Tag: inspiration

Writing

Thinking of New Year 2019

carolyncordon

There will be no New Years resolutions for me, and this is why:

Over the final month of 2018 I’ve been thinking about the meaning of words, and how actual meaning can be lost or muted over time, particularly through flippant overuse. New Years resolutions, where many of us put together a list of our worthy resolutions, only to ignore them or willingly break them early in the New Year is one of those words.
A resolution is an intention, something we aim or plan to do. But no matter how worthy this intention or resolution may be, so many of us easily and quickly throw that New Years idea to the winds, and just go back to our bad habits of previous times. We eat, drink, smoke, work, too much even though we’d resolved not to, or we don’t do theĀ  exercise or good works we had written down as a New Years resolution.
Is the problem one of semantics perhaps, and maybe stripping it back to bare basics might be better, is what I’ve decided. Some circumstances demand that you drink more than usual, or have another smoke, or don’t do that exercise program. Life can be a problem, trying to fit in or take out various things, and worthy pursuits we had resolved to do, go undone.
This is a shame, but hey, that’s what life is sometimes, isn’t it?
That’s why this year, I’m going to do it differently. This year I won’t have a list of intentions, or resolutions. This year, this year I won’t resolve to itdo anything anything, and then not do it, there’s it’s happened many other years. Instead, this year I simply declare this. This year I WILL BE the BEST person I can be.
It’s as simple as that, it’s as widespread as that. In everything I do, every decision, action, or choice I make, will be the BEST I can do!
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This will be dependant on how I am feeling, and what I am doing, but I am promising right here, to anyone visiting this blog, that everything I do in 2019 WILL BE the BEST person I can be. I will write the best words I can, I will be a caring and useful community member. I will give my all to every thing I do. My life will be a shining example of the the Best I can do, at every given moment.
There will be times when my BEST may not measure up to much, but it will truthfully be the BEST I am able to do at that time. I am not a super person, I am living with a chronic illness, but I am also well looked after, and have great family and friends. I have no excuses for not doing my BEST I can, and I therefore WILL DO MY BEST!
I will do my best writing, I hope to publish at least two books in 2019 (or at least have them written and ready to be published in that year). These books are a children’s picture book, a chapter book for middle to upper primary school level, a chap book if not a poetry collection, and the next book in the Buster the Dog series, which will be a book written with my friend and fellow writer Janette Menhennet, who is writing with McTavish the Cat! Fun times for sure, and I’m looking forward to getting this book ready and seeing any illustrations that will be done by my usual illustrator, Ally Hean!
2019 will be my BEST year ever, in many ways, and I look forward to putting out information about my writing in 2019, to keep everyone up to date!
Writing

Which Story To Write?

carolyncordon

I have a friend, a member of my weekly writing group, who is working on, I think she said, ten novels at the same time. She is a dedicated writer, and I am so impressed by her output, in both quality and quantity. She writes historical fiction, and more contemporary fiction, as well as a smaller amount of non-fiction. I am in awe of her, I’m not sure is she realises that …

I can’t imagine having that many ‘works in progress’, going at the same time. I work at a crazy mixed up, slap-dash kind of pace, and feel unable to commit myself, and my concentrated time, in the same way as my friend. That being said though, I have managed to write and either publish, or have published, seven books since my first one, about fourteen years ago.

My most recently published book “Dog Buddha’s Thoughts”, which I self-published last year, is the last in a series of three books, written in the point of view of a made up dog, Buster the Dog, and I don’t think I am going to write another book in that series. I feel like that book from last year said all I had to say. But the thing about books and writing, is that inspiration can come from a wide variety of places, so really, who knows?

At the moment though, I don’t feel at all committed to writing another “Buster the Dog” book, but Buster is always there somewhere in my head, so who knows. I keep my mind open to new ideas, always! I have other, more sensible ideas for stories that may become books though, and I am much more interested in those. One is a book for the 10-14 year old reader, and it involves, amongst other things, unicorns.

Unicorns have been in my life since I was around the same age as my imagined readers for this book, and I’m certainly excited about getting that book out. It’s a positive book, about a young girl growing up and learning about herself, what she is capable of, and how her life may be as she gets older. It is set in a district based in part on the region where I live, which is also the region of a made up place, I have set another book I’m currently working on.

This particular book is a novel, with intrigue, murder, politics, and is a bit of a love story. It is slowly creeping into existence, with me adding another paragraph or two every week. As I said, ‘slowly creeping’! I don’t know if I’m going to ever finish this one. I know it will need to be at least 65,000 pages, but at the moment, after a couple of years since I began it, there are perhaps 12,000 words.

With this book, I have paragraphs in notebooks, and devices all over the place, and I don’t know whether I’ll actually be able to even find everything I’ve already written of this book-in-progress. I think if I was really committed to this particular novel, I would have got far more organised with it by now, but haven’t really done much about it at all. I think that tells me the truth about it. I still have my main characters in my head, but not so much on the page. I suspect Meredith may never come out into the world …

I’ve enjoyed writing the snippets I’ve written in response to prompts from someone in my writing group, and I definitely feel that all writing is good practice. So, if that’s true, I’m not wasting my time with this novel-in-progress, I’m in fact learning more about how to write a novel, so that when a novel I feel I must write comes along, I will be ready to do it justice.

I hope anyone reading this has found it interesting, and I would love to read about your own writing process! Feel free to leave a comment here!

Writing

Most Recent Published Book

carolyncordon

I am extremely proud of my most recent book. I wrote it and (self) published it last year. This book is the third in the series that began with “Dig It! Gardening Tips for Dogs”, then went on to “Doggone It – Mindfulness from a Dog’s Point of View” and ended with the most recent book “Dog Buddha’s Thoughts”. I began a blog about that first book a long time ago – it is here.

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As you can see in the photo of the book, I claim this book was written by Buster the Dog, “assisted by Carolyn Cordon”. I am Carolyn, and I have to confess that there is no Buster the Dog, not really. Buster the Dog, I always say, lives in my head. and of course that is true, because Buster is a figment of my imagination, a combination of all of the dogs I’ve lived with, and my thoughts and imaginings about those dogs.

I’ve been a dog exhibitor and dog breeder in my past, so there have been many, many dogs there for real. I don’t show or breed dogs these days, but I’m still very interested in dogs, and we still have a dog, one we bred, and showed (once) – Missy. We gave up the dog show world not that long after Missy was born, and then some years later, we gave up breeding dogs too.

The purpose of this blog post is to talk about where writers might get their ideas from. This recent book, about the thoughts of the Dog Buddha, is a good one for this for many reasons. Firstly, it is about dogs, and as I have written, there have been many dogs in my life, and Missy is still here (sitting on the dog sofa, just across from me, as I type, actually).

So I see think about dogs, and live with a dog. Missy does funny things sometimes, she ‘gardens’, she hunts, she rolls on the grass in the backyard, she eats food that falls on the ground, as well as doing many other things that appear in my recent book. I have a friend who is a Buddhist, and the idea for this book flowed on well from the second book in the Buster the Dog series. Mindfulness and Buddhism go together well, and I go the idea that dogs could have their own ‘God’ who they revere, as humans may have their own God or Gods.

I modelled this book on the first two books, where each chapter was about a certain ‘thing’ and I then expanded more about that ‘thing’, as a dog might consider it. So in the first book, “Dig It! Gardening Tips for Dogs” these are chapters about such things as composting, fertilising, and so on, and in the book, it is obvious that dogs and humans look at these matters in quite different ways, with humorous results. With the most recent book, I spent some time considering the thoughts of the Buddha that humans hold dear.

I then thought about possible wise thoughts that could be attributed to a canine Buddha, and then how Buster the Dog might try to live his life in accordance with such wise thoughts. When I first began writing this book, I was the Writer-in-Residence at a particular cafe, and I would sit there thinking about the Dog Buddha, about dogs, about the ‘real’ Buddha, and about Buster the Dog. It was fun, and come up with a new thought always made me happy! I was certainly feeling inspired at that time in my life.

Inspiration can come from many things, as I’ve indicated. I write poetry, as well as prose, and today, I was inspired to write a short poem, a haiku, by two very different things I saw. I was on my way to our vet to pick up some medication for Missy. ON the road just down from our house, I saw a dead lizard, and thought, ‘Oh, poor lizard’. Then, getting closer to the vets (Roseworthy Veterinary Clinic), I saw a better view of some smoke I’d spotted earlier in the day. There seemed to be a fire up in the hills to the south-east of Gawler.

When I got to the vets, I got out my mobile phone and wrote the haiku poem that was sitting there waiting for me. It may not be a great haiku, but I’m happy I was inspired enough to record the sad moments. This is the haiku I wrote. Feel free to comment about it, whether you liked it or not. I always appreciate getting feedback, no matter what. Here goes:

Lizard dead on road
fire in the hills nearby –
early Spring sadness

 

Now that I’ve thought about this poem, I’m wondering whether or not the final word should be there. What do you think? Leave a message to let me know!

So that is a small look at how some of my writing has been inspired. There are also the five word challenges I’ve written about, and many other things. Life is there to think about, and be inspired by, always – live your life, and remain open to finding the inspirations available!