Inspiration

Good Morning,

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Woohoo! I completed the second draft of my novella last night. This morning, I’m preparing to begin my next work. It’s always daunting to start a new project. I turn to a lake, a river, the clouds, a former classroom, or the ocean for inspiration when I’m seeking a new subject or theme.

This morning, Rick Frishman of Author 101 University, posted a quote on Facebook that he attributed it to Confucius: The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.

That quote inspired me to write a poem. Writers are told our characters must grow in our books. The reader expects a change.

Stones were my nemesis as a young girl growing up in the Adirondack area of New York State. I was told the great glacier had dropped them on our land. To plant a garden, we had to pick stones, so they wouldn’t damage the plow or tiller.

Dad would put a hay wagon in the middle of the garden and tell me to fill it with stones. I cried much of the day on stone-picking days. The stones scraped against my fingernails and sent chills through my body all day. As I look back at those days, I wonder why I wasn’t given gloves.

There wasn’t any quitting. When Dad gave me a job, it had to be completed. Slowly, stone-by-stone, I filled the wagon as directed. I hope I built character as I picked those stones and completed my task. I know it resulted in gardens full of fresh vegetables.

I never think of stones without thinking of Robert Frost’s poems “Mending Wall” and wondering if he was given the task of picking stones and hated it as much as I did. He said, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”

One thing is for sure. In New England, stone walls bound borders, and as much as I hated picking stones, I love the stone walls that are part of the New England charm. However, like Frost, I hate that we build boundaries that wall us in and others out.

There’s a poem in picking stones, and I plan to write it stone-by-stone or word-by-word in the next few weeks.

Thank God it’s Friday. Thank you for visiting My News, and thank you, Rick Frishman, for posting inspiration quotes.