Author: carolyncordon

Wife, mother, Poet, Writer, Art Installationist, Stand Up Comedian, Dog Enthusiast. Spending most of my time being creative in a variety of sometimes quirky ways! I have suffered in my life, I have had wonderful things occur in my life. Concentrating on the wonderful things makes it easier for me to live a great life.
New Ideas

The Books are in the Fridge

carolyncordon

Books in the fridge? What madness is thins, who would put books in a fridge? It may seem like a weird and way out thing, but in the small South Australian town of Mallala, there a brightly coloured fridge carefully placed just on the other side of the fence, so it’s between the Dublin Road, and a house. that is loaded up with books.

I know about this strange thing, and I was happy to be able to go along and have a look. The fridge is actually a Little Free Library ! If you’ve never heard of Little Free Libraries, they are tiny libraries, most often out in the open, often near someone’s home. That ‘someone’ may be the ‘steward’ who looks after the Little Free Library. There is more information about this cute little book homes here – Little Free Library

I’d heard of these little book halfway homes before, but had never actually seen one, even though I certainly thought about the possibility of having one myself. I decided my house doesn’t have enough traffic pass through it to make it a viable option for me. So, like some other good ideas, nothing more came of it.

I still love books, and libraries though, for sure. So when a resident at my closest town put up a notice on a Facebook Page I have, Mallala Crossroad Chronicle, I immediately wanted to help out, with further advertising this wonderful service. The town of Mallala certainly has a normal library, inside a room at the Adelaide Plains Council building in Mallala, but that is only open twice a week, for a few hours on each of those days.

Now, Mallala has its own Little Free Library, and yes, it’s inside a fridge! This fridge is an old fridge, that was bought and painted in bright colours to make it beautiful, and also obvious. If you drive past the house where the fridge is place in front of, you can miss seeing the Little Free Library.

So I got some more information about this Little Free Library, from the people at whose house the fridge is, and I put it on the front cover of the May issue of the Mallala Crossroad Chronicle. This a newsletter that I edit, that comes out once a month. So on the front cover of the May 2020 issue of the Chronicle is the story all about the Mallala Little Free Library. Christine, the woman whose idea it was, wrote the article, and provided me with a great photograph of the fridge/Little Free Library.

If you go here, and scroll down, you’ll find another photo of the Library, as well as a little bit about it all. I’ve been thinking about taking a look at this library ever since I heard about it last month, and today, when I visited my mother, she gave me two books for me to take along and put in the library! I was thrilled, finally, I would finally get there! So I did. I opened the fridge door, and there were many, many books! Grown up’s books, and children’s books, fiction and non fiction, lots of lovely pre-loved books.

So I placed the two books from my mother into the library, and took out four books to bring home. One of the books I took, I will give to my mum, and the others I will keep. I’m going to take some of the books I have at home, to the Mallala Little Free Library soon, perhaps tomorrow. I have lots of books, and sharing them feels like a good thing to do!

Have you heard about Little Free Libraries before? Do you have one at your place? This is a big thing, a world wide thing, and sharing books with others is surely a fine thing to do! I’d love to hear any thoughts you have about it!

Writing

I Love the English Language, but …

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Yes, as a writer, I adore our language, the way it changes, and grows, taking bits from here and there, and using them in sometimes different ways. And the sounds of words, too, when they fill the mouth with the essence of the meaning of a word, accidentally, perhaps, or maybe on purpose.

The word SCRATCH, for instance, compared to the word MAMA. One of those words is painful and nasty, the other word feels like a warm hug from a beloved parent. Do you agree? Of course, knowing the meanings might taint my attitude, but even so, say the words out loud, and you’ll get what I’m saying, I’m sure. Words have power beyond their meaning …

Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash

And speaking of meaning, I had the most weirdly interesting use (misuse?) of a word. It’s one I’ve never encountered before, and suspect I may not ever again, unless it were to take off amongst a certain group of writers, Spammers. I was checking the spam on my website/blog, and came across a sentence, and had to share it with my writing friends here. Is it a brave attempt to reshape a word, or is it simply misuse of a word by a person whose first language isn’t English?

This is the sentence, picked out of the spam post, and copied, just before I deleted the spam. “I did however expertise several technical issues using this web site, as I experienced to
reload the website many times previous to I could get it to load properly.”

It’s an awkward sentence for sure, but really, a brave attempt, I suppose to make a person want to use the spammer’s expertise to fix a problem. But they’ve confused two words, using ‘expertise’ when they obviously meant ‘experience’, and then they use ‘experienced’ incorrectly when ‘tried’ would have been a better word for what they meant. And then they made a mish-mash of the final part of the sentence. With ‘previous’ instead of ‘before’ and ‘to’ instead of ‘so’.

I’m not laughing at this person, or trying not to. If I had to write anything in a language other than English, my attempts would be equally as dodgy, I suspect. But if this person had stuck to smaller words, they may have been more successful. Short words, when used correctly, have far more gravitas than longer words used incorrectly.

I’d love to have some comments about this from my writing friends here, lets have some fun with words. Who has a favourite word they’d like to share? I like the word softly, said in a gently voice, with the ‘s’ extended, like a blanket, and the ‘of’ sound, a person snuggling down and the ‘tly’ sound the blanket being tucked in …

Tell me about your favourite word, I’d love to hear about it!

inspiration, meaning in life, New Ideas

Writing Inspiration – Accidental or Formal

carolyncordon

When you write creatively, you’re a writer. Many of us take a long tome to actually acknowledge this, and claim the title, but it’s true, if you write, you’re a writer. And if what you write is poetry, then guess what, you’re a poet. The words don’t have to be published, or even shared with anyone else. There are many writers and poets who have many written words tucked away, hidden from the world that may be desperate to read those words, without realising, as you don’t realise it either.

So, there are many of us writers and poets. And of the many out there, what we all love is getting an inspiration, that lights the fire of our imagination and mind, and the words come. For some they feel they need that inspiration to come from something within themselves, or from Nature, or some such thing. Others feel fine using writing exercises, and things such as a five word challenge can be their inspiration.

Or an inspiration can be a happy accident, where two different things come together, adding up to, not two, but fifteen, and something far greater than the sum of its parts has emerged. Certainly, I feel my current writing adventure was one of those happy accidents, where a phrase, and an idea have come together, and an Anthology is on its way to coming into the world.

I enjoy five word challenges too though, and am finding that the more often I do them, the better I get at doing them. I know many of my writing friends enjoy doing five word challenges, because members of writing groups I’m involved in do them, and produce marvellous pieces of writing with them.

Nature, though, Nature is my biggest inspiration, in my life, and in my writing. My usual writing position at home, during the day, gives me a window into Nature, with flowers, trees, creatures, and the sky all bringing me peace, ideas, and conflict too, sometimes – all inspirational.

My front yard inspiration

Today I was watching an ant. It was in my back yard, I was standing watching the goings on in and around some ant nests, and one ant was carrying something, so I decided to watch where it would take it. WE often think of ants as being purposeful workers, but this ant wandered around one tiny area, about 30cm x 30cm, carrying that burden over difficult areas, backwards forwards, over and under weeds, toward a next hole and away, back again. Then I looked away and the ant was gone!

Well the ant of course could have still been there, because there were ants all around the nests, but I couldn’t see one carrying that piece of whatever it was. And of course, to me, all of the ants around that nest look exactly the same. I was only able to see that particular ant because of the ‘whatever it was’ it had been carrying. So, burden gone, interest gone? No not really – the idea of carrying a burden, a thing, giving one a sense of purpose is definitely an interesting idea to write about, in many ways.

What could it mean to the one with the burden, or to be burdened and to put it down, and go back to normal life. Does carrying, or having a possession make you more important than others, or give you a sense of purpose? These ideas could certainly be inspirations for many kinds of writing.

Inspiration is the thing that takes our writing from ordinary, to something more, something greater, from the mundane to meaningful and perhaps magnificent. Use the world as your inspiration and look with eyes, and mind, and all of your other senses, if need be. Inspiration fed gives much to the writer, seek it, feed it, benefit from it. The world needs your words!

Uncategorized

Bits, And Pieces. Making an Anthology

carolyncordon

An anthology may begin with an idea, and slowly build up, picking up a bit of this, and some of that, until all of the bits and pieces merge together into some kind of meaning, at least in the eye of the editor of that anthology.

And an anthology, like any other book, has things it needs to have, to become a book, a saleable item, one that can be found in libraries, and book shops. There are expected things, necessary things, useful things, and just to pique the interest of reviewers and readers, surprising things.

part of my own library …

The necessary things are items such as written words, poetry or prose, from a range of writers who had something they wanted to say, and perhaps answered the call for submissions for the anthology, and had their work accepted by the editor. These are the ‘guts’ of the book, the meat that will make the anthology something spending the necessary time on, to read it all.

But there are other things the book will need, that the reader doesn’t really need to know about, but the editor does, if they want to make the book a thing that will fit into the places where the reader may find it. A book needs an ISBN, and a barcode, to better enable librarians and book sellers to deal with that book. And inside of the book, as well as the pieces written in response to a request for them, needs to be list of contents, and those contents might also be a foreword, and an introduction, and then those so important contents.

After the contents, there may be a list of the contributors, containing a few words about each of them and perhaps with details about how to read more about them, such as a link to their own website, it they have one, as well a list of their books or articles written.

And so an idea becomes a thing, a book, to be printed, and then maybe launched, shared, anyway, marketed, so copies may be purchased or borrowed, and the editor smiles, glad to see idea become reality. And then waits for the next idea, and the new bits and pieces …

covid 19, writing opportunities

An Anthology is ? Pages …

carolyncordon

I don’t know if there’s a ‘rule’ on how many pages an anthology is, or should be. And if there is such a rule, I’m not going to follow it. I am creating an Anthology, with the help of lovely poets and writers who are sending me their words.

The title of this book, is “Plague Invasion – Creative Writing Responses to Covid-19”, and at the moment it is 76 pages, in total. I know there are at least three more pages being worked on now, and hopefully there’s another page of two, these are from members of my writing group, some of whom have already submitted work, and had it accepted.

So if I add those pieces to the current total, that would make a book of over 80 pages, but only just. I’m certainly happy to have received so many wonderful words, but I want more. I want to hear from someone who’s had to cancel things, sport, theatre, school, business, whatever. If it relates to Covid-19, it deserves a place in this book.

A friend of mine has declared this work to be a needed historical record, or words similar to that, and he is a man of much knowledge, and I respect what he says. And so the anthology will be more than eighty pages, how many more could I or should I expect it could be? I put the call out for responses to this Covid-19 crisis we’re currently working through, in a variety of different ways, and I put a closing date of 31 July for accepting submissions.

Shedding light …

Reading the variety of words that I’ve received so far has been wonderful, and it’s been humbling. The honesty in the words I’ve read has been soulful and I hope those who need it will find comfort in reading their words in this book, and the words of others living through the same thing, in a similar or quite different way. We all do things in our own way, and there is no one way for anything in life, really, and certainly not for getting through what could have been tragic circumstances.

If you have words you feel you need to write about all of this, because they’re filling your brain and you can’t even think straight, write them down, a story shared, can be a healing thing. And of course, if you’re happy with what you’ve written, and think the quality is good enough, feel free to submit them for possible inclusion in the “Plague Invasion” anthology Send them to kittycordo@gmail.com and see what happens. All contributors of accepted words will receive a free copy of the book, and will be able to puchase further copies if they wish to, at a reduced cost.

Words are shared, so knowledge is learned …