What's Going on With Us


            Many of you may know that Gary and I have been writing stories and poems for local contests. For the last few years we’ve attended writing conferences in Searcy and Little Rock to learn more about the craft and improve our writing.
            This year, we’ve taken advantage of the opportunity to attend even more conferences and workshops. Next week, we will be attending the Ozark Creative Writers Conference in Eureka Springs. It’s a chance to take a short vacation and enjoy the beauty of the Ozarks, hear some good speakers, and meet some other people who share our love of writing.
              It is also a chance to test our skills against writers attending from other areas. There are several writing contests being awarded at this conference, and we hope to make a showing in the awards. But I admit, I’m nervous about it.
We’ve had some nice wins in the last few years at both the Arkansas Writers Conference and White County Creative Writers Conferences. Our writing has improved as we’ve learned tips and techniques at the various workshops. And we’ve practiced. Like any skill, writing requires practice. But we’ve never been to the Ozark conference; we don’t know anything about our competition. I can’t help but wonder if we’re out of our league.
  Regardless of the contest results, we’ll learn something from the terrific line-up of speakers. We’ll have a good time. We’ll see a few friends and hopefully make several more. And if we get to cash a prize check or two, that would be icing on the cake.

Comments

  1. Linda O'ConnellOctober 14, 2019 at 7:43 AM

    Congratulations on your many wins at OCW this weekend. It was a pleasure meeting you, and a thrill to watch you receive so many awards.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

When in Doubt, Pray

Image
When my daughter was young, we were active in a local church. We tried to teach her to have a relationship with the Lord and pray regularly. She has always been a kind-hearted and loving child, and frequently felt led to pray for her friends and family. Animals have always been a part of our family, and we’ve always treated them with kindness and care. So it was not surprising to me that she often prayed for a beloved pet. At one point, a Sunday School leader told her she should not pray for animals, only for people. She was confused, and I was disheartened, to put it mildly. It was and still is my belief that a loving and caring God understands the heart of a child. The lesson we were trying to teach was that you can take all of your cares, concerns, and worries to the Lord. Philippians 4:6 tells us, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition and thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” If we devalue the prayers of a young child, h...
Read more

A NEW YEAR'S THOUGHT

Image
      As this year and this decade draw to a close, we don’t have to look far to see all the problems and hurts in our community, nation, and world. It’s natural to want to fix things. It’s frustrating as well as humbling to admit there is very little we as individuals can do to solve these problems.        But if we open our eyes and our hearts, we don’t have to look far to find beauty and love. If we will look past the problems and hurts, we can see how blessed we truly are.        Each of us has a little circle where we live, work, worship, and play. We should each do everything in our ability to make things better within our own circle. We shouldn't compare our circle to anyone else’s circle, or envy someone else’s circle. If we each take care of our own little circle of the world, maybe these circles will grow and overlap, and make the whole world a better place.        We will wake up tomorrow to a new...
Read more

PROCRASTINATION

           Do you ever procrastinate? If so, I need to know how you finally kick yourself out of it. If not, you are my hero. And you may want to just skip this post.             You see, I’ve been “supposed to” write a blog post since the first day of this year. It could be anything, a poem, an essay, a short story.  Just words on the page was the only criteria.             First, I got sick with an upper respiratory infection and felt cruddy. I told myself I’d write after I felt better. Then I got really busy at work catching up on the things that I let slide while I was sick. And I tired easily because I wasn’t completely recuperated from the crud yet, so I had to relax and rest when I made it home.             There are always household chores that need to be done, something th...
Read more