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Authenticity
For my 56th birthday in 2008, my husband took me out to eat. I fixed my hair and put on some make up. I put on a nice dress and selected pearls for my jewelry. Bernd had already moved the car out of the garage, so I went out the front door. As I was…
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SyZyGy
Syzygy (SIZ-eh-gee): Either of two points in the orbit of the moon when the moon lies in a straight line with the sun and the earth. As in an eclipse. When I was very young, my mom enjoyed solving crossword puzzles. She knew more obscure words than I thought it was possible to know. But…
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Negativity
I don’t really understand negativity as a general principle. Yeah, I get down sometimes and things seem … well, not too good. But I’ve found that, in general, things usually get better at some point. Maybe I’ve just been luckier than most. But based on my ability to win anything at all, I’d have to…
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Leave Your Ego out of It
Don’t try to be too clever in your writing. Even your husband who knows you very well might still be stymied by a convoluted turn of phrase. Or even something simple, really. Maybe it’s more a comment on your husband than your writing. But still, don’t try to be too clever. It might just shove…
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SyZyGy Jewelry
Maddie’s Mom not only writes, she also makes jewelry. I’ve been making jewelry for nearly 30 years. I began with stringing seed beads. They were cheap and colorful and a lot of fun. I made necklaces and bracelets. But then, I wanted to add pendants. I’d been collecting shale locally (lived in Arizona at the…
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I had Diarrhea and Became a Genius
I read an article a few days ago. A lot of my posts start that way. I read something that makes me think and then I have to write about it. I take no credit for the title of this post. My husband suggested it after I told him what I had read. The article…
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Life and Expectations
It’s never what you expect. Sometimes it’s better. Writing something when you feel good is very different from writing something when you feel badly. The previous statement is a prime example. There are many days when I might have written this instead: It’s never what you expect. Sometimes it’s worse. The main thing everyone should…
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Vanity?
I spent a large portion of my early adult life looking in mirrors and any reflective surface that was handy. I checked my makeup (laboriously applied), hair (fussed over) and clothes (were they still arranged neatly?) whenever the opportunity presented itself. I realized some many years later that just like I was not lazy, as…
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Trust the Reader
The hard part of creating a good story isn’t deciding what to put in. It seems to me that what you leave out matters most. I read once that Lee Child had to learn to trust the reader. And by that, he meant trust the reader to fill in the details. His opinion was that…
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Life is Like a Box of …
Life is not like a box of chocolates. It is more akin to a piñata. In both cases they are the same in that you never know what you will get. But the manner of the getting is vastly different. Images courtesy of chocolatesbyashley.com and Walmart
Maddie's Mom Writes 