JUST (Five Minute Friday)

When I first started wondering about how to move from thinking and reading about writing to actually writing, when I struggled to find the courage to share my writing, this is the answer that came to me. I remind myself of it when I feel stuck. Perhaps it will be useful for someone else too.

Just write
Write notes
Write articles
Write thoughts down
Write letters to God as prayers
Write presentations
Write new poems
Rewrite old poems

Keep a notebook with you
Keep it in the car
In your pocket
By your bed
Use your Surface
Jot stuff down
Just write anything

Just write whenever you can
Whenever you have a thought
Whenever you notice something
Whenever time presents itself
Write when you’re ill
Write when you’re clear headed
Write anything
Write now

Just write.

Five Minute Friday are a community of bloggers who write on a one word theme for 5 minutes every Friday and then share. Find out more here: https://fiveminutefriday.com/

CONFIDENCE (Five Minute Friday)

It’s a long old road, the A303, especially at night, and even more so after a hard day’s work. In the darkness, only a few familiar bends and county boundary signs, first Wiltshire then Somerset, mark progress on the route west.

We talk, letting the weight of the week drop from our shoulders, leaving it to fend for itself on the roadside, as we travel. Or we quietly listen to music; sometimes Premier Praise Radio pushes us along or an audiobook melts the miles away. But tonight it’s a jazz compilation on Spotify, mainly Miles Davis.

Absorbed in a sense of increasing relaxation and wandering possibilities for the weekend ahead, my husband’s smiling voice interrupts my thoughts:

“It’s ok. You can dose off for a while if you want. I won’t mind – I’ll take it as a compliment.”

I know I can. I have such confidence in his driving and his ability to keep me safe.

But I don’t. I know he’s tired too. So we talk – about our hopes and plans, the road conditions, what we’re going to eat at Exeter Services when we stop.

And on we go.

Five Minute Friday is a weekly writing prompt blog link-up. You can find more inspired posts here: https://fiveminutefriday.com/2019/02/14/fmf-writing-prompt-link-up-confident/. And I couldn’t resist sharing a great song on the same topic, Confidence by Sanctus Real: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=KA9kSBv1QrI

 

BREAKING NEWS

Just wanted to share with you that I shall now be a regular contributor to the Association of Christian Writers blog MoreThanWriters http://morethanwriters.blogspot.com/.

My first post will be on Thursday – Valentine’s Day – and I take the significance but not necessarily in the direction you’d think.

If you’ve not come across this blog before, which looks specifically at writing, reading and being a Christian, I’d recommend it. And if you want to read more from me, check it out on the 14th of every month.

I’m really excited but also a little nervous so please pray for me (and the other contributors) too.

Unlikely Foundations (FIVE MINUTE FRIDAY)

Ash and seaweed – it’s not exactly an appealing combination is it? It might work as a face mask but it’s hardly a recipe for life.

Or is it?

Let me introduce you to Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, one of the world’s newest islands It was formed when an underwater volcano sent up ash into the air, which settled and interacted with seaweed to build a completely mew island about four years ago. Now it’s home to flowers, owls, and terns.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-47153797

Strange and wonderful how such an uninspiring, even off-putting, mix can, in the right circumstances, be turned into something amazing and life giving. Even the plant life is down to bird droppings.

It gives hope for us all.

If this is what Nature can do with ash, seaweed, and guano, think what the Creator God can do with mess we and our lives seem to be made of.

WHERE DO NEW WORDS COME FROM? (Five Minute Friday)

I had this (title) phrase circulating my head like a child asking its mother where babies come from! So, although it’s taken me much longer than 5 minutes to work out some of the potential origins for new words, this poem is the quick result of those studies. It probably needs more work but, at the moment, it fits the Five Minute concept. And for those of you who, like me, enjoy etymology, there’s a list of an example for each line at the end.

WHERE DO NEW WORDS COME FROM?

Birthed in foreign travels
Tasted in unfamiliar cuisines
Adopted from other cultures’ concepts
Broadcast across the international internet
Manufactured in developing technologies
Transferred from one use to another
Amalgamated from parent terms
Civilised from slang
Borrowed from a name
Evolved through time
Out of the primaeval soup of a writer’s imagination

(EXAMPLES:
1.hammajang – a Hawaiian term for ‘in a disorderly or shambolic state’
2. bunny chow – a South African curry served in hollowed out loaf of bread
3. ikigai – from the Japanese used to indicate the source of value in one’s life or the things that make one’s life worthwhile
4. facetime – a video call using the internet
5. vape – an alternative to smoking
6. chair – noun or verb: the person running a meeting or to take charge of the meeting
7. burkini – a swimming costume with maximum coverage; a combination of ‘burkha’ and ‘bikini’ 
8. dench – excellent
9. Dylanesque – in the style of Bob Dylan or his songs
10. chopsy – in the 1960s this meant ‘having prominent, fleshy jowls; jowly’; by the 1970s we have the Welsh meaning of someone who is ‘inclined to talk a lot, especially in a rude, insolent, or belligerent way’; and in 1980s the musical world refers to (especially jazz) performers ‘displaying or characterized by technical virtuosity’, which comes from chops (1966) meaning ‘a jazz musician’s skills’ (itself derived from an earlier sense meaning ‘the power of a trumpeter’s embouchure’).
11. brillig – from Lewis Carroll’s The Jabberwocky in Alice in Wonderland, where Humpty Dumpty explains it as “four o’clock in the afternoon — the time when you begin broiling things for dinner.” )