On Writing

What makes you grateful? The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, Receiving Prosperity by Louise Hay, and every one of Abraham-Hicks' teachings are about creating a successful and happy life by focussing on what makes you grateful. One of the main reasons we often have physical hobbies is because they make us feel good. They put us into a happy little state and some of us even hum or sing while we are doing our hobbies. It gives us a precious place to think our thoughts or just get in a happy, healthy mental zone of gratitude. There is the reward, of course, of a new outfit or a toque or a birdhouse when your project is done, but there is even greater value, for many hobbyists, in the doing of the activity, itself.  I mentioned that I am building a greenhouse out of old windows from a house in my Nova Scotia neighbourhood.  I have been very startled several times during the process by people saying "what are you growing to grow in it?" because that had not even entered my mind, and I&

 This is a short little assignment for a course I'm teaching on how to use the actions of our hands to help portray emotion and mood in the stories we write. I based the course on this blog post:  https://cbonwriting.blogspot.com/2019/07/living-and-writing-with-less-money-and.html 1. What skills do you have? Draw on these. Are you a quilter, a chainsaw carver, a wood carver or builder, a spinner, a knitter, a crocheter?  Whatever your jam is, whatever your hands have experience doing, meditate on that, and come up with just one emotion, event, or scene that you could illustrate by using the action of the craft. Either tell us your idea, or write out a few paragraphs of the scene. Thank you! Examples: Imagine a woman in her craft room.  SPINNING We have, for example, that poor princess who had to spin straw into gold in the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin ( https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Rumpelstiltskin ). While she spun, she worried and worried. BRAIDING/KNOTTING Imagine writing abou