Lisa Turner's New Book

One of my favorite writers and a good friend, Lisa Turner has written another book to help us with our homes. Lisa is a very intelligent and interesting woman. I am always amazed when I think about her building her own airplane and flying it. She was the girl who wanted to take Shop in high school instead of Home Economics. She appears as a guest on podcasts and writes a blog that is helpful to all of us who write and want to publish. Visit her here.

 Lisa Turner is a former aerospace manufacturing engineer who is now a freelance columnist for Sport Aviation and KITPLANES magazines. Lisa is also the home improvement columnist for Clay County Progress, the local newspaper in Hayesville, North Carolina.

See her author page and all of the books she has available.

Check her out and let me know what you think. Read one of her books and give her a review on Amazon.com 

Want to write poetry? Take this workshop with poet and professor, Catherine Carter

 Saturday, September 11^th, 1:30-3:30 PM

Poetry Workshop with poet and professor, Catherine Carter

Fee is only $25 and beginners, as well as more experienced poets, are welcome.

Carter will teach a two-hour workshop for NCWN-West via Zoom from 1:30-3:30 on Saturday, September 11^th.  Wherever you live, if you can get Zoom on your computer, you can participate in this class.

The workshop focuses on using the addition of internal slant rhyme to poems to echo off existing keywords and increase poems’ music, along with close attention to the impact of lines’ end words. 

For the first hour, poets will look at published poems and the ways in which their sounds enhance their content. 

For the second hour, participants will work on enhancing the sounds in a short poem of their own and, if they like, share the results with the group. 

Participants are asked to have on hand a HARD COPY of a draft of a short poem of their own, less than one page long, for this activity.

To register: Send a check or money order for $25 made to NCWN-West, %Glenda Beall, 581 Chatuge Lane, Hayesville, NC 28904. We need to receive the fee by September 6, and we will then send you the link to the class. 

A life-time-learner

I have realized I am a life-time-learner and each day I am able, I find and learn something new. Today I learned about freezing bubbles and how they change as they freeze. My friend in Australia posted photos of bubbles she blew outside where it is very cold right now. When we have summer in the US, they have winter in Australia. I enjoy reading my friend's blog posts and learning about flowers, animals, and life in a country I will never visit in person. Thanks to her, I visit virtually and she educates me about her life and her location on this earth.  

Since learning on Zoom has become a large part of my life in the past year, I am taking classes from Jane Friedman's group and the instructors are knowledgeable and interesting. The best part for me as my income doesn't grow while the expenses all around me increase, is Jane's classes cost only 25 to 30 dollars.

Visit her website and see for yourself.

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I don't know why I was blessed with this curiosity that pushes me to read and learn all I can about humanity and the life of plants, animals, and the small creatures that inhabit and improve our lives here on earth. I take joy in watching the butterflies and the hummingbirds that visit my deck garden. The squirrel that slips by Lexie's notice and finds something that interests him is fun to watch. He pays me no attention and only runs when my little canine friend finds he is there.

With all the problems I endure because technology in today's world is always changing and forcing me to learn more or forcing me to throw up my hands in defeat, I am so grateful that I can sit at home and converse with like-minded people around the world. I can see my great-nephew's baby who is less than a year old and lives miles and miles away from me. All I have to do is turn on my computer. 

If I want to visit Ireland, I go to my television set and search for Ireland. Soon I am traveling the roads, visiting the pubs, and meeting the people who live there.

Although I did not enjoy most of the classes I took in college, I did enjoy history. Now I can learn all I want to know about the world's history while sitting in my own home. Some might wonder why do I want to know so much about things that don't pertain to my life or that will not benefit me in some way. My family history is amazing to me. My ancestors made a journey from far over the ocean to reach this land. They came to find freedom and opportunity back when the native inhabitants, Native Americans, lived where we live today. I like to follow the families as they moved from Jamestown down to North Carolina and finally into Georgia and north Florida. I want to know why they moved south and where did they settle. Why did I happen to be born in Albany, Georgia instead of North Carolina or Florida?

A map of the Old Wagon Road. In the mid-1700s European colonists, many arriving from ships in or near Philadelphia, began traveling south along the trail in search of land for new homes.

 You can have knowledge without wisdom, but you can’t have wisdom without knowledge. 

 If we all learned as much as we could, it would help us to live in this world of today where ignorance of the past has been a painful lesson many have had to learn the hard way. 

I hear from others how much they despise the idea of taking down statues of Confederate Generals. "Why are they suddenly so offensive?"  A friend asks in disgust. 

Because we were not taught the real impact of our history on all the people living here, we don't know that these statues have not suddenly become offensive. They have been symbols of slavery and the infringement of rights on a whole culture of Americans ever since politicians embraced them in the Jim Crow days as a way to keep black people "in their place."

We should keep learning and we should keep an open mind about what is happening to others, even those we don't know personally or we have avoided most of our lives. Children should be taught about our past, the good and the bad. As a white child growing up in the deep south, I learned nothing about slavery except Uncle Remus stories where everyone was happy. As a young person who fell in love with Gone with the Wind, I wanted to believe that all black people lived happily with their white owners. Because I didn't know of the racial hatred or prejudice that abounds in this country, I was ignorant until I was an adult and learned the truth. 

I will continue to learn and reflect on my life as long as my mind is working properly. I will continue to teach others, to share my wisdom gained over the many years of my life. I was told by a friend recently that I am the most mission-driven person he knows. 

My mission is to learn, to love, and to share in hopes of making this world a better place. 

My readers, my friends, I hope your world is filled with light, hope and good health in the coming week. I wonder what you will learn this week that makes you a better person or that helps someone be a better person. Let me hear from you, please.

Why Do You Write?

Bobbie Christmas, editor and writer, published this article on LinkedIn. 

Why Do You Write? is a good question to ask yourself. Bobbie answers this question and tells us what we should do according to who we write for, who we want to read our words, where we hope to publish, and what we want to do if we publish a book.

Students gather around the table for a class in my studio before COVID

I have scheduled my next writing class for September 27 - November 1, Mondays 2:30 - 4:30 PM.

The classes will be on Zoom as my last several classes have been. The Institute for Continuing Learning will sponsor the class. Visit  www.iclyhc.org to see when registration begins for this class. 

Check the calendar for all 2021 fall classes. No matter where you live if you can get Internet coverage and can connect with Zoom.com, you are welcome to join locals in my region of the Appalachian Mountains in my class. 

Writers Circle around the Table - images from the past ten years

My dear departed friend and neighbor, Ginny Walsh, Barbara Gabriel, Staci Bell around the table in the early days

Scott Owens, prolific and talented poet from Hickory NC taught here many times. We hope to have him again.   

Scott has a new poetry collection, Sky Full of Stars and Dreaming that I recommend. It includes some poems from his earlier books and new poems as well. His poetry is heartfelt and relatable to anyone who has empathy for suffering in our world. Sometimes I cry and sometimes I smile when reading his words, but I always enjoy them.  Read one of his poems here. 

A very popular writing instructor, Steven Harvey, an English professor at Young Harris College who is now retired. His students at Writers Circle loved him. Maybe he will teach for Writers Circle again one day. He has written many books and my favorite is his memoir, The Book of Knowledge and Wonder, a memoir about the suicide of his mother published by Ovenbird Books as part of the "Judith Kitchen Select" series.

At this class we had a man attend. Gene was working on his first book and now he has written his third.
Front right, Jo Carolyn Beebe is a delightful writer of historical fiction. 

Michelle Keller taught classes on genealogy. We all learned so much. She has found that she and I are distant cousins because we both have an ancestor descended from Francis Posey who came to this country when it was being settled.

From 2010 until 2020, we enjoyed meeting and learning together at my studio. 

The students became my friends and the instructors became friends that I cherish today. 

Who knows what the future holds with this virus crippling our country and the entire world, but maybe we can once again have people gather around my table and leave with a smile and a feeling that they can write that book, that poem, or article they always wanted to write. 

Mainstreet Rag Publishing is going strong

Often I receive news that one of our western NC writers has published a book with Mainstreet Rag Publishing Company.

Today I checked out the website and found recommendations for submitting to contests. I think the judges' comments are excellent and could be of help to all of us who enter our poems or our poetry books in competitions. 

MainStreet Rag Publishing Company has been publishing the print magazine, The Main Street Rag, uninterrupted since 1996. Among its features are poetry, short fiction, photography, essays, interviews, reviews, and commentary. I was honored to have a couple of my poems published in the literary journal some years ago.

If we subscribe to the Mainstreet Rag magazine, our fees for submission to contests are discounted. I feel safe recommending Main Street Rag because they have been around a long time, and M. Scott Douglass, Publisher/Managing Editor is well-known and employs excellent editors and judges for his contests.  Read more at :

https://www.mainstreetrag.com/contest-recommendations/

Tips for Aspiring Authors

Tips from Kelly Starling Lyons.... poet laureate of the Piedmont - children's book author

Tips for Aspiring Authors
One of the best pieces of advice I ever read was: "writers write." Sounds like a no-brainer, right? It's not. Lots of people dream of writing their memoirs or the great American novel. But how many work on it every day, inching their way to that goal word by word?

I'm guilty of procrastinating too. So many things are easier than writing -- cleaning the house, working out, pulling weeds. Here are some ideas to stop deferring your dream and make it happen:

1. Find a time to write each day. Even if you just have 10 minutes to spare, sit down and make it count.

2. Believe you can do it.

3. Break a big assignment into smaller parts. You want to write a novel? Start with page one. Maybe next week, you will write another page or 10. Stay consistent and you'll reach the finish line.

4. Write anything. Sometimes the hardest part is facing that blank page or computer screen. Silence your internal critic and write whatever you're thinking -- even if it doesn't make sense. The goal is to get your creativity flowing.

5. Cut off the phone and turn off the TV. If you have children, ask your spouse, relative or friend to watch them while you work. While you're at it, stay off the web unless you're researching for your piece. Surfing can be fun but it steals time from your dream.

6. Say no. If you're one of those people who gets pulled every which way, start turning down some requests. If you don't care about your goal, no one else will.

7. Keep a dream book. Now, I'm not talking about one of those old-school paperbacks that depending on what you dreamed at night had a list of lottery numbers to play. I mean create a journal where you chop down the limits in your mind and let your imagination soar. What do you want to write? Why? Who do you want to be?

8. Reward yourself. Kids love incentives for completing a task. So do we. Make a pledge that if you meet your writing goal -- writing every day for a month or an hour each week, whatever you decide -- you'll treat yourself to something special.

9. Surround yourself with doers. To be able to dream, think around boundaries, is a gift. But you need a healthy dose of grit to make it come true. Cultivate friends who already have that drive and take a cue from them.

Read the story of this author's life here.

Writers' Night Out on Zoom June 11

Friday evening, June 11,7:00 PM, I will host Writers' Night Out on Zoom from my home.

We are excited to have as our featured guest, P.C. Zick, author of over thirty books. P.C. is a woman writer who lives in Tallahassee, Florida, but during the summer she lives in Murphy, NC, not far from my home in Hayesville, NC.

I look forward to our conversation that night and to P.C. reading from some of her publications.

She writes contemporary fiction, romance novels, and nonfiction books. I found that her book, The Author's Journey, a road map for writers from draft to published book, a necessary part of my library, and I refer to it often as well as use it when teaching my writing students.

If you are a regular reader of this blog and would like to join us Friday evening on Zoom, contact me by email and I can send you the link to the meeting.

P.C. Zick is a woman whose name is Pat, and I look forward to learning why she writes using her initials. 

If you want to know more about this author, check out her website: www.pczick.com