It’s an important word, ‘After’. After what? Afterwards, after dinner, after school is over, after you’ve left that job you hate, or been sacked from one you loved, after the divorce.
Today’s writing primpt is that word – After
There are so many things in life that come along after … After you think about this new word prompt, I hope you’ll find some great ideas to write about! After this, that and the other …
After I realise I said something stupid, that can be an embarrassing thing, but sometimes looking at it and treating it with humour can halt the afterburn! Afterthoughts, oh the wisdom of our afterthoughts …
Further thoughts on what happens after – after the kids start school, move out of home, find someone they love, get married, have children. What about after we die – what happes then, and what will happen to us after we age and become frail …
Some of these things are good, some are not so good, some can be terrible. But they’re all good things to think further on, and to write about. How about thinking about after the operation, after you move home, move to the country, or to the city?
Big things might happen after … or maybe things stop happening after, and how might that feel?
As they say in the James Bond movie – Never Say Never!
Actually, feel free to say Never, say the word, and write about it! Today is the day for it, because the word NEVER is the writing prompt for today, the fifth day of February. It’s a trick word, never. We may say, in our earlier lives would never do this or that or the other, in our lives. But we grow up, see things, like things, accept things, and our thoughts grow, and change, as we get older, living, leaning, losing, lazing about!
As youngsters, we have we may have declared, ‘I’ll never ever do that!’, only to realise, as you’ve aged, you’d be quite happy to do that thing now, because you can see the wisdom of doing that very thing, whatever it is.
For me, my personal most unfavoured food that I now love to eat, is mushrooms. I hadn’t self-declared as a no mushroom eater, when I was a child, as such, I simply never ate them, if and when, they appeared on my dinner plate. Then pizzas came into the world (or at least my pre-teen world) and I discovered that mushrooms are actually quite tasty!
So I went from never eating mushrooms, to eating these tasty and healthy foods quite often. So much for that word, never!
Is there anything you never do, or never have done? Personally, I’ve never bungie jumped. I’m not saying I’ll never done it, and it’s difficult to see any circumstances occuring where I’ll have the opportunity to do it, but who knows, I might well give it a go!
Last year, I certainly learnt a lesson in using that word Never. My mother and I were chatting at our usual Friday catch up, about how neither of us had ever broken a bone, even though there were certainly times when we could have. And then, the next day, what did I do? I fell over and broke my ankle – in fact two bones in my ankle!
(If you want to, you can read more about it here, at another of my blogs.) That blog post, and many of the ones that follow are about my ankle, it was my major focus for the three months that followed. I’m going to be more careful about using this bog word, Never, in the future!
ouch, my poor ankle! But hey, I’m a writer, and I wrote about my ankle, and had a book published with the poems I wrote when I was laid up, with instructions to not put any weight on my right foot! And here it is, my beautiful little book!
If there’s anything you’ve never done, or would never do, are you sure about that? Never vote for ? or never have a ? as a pet? You never really know what might happen, how circumstances might change, and how your knowledge about things may change too, based on further relevant information.
So today’s prompt, is ************** NEVER************
You could write a list poem, containing all of the things you would or wouldn’t ever do.
Or you could write a list of ‘Never Do This’ things, make it sensible, or funny, give examples, save lives or make people giggle, take this any way you want. I would say ‘Never break your ankle!’
Or you could do something else entirely, based on your thoughts about that word, ‘Never’.
I am a woman, middle aged, no raving beauty, for sure, but the sight of me certainly doesn’t frighten children. My ankle though, my right ankle, that is a beautiful thing! I’m not an expert on ankles, but I know more about them now, than I used to know, because I’ve discovered more about ankles, in particular broken ones, than I knew before I broke my right ankle on AFL grand final day at the end of September this year..
My broken ankle was certainly not a thing of beauty, when I fell, and, on landing, and in twisting the ankle, broke two bones of my ankle, the tibia and the fibula. It was a twisted and painful thing, something of horror. The pain I felt when I broke my ankle was the most extreme pain I had ever previously felt.
Now though, after three ambulance rides, three hospitals visited, an operation, and some fine nursing, it has all come together, to mend the break, and with some fine further work from my podiatrist and physio, I can honestly say when I look at my right ankle now, it is no longer an ugly twisted thing, but a soft, supple joint, that, even though is not as flexible as my left ankle, it is definitely now fit for the purpose of walking, with or without the help of a walking stick.
I have worked on my ankle, obeying the instructions from the surgeon and podiatrist, as well as the physio. These are the people who definitely do know a lot about ankles, and the healing of ankles that are in need of work.
My x ray I had taken recently, before seeing the surgeon who operated on my ankle, is beautiful too, with the surgeon extremely happy with how things are going. When I read of others afflicted with broken ankles, I can honestly say the way my right ankle has healed since I broke it just nine weeks ago, is a beautiful thing indeed!
And to add to the beauty and positiveness of it all, I have, in my time of needed rest and rehabilitation, written a small poetry collection, written, edited, published and now ready to be launched and made available to the world.
Yes,”Angles on Ankles”, will be launched just after Christmas, the perfect late gift for anyone who has had physical injuries, that kept them resting, and healing! Whether a broken ankle, or any other physical mishap, there will be something of interest in this little collection for everyone!
The collection will be launched by popular South Australian poet, John Malone, at the P/A Hotel in Gawler, on 29 December, at 1.45 PM, just before the usual Gawler Poets at the Pub event, with Carolyn Cordon as the Guest Poet. There will be much happiness, and a possible showing of scars, to anyone interested!
Sometimes life will give you a proverbial kick in the guts, and what you thought you would be working on until completion, has to take a back seat. This doesn’t mean that project isn’t important, or won’t be worked on, it simply means something else is more important at that particular time.
I know what this is like, because recently it has happened to me, and even though my Cozy Murder Mystery series was taking up much of my thought processes, in August and September this year, something bigger hit me, and I ended up writing, and having published, something else entirely.
It was a big thing, and there was nothing I could do to change things around. I fell over and broke my right ankle, needing an operation to fix it, and then a healing and rehabilitation period of two months. In that rehab time, I wasn’t thinking much about cozy murder mysteries, I was thinking about ankles, and healing.
I didn’t give up writing though, not at all. What I did was write a series of poems about aspects of broken bones, healing, the things I saw and went through as my ankle mended. It’s all more or less fixed now, my ankle, and I now have a completed book, a chap book of poetry related to my broken ankle!
This chapbook is titled “Angles on Angles”, and I am so pleased with what I have done! I had to rest (a lot) with my injured ankle resting up high, and that was almost the only thing I could do … I had a nifty ‘Knee Walker” that allowed me to get from sofa, to next point, but it was tiring, and I only moved on if I absolutely needed to.
The making of this little book went smoothly and quickly and I am so pleased the publisher, Ginninderra Press, like this collection and printed it super quickly. So, I now have a new book to launch, and I love book launches, especially when the book is one I have written!
“Angles on Ankles” will be launched at the Prince Albert Hotel in Gawler, South Australia on 29 December at 2pm, and signed copies will be available for $5 on the day. People who have seen this little book have loved it, and the more I look at it, the more I’m loving it too. The pain is fading, and joy in new poems is growing!
They say ‘Write what you know’, and I now know a fair bit about broken ankles! Sometimes “life” is the best theme to write about there is!
If you ask me who I am, I probably won’t give you the same answer that I may have given you fifteen to twenty years ago, and I most likely will have to think about the answer I actually give you these days. Twenty years ago, I probably would have said, in answer to the question: I’m Jake’s mum.
And of course, whether naming myself that, in answer to the question of ‘Who are you?’ is an interesting thing to think further on. I am Carolyn. That is who I am. But I am also Jake’s mum, for sure, I am proud to be the mother of this fine young man I carried into this world.
But I’m Carolyn Cordon, writer and poet, as well as President of Adelaide Plains Poets writing group, Editor of the Mallala Crossroad Chronicle newsletter, and a former dog breeder, breeding dogs with the Kennel name of Holkschter Kennels. I’m a former Public Servant, a onetime (failed) dog food promoter, and a couple of other smaller jobs, including the Mallala and Dublin Towns Coordinator, a role I enjoyed, but one I suffered many sleepless nights because of.
The writer and poet jobs, have been with me off and on for the most years, and they are pretty well always happening every day. Writers and poets don’t really turn off after work in the afternoon, because our workplace is inside our heads, thinking, whether we’re doing it consciously or not. And my role as the Editor of the Crossroad Chronicle is one that happens on the weekend too, sometimes, if a community event of note is on, for instance.
Writers and poets, as well as editors, are always looking for the next big thing to write about, hoping to put together something of interest to their audience, through a story of whatever kind is relevant to their role. And I am another thing as well, I am a blogger, with a few different blogs, of differing subject matter. So – gardening, dogs, writing, child abuse, multiple sclerosis & stoicism, these are all things I blog about, so I am open to anything relating to them all, all of the time, because, well you never know what might happen in this brain of mine, when things are in there swilling around!
I have a main character from my unfinished novel, Meredith, and even though I am probably never going to complete that novel, I still see things and think, yes, that’s something Meredith would think, or do, or have happen to her. Meredith is with me, whether I want her there or not. I brought her to life, and I’m not going to abandon her, even though she probably would like me to get her story moving along some more …
All of the things that happen to me, may happen to Meredith, or some other person in that novel or in my next poetry collection, or they may come up in the next issue of the Mallala Crossroad Chronicle, or one of my blogs. I am who I am, a wearer of many hats, and doing of many things. Life is full of things, good and bad, and I can use them all in various ways, in my life.
And of course, I am a Public Speaker, looking for more work in that role, so I am looking for interesting, informative, amusing things to speak about too. Life truly is a basket of things, isn’t it. Thinking, writing, speaking, being, they all blend together in great ways for anyone and everyone who are interested and are paying attention!
Anyway, the question of Who I Am, is tied up to the question of What I Am, always. Do you have many roles too? And how do you respond to the question?
Carolyn Cordon - Creative 