The wind blew the Cozy Critters to my door yesterday, ready to discuss reading and writing and many other things. If lightning and heavy rain had accompanied the wind, we would have been sure that we were about to be blown away. As it was, the sun broke through the clouds in the middle of our discussions (now isn’t that a good sign?) Some of the wind gusts, according to the weatherman, were fifty miles an hour.
Peg is under the weather. We missed her and her discussion of books she’s reading. Hurry and get well, Peg. Nancy couldn’t attend but we are hopeful her schedule will allow her to get back with us soon. Helen brought chocolate peanut clusters. Those, with coffee and tea, and a lot of laughter, and we forgot the wind roaring outside and leaves flying past the windows and the possibility of sailing off and landing somewhere near Timbuktu.
Inspiration came to Jane in the middle of the night last week and she wrote a beautiful poem. She shared that with us but swore us to secrecy so just take my word for it, it was pretty.
She is getting together another poem that involves some deep thoughts about our inner voice. “How in the world can you think about and solve a problem without uttering a word?” she asked. “God gave us one body but two voices: our audible voice and our inner voice.” I can hardly wait to hear Jane’s finished work on that subject.
When Judy worked at the University of Arkansas, she entered an Aging Well Creative Writing Contest. She won third place in that contest which was a great honor because of the many contestants who entered. Judy’s poem was Anniversary Dance. She read that for us yesterday and, let me tell you, it was a beautiful word picture of the love and devotion between two people who grew older in a graceful, loving manner.
Helen has made four sales to four different issues of the Christian periodical, Vision. She brought only two copies yesterday. (She modestly said she didn’t want to overwhelm us.) The Warming Hut about a snow coach ride through Yellowstone National Park was particularly meaningful to me. I loved the imagery.
The second published article was Being Watched which had to do with wildlife watching tourists. Helen compared that to people watching Christians to see how their lives measure up.
In addition to these two already published devotionals, Helen brought four for us to critique: An Extraordinary Son, The Sacrifice of a Son, I Can Have Jellybeans, and Understanding Isn’t Necessary.
I shared with them what’s going on in my writing world and read three chapters of the fourth Darcy and Flora cozy mystery, Grave Heritage. They offered some straightforward and pithy pointers. Darcy and Flora are all the better for those pithy pointers.
And, now on to the next critique. But between now and then, I feel sure the winds of creativity will whisper into the ear of each Critter and inspire us to soar to even loftier literary heights.
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