Tag Archives: blogging

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Fear and Trembling in the New Year: a Writer’s Confession


It’s the beginning of a new year and I’m facing the feeling so many writers dread—the fear that I will never compose another decent sentence—the dread that I will not only have nothing to say, but also that what I do write will limp along badly—boring, boring prose that no one with even half a literary brain would lay claim to.

Part of what frustrates me is my seeming lack of focus, the realization as this blog evolves that my interests are too eclectic.  I enjoy a little of this and a lot of that and that and that.  With Sara and I traveling so much, I feel my writing is both literally and stylistically all over the map, sometimes funny, sometimes deadly serious.  Are my own eccentric inclinations exaggerated by the sheer geographical range, if nothing else?

 It might be boring, but I sometimes wish I were one of those people with a singular focus!  Practically speaking, how does one lend cohesion to a blog that’s at one time or another about Haiti, Vietnam, art, poetry, dogs, travel, disaster response, and election fraud?  Then when you expand that list even further by adding topics I’ve yet to address, but plan to (my work in India this past year, for example), it becomes a dizzying mish-mash that would give even the most open-minded reader a case of topical whiplash.

So, my questions this New Year’s Day remain:

–How singularly focused does a blog need to be?

–What makes you keep reading one blog but not another?

–What is your biggest fear as a writer?

–Would you be willing to discuss any of these issues in a post to your blog?

I’d love to know I’m not alone with these writerly fears for the coming year.  How do you manage your own creative insecurities?

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A Frenzy of Freshly Pressed


I had a less-than-cool response to being Freshly Pressed.

I may have over-reacted.  I may have caused a scene.

For those of you who don’t know, for those of you who are just now tuning in, I blog from Haiti, where not a lot of positive things have been happening lately, what with the January 12th earthquake, Hurricane Tomas, cholera, and now the close-to-coup political uncertainty.

To distract myself from this atmosphere of never knowing what’s next, I began blogging again after a year away from posts and comments—from Search Engine Optimization and RSS feeds.

I poured indecent amounts of energy into my renewed foray into the blogosphere.  I was a down-right bloggerly drudge when it came to reading and commenting on the blogs of others. 

I wrote and posted—

Wrote and posted—

Commenting maniacally in between.

For three whole weeks—

Until Tuesday—

When I did my daily duty of checking Freshly Pressed, posted most mornings by 11 Eastern Standard Time.

I had developed a near religious devotion to this posting of posts, ten blogs featured each weekday on WordPress.com. I knew my duties as a devotee, arriving with the requisite ritual beverages (coffee and Coke Zero, of course). I knelt at the altar of blogging greatness— and clicked.

Strangely—the list of featured posts included one that had not only stolen the name of my blog, but the name of my post, as well.

This was a desecration.

A cardinal sin against the goodness that is Freshly Pressed!

Until it hit me.

Oh, may the gods of blogging forever bless the shrine of Freshly Pressed—for, in the name of blog, indeed,

I had been Freshly Pressed.

Heavenly choirs were singing as I twirled my Port-au-Prince kitchen dizzy—

Shrieking—

OMG—OMG

Twirling and shrieking—

Shrieking and twirling—a dervish of posting devotion.

And in this blogging frenzy, I did what any blogging diva worth her salt would do in such a moment.

I called my mother—

(Called my mother with the zeal of a six-year-old, just home from kindergarten, ready to show off her printing practice sheet, S’s marching capital and lower case across the page.)

“Mom, this is costing gobs of money, so I can only talk a minute, but I’ve been Freshly Pressed.”

“You’ve been what, Dear?”

“My blog.  My blog has . . . “

(How should I explain it?)

“My blog has won a prize.”

“Well, that’s lovely, Dear.”

“What kind of prize?”

(I dare not mention “Freshly Pressed.”  She’ll confuse that with French press or launch into a discussion of ironing!)

“It doesn’t matter, Mom, just a really cool prize.  You should hurry and check your email.  I sent you the link.”

“You sent me what, Dear?”

“The link.  The blue LINK!”

“Oh, the BLUE ink, yes, I know, Dear.”

“But wait, let me write that down.  I don’t want to forget—BLUE ink?”

(To better appreciate my mother’s memory issues see a post called “Airing Family Secrets via Haute Couture.”)

“Just go check your email, Mom.”

 You know how the story ends—

Not with my mother delightfully 72, trying to figure out this world that was once Smith Corona and is now Google, Facebook, Twitter. 

Rather with me—dizzy in my kitchen—reeling with the down-right, unabashed, writing-posting-commenting joy of it all—

The joy of FRESHLY PRESSED!

Yippee!

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Mud-Wrestling with God: Holiday Thoughts from Haiti


I know I should be bringing you important updates about current events in Haiti—about the cholera epidemic that’s killing folks by the thousands and about the obvious fraud in Sunday’s presidential elections.  But I need a bit of a break from such serious matters today.  So it’s in this spirit of departure from the muck and mire of disease and politics, that I bring you a story about my recent up-close and personal encounter with, well, muck and mire.

(Now, I must confess that the idea for this post—the reminder that meditating on mud can make for marvelous writing, came yesterday from a blog I’m newly in love with called “Sunshine in London.”  I discovered this blog from another site I REALLY like called “Notes from Africa,” and I’m learning lots about being grateful, thankful for even these muddiest of matters, from a series of posts at “Grandeur Vision.”  These three blogs are all well worth reading!)

At any rate, I realized yesterday I had not shared my own adventure with what we might call, for lack of a better term, “mud-wrestling.”

This encounter with the muck and mire that can be Haiti toward the end of the rainy season happened several weeks ago—just days before Hurricane Tomas actually brought that season to an official, if no less muddy, end.  I was returning from a two week trip to the US for an honest-to-goodness American vacation.  Sara and I don’t get many of them.  Though we travel a lot, traveling for pleasure is not usually part of the package.

So I was returning to Haiti feeling somewhat rested—ready to get down and dirty, though not exactly knee deep, in the challenges ahead.

Or so I thought—

I should have known it didn’t bode well when our security folks didn’t meet my plane and I had to make it through the Port-au-Prince airport without the special assistance Samuel provides.

But, I wasn’t terribly worried.  I survived the fight for my baggage.  I fought the good fight, the get-out-of-my-way-or-I-may-have-to-kill-you challenge that is getting one’s bags and getting away with one’s life.

I had not only gotten my bags, I had survived my driver surviving the traffic, gotten my groceries, gotten my dog, gotten inside my gate, gotten beyond my front door and down a few steps—

Before falling flat on my ass in a river of mud.

Not just a little mud, I might add—much mud, deep mud, muddy mud.

Muddy facts:

1.  My neighbor on the mountain above had been digging a new drive.

2.  It had rained a lot on that newly dug drive.

3.  The newly dug drive in its now liquid form had flooded my floor with a good inch of mud.

4.  I was not entirely pleased with his development.

Until I thought of something Sara says when it rains here in Haiti—something she thinks about when it seems the torrents of wet will never stop falling—especially at night when damp dark soaks the soul of a person—

Especially a mother, holding her baby, in a make shift tent—barely a tarp over a mud slick floor—

I thought of that mother.

that baby.

that floor.

I thanked God for my mud.

I thanked God for my floor.

What are you thankful for this holiday season?