Mad Macedonian

PYTW 48: Why I Write...What Are YOUR Reasons?

Prompting Yourself  To Write 48

My prompt for you today is to answer a simple question...

Why do you write?

Bryan Hutchinson, of Positive Writer, has answered and issued a challenge; he calls it the 40 Reasons "Why Do You Write?" Challenge.

I sat down, this afternoon, and thought about how to answer and decided to begin by sharing the link to a blog post I wrote in 2012.

 It was a post about the "process" of writing and linked to a challenge to write on the subject offered up by a poetic writing friend of mine.

My answer to her challenge was to share links to 10 blog posts related to "process" I had written between 2007 and 2011.

As for "Why I Write?"... I came up with 51 reasons! :-D

PYTW 47: Of Pens and Paper - Your Choice of Writing Tools

Prompting Yourself To Write 47: Of Pens and Paper - Your Choice of Writing Tools 

Intended to encourage you to write about your choice of writing tools, past and present.

January 23rd is National Handwriting Day! Who knew?

Started by the Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association (WIMA), its members are manufacturers of pens, markers, and pencils.

How to Celebrate National Handwriting Day (14 Steps).

A Brief History of Penmanship on National Handwriting Day.

Who Needs Handwriting?

How the Ballpoint Pen Killed Cursive.

CURSIVE HANDWRITING AND OTHER EDUCATION MYTHS: Teaching cursive handwriting doesn’t have nearly the value we think it does.

In 2015 Bic launched a campaign to “save handwriting.” Named “Fight for Your Write,” it is quite campaign and, as a creative writer, I decided to end 2016 and begin 2017 by taking their pledge to celebrate handwriting.

In Britain there is even a National Handwriting Association: The NHA is a charity whose aims are to "raise awareness of the importance of handwriting as a vital component of literacy, to promote good practice in the teaching of handwriting and to support those who work with children with handwriting difficulties."

Oh, and you can find 1000+ Ideas about Teaching Handwriting on Pinterest!

While some schools apparently may no longer teach handwriting and electronic devices have seemingly conquered the civilized world...people still put writing instrument to paper all around the world.

As the Moleskine blog noted, on NHD 2o15, when we do so we let our brain do the auto-correcting for us!

What Creativity Has Meant to Me In Houston 2

 

A lot has happened since Summer 2012, when  Daddy Kiril finalized a move to Houston, and Sept. 2012 when He and his 2 feline companions and muses got here.

4 years of ups and downs and creativity and, as mentioned in the prologue, this is an effort to celebrate his and his felines time here on this anniversary.

The prologue is here.

........

 

This post, co-written by Daddy Kiril and I, Elvira Mistress of Felinity is meant to celebrate 4 years of cat blogging by The Opinionated Pussycats.

 

1. Creativity means celebrating 700 blog posts by packing up the cats and everything else and moving to Texas.

2. Creativity means Nikita and Elvira exploring their new home on a leashed walk.

3. Creativity means 4 years of sharing photos of cats and other critters via Street Seens and Seen & Heard posts.

4. Creativity means the cats getting used to their new home, helping Daddy Kiril unpack, set things up and put together bookshelves.

5. Creativity means Nikita and Elvira telling everyone, through images and words about the trip to Houston.

Getting to the airport....Nikita's take on the journey....Elvira's take on the journey.

6. Creativity means Elvira using poetry to explain the move to TX.

7. Creativity means sharing and commenting on feline related news in entertaining ways via World Mews Repurrts

8. Creativity means playing nurse to Daddy Kiril as he spends the last couple of months of 2012 and the first few months of 2013 dealing with his eye surgeries (one for a broken blood vessel in the left eye, the other for cancer in the right eye).

9. Creativity means celebrating the first TX Chrissymouse through poetry...

‘Twas the Night Before Catmas… , Randy the Red-Nosed Pussycat , The Tomcat Got Run Over By a Reindeer

10. Creativity means beginning 2013 by joining Daddy Kiril an accepting the Very Inspiring Blogger Award.

1. Creativity means celebrating 700 blog posts by packing up the cats and everything else and moving to Texas.

2. Creativity means Nikita and Elvira exploring their new home on a leashed walk.

3. Creativity means 4 years of sharing photos of cats and other critters via Street Seens and Seen & Heard posts.

4. Creativity means the cats getting used to their new home, helping Daddy Kiril unpack, set things up and put together bookshelves.

5. Creativity means Nikita and Elvira telling everyone, through images and words about the trip to Houston.

Getting to the airport....Nikita's take on the journey....Elvira's take on the journey.

6. Creativity means Elvira using poetry to explain the move to TX.

7. Creativity means sharing and commenting on feline related news in entertaining ways via World Mews Repurrts

8. Creativity means playing nurse to Daddy Kiril as he spends the last couple of months of 2012 and the first few months of 2013 dealing with his eye surgeries (one for a broken blood vessel in the left eye, the other for cancer in the right eye).

9. Creativity means celebrating the first TX Chrissymouse through poetry...

‘Twas the Night Before Catmas… , Randy the Red-Nosed Pussycat , The Tomcat Got Run Over By a Reindeer

10. Creativity means beginning 2013 by joining Daddy Kiril an accepting the Very Inspiring Blogger Award.

What Creativity Has Meant to Me In Houston 1

A lot has happened since Summer 2012, when I finalized a move to Houston, and Sept. 2012 when I got here.

4 years of ups and downs and creativity and, as mentioned in the prologue, this is my effort to celebrate my time here on this anniversary.

 

The prologue is here.

....

 

1. Creativity means finding the best way I could to explain the why of relocating to Texas and what I will miss about the state of my birth.

2. Creativity means telling  about my move to Houston and my (and my cats) 1st month here in ways that entertain and amuse.

3. Creativity means finding ways to get comfortable in my new home and introducing myself.

4. Creativity means finding furniture in unexpected places, from a thrift store to Ikea.

5. Creativity means finding time to explore my new surroundings and spend a month sharing daily gratitude for so much that has happened in my life.

6. Creativity means finding ways to use my talent for writing and photography and a peculiar sense of humor to survive 2 eye surgeries (one of which was a cancer scare) in my first 8 months in Houston.

7. Creativity means finding ways to host concerned sisters during my first surgery and making sure they don't get lost and leave re-assured about my health.

8. Creativity means creating the Twitter hashtag #WeccommendWedn and finding a way to somehow forget I'd ever done so until preparing this post.

9. Creativity means prancing in the rain of a Houston storm.

10. Creativity means finding an interesting ways to explore the heart of my new city and  interviewing the natives.

PYTW 46: What Creativity Means To Me - Houston Prologue

Prompting Yourself To Write 46: What Creativity Means To Me - Houston Prologue

Wow, has it been since April 2013 that I last did a writing prompt post?

PYTW 45: Framing Myself as a Way to Inspire My Hopes and Dreams 2013

As I wrote a month before I left California for Texas:

Creativity means the power, challenge and talent to write and somehow, some way, developing it.

Creativity means writing and praying a Creative Writer's Prayer and having faith in one's abilities...

I had reached a fork in the road, soon crossed the road and traveled onward to Houston.

Now, as I continue to slowly move forward with my personal, career, and creative lives, I thought it would be fun and encouraging to look back over the past four years and catalogue what creativity has meant to me since I set foot in the Bayou City, as shared in this blog and The Opinionated Pussycat.

H-Town, Magnolia City, Space City, Hustle Town, the Golden Buckle of the Sunbelt, the city with the Big Heart...whatever you choose to call it, it is my home and I am trying to succeed and thrive here.

Wordsmith Studio’s 3rd Anniversary: Reflections of a Mad Macedonian - Pt. 2

Three days ago I began a series of posts as part of the Wordsmith Studio's 3rd Anniversary celebration Blog Hops...this is part 2.

In this post I want to respond to the writing prompts from the first Blog Hop:

1. Are you a WSSer (a member of Wordsmith)? If so, sound off about how long you’ve been a member, your favorite way to participate, or anything you’ve missed if you’ve been away.

I am a founding member, but I have missed so damn much that I am a bit embarrassed to still have a bio listing on the home site and to still have my blog posts shared in the wonderful Wordsmith Studio Paper.Li newspaper.

There is so much that is new about the community that I don't know where to begin in an attempt to get back into it.

Elissa Field's description of the new elements shows how far things have come.

PYTW 45: Framing Myself as a Way to Inspire My Hopes and Dreams 2013

Prompting Yourself  To Write 45: Frame yourself! 2013

(An updated version of a post from July 2012)

An April 2012 blog post of mine so deeply affected my friend in writing, Amanda Socci (The Creative Idea Gal), that she strongly suggested I do something a little radical to thus inspire myself.

After reading PYTW 34 - Dear Mad Macedonian: A Love Letter she shared her thoughts in a comment, and on Facebook, where she also shared my piece with her friends.

This was her overall message to me:

Dear Kiril: I love this blog post on so many levels.

I cannot begin to express how potent it was. I found it to be exceptionally inspirational. A rich, creative, fulfilling writing prompt. Kudos for having completed this exercise so well.

Here is liquid gold, carefully integrated from your pen, leaving multiple windows of insight into your unique world wide open. Here is my favorite line, and one which I think speaks volumes: "I'm your imagination...proud, bold, unchained, and unafraid!." You are not just the mad Macedonian, you are Groucho Marx incarnate!

You write so richly about your life experiences in a way that is truly enviable. You have captured your successes and turned them into power. You must print this out, autograph it, and frame it so that you may remind yourself each and every day of how good you are with your writing and talents.

Bravo!

PYTW 44: Wordsmith Studio 1yr. Anniversary Celebration

Wordsmith Studio Writer's Community

Prompting Yourself  To Write 44: Wordsmith Studio 1yr. Anniversary Celebration

Last April Fool’s day Robert Lee Brewer, author, writer, editor at Writer's Digest, poet laureate of the blogosphere, and blogger extraordinaire, set forth a challenge for budding, and experienced writers alike. He believes that one of the most important tools for a writer trying to find success in today's media environment is a strong platform. He wanted to help create a supportive framework that helps writers challenge themselves.
 
All through April 2013 a selection of members of the Wordsmith community of writers that sprang up after that month share their thoughts on the 1 yr. anniversary.

1. My, How Things Have Changed in a Year! by Yours Truly

2. Belong, Belonging, Beloved. A little love letter to us, my Wordsmith Studio friends, on our first anniversary by Veronica Roth

3. Platform Diving by J.lynn Sheridan

4. Authorpreneur: The Lure of the Pro-Blogosphere by  Elizabeth (Beth) Saunders

5. Living on my Own by Sopphey Vance

6. A year (and a bit) in the life of Writerly Goodness by Melanie Marttila

7.  Confessions of An April Platform Challenge Participant by Heather Button

8. The April Platform Challenge Anniversary: Who Knew? by Gerry Wilson

What Creativity Means To Me 2

Prompting Yourself  To Write 43: What Creativity Means To Me -  Continued

In yesterday's post I wrote of the inspiration for it, and this 2nd part.

How my friend Jo Ann wrote a blog post where she wrote abote living in the present and exploring the unlimited opportunities one has ti use his or her creativity in everyday life.

She wrote of approaching the problems one faces with imagination and turning them into blessings.

Read part 1.

I am thnkful for all the good I've experiences in my life and the gift of creativity that The Great Creator has, for some reason not yet clear to me, bestowed on me. I believe that my creativity is meant  not just to enrich  my life, but the lives of others and that, by doing so, I will be making a small contribution toward making the world we all share a much better place for everyone.

As I try to move forward with my personal, career, and creative lives, by relocating, I hope, to Texas, I can't help but believe, as Jo Ann writes in a poem, that the present is ripe with great opportunity if I only understood how best to grasp it.

 



  I have shown, over a decade of blogging, that I am able to use my creativity to enrich the lives of others all around the world. I know this is true because people have told me so. Sharing my gift for writing has helped sustain me during my own most dark and difficult moments.

Another friend has urged me to not settle for just any old job that comes my way, to consider as a goal finding a career related in some way to my abilities as a writer.

Figuring out just what that may be, and how to get such a job, along with successfully relocating myself elsewhere than where I am, are on my agenda for the days ahead...for tonight I have a list to complete. :-D

58. Creativity means being unemployed, since fall 2010, taking a series of computer classes to add to my marketable skills, then finding an imaginative way to break an ankle, and spending the recovery year reading, both for faith and inspiration, and considering my personal, career and creative futures, with particular focus on moving out of state completely and starting fresh deep in the heart of Texas.

59. Creativity means finding ways to be different when commenting on other blogs.

60. Creativity means writing about a bicycle named Pops, forgetting about him, and now considering resurrecting him.

61. Creativity means thinking about PLACE and why I write about it.

62. Creativity means writing book reviews.

63. Creativity means digging up roots in the family garden.

64. Creativity means sharing humor and odd thoughts.

65. Creativity means a camera carrying conservative.

66.  Creativity means sharing the odd thoughts that wander through my brain while taking a shower.

 

PYTW 43: What Creativity Means To Me

Prompting Yourself  To Write 43: What Creativity Means To Me

Last monday my friend Jo Ann, writer of the Chronicles blog, had a great post, with the subject of the essay and poem being creativity. She asked her readers to consider doing their own blog post on the subject and so I spent some time on tuesday and wednesday thinking and writing, while eating lunch at a pair of local fast food joints.

Creativity means the power, challenge and talent to write and somehow, some way, developing it.

Creativity means reaching a fork in the road that is the journey of my life.

Creativity means writing and praying a Creative Writer's Prayer and having faith in one's abilities...

1. Creativity means learning to drive a car, before I was a year old, in order to impress a girl (I've got pictures to prove it!).

2. Creativity means early learning, via Romper Room, Bozo the Clown and Hobo Kelly.

3. Creativity means having my imagination stirred by a mother who read to me, then encouraged me to read for myself.

4. Creativity means an award-winning elementary school rock and gem science project.

5. Creativity means being a white kid standing before an audience of black students in the school auditorium, and performing MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech for Black History Month, in elementary school.

6. Creativity means taking up the violin in the 4th grade and sticking with it all the way through the end of High School.

7. Creativity means writing my 1st story in elementary school and finding such joy in it that creative writing of all sorts, from stories to book reports, became integral parts of who I was as a student in school all the way through college.

8. Creativity means waking up in the middle of the night and swearing I saw the closet door open and shut, on its own accord, in my bedroom.

9. Creativity means seeing a giant red globe fly across sky on a cloudy afternoon, with a schoolmate as witness to this UFO.

10. Creativity means having my young imagination stirred by the books I read and the TV shows and movies i watched growing up.

11. Creativity means having the courage to try to teach my 4th grade classmates how to play a game called Danish (A team game sort of like baseball, but without the bat, or a pitcher, and using a tennis ball) and not having to say I'm sorry for not entirely succeeding.

12. Creativity means having my young imagination stirred by Vin Scully, Jerry Doggett and Chick Hearn to such an extent tht I'd immitate them while tossing a tennis ball against a wall, or shooting hoops alone.

13. Creativity means learning to enjoy speaking in front of others in class, or in dramatic skits.

14. Creativity means teaching myself, at an early age, to safelywalk and read a book, or magazine, at the same time and live to tell about it.

15. Creativity meand teaching myself to navigate every mass transit system from LA to San Bernardino and Brea to San Diego, from the time I was a teen, finally trusted by my mom to go out on my own.

16. Creativity means erasing paragraphs, even whole pages, in an early Star Trek "History" book and re-writing things much more to my liking.

17. Creativity means dressing up, at 16, as Miss America 1976, for an amusing 1 mile walk, escorting my young sisters to the Girl Scout halloween party, that embarrassed the hell out of the little darlings, freaked out the Den Mother when she opened the door, and for which, I think, the sisters have yet to completely forgive me. (Yes, I DO have a photo laying around somewhere)

18. Creativity means teaching my teen self to cook my own breakfast of scrambled  egg and bacon/sausage sandwiches.

19. Creativity means having one's imagination stired by spending a day in the home of legendary Star Trel Fan and author Bjo Trimble (The woman who saved Star Trek) in Los Angeles.

20. Creativity means writing a creative story as an assignment for a criminal justice class in college: Elay Ca. Police Interrogation, in 27 Year Old Murder Case, Uncovered

21. Creativity means building a large and varied book and comics, then video, then classical CD collections and eventually finding the best ways to give them all up by the time I was 40, because I needed the money.

22. Creativity means starting up a new, but just as varied  book collection a couple of years after  kissingall that had gone before good-bye.

23. Creativity means spending 17 years working in bookstores, finding different, entertaining, easy to understand, ways to display the merchandise on shelves and tables for customers to explore.

24. Creativity means finding new, different and unique magazines, books, videos and other merchandize to interest customers.

25. Creativity means finding ways to persuade customers that such merchandise was worth shelling out their hard hearned money for.