Put off until tomorrow...

...what you should be doing today.


The real quote is “Why put off until tomorrow, what you can do today.” ‘Why’ being the operative word here, but lately I’ve missed the boat and have been putting off until tomorrow the things I should be doing today.

Like my writing. Some would call it procrastinating, but I am in a serious deficit of putting things off until tomorrow. Like this post, it entered my mind last week, bubbled there a bit, and I thought, I’ll wait until tomorrow. It is a week later and I’m just getting to this post, and believe me, I have tons going on in my head that make me want to stop writing and put it off again until...tomorrow? Next week perhaps?

My dilemma? Well most of you know that I’ve moved recently and almost all of you (who follow religiously) are aware of my situation. Recap: Fiancé going blind, no medical help, being forced to move to another state in hopes of getting help, then...the farm. A city girl born and raised, who yearned for the country life, and now, it seems my life is all that I’ve dreamed of.

I’m on a farm, I have a garden and I have well over 3 acres of land to mow and tend. We’re renting, but it still is an awe inspiring emotional time for me. So where does that leave my writing? It is in my heart, always, that’s where! Don’t worry, I may get behind in my blog, I may forget to help you all in your writing journey, but please know, the only things that I put off until tomorrow, are the very things that I HAVE to put off for the moment.

I’ve mentored this F2K session and I wasn’t even there in my heart. I have two rooms that I facilitate at WVU and luckily it is a slow time in the U or they would be having my head and taking over my rooms. Everyone understands what is happening in my life so they understand what things are more important to me at this time. If I worry about everyone else, who is going to worry about me and my family?

I have a strong faith that carries me through every single day, and when He says, “Joni, get back to your writing this instant!” I will surely adhere to His voice and come back here full steam ahead. I think in the Fall I’ll have tons to write about and maybe my mind will have absorbed all that is going on here and maybe, just maybe, I’ll write about it and tell you all how it plays into my writing life.

For you, the new writer, I’m not putting you off, I’m not putting off my writing or my blog, I’m just inhaling the glorious beauty that the Lord has surrounded me with. Whatever you do, “Don’t put off until tomorrow, what YOU can do TODAY!”


"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore.Dream. Discover!"
-- MARK TWAIN

Poetry Sunday

Life’s Chained Prison

Am I alone in this chained prison,
all by my own fruition?
Do I idly cower in fear,
it's never clear;
problems have nearly risen.

To heights unforeseen, I am alone;
on a quest not yet shown.
Do I scamper all about,
I try to shout.....
but silent is my tone.

Confusion has impeded my sight.
I often buckle; no strength to fight.
Will anyone hear my cries,
unveiled lies,
The blind now see the light.

Free me from these sheltered walls,
I hear the sacred angels calls.
Not alone I am defeating,
now completing;
HIS arms will catch my falls!!!!

Quotation Saturday

Proust speaks of "an illusory magical power in literature".

It is not possible that a piece of sculpture, a piece of music which gives us an emotion which we feel to be more exalted, more pure, more true, does not correspond to some definite spiritual reality. It is surely symbolical of one, since it gives that impression of profundity and truth. Thus nothing resembled more closely than some such phrase of Vinteuil the peculiar pleasure which I had felt at certain moments in my life, when gazing, for instance, at the steeples of Martinville, or at certain trees along a road near Balbec, or, more simply, in the first part of this book, when I tasted a certain cup of tea."

This passage links together two of Proust's main ideas: the idea that art reveals deep truths, truths that daily life doesn't reveal, and the idea that unconscious memory, the memory of a sight, a smell or a taste, can also reveal deep truths.

Like most outstanding writers, Proust had a low opinion of literary critics. Proust said that critics always overrate certain authors and underrate others: "This constant aberration of the critics is such that a writer should almost prefer to be judged by the public at large....For the talent of a great writer--which, after all, is merely an instinct religiously hearkened to (while silence is imposed on everything else) perfected and understood--has more in common with the instinctive life of the people than with the superficial verbiage and fluctuating standards of the conventionally recognised judges."

Write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.
~~Neil Gaiman

You can take for granted that people know more or less what a street, a shop, a beach, a sky, an oak tree look like. Tell them what makes this one different.
~~Neil Gaiman

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.
~~Edgar Allan Poe

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? ~~ George Orwell

You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist. ~~ Isaac Asimov

If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.
~~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

America's greatest strength, and its greatest weakness, is our belief in second chances, our belief that we can always start over, that things can be made better.
~~Anthony Walton

Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.
~~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Poet," Essays, Second Series, 1844

When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.
~~Adlai Stevenson

Have a SAFE and GLORIOUS Fourth of July in the Land of the FREE

A Poem for Monday

What is Love?

There's more to love than meets the eye.
Give it wings and it will fly.
Sow it in the richest soil.
A tree burst forth with little toil.
Hold it in the palm of your hand,
mold it, shape it so it will stand.
Drop it in the widest sea,
it will flow through you and me.
Make it an instrument and it creates song,
carry you gently your whole life long.
Release it to the fragrant air;
surely it finds a heart to snare.
Give it freely, if for no reason;
it takes the form of the changing season.
Breathe it in and it will seep,
into your soul for you to keep.
Plant it firmly within your heart,
the seed of love will never part.

Happy Father's Day

The Storms We Watch
***

A thousand miles away I may be
the love of my father sweeps through me.
When storms they pass overhead;
my father and I watched with dread.

We knew the storm held danger within
but we stood there watching thunderheads spin.
I looked up at him with childlike zeal
knowing the lightning’s crash would peal.

Scared as I was I clung to his hip
his arm on my shoulder, I was tight in his grip.
The rain would fall in rapid procession,
we stood amazed, the storm our obsession.

All through life I road many a storm
knowing his love would keep me warm.
I carry his arm wrapped round my shoulder
with every storm as I get older.

I know he’ll love, protect and keep
the storms at bay so I may sleep.
In peace I’ll grow, his strength by my side
for me he’ll always have arms open wide.

Though we don’t see each other too much
you can rest assured I feel his touch.
With every raging storm that goes by,
I’m out there seeing him look in my eye.

A thousand miles away I may be,
The love of my father always sweeps through me!

Quotation Saturday

Many suffer from the incurable disease of writing and it becomes chronic in their sick minds.
~ Juvenal (AD 60-130)

The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say. ~Mark Twain

The expression "to write something down" suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it.
~William Gass, "Habitations of the Word," Kenyon Review, October 1984

Being an author is like being in charge of your own personal insane asylum.
~ Graycie Harmon

When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.
~ Samuel Butler

When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.
~ Enrique Jardiel Poncela

I asked Ring Lardner the other day how he writes his short stories, and he said he wrote a few widely separated words or phrases on a piece of paper and then went back and filled in the spaces.
~ Harold Ross

The ablest writer is only a gardener first, and then a cook: his tasks are, carefully to select and cultivate his strongest and most nutritive thoughts; and when they are ripe, to dress them, wholesomely, and yet so that they may have a relish.
~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.'
~ Edgar Allan Poe

Poetry Sunday

I Asked My Soul A Question
***
I asked my soul a question.
What am I searching for?
Gently holding onto the knob,
It opened up a door.

Cascading tiny showers of love,
Embellished an aching heart.
Agony, ecstasy, shame and sorrow,
Each had there own part.

Strings of light came shining through,
Appearing as a sword.
Strumming sounds of destiny,
Each a blazing chord.

Prisms on the meadow.
My heart now plays a song.
The sword now clutched in my hand.
I know where I belong.

I asked my soul a question.
I found what I came for.
Gently holding onto the knob.
It closed the open door.