable to wish other folks success in endeavors which they themselves once dreamed of pursuing. Instead of support they offer mockery, instead of encouragement they try to plant seeds of doubt in your head.

Avoid these people at all costs or risk becoming infected yourself.

So what’s the difference between writers who go on to achieve their writing dream and those who don’t?
I don’t believe it’s talent – though it would be naïve to think that talent isn’t a vital part of the equation.

It certainly isn’t luck – that’s just a silly excuse used by folks who think there’s an easy path to success.

I believe the difference is simple.

Successful writers refuse to allow their ‘buts’ to get in the way. They see a ‘but’ as an obstacle which must be overcome rather than an excuse to quit… at least that’s what I’m hoping.

Me, I’m nearer fifty than forty; between leaving school at sixteen (with a poor academic record) and my 42nd birthday, I’d never written a word of fiction. Believe me, I could come up with a dozen more great excuses. The point is who cares? I figure all those things will just make my ‘How I done it’ story a little more interesting if and when I become successful as a writer.

How about you?

What ‘buts’ have you put behind you as you chase your writing dream?

This post was originally published at http://jongibbs.livejournal.com/68015.html. 

Jon Gibbs is an active member of both The Garden State Horror Writers and The Monmouth Creative Writing Group .  His story “Wild West Justice” will appear in The Best of Every Day Fiction Two coming out this month. He can usually be found hunched over the laptop in his kitchen. One day he hopes to figure out how to switch it on. 

Editor’s note: Today is Kevin Shamel’s birthday.  Happy Birthday, Kev!

Flash fiction made me a better novelist. Novella-ist? Well, anyway…

I found flash while wandering the shadowy paths of publishing short stories. It was like stumbling out of an enchanted forest and into neat rows of juicy little fruit trees. I knew I could grow some tasty stories like that. By the time I’d had my fifth or sixth flash fiction story published, I was an amateur orchard-grower. I spent a year writing lots of flash. The more I wrote, the more I wanted to write. Soon enough, I was producing juice. (I later fermented it all and got everyone drunk, but that’s another story entirely.)

A majority of the writers I know—and I know more writers than I know other kinds of people—have never attempted flash fiction. Most of them haven’t thought much about it. Of the people I casually speak to about writing flash that have not done so, most really don’t think much of the art. It’s because they’ve not explored it.

The common misconception about flash fiction is that it’s an easy thing to write. It’s a thousand words or less. I can write that in ten minutes. That is true. In fact, I’ve had stories published that I wrote in ten minutes. (Keep in mind that I also write publishable novellas in under two weeks, and I’m writing one soon that will be written in three days. It’s not the “normal” way of doing it.) It’s not unheard of to whip out an amazing bit of flash in no time at all. However, it’s not uncommon to spend days, weeks, or months getting a flash story just right.

That’s because it’s an art-form. It has to be mastered. When you’ve got it figured out, it’s a skill you can draw upon for the rest of your authoring life.

By learning how to write a complete story with such a small word count, I learned to cut my story to its quick. I learned about what words are really necessary for the story. I learned that a great number of people prefer to read stories that are lean and to the point. I honed my sentences and cut out all the extras that took the story (and the reader) somewhere beyond the point of it all. I learned how to make my stories shoot straight to the heart of the reader. I learned to edit.

My year of writing flash helped me to find my true writing style. One that is fortunately in synch with the world today. I write books that can be read in the time it takes to watch a movie. People like that. In fact, they love that. How many people spend fifteen hours watching a movie? Do you push pause after watching for fifteen minutes and go to work? Are movies two hundred hours long? No. People like the idea of complete, satisfying, lasting stories that they can digest quickly. Stories like flash fiction.

Because of flash, my longer works are leaner and quicker. Because of flash, it’s easier to make a story something that people will read straight through because they don’t have a moment to stray from the story. Because of flash, I had a book published.

In the toppling forest of the publishing industry, there is new growth. I urge anyone growing giant Sequoias of novels to consider spending a year learning the art of pruning flash fiction bonsais. In no time we’ll have acres and acres of shady rows of producing trees. Then we can feed the world our fruits.

Or get them all drunk on apple cider.

Kevin Shamel lives in the Pacific Northwest in a house that was once surrounded by apple orchards. You can find his flash at Every Day Fiction. His first book, Rotten Little Animals, can be read on a long commute or on a flight to Maui (it has been done). Visit ShamelessCreations for art, words, and shameless weirdness.

The house is quiet, and smells of my favorite jasmine candle. Outside, Texas is thundering rain on the roof and windows. I can write for hours like this. I like to think maybe today, I will get the chance to do so. The honest truth is this thunderstorm will pass in about twenty minutes, the house will be alive with voices sooner than later, and my candle will burn out. Then it’s back to the perfectly non-ideal writing environment, but you know what? I’ll still write. Nothing can keep me from it.

My inner self drives me to write, not my outside circumstances. The voices in my heart gather from experiences, and drive my fingers to pick up that pen and paper and scribble like a mad woman. Various emotions, thoughts, memories, take on a personality and demand a life of their own. I let my muse write whatever it wants. This is where magic and power lies. If I handcuff my muse to a turkey platter and demand it write turkeys, it will write turkeys, but the turkeys, unlike Edward, won’t sparkle. Powerful writing is dependent upon you giving boundless freedom to your muse to roam and develop.

Life. So much simple life eats up our time, just the normal things you need to do to get through a week, a month– jobs, commuting, dating, spouses, children, family members, family issues, friends, neighbors, college, illness, loved one’s deaths, car accidents, doctor appointments /dentist / hair appointments, church, holidays, yard work, paying bills, getting a second job to pay the bills, and oh yeah, having fun –that when you have a spare second, that moment in the evening when the world is quiet, dark, and you are left with your own thoughts, a glass of wine on your desk, and a blank computer screen, it’s so easy to let the negative voice come out.

It discourages you because: another reject, there are those ‘other writers’ that are better than you, you don’t get grammar, what the heck is a ‘sympathetic character’? Or is it ‘pathetic character’? Are you supposed to be outlining plots or do you go all willy nilly all over the place- omg, does your writing suck? You feel like it sucks. Is this just a pipe dream? Your spouse/ girlfriend/ boyfriend/mother/preacher/brother/best friend/ co-worker thinks your writing is lame and childish – who reads anyway? What if the preacher finds out your character said the F word, and he thinks you are the one really saying the F word, but you really honestly don’t say the fucking F word, but he might think you do…

On and on and on these thoughts go until your glass of wine is gone, and you wonder what the preacher would think if he knew you just drank a glass of wine, and then you remember you have to take your grandmother to chemo tomorrow. You feel tired, drained, discouraged.

What happens next is what separates the people who succeed from the people who don’t. It’s not about genes, money, health, good looks, or ‘natural talent’. It’s what happens with that very next breath and decision you make. You either:

1) Stand up, drop your glass in the sink, brush your teeth, flop in bed exhausted – another day done and gone. You will rise tomorrow, none the closer to anything. In fact, you are falling backwards from your dream because you lack the motivation to move forward.

Or

2) You tell all your doubts to go hell heck. You sit down and force those thousand or five hundred words. If you are writing a novel and the muse wants to write it – write it. If you are worried about grandma’s chemo because the nurse can never find her frickin’ vein and you know its going to hurt when the nurse inserts the needle, fishes around, draws it out, stabs it in again – you write a story about that anger, that fear. You just write it. And then, if you are writing flashes or shorts, you submit it – even if you think it sucks and it probably does. Doesn’t matter. You do it anyway. Someone will publish it. You keep writing, day after day. Night after night. And when you are done writing, you read.  You read because you need to keep that creative tank filled with how the pros do it. You do it and you keep on doing it. You’re more exhausted than you would have been without writing and reading, but it’s okay, because you are working your dream, what you want.  No one can take that from you. No one.

And this is what I’ve been doing.

I hope this speaks to you. I hope this causes you to ditch those doubts, fears, fatigue, and just go for it. Magic beans, golden pens, or supportive friends aren’t going to fulfill your dreams as a writer. Only you can do that, butt in chair, writing away when the whole world is sleeping or falling apart around you.

Decide not to let outside circumstances be a barrier to your muse. Let your inner voice speak, and write it – no matter what. Trust you to be you. This is your life, your dream. The only way to make it as a writer is to jump in heart and soul. That sounds so cliché’, huh? Sometimes the truths in life are cliché’. Deal with it.

My muse wants cheesecake. So far, the ingredients can be difficult to come by, but it tastes great, and it just keeps getting better.

Jodi MacArthur serves imagination raw on an open flame. Bring your fork to www.jodimacarthur.blogspot.com. Published online and in print, she is working on her first novel, Devil’s Eye.

In his post “Make in Fun” (on Wednesday 11th November ’09) Alexander Burns wrote “To that end, I’ve determined that a writer has learned most of what they need to know about storytelling by the age of 10 or so. After that, all that’s left is to learn how to make it good.” I totally agree. What’s more it reminded me of something that I do from time to time – Eavesdrop! On my kids, and especially my daughter who will turn twelve this month!

I know it is a sneaky habit. I’m a bad mom. Sorry! But I can’t help it. The stuff they talk about, the books they read, the things they do, and more importantly write and so often the stories they tell themselves or to each other is so interesting. So inspiring too. For my writing I mean.

You see, kids have these absolutely wide open windows in their minds. Information, ideas, imaginary things keep flying in and out all the time. They have this absolutely fresh way of looking at everyday, mundane things. They keep “discovering” the world around them. If you sneak around the kids, your imagination is sure to get fired up.

I loved it when my daughter and son too, were younger and talked to themselves when they either drew pictures or played with their toys. The stories they told themselves were entertaining, though not always, actually almost never, logical. Probably that’s why they were so entertaining in the first place. I did not plagiarize their stories (it seriously didn’t occur to me at that time, and now I wonder if I did miss an opportunity, since my kids wouldn’t sue me for that, would they? ). I wish I had recorded some of that prattle, though. Sigh. Nevertheless, eavesdropping on their imaginary voyages and adventures did inspire me and often liberated me from my adult constraints of fact and form.

Anything is possible in a child’s inner world. Nothing is improbable!

Not even lemon yellow polka dotted purple ice cream
Served in a jelly belly bowl with a slice of moon beam!

Some of the stuff they think of and say actually provide fodder for us adult writers. Like the time I found my daughter, then around nine years old, looking thoughtfully at the artificially created turquoise waters of a swimming pool. After sometime she muttered, “Rapture of the deep is what happens to sailors when they are drowning; they don’t want to come up.” I stood still. She had connected something ordinary with something extra-ordinary and seemingly unrelated to the present. She skipped away to do something else and I found myself seeing a vast stretch of turquoise water all around me and feeling an immense sense of ecstasy wash over me. My daughter had just opened up a new dimension, another portal before me. The first draft of my poem “Rapture of the Deep” was born then and there; the poem was later published in A Little Poetry. Another time, on a rainy evening, I heard her advise a frog that was staring at her from its perch on a low railing, almost eye level with her, that “he was better off as a frog!” She was around six then and far more fond of birds and animals than Barbie dolls and princesses. My Story “Return of the Frog Prince” almost hopped off my head and was published a couple of years later in the Lily Literary Review!

It’s not always that a poem or a story takes shape every time I eavesdrop on my kids, or any kids for that matter. But their artless words and wide open hearts are not merely joyous to behold, like a rainbow seen in the crystal light after a shower, with the scent of renewed life all around you, they have a potent magic in them. I think the magic is really the cleansing quality that they have, something that makes you shed, at least want to shed, your inhibitions and adult complexes. The effect is wonderfully refreshing. And I think that is good for writers.

___________________________________________________________________________

Rumjhum Biswas has been writing poetry almost since she learned to read and write. It was her way of getting back at the world. Now a plump, bespectacled and hopefully respectable mom of two and wife of one she continues to write poetry and also fiction, because while poets remain poor some fiction writers do get rich and that gives her hope. Her publications and mutterings are here: http://rumjhumkbiswas.wordpress.com/ She also jabbers from time to time at Flash Fiction Chronicles.

“Writers write.”  Who said that? Flannery O’Connor or Stephen King? I can’t remember, but the veracity of the statement cannot be challenged. No words on paper: no tome.

The better question might be, “How do writers manage to write in REAL LIFE?” How do they come up with a steady stream of sentences, paragraphs, story beats? Maybe some are born with enough talent and drive to block out the temptations of the Friday morning Sudoku, but for most of us, the world is full of enticements, obligations, distractions, and bicyclists smashing into trashcans, pounding on doors to harass owners about city-dictated trashcan placement. These intrusions challenge our ability to meet writing goals, but retaining focus, an outlined plan to commit to writing, helps us remain in office chairs, fingers flitting over keys, heads hunched toward screens.

But how can I ignore husband, kids, friends? Don’t I need to exercise, shop for healthy food? Stay up on the election news?  Do I have to skip Project Runway, American Idol, Without A Trace?

It’s a balance, and focusing on that balance leads to symbiotic interplay between the two. In other words, pay off.

Family? Friends? We have to have them. Can’t really live–or write–without them and all those obnoxious, needy, freeway-jamming, gum-chewing, rude and crude other people too. They are our characters, and the subsequent drama of their–and our–tangled relationships provide us with themes and plots. So letting people muddy up our lives? Gotta happen.

Then there’s the issue of health, exercise, brushing teeth, and that no sugar rule. And the need to refill Julia Cameron’s proverbial well with sunny days of rebelling against routine and late nights devoted to deep substantial reading. Plots build themselves on early morning walks, scene by scene, block by block. “To Build a Fire” gave birth to my story “Richie’s Last Shot” and The Red Tent to “Honeymoon at the Oasis Hotel.” Are these distractions or assets? Both.

As for the news, election or not, jury duty, the media, the Lakers, pop culture, and the biggest distraction: TV? Acts of living can shatter anyone’s focus, but while they confuse us, they provide us with insights, while they frustrate us, they bring us understanding, while they subject us to banality and routine, they teach us the rhythm of patterns. These lessons, in turn, gift us with material from which we pull universal truths, the heart of good writing.

Awareness of how REAL LIFE devours both our time and our passion is all-important. The solution is deciding to do something about it–Plan. Follow through. Rejoice. And accept the idea that spending time in the act of writing is a blessing.

I used to believe that “having talent” meant writers were born, not made, and were compelled to write day and night. With no effort on their part, they could separate themselves from what other people wanted them to do and instead, blissfully compose epic novels. That certainly wasn’t me. I had tasks to do at home, sometimes a job, demands of family, obligations to others. Since I was overwhelmed by RL, I wrote sporadically, fitfully, so I couldn’t have been “born to write.” I took this logic another step: “Not born to write” must mean I have no talent. I let this idea defeat me. Since I struggled to overcome distractions to writing, I must not have been born to write. If I was, I would let nothing stand in my way.

I don’t believe this anymore. People who want to write eventually figure out some way to navigate the obstacles. They will find a balance. Writing is a choice. And choice demand action–and focus.  After all, writers write.

Post originally published at Gay Degani’s Words in Place blog on Wednesday, March 05, 2008. Gay is the editor of EDF’s Flash Fiction Chronicles. She has stories forthcoming in Paradigm, Every Day Fiction,  The Battered Suitcase, and 10Flash.

Recently I attended a book reading by an up and coming writer in Chennai, India and I was pleasantly surprised to hear her say that going for walks triggered story ideas in her head.  I found myself nodding in agreement.Walking is great exercise, for both body and mind. What makes it even better for writers is that as you walk you unwittingly keep observing the world around you in a detached sort of way. Objects, people, stray thoughts gather momentum with every step or stride.

Your head begins to clear up and soon a kind of informal creative mood sets in. You begin to look at the world around you (and I mean really look at the the world around you) with fresh eyes. A slant of sunlight on a pathway you never noticed before, an expression on the face of a passerby you see most days but never notice, the sudden pattern of paint peeling off a fence… Before you know it, an image has become a sentence, a thought has become a phrase; one word has sparked off a whole string; your mind has come alive with sound and colour. Pretty soon you have a dialogue happening between characters that suddenly appeared between your eyes. The first lines of a poem begin to meander. A storyline erupts and starts to bubble inside your head…

Many of my stories and poems started out that way. However, unlike the noted Indian writer Ruskin Bond, I don’t carry a notepad and pen with me when I go for my walks. No longhand first drafts for me. I need my computer, always. The only exception that I can think of is the odd poem that crops up at an Airport or during a train journey. The rest of the time, I am comfortably creative when I sit before my own computer, in my own room. And no where else.

Not jotting down your thoughts the minute they arrive does have its pitfalls. I have lost a number of good sentences, phrases and ideas that way. But everything does not melt away in the sunlight of a normal working day. After my day’s chores are done (read wife and mum!) there is still enough fodder gathered during my morning walk left over in my mind to fuel the creative writing process. That apart, walking also works like a creative excercise. All those random thoughts, mostly unrelated and unregulated, produce a kind of cleansing effect. And then when the dust settles down, you get some clear directions as to where your muse is headed for the day.

A writer friend of mine who is pretty good at writing flash fiction and had also won a major flash fiction prize is full of woe lately because the novel she is working on is not happening, according to her. I think she is being too hard on herself. While it is true that a novel is an entirely different ball game from a flash fiction, why should the writing process be a deterrent?

Most novels have a structure similar to a short story, where there’s an initial, inciting incident; a series of conflicts in which the main character is frustrated in his/her attempts to achieve his/her goal; a climax, in which the main conflicts are resolved and a denouement or falling action. There can also be multiple story lines to make the original plot more complex. Many novels are not structured in the classic sense at all, but are made up instead of small narrative pieces which may or may not be about the same characters or have a standard fictional structure, yet all of which add up to a complex picture of a character/set of characters, a place or a time; even perhaps all three. This is also a perfectly plausible way to go about constructing a good novel.

The key words here are “smaller narrative pieces”, which can be as small as four to five hundred words at a time. These are the flash fiction pieces that can be roped together like a string of pearls to ultimately produce that novel. The trick is to keep writing those small pieces without worrying about not writing enough and whether the novel is coming through or not. No novel looks like the finished product during the first draft stage, and sometimes at the second and third draft stages as well. The smarter trick is to enjoy (as in being involved with your writing and actually will yourself to do it if it doesn’t come easy), writing those little chunks of fiction. If you haven’t enjoyed/been involved with your novel how can you expect your readers to enjoy reading it? As for the little chunks of fiction, they could be different situations faced by the main character/characters, cameo pieces of the secondary characters, even whimsical episodic pieces.

So long as all of them basically adhere to the plot in your head or the core direction of your novel and are rooted in the same soil I see no reason for the novel to not to happen. There are artistic rules and success stories to prove those rules right. Then again, so many writers have broken the rules and set new standards, paved new paths. But all of them have kept writing and kept on writing, sometimes only a few short sentences in a day.

When I want to write something dark, a horror story, a flash focusing on goblins, a crime story–I write it with drawn blinds or at night. The monitor being the only light most of the time.

I find it puts me more in the mood with a darkling shroud around me. Not that it’s impossible to write that sort of thing on a bright spring day under an apple tree with birds singing. However, I find the mood at night, maybe rainswept and stormy, really sets a feeling I believe most of us have: That primal fear of all things that dwell in the darkness. Probably that’s why the creatures of fiction from vampires to ghosts to goblins and trolls and even werewolves and orgs, are creatures of the night, shunning daylight much as we shun the night.

And so I put myself there–right with those dark beings. There are no grand vistas, no view of distant isles or mighty mountain peaks. No. It’s just what’s right before you. In that small envelope of space barely beyond arms-reach. A footfall down a darkened ally, an owl’s hoot atop a gnarled and ancient tree, a snarling growl just beyond view in a dense fog, the sudden and horrid shriek of the fellow, now gone, who was bringing up the rear through the path of the thick jungle. Things do go bump in the night.

And that can make for a great and frightening tale.

DJ Barber writes stories, flash, poems, and novels. He was born in the northeast and lives in the northwest. When not writing he has a wife and two dogs that keep him busy.
He has been published online at Every Day Fiction, Moon Drenched Fables, Tales From the Moonlit Path, Big Pulp, Every Day Poets, and Everyday Weirdness.

In Print DJ has been published by Darker Intentions Press, Odyssey Magazine, has a short story in the anthology, Damned in Dixie, and has a flash in the Best of Every Day Fiction 2008.

DJ would like to remind everyone that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

You’ve heard of continental drift, I’m sure. How as the earth formed and reshaped itself, the continents moved closer together, then farther apart, back again? Still do? Not a scientifically accurate explanation*, but that’s not the point. The point is WE drift too.

It is the rare human being (writer) who doesn’t suddenly find herself in a different landscape far from the one where she wanted to be. Sometimes the new island, mountain top, whatever, is pretty damn pleasant and for a moment, when she realizes where she is, she thinks maybe she’ll stay.

After all, the place where she used to be is a bare speck on the horizon. From where she sits now, that speck seems rugged and untamed, jungle-like, and a good rowing distance away. A hard row. And she’s never learned to sail, can’t crank an outboard. For her it’s strong arms, back, and legs all pulling together or nothing. And that’s soooo much work. Easier to stay put in this new place…

But no. Can’t do that. Gotta get out the row boat, patch the leaks, and get rowing. And next time when playing in the vast sea becomes a temptation, she’s gotta point the prow straight back to the jungle, and pull it up into the sand.

In other words, get writing.

*I googled “continental drift”: In 1915, the German geologist and meteorologist Alfred Wegener first proposed the theory of continental drift, which states that parts of the Earth’s crust slowly drift atop a liquid core. The fossil record supports and gives credence to the theories of continental drift and plate tectonics.