Writing

What is your favorite hobby or pastime?

For me it’s my mother when she saw a spider. That was in the days you never thought to get a glass and take it outside. I’m glad I live in these days. “If you want to live and thrive, let a spider run alive.” Just not on the ceiling where it might abseil down at any moment! I don’t want to knock myself senseless with a book in a complete panic, nor do I want to kill it. But the hair is sacred ground!

A cautionary power

I love the power of words to create change, or to make you smile. Unless you have a friend like me who shared this to her group not long before bed time last night. 🙈 🤣

I actually just shared it because it was funny, then realised. sigh. Shows me how far I’ve come though, I didn’t have to search the place from ground to roof, at one time going to bed would have been hell.

But the power to write becomes a responsibility. Just think about how good and beautiful most of the religious books are, and how they’re being interpreted. “Thous shalt not kill” has become “unless you want to”. How did we ‘misinterpret’ that?

I was taught a teensy bit about the Koran by an expert at my university. The best person I’ve ever met. There is so much beauty there. However…sigh.

Choices and wars

Writing has the power to reshape the world. Novels can inspire. Good laws can be written. It all depends on the minds behind the writing and the interpretations of other minds.

I do wish the American Constitution had said “you have the right to bear arms to hunt for food providing you only kill what you need, but not to kill each other, if you do you’re going straight to hell!.” Sadly it didn’t.

All wars start with words. Writers have the power to question, offer solutions, to create fiction with a strong message to see if the fixed and immovable can be unfixed and moved in a subtle way. A way that disguises the fact that someone is screaming silently at them “for pity’s sake open your mind before millions die!”

We watched Grand Tourino with Clint Eastwood on Friday night, for the first time. It’s a masterpiece of writing, with any number of superb messages, the ending is incredible. If you haven’t seen it, and you like something that surprises you and makes you think. I recommend it.

I’m passionate about writing, but I’m also super careful in what I say.

I try to create connections, to help us see that we all live under the same sky. That our gods’ names refer to the same being in a different language. That we all just want our kids and pets and loved ones to be safe. I aligned kids and pets because a true animal lover has the same fierce protection towards them as they do to any human.

Someone who really knows how to love sees no barriers between us. Only children of the universe. That’s why we’re not leg-prejudiced and take spiders outside and place them gently somewhere safe. That’s why the children of the Middle East make me feel so helpless.

They don’t know that huge numbers of ‘the enemy’ are heartbroken, furious with their governments, and just want to come and pick them and their families up , take them away, and keep them safe.

But writers can tell them. We can say that our governments do not speak for us, that they matter as much as our own children, and we’re devastated. For them and the Ukrainian children, for Russian children who must be so scared. For the Syrians. For those in Africa. The far east. Just everywhere. Whether it’s war or weather that is the problem. Because some of us know we’re one family under the skin.

That’s why this is not a hobby it’s a passion. I can write poetry, plays, books. But I always wanted to be a playwright. My dream was that people could leave saying:

“That was funny“

“No it was thought-provoking”

“I found it to be both”

And they would all be right.

I wrote a play where an entire family were murdered except one child, within six months my entire family walked away from me. The messages were in that play.., except I didn’t see them. 🤣

It was extremely funny though.

Have the best day then outdo it tomorrow

Deb