Today Is April Third and there are so many fun things about this spring month if you love writing and photography as much as I do. There is a photography challenge at the site where I post a photo a day, 365 project, to shoot all the colors from the song Joseph's Coat
I have stretched it further by deciding to work on my editing on the selective coloring front. So far the colors have been red, yellow and green with tomorrow being brown, but to make it through the month there are also some color names I had to go to google images to figure out exactly what color that even was.
Mauve, Russet, ochre, and what is the difference between, red, scarlet and crimson?
see the challenge here http://365project.org/discuss/themes-competitions/17191/technicolor-april
And I have been working on my 3rd Duffy Barkley Book, but this time with the twist that his sister goes and Duffy is left behind when the other world calls. Here is an unedited excerpt of what I have so far
Izzy
could see that something had changed long before she got out of the
lane where she had wandered to check the mailbox at the top of the
cornfield lined, gravel drive. She slipped through the gate and ran
along the concrete walk beside the detached garage. She leapt up the
steps and ran across the grey porch, her feet on the weathered boards
kicking up a few of the loose flakes of dark green paint that
remained. She pulled the screen door open and let it fall into place
again behind her with a bang. “Aunt peg? Aunt Peg!”
Her
great aunt turned away from where she was pumping water into the
enormous sink using an old fashioned hand water pump to send the
cold, clean, well water spurting through the trough and over the corn
and potatoes she was washing.
“Well
child? What has gotten you so stirred up?”
“The
Tree! The top has been blown off.”
Peg
did not have to ask which tree, although the farm was filled with
many trees, black walnut trees and pine trees and apple trees, but
Peg knew that when Izzy said “The Tree” it meant the cedar tree
that stood in a group of cedar trees just to the left of the kitchen
door.
Since
Izzy had come to spend the week and two weekends with Peg, she had
made her own perch high up in the top of the tallest tree in the
cluster. She climbed nimbly up through the branches which circled
the trunk so uniformly spaced and of such a similar thickness that
they could have almost been a man made ladder. Then she straddled
the thick branch at the top, where lightning had carved a saddle and
pulled out an apple or a bag of pickle flavored sunflower seeds and a
book and took her break at the top of her world.
Peg
dried her hands on a dish towel and hung her apron on the hook by the
door. Then she took her cap from another hook and strode out onto the
sun bleached porch to see for herself. She scanned the tree and the
ground around it. True the top of the tree, maybe a good ten to
fifteen foot of tree, was gone, but she had not heard it crash, and
furthermore, there was no broken limbs or shattered trunk around the
ground. She watched from the porch as Izzy ran down and kicked of
her shoes and hauled herself up onto the lowest, forked branch and
began to climb. Then Peg gasped, Izzy kept climbing but she began to
disappear, first her hands as they reached above her, then her arms
and head and shoulders and finally her bare toes as she pulled
herself up and into the blue sky as if she had merely kept climbing
into a fog.
It
might have looked unbelievable but Peg had no trouble believing her
eyes, so she wasted no time standing there and telling herself that
it was impossible. Impossible was something Peg was on close speaking
terms with.
Peg
ran down to the base of the tree and called up it as if she were
merely scolding a naughty child. She called to someone who was not
her ten year old great-niece, “Ivor, whatever you are up to, you
need to get her back here. Now! Safely! Ivor!”
She
waited, then when all was silent she slapped her hand against the
rough trunk of the tree and tried to imagine explaining to her niece
that Peg had lost her daughter. No, she couldn't do that. She
kicked her own shoes off and gripped the branch just over her head
and began to climb.
and for those who write in images and bursts of feeling more than in long narratives, it is also a month to try writing a poem a day with NaPoWriMo
I love all these ideas and you can see that I have started the technicolor-april challenge and I've been working on getting up the enthusiasm to make my novel happen, but there is also a part of me yearning to combine the images and the poem a day and see if I can do a children's book. I am a glutton for punishment.
Plus I need to work-out and eat healthy even more when writing keeps me chained to a desk even ,ore than usual, oh and sleep and pay the bills. is it true after all, that "April is the cruelest month" (thank you T. S. Eliot) raising desires where they seemed to have died, showing you the hibernation you have been sleeping in, and not quite giving you enough time and energy to fulfill them?
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