About a year ago (good god, it’s already been a year, shame on me) a friend of mine and I made a pact that we would call ourselves by what we truly were: artists. She, a dancer. Me, a writer. We made a deal with each other that we would have the courage to speak our hearts about ourselves. But here we are a year later, and I am still afraid.

When I left for our cruise a couple of weeks ago, I reminded myself of this promise. I said to myself, “When I meet people, I will tell them I am a writer. No excuses. For what do I have to lose? I will never see them after I get off the boat.”

One person asked me what I do. Just one, and still I faltered. I said I was a writer, but when she asked me what I write, I stumbled. I talked about my passion as if it were driftwood, a piece of boring slate grey dead limb pieces. And the conversation stopped. Talk about it that way, why would she be interested? I’d go numb too.

And as I heard the stupid words tumble from my mouth, I felt ashamed. Like I’d been caught with the silly frock and smeared red lipstick. I saw disappointment in her eyes, but I think it was just a mirror of my own.

I know the only thing that keeps me from fitting in the frock as if I belong and wearing that lipstick with grace is courage. In my head I know this. But then my heart whispers: sometimes people say they like my words, but would they really buy them? So I don’t tug too hard on the lace-lined dress, for I think it might unravel in my hands.

This week’s challenge: Metaphors and similes. Let’s play around with making up our own metaphors and similes. Create your own metaphor or simile, then write something using it. Link it up in the comments section below and please do stop and visit others’ entries to spread a little love.

Next week’s challenge: I don’t know about you, but I’m addicted to adjectives and adverbs. But I hear writing can be strengthened and made more precise without qualifying words. So this week’s challenge is to trim the fat. Write anything you like. Then go back and eliminate all the adverbs (if you’re extra daring, you can try adjectives too…using color is okay though). Erase anything that ends in -ly. Then rewrite those parts/phrases to mean what you meant, without using the adverb.

I feel the cold metallic tinge of silver between my fingers, different from the cool ceramic plate resting in my lap. Delicate yellows and whites trickle over my face, the flush of sun dancing like freckles.

With delicious anticipation, I raise the first bite to my lips. An explosion of soft, tingly and grainy flesh fills my mouth. The mango is warm and exotic, the coconut milk is a beach, filled with sunshine and palm trees. The rice offers up a weight on the tongue, pleasant, like comfort.

I salivate, teardrops in my mouth activated by the wild combination of flavors. Sunlight feeds the belly of the beast. I reach for another bite and rejoice.

This week’s challenge: One place, one sense. Pick one place (a room, a landscape, even a time or moment) and describe it using only one sense of perception (taste, smell, touch…). One caveat: You can’t use sight. Post a link to your writing in the comments section below. (Hopefully yesterday’s issues have all been resolved!)

Next week’s challenge: Metaphors and similes. Let’s play around with making up our own metaphors and similes. Create your own metaphor, then write something using it.
Need inspiration? Maybe think of a mood: wistful, uncertain, eager, hope.

She got out of bed to get dressed for the day and tried to shove aside the feeling, pushing it back like she brushed back her dark, black hair. Days off from work usually had a surreal quality to them anyway. Besides, Roy was in town to visit – god, she hadn’t seen him in, what? 10 years? At least. Not since they left Mississippi. It was good to have him in town, show him around. She was really proud of the new house they had just bought. It had only been two months since they’d moved, but it was beginning to feel like home. Safer neighborhood. No gangs, not like where they used to live.

She smiled as she went downstairs. Roy was sitting at the table, coffee in hand. Dave had already gotten up and settled their guest with a cup, so she poured herself one too. She asked him how he’d slept, still trying to push the strange feeling away from her mind. She tried to remember to breathe. She always forgot, letting her chest clench up too tight. Relax, she told herself.

After coffee, they put on their walking shoes, having decided to go for a walk around the neighborhood and enjoy the fresh morning air. She looked at the clock as they headed out the door. Just a little past 7 a.m.

They headed up the street, towards the top of the suburban neighborhood hill. It was a crisp, clear October morning. Warm already. The city had barely begun to stir.

They rounded a corner and that’s when she heard them. Sirens. In the distance but coming closer. Too close. The minute she heard them, she knew. She knew it. “We have to go back home, Roy,” she said with unflappable calm. She was always unflappably calm, unless you looked close enough to see the dark storm in her eyes. “We have to go back.” He nodded, understanding. Roy was that way. He always just understood.

She pushed back down the hill and into the house to find Dave, dripping wet from a shower and dressing as quickly as he could. He looked up at her and she knew. She could see in his eyes. His voice was gruff and it cracked as he said, “She’s been in an accident. She’s at the hospital.”

Wordlessly, they grabbed their wallets and purses and piled into the car. Dave sped to the hospital. Nobody spoke. What could one say? Flashes passed through her mind: the arguments they’d had. She knew she should have insisted on the bus. If their daughter had just taken the bus to school instead of going with that boy, this wouldn’t have happened. Why hadn’t she stood her ground on this one?

They practically ran to the nurses’ counter and Dave gave his name, said the hospital had called. His daughter had been in an accident. Where was she and could they see her? They waited, in long ridiculous moments, watching nurses shuffle papers and talk on phones and whisper to each other. Why are hospital staff always so slow to move in situations like these?

Finally. Finally, they led her down a corridor to the E.R. Nurses hurried past, and her gut clenched as she saw the cops in uniform milling around. The nurse pulled back a curtain, and there she was. Their little girl. Their baby girl, fourteen and with fear in her eyes, IVs in her arms. The nurse filled in the details, something about five cars, ten people, a head-on collision and flipping…but she didn’t hear much past “dislocated elbow”, “will be okay” and “lucky to be alive”. She forced herself to be strong. She did not allow the tears or the anger: her baby needed her to be strong. She took her daughter’s hand in her own and stroked it. She pressed her fingers along her daughter’s scared and frightened brow until the creases went away, until the anxiety began to melt away. She watched as her daughter silently grit her teeth, steeling against the doctor resetting the bone. She forced herself not to panic as they wheeled her away for more x-rays, and then again while the cops pulled her daughter aside for more questioning. Relief only came in little sips, little whispers as moment by moment, it became clearer that it would all be okay.

It was well past noon when they were finally able to go home. Dave helped their daughter onto the couch with a movie and pillows and blankets, while she poured all the comfort she could put into a bowl of rice soup and a cup of tea. The phone rang…persistently…throughout the afternoon. She was a resilient guard, protecting her daughter from the barrage of reporter’s questions, angry at them for interrupting her daughter’s much needed rest.

When the day finally quieted down, the war of emotions threatened to release inside her. All the pent-up fear, anger, guilt, worry; that day probably changed her even more than her daughter (cars would never feel as safe again)…but then children are always so resilient, aren’t they?

But through all of it, she allowed herself one little thought: that day was the day she began to think there might be such a thing as guardian angels. There might be such a thing as a saving grace.

And from now on, Jade was definitely going to be taking the bus.

This week’s challenge: Tell a story about something that happened to you – but from someone else’s perspective. Post a link to your story in the comments below!

(Phfew! That was a hard one! Was it difficult for anyone else? Hopefully this next one will be easier!)

Next week’s challenge: One place, one sense. Pick one place (a room, a landscape, even a time or moment) and describe it using only one sense of perception (taste, smell, touch…). One caveat: You can’t use sight.

Next Sunday is the second wedding anniversary for my husband and me. We’ve been talking vaguely about “doing something” to celebrate, but we’ve both been so utterly consumed with work, we really haven’t had a second to think about it. Time slipped by. One birthday, then another. A weekend away, then another. And suddenly we found ourselves just days away from our anniversary without even a whisper of a delicate, fragile, transparent snowflake of a plan.

We talked vaguely of taking a trip to Arizona, Sedona maybe, throwing out ideas of hotel costs and what we could afford in time off. The Hubby has really been wanting to take me to Portland – has loved it both times he’s been, but I’ve never gone. So I thought about trying to catch last-minute flights plus airmiles I’ve accrued, and could we stay with friends, but oh it’s such short notice and whoa…flights are $1200. Never mind.

::sigh:: All the last minute flight deals were not really deals, and I began to lose hope of a special idea.

But then, I saw a little tab that said “cruises” and I gasped with glee. I ell-oh-vee-ee LOVE cruises and Hubby has never been on one before. I started clicking through, remembering how many times I’ve heard people say they got deals on cruises that are amazing, considering all the lodging and food included. My excitement started to grow. Then I found a 3-day cruise to Baja, Mexico with availability for this weekend – for an amazing price! A whole weekend poolside…cocktails on the open sea…day trip to Ensenada…cozy cabin…we HAD to do this!

I nudged my hubby. His eyes popped wide and a familiar little light shone in them. He hemmed a little bit (…an international cruise…on 4 days notice…a little more than we wanted to spend, but on the other hand, do-able…) but I knew he was hooked.

A few clicks of the mouse later and we were booked!

And we are thrilled. Now we just have to really scurry to get some work done before we go! But I think I might just need to pop out to the shops for a new bathing suit. {wink, wink}

This week’s Tell It To Me Tuesday: tell a story using the words thrill, grow, snowflake, sigh

Next week’s challenge: Write about something that happened to you (anything, from the momentous to the mundane) – but tell it from someone else’s perspective.

Until him.

He walked in, smelling like rain. She felt him before she saw him, and knew before turning.

His voice was rich, like the dark caramel roast he requested.

A glance.

The brush of fingers over hers, soft like a whisper, heady like lightening, as he reached for the cream.

A word. A moment. Like a heavy chain yanking her by her stomach towards him.

A hint of a smile and he claimed her.

And then he was gone. The sounds of the coffee shop crashed back down on her ears and such wretched disappointment stood in his wake.

She carried her cup to the lonely sofa in the corner. Her place of lovely solitude suddenly felt unbearably empty. She chided herself for foolishness. She of all people should know that coffee shops were for the ephemeral. Not for the here and now.

She stuffed her hands in her pockets, sullen.

Then fingered the edge of a business card. She pulled it out in wonder. His. She looked up to where he had stood just moments before. His card. His card was in her pocket.

A sense of lightness warmed the empty pit, filling it and it spilled over like gold. The line between dream and real began to blur, and it felt like freedom not to have to choose. She couldn’t wait to finish her coffee. For today, the dream waited outside the coffee shop.

This week’s Tell It To Me Tuesday challenge: Tell a story that ends with the words “coffee shop”. Post a link to your story in the comments section below!

Next week’s challenge: Write something in which you use the following words: thrill, grow, snowflake, sigh.

Image courtesy of Andrew Welch

Today I am a guitar case.
No frills, no stickers,
No lockets or bows.
A simple brown jacket
All zipped up tight.
Inside, there is a song
I would sing,
if I could.
If someone took me out
And strummed my strings
I’d play notes sweet, sour,
melancholy, discordant and bright.
But I am closed up.
Zipped up,
and put away.
And no one will play me.
No, not today.

If you were a bag, what bag would you be?

Next week’s challenge: Tell a story that ends with the words “coffee shop.”

I had a wonderful birthday and I’me thinking of luggage and flowers and vintage and fabrics. I’me feeling inspired and relieved, contrary and perniculous. I don’t know why I’me saying such things but the words pop in my head and what am I to do? There’s so much work to do tomorrow fbut for the moment, I’me relaxing. We watched Stand By Me and Toby said he didn’t like the name of the movie it was too romantic. But I think it draws more attention to the relationship between the boys than Stephen King’s title “The Body”. But we ate so much this weekend and the food was so good. And it really was good to have my parents in town. I really am lucky to be close to them. I know many people aren’t close to their parents the way I am. They have given me lots of things to think about in Thailand. But mostly they’re easing me from having too many thoughts. I guess that’s why I said I’me feeling contrary. So many mixed thoughts and feelings. So much running around, throwing around. Colliding around in my skull. I need to take a breathe. I need to breathe. It’s too hard to breathe with too mch shite on top of your head. But I’me getting out. I will get out. Just a little while longer. Toby said it’s been too long since I’ve really just sat back and enjoyed where I am in life. And it made me want to cry. Because it’s true. I need to get to that place. I need to take a step back and just get to a place where I can just enjoy. Enjoy enjoy enjoy enjoy enjoy. Like chocolate cake and raspberries. Like birthdays and vintage. Like stickers and snowmen. Pastries. Swimming pools and margaritas. What time is it? 3:47 left. I’me staring at the screen and The Yellow Suitcase is in the back of my mind. I want to do more research. I want to flesh out the ideas for my next book. Japan. Picture brides. Home. But I must wait. Just a little more. Then I can focus. I just have to get to a space where I can let myself focus. Like my dad says. When am I going to get these monkeys off my back? Time to get rid of the self-imposed monkeys. Fuck the monkeys. Pardon my French. So let’s sew. I’ve got some great fabrics. I just got to get rid of my fear of making a mistake. Nothing lost if I mess up. Just learn. Learn to have patience. One step at a time. One step at a time. I’ve never been good at that…I need to practice one step at a time. Then I won’t be so scattered. I’me so scattered. So scattered.

You’ve got 10 minutes. Don’t think. Just write. No holds barred.

Then just post the link in the comments below!

Next week’s challenge: “If I were a bag of some sort, I would be a…”
Fancy purse? A backpack? Reusable? What would you carry?

But right now I want to show you some of my favorite things about where I live. So let’s take a walk through the neighborhood.

Here’s my front door. Hello front door!
Our house is an apartment, but it has its own house number and that makes us feel a little more grown up. But it’s not free-standing. It just curves around to other apartments, like so.

But as we wander around the neighborhood, I’ll show you what I love most.

It’s these little cottage-style houses.

I suppose I’m not using the right lens for these guys…but anyway. They’re cute. And each one is so different!

I could seriously make a photo book of the different houses and none of them would look the same.
I love the variety of character. I could spend hours looking at these houses. But then everyone would think they have a crazy stalker lady for a neighbor. It’s only partly true. I stalk architecture.

Sure, Santa Barbara has the fancy-schmancy houses like these:

And those are kind of the medium houses. There are bigger ones further on up the hill, all of which have ocean views, mind you. And that’s not even getting into Montecito. I’ve driven by Oprah’s house once or twice. Of course, “driven by” is kind of relative when houses have crazy long driveways and you need a golf cart to get from the front gate to the front door.

But they don’t have the charm of the little cottages. I mean, how can you resist a place with a fairytale front gate like this?

It’s the little things I love. Like bougainvillea spilling over.

Take us on a tour! Of your room, your house, your neighborhood, your work, your world. Whatever you want to show us, and just post the link in the comments below.

Next week’s challenge: 10 minute free write
Get your creative juices flowing and do a 10-minute free write. We who write blogs are so busy writing for an audience, we rarely write for ourselves. So this week’s challenge is to write for no audience. Just set a timer and write. Then, if you dare, share. Unedited.

*Okay, you can edit for privacy’s sake. But not for the sake of spelling or grammar or better writing! See? Challenge.

…the health of loved ones.

…my ability to get where I want to go.

…whether I’m in tune with myself or whether I’m scattering.

…being on time.

…little things.

…whether I’ll be any good.

…what happens when things break between loved ones.

…people in my heart, even if I never let on.

…some things, but thankfully, not too much.

What do you worry about?
Join in with a comment or a link to your blog post in the comments section below. Share your worries with us – as detailed or as abstract as you care to go. Then…take a deep breath, close your eyes, listen to the silence, and let it go.

Even if it’s only for a moment. Sometimes a burden is easier to carry if you set it down from time to time. Sometimes, if you set it down, you find you don’t need to pick it back up again.

“Worry is like a rocking chair. It keeps you busy, but gets you nowhere.” ~ Author Unknown

Next week’s challenge: Take us on a tour
Take us on a tour (photos would be great!) of a place you’re connected to: your kitchen, your home, your neighborhood, your work, your favorite shops, your place of peace. Can be anything!

“None of us comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave as human beings unless we learned it from other human beings. We need other human beings in order to be human. I am because other people are.”
– Desmond Tutu

“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.”
–Pema Chodron

“I needed to experience despair…in order to experience grace.”
–Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse

“Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. In the end that’s all there is: love and its duty, sorrow and its truth. In the end that’s all we have – to hold on tight until the dawn.”
– Shantaram, David Gregory Roberts

“Some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. Some things are so sad that only your soul can do the crying for them.”
–Shantaram, David Gregory Roberts

“Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
–Anonymous

“A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnecessary.”
–Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Are there any quotes that have been important to you?

I’m annoyed with Mr. Linky, so just post the address/link to your blog post in the comments section below. I’m pretty sure it should automatically create a link.

Next week’s challenge: Complete this phrase: “I’m worried that…”