I am sure she really meant no harm when she said, “You will never be a writer.” The shock of the statement caused me to burn inside and I ached to prove her wrong. My sophomore English teacher failed to understand my punctuation and short sentences that often lacked complexity or my fascination with Tyburn poems. “Rat-a-tat-tat,” she would write on my papers. “Less poetry, more exposition,” she scrawled in big red letters. Sentences consisting…
It had happened again. And he feared the result. A near miss or a slip up and the entire room was questioning his ability. More than 30 years doing this job. And yet, he wondered if he really understood how to do it. The mistake had happened almost as soon as he made the decision to move forward. A reaction timed wrongly, and if it had not been noticed, he might have been able to…
I started Wordsmith Holler to experiment and put myself out there. I have no other reason. It seemed pointless to keep writing first drafts and store them in the cloud. Stored and forgotten. Go ahead and post them and let others decide their true worth. I also do not understand the current publishing business. Writers are discovered online on Twitter. Can 140-character riffs really indicate your ability to write? I suppose if you are writing…
Small. Brownie Cottage. 300 square feet. Enough room to sit. And maybe spin all around. The size of a gingerbread doghouse. If the dog was a small mastiff. A big dog with a very large appetite. With no place to store the dog food bags. The minimalists say we all could stand to slim down. That our mega mansions, stuff, and stacks of books signify waste. But the very thought of living in a one-room…
Years ago in the American southwest, there was an apprentice rainmaker. He learned everything he could from his mentor, a Great Chief, who could taste the wind, read the sky, and cause it to rain in the very spot he picked. This Great Chief was known throughout the four corners for his rainmaking and he was often called upon by farmers and ranchers when their crops or their cattle were suffering. They would send a…
Story: A Tall Tale of Sin Character: Cindy Lash, Protagonist Cindy Lash grew up in Utah, the daughter of a Mormon woman named Miss Lucy and a gambler man named Dillon. As the product of a socially-mixed marriage, Cindy carries an innocence of living a sheltered life. Or does she? Deep down she has the heart and soul of a gambler and this corruptible side fuels her passions. Other Writings You May Like A Tall…
I dislike the gym. I do not have a gym membership and the thought of exercise sends me back to the couch. I like the couch. It is safer and never leads to a pulled back muscle. Of course, I could use some stretching of my back muscles. Writing – the actual practice of sitting down and writing – has never been a problem. I mean, the actual knocking out of words. The words flow…