Not Writing a Book in Your Head

Writing is your personal answer on your journey to discover what the questions are. I hand-write random thoughts, jagged fragments in jumbled cryptic description in my journals. My advice: Write down the rattle–there’s time for fixing later. n taylor collins, writer

Follow these simple writing steps and begin:

• Focus on what you are thinking about when something strikes an emotional or tangible chord.
• Begin writing your thoughts down – this is the part where the “writing a book in your head” becomes actually writing a book.  Take note — “Writing a book in your head” is thinking, not writing.
• Write down your spontaneous thoughts.  Concentrate on the flow of words leaving your mind.  Watch them become visible tangible markings on a page.
• Every day, or as often as you can, repeat this process. Just write down your spontaneous thoughts.
• Write for 30 days.  If you do,  a habit of writing is developed.
• Writers write.  You are writing that book. You are no longer just thinking.
• For now, write. Write something each day for the next 30 days and the next 30 days.
• Check back with me in 60 days for the next step..

Remember, thinking  a book in your head is not the same as writing it.   Writing stakes a claim on the writing part when you stake a claim on being a writer. 

A link to how I found inspiration in a card from a poet friend, Helen.  http://tinyurl.com/c2c6m4l

©2013 ntaylor collins (please keep credit with reposts)

Tomato By Any Name is an Appetizer – Part 1 of 2

Food and Recipes?

Cooking is not my forte…

Ok – I will admit it – the kitchen is a foreign country that has an un-interpretable language to me.  Cooking has too many nuances, too many rules, too many tools!

I like to eat.  That part of food I understand.  I have a kitchen – that cooking part, recipes, I do not understand.

Gadgets still lurk in dark recesses of cabinets and drawers that I haven’t an inkling what to do with.  I got them at my kitchen bridal shower.  That was 45 years ago.

I decided recently that I need to learn to cook and maybe I should write about that, too.  The reasons were simple:

I am dating a man – a younger, used-to-eating-well-as-he’s-into-physical-fitness-and-all-that man.

AND  I ran into a man at an entrepreneur event – a Delaware slightly obsessed foodie,  who is a genius, named Dave.   He offers free cooking classes in his store.  Free.  That’s as in “no cost to take the cooking part.”  I will only have to pay for what I may purchase depending upon the desired results of the cooking and my immediate impulse on the given day of the free class.  In other words – it’s going to cost a fortune to learn how to cook!   But… I’m hooked by the free part.  I’m in Dave.  I’m in.

So here’s what I really know about cooking.  I’ll start with appetizers.

I have two best recipes for just about anything.  If you know how to cook or not, you will find these of interest.  If you master these top-secret carefully selected recipes you will never be at a loss when someone stops by or you are expected to “bring a little something” to a party or event.   The second recipe will be in my next post. Here’s the first no-fail recipe.

Sister’s Empty-Dish Salsa

This works for any size dish or pan.  You just increase or decrease the ingredients accordingly.  I’m giving you the 9 x 13 version which works well for feasts.

The Ingredients

• 2 packages 8 oz. cream cheese (low-fat, regular fat, etc. – it doesn’t matter.  Just buy the best ingredients if you want it to taste the best)
• Salsa (this can be from well-known brands in a jar or your own family recipe – my “secret” ingredient is found in the standard 15 oz. jar.  I’m not here to make this difficult for you – your choice of salsa can be red hot, mild, chunky, whatever.  And you can use the larger jar as well  but it’s not really necessary as it tastes great with smaller one.  If you’re really feeling creative, then chop up a fresh tomato and throw that in as well.)
• Shredded cheddar cheese (plain old regular medium, sharp, or extra sharp, low-fat, no fat or whatever.  Again, the better quality the cheese, the better the taste.)
• Bag of favorite scoopable chips – (this recipe screams scoopables)

The Process

1. The first layer is the cream cheese.  Spread it out evenly on your pan or dish with a wooden spoon.  A wooden spoon works best for this.  ( If you don’t have any wooden spoons,  you should check out Dave’s shop as he has just about anything that you need to stock your kitchen like a chef.)
2. For the second layer, evenly spread out the choice of salsa.  (so far so good, right?)
3. Lastly,  load it up with cheddar on the top.   Sprinkle as much or as little of this as you want.  You know your crowd.  If they’re cheese lovers, add lots.  (These layers do not get stirred together, OK?)
4. Bake at 350 for about 15 – 25 minutes.   It varies on how crispy you want your cheese.

The Creative Part

If you’re making a smaller portion, which I seem to do almost every day, just slather on some cream cheese, a little salsa, and top with cheese in your dish or bowl that fits the microwave.  Nuk for about 3 – 5 minutes (covered)   I will admit the cheese doesn’t get crispy but it melts nicely.  Test different lengths of time to get the consistency you like as microwaves vary.

My sister, practically a gourmet chef, swears by the oven as it makes the cheese crunchier.  I, as stated before, just like to eat, so microwaving is just fine for me.  The individual portions are great, too, for things like super bowl parties as you have your own dish and can be a double dipper if you want.

So now all you have to do is pick out your favorite scoopable chip – there are so many varieties out there now – and your appetizer will just knock them over.  Your dish will be one of the first to empty.  I can almost guarantee you that.

My second recipe, BFF Tomato Blues, involves Roma tomatoes (or any tomato) and fresh mozzarella.  I’ll post this next as I’m trying to do shorter blog posts.  I plan to incorporate my cooking experience in this blog as this blog represents my life (creative aspects mostly) more than any one particular aspect of it.  My focus is writing about what I’m interested in.  Right now, it’s cooking.   If you want to subscribe, you’ll be sure not to miss what passes as my attempt for enjoying a creative life.

Thanks for stopping by.  I’d love to hear if you try this recipe.     And remember my motto:   Cooking is not just an adventure, it’s a job.  Cheers. 

Taylor

AN ASIDE:   And smaller dishes are great if friends just stop by unexpectedly as well.  Even though the last time several girlfriends did stop by I wasn’t able to make this for them and they know why, but I won’t be sharing this on this blog post but maybe another one.  And you know who you are girlfriends if you’re reading this, and you had better not comment!  LOL

I hold the copyright to this post.  I realize recipes are technically not but in the context of this post my words are.  ntaylorcollins ©2013  And if you’re in the northern Delaware area, Greenville specifically, stop by and see Dave at his store. 

Maybe we’ll run in to each other and the next thing you know, I’ll be writing about you. 

Putting Me Back Together Again…

Sometimes It’s Just About Me…

I know – it’s daunting.  All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t fix Humpty Dumpty. But I’m tired of not knowing where I am anymore in this cyber world I spend so much time in.

It’s so difficult keeping up with myself.  I’m either off posting, or painting, or pinning, or writing, or reading, or liking, or linking, or sharing, or twittering.  The cyber side always winning as I try to hone each aspect of my life into my creative and diverse interests.

Well–it’s just too much.  So this post is about me or rather a ME page set up to link my relevant sites.  I claimed my .ME domain name a while ago and with the service I use you can have a free page.  I wasn’t even sure where to post anything about this special page.  There’s something redundant about posting it anywhere as I’m so fractured already.  And I don’t want to bother family and friends with emails at this point because I still haven’t figured out MailChimp which I desperately need to do.  It’s a fine mess I find myself in.

I’d love to hear your comments on how you’ve put yourself back together again.  If you click this link TaylorCollins - the ME Page, you can see the highlights where my career focus is at the moment.  I want to offer journaling workshops, expand speaking opportunities, and let people know my highlights around the web.  I’ll be updating it for the next couple of weeks as time allows as I’m working away on my first full draft of a manuscript.

And it’s fun to be king of my name domain.  I think old Humpty and I are going to be OK! 

Happy patching,

Where the Quiet Dust Is Quieter Still…

At this time of memorials, on a weekend dedicated specifically for the purpose, I remembered the photograph I took upon exiting West Cemetery in Amherst Massachusetts.  My specific purpose of the recent visit was to leave an amethyst remembrance at the grave of Emily Dickinson on the anniversary of her May death.

Emily’s poems impact much of my writing and in homage to her as a female writing ancestor, I wanted to pay my respects to her and visit her where all journey’s end – in “this quiet dust.”  As I left Emily’s gravesite,  I circled around the more grassy driveway to the less visited area of West Cemetery – the quieter still part.

I was struck by the way the morning sun struck the slanted, multi-colored stones. In this part of the cemetery, jonquils sprouted randomly, disconnected from any particular grave.  Their flecks of white punctuated the stones they stood in front of.  The headstones colored in earthy tones of bronze, and brown and gray, could have been lifted from an Andrew Wyeth palette.  Dust permeated every particle of this somber stilled scene, from the pollen-filled air to barnacled crevices on carved stones.

This was that finite infinity that Emily often spoke of–the receding progression of names obliterated by centuries of rain and wind and sun and snow.  This was the dust of the dust-to-dust that the eons had produced—the embodiment of what we are perceived to come from and what we will return to again.

As I contemplated this scene, a bit of bright color caught my eye and another bit and another.  Sprinkled throughout this overgrown, seemingly forgotten space,  bits of red and white and blue started to pop out.  Reminders that someone still remembers our veterans, those who heeded the call to service, those who may have given their all.  Someone remembers still.

Someone plants a flag and livens up this quiet dust.  Someone remembers an unnamed veteran who served in an almost forgotten battle.  Even in this remote realm, someone remembers.  And to us, as a nation, that has made all the difference.

Have a color-filled holiday full of life and hold dear the remembrance of things now past.  My wish is that we all enjoy peace.  Peace.

 

P.S.  I think there are four flags showing in this photograph but there were many more scattered amongst the stones.

Striking it Hot – National Poetry Month 2012

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.

William B. Sprague

 Yeah! It’s National Poetry Month.  For 2012, I’ll write and post a draft poem each day during April based upon a poetic inspirational source.  

To make it easy for followers I’m posting in various places.  In Twitter, I posted many of the sources.  Poetry drafts and notes on creative process will be included on my Facebook writer’s page, Taylor Collins.  You can like me there so updates will appear in your feed.

This blog post has been updated with all available links that I’m using for my work for National Poetry Month - April 2012.  Please share your favorite links, a poem or two, or comments.   I look forward to hearing from you. 

1. April 1, 2012 – Linda Pastan “April”
2. April 2, 2012 – George Bilgere “Desire“
3. April 3, 2012  -  Don Chiasson “Tree”
4. April 4, 2012 -  Rita Dove ”Insomnia Etiquette”
5. April 5, 2012 -  Simon Armitage’s “Sold to the Lady in the Sunglasses and the Green Shoes”
6. April 6, 2012 – Garrett Hongo’s “Something Whispered in the Shakuhaski”
7. April 7, 2012 -  Lucille Clifton’s “Homage to My Hips”
8. April 8, 2012 – - Emily Dickinson collage in response to George Bilgere’s “Robert Frost”  
9. April 9, 2012 — Fleda Brown’s “Translation”
10. April 10, 2012 — Linda Blaskey’s “Rest Stop, Eighty-Seven Miles from Asheville”
11. April 11, 2012–Kay Ryan’s  “Thin”
12. April 12, 2012 – -Jane Kenyon’s “Thinking of Madame Bovary”
13. April 13, 2012 – Narrative Magazine’s Prize & Mathew Dickman’s “Slow Dance”
14. April 14, 2012 – Gerald Stern’s “Another Insane Devotion” 
15. April 15, 2012 – NYT’s “Tax Break”
16. April 16, 2012 – @dreamersteve_99 -  Twitter poem
17. April 17, 2012 – Michael “Flathead” Blanchard’s Obituary
18. April 18, 2012 - They found me via google with what?
19. April 19, 2012 – Suan Swager Johnston’s painting
20. April 20, 2012 -  My photograph – Stone Hand
21. April 21, 2012 -  B&N’s newletter
22. April 22, 2012 – Kevin Young “Serenade”
23. April 23, 2012 – Kristen Gillibrand’s email “Senseless” & Twitter #TMMPoetry
24. April 24, 2012 – Sheila Bender’s Literature in Letters
25. April 25, 2012 – Marie Howe’s “After the Movie”
26. April 26, 2012 – Tony Hoagland “How It Adds Up”
27. April 27, 2012 – A Reunion of Poets – Object Poetry – Ekphrastic Views
28. April 28, 2012 – Greg Watson’s “Now”
29. April 29,  2012 –   Stephan DeDakis’s  - “Metro Girl”  shared by John DeDakis
30. April 30, 2012 – Robert Bly & Wislawa Szymborska - Two favorite love poems.

Enjoy the month of April  – of renewal where poetry, like pollen, clings to everything.  My poems will be the basis of a chapbook and used in my workshop, “Finding Yourself in Time.”  Details available soon.  Please consider subscribing to my blog so you will be sent all updates.

These Sixties Aren’t Those Sixties

Wendy (of Peter Pan) : He has no unhappy thoughts.

Ok – I admit it.  I guess I sort of kind of thought I might make it off this planet alive.  Not really – but there seemed a glimmer of hope, at least, that children of the sixties were somehow ageless.  We really weren’t getting old.  But Davy Jones died.  He was 66.

Maybe it’s because Davy didn’t become overexposed in later life.  He popped up every once in a while on a show or special – usually in some sort of spoof of himself.  And Mickey Dolenz was always my favorite Monkee so I’m not sure why the death of Davy is of such impact.  I had a thing for drummers as Ringo is and was my heart-throb Beatle.  And Mickey was Circus Boy.  Circus Boy.  How I loved that tyke when I was a tyke.

We didn’t watch Davy become a canyon-wrinkled Jagger, a Sinatra-Rod Stewart, a face-lifted-beyond-description Wayne Newton.  And sadly, even those born a little later, like Jon Bon Jovi, we see him advertise a pain reliever as if we are to believe, we will rock on forever with the help of a pill.

Davy was out of view of  late.  Davy wasn’t a great talent – in acting or in singing.  He was just plain cute.  God, how we loved cute in the sixties!  In our coming of age, cute always caught our attention.

But one minute we were slow dancing under crepe-paper streamers in a gym and the next we were dying in Vietnam.  We wanted to make love all day in the sunshine as we watched Mission Impossible and Ed Sullivan at night.  We had records of the Kingston Trio beside the Stones next to The Supremes and hated Dylan for losing his roots but wrapped his words around us like a flag no matter the cause.  We fought for equal pay and handicap accessibility.  We owned Underdog – would fight to the death for him.  We protested and became anti-materialistic.  We burned things like bras and draft cards. We were taught every value and tried to live by the golden rule.

And somewhere along the way we rejected almost every value and almost every rule – so many values, so many traditions, so many rules.  And as someone says -  we became more aware of the cost of everything and less aware of what was truly valuable.  We were smart and we knew it.  Nothing was impossible.

And during this time, we aged.  There’s been a gradual dying down of us.  This, my generation that would not take no for an answer – we who conquered everything put in its path — we started to fall away.

And somehow, with the passing of one of the seemingly most innocent from those days – those youthful days that are cherished in our collective memory as “way back when” – somehow in the passing of Davy Jones–with the death of this one person – there’s a sense of a tolling of the bells – a sort of death knell for our time.

I am suddenly aware, acutely aware, that I’m in my sixties.  This child of the sixties is fully aware of these sixties., and these sixties are not those sixties!  And I think Peter Pan IS dead.

Davy Jones was 66.    I ask you – How is that possible?

And I tell you – These sixties suck!

It’s About the Width of It…

Sources of Inspiration

How Many Years Has It Been?

“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the  length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.” – Diane Ackerman

Today I was interviewed by TV reporter, Charlie Paparella of WBOC.  It wasn’t one of those live on-air sessions where you get one chance to fall on your face. Even though I did have ample opportunities as he visited me in my studio, I’m hopeful that in his capable hands any falters will be dumped into the recycle bin.  I’ll let you know when the segment airs.

Charlie took photos of various things in my working space and two photographs that he commented on got me to thinking how lucky I have been to have painted with some wonderfully talented people.

The first photo above is of my dear mentor, Jack Lewis.  He’s a WPA artist and will be 100 this year.  He taught me everything I know about the artist spirit.  I never learned to paint in watercolors even though I tried for many years under his tutelage.  He instilled in me a love of plein air painting (that’s painting outside for those who might not be familiar with the term.)  He taught me how to ”see” as an artist which is a lot different than just plain old looking.

I took this photo in black and white in the late eighties during a class at Rehoboth Art League.  It’s hand-colored with Marshall pencils.   I think there’s an inch of crud on the glass but this photo hangs close by my easel.   I still look to Jack for inspiration even though he’s hundreds of miles away in York, Maine.

The last time I saw him, Dorothy was still alive.  I plan to drop by in May to see him as I’m heading to the Portland area then.  Jack always dressed the part of a bohemian artist, with his beard and beret being the crowning touches.  He has lived a wide and deep and long life. Without his initial guidance and wisdom, I would still be painting bowls of fruit and National Geographic photos.

In the second photo are stalwart painting friends.  Left to right lower level, Helen Duff Thompson, Michele Green, Maria Liberto Bessette, and moi (NTCollins) and in the back Dianne Bauer.   For those who follow in Facebook or Twitter, I’m sure you recognize Maria and Dianne.  We’re still out there painting together after all these years –living wide.  I think this photo was taken in 1998.  Neither one of us have aged!   Helen lives in Pennsylvania now.  Michele is out there all the time somewhere on the Delmarva Peninsula paint brush in hand.  Dianne, Maria and I are still out there somewhere as well, having picked up a few additional friends along the way which I will be writing about more on my Taylor page in Facebook. .

There are others I’m indebted to.  Their photos are not framed in my studio so Charlie and you won’t get to meet them at the moment.  But thanks to Charlie and his inquisitiveness, I had a chance today to reflect on the role of artist.  I’m glad for the reminder that my journey has not been a lonely one.  I’ve been living the width, the breadth and the depth of it here on marvelous Delmarva.