Her Only Prescription: Keep walking, keep writing

ARNP Nelly offers no cure for this nearly-two-dozen-years of living with fibromyalgia (one quarter of my life).  Her only prescription: Keep walking, keep writing.

I am walking farther than I’ve been able to (14 blocks at once) in decades, but I come home in a slog and deal with such pain afterwards, every single time. Writing? I’m dealing with the same “brain fog” problem as a year ago. Was it because my Favorite Guy suggested I quit with the four books? Or because what wants worked on is kind of an outlier–some of the same subject matter but approaching it much more creatively.

Yes, I’m thinking free verse and have a lot of it done. Then I discovered Grant Faulkner’s The Art of Brevity. I can’t wait to try some of the stories that way!

I’m working with the stories of seven generations of my motherline, six of them Iowans. Grandma Leora is in the center of the five photos. It’s her 8th grade graduation photo. Mom’s and mine on the bottom were for high school graduation. The ones on the top are Leora’s grandmother and mother.

I’m buoyed by the examples of Elizabeth Gauffreau (Grief Songs: Poems of Love & Remembrance), Greg Seeley (The Horse Lawyer and Other Poems), and Luanne Castle (Kin Types). And the ideas in The Art of Brevity.

Have you ever played with FaceApp? I have photos of Mom and Grandma Leora in their 90s and wondered what I might look like then. Hmmm. Here’s hoping the next book is finished before I need it as an author photo!

Grant Faulkner likes to wear specific headgear while working on a manuscript. Hmmm, perhaps I should see whether wearing Mom’s Sally Victor hat, the one she wore to our wedding, might work to encourage creativity.

If you need me, I’ll be playing with titles (Meadowlark Songs: Mining the Stories of My Motherline), and watching for treasured nuggets and themes in the stories of women whose mtDNA I carry.