The Real, Honest to Goodness Reason Frogs and Toads Show Up After a Rain Storm

The frogs and toads, my friends, have been in hibernation.  Their entire make-up says that no handsome princes or beautiful princesses are out and about in the wicked heat.  It tells them that the beautiful people only visit the out-of-doors in the summer when the rains cool down the sweltering skies.  As we all, being intelligent folks, know, frogs and toads are in perpetual search for their soul mate.  The person who will one day pick them up and plant a nice big smackeroo on their little froggy lips, thereby enabling them to complete their final metamorphous from amoeba-tadpole-frog/toad to prince/princess.  Ergo – rain equals the arrival of a bevy of hopeful long-jumping, fly-eating caecilians.

So, folks, you have a job before you.  Have some compassion, some feeling for your fellow amphibians.  Do the right thing!  Pick up a greenie and lay one on it!


Imagining the possibilities,


Peggy

Story, Undefeated

Story, Undefeated

Have you ever had an idea for a story and yet didn’t write it down?  The story filled your dreams.  Followed you around like a lost dog, begging you to turn around and pat its head, to pay it attention.  At the oddest times, you think of that story.  Shopping for groceries, it slips into the conscious.  Putting clothes in washer and dryer, the story taps at your soul.  Write me, please, yet the paper/computer stays blank.  There is something else you must—do—see—feel.  You close your eyes and turn away, shutting out the small flame of an idea that is looking for receptive tinder…. 

WHY?????

The story is too much.  Too close to home.  It grabs the heart and squeezes.  It holds a mirror up to the writer’s soul, then reflects like a prism to the world things we may not want anyone to see.  What will people say if they read this?  What will people think about me if I put this in writing?  The story spark lights up places better left hidden for whatever reason.  It is simply too much to bare.  (I meant that word.) 

Let’s face it.  As writers, we share our deepest selves to anyone who reads our work.  Everything our characters do comes from our mind, heart, and soul.  We feel what our characters feel.  We give them life and meaning.  We determine everything about the people in our stories whether truth or fiction, therefore it reflects something about the writer.  What if Shakespeare had never written To be or not to be, that is the question? Or Charles Dickens never said via David Copperfield, I was born.  Or Lucas’ famous:  In a Galaxy far far away…

I’m writing this, because I caught myself avoiding a story for the past few days, and realized that life is too short to keep things bottled up.  I’m going to try to uncork the bottle of hidden ideas and let them come forth like a magical being.  I hope to light the pages up with lovely black letters and let ’er rip!  It won’t be easy – I do know this, but it is time.  If one of my characters wants to do something, I will not hold them back because of my fear.  When the spirit strikes, even If I can’t put the whole thing in final form, I’m going to write as much as I can so the spark will not be blown out or fade into oblivion because of lack of care.

Story now completed, I am imagining the possibilities,

Peggy