Magical Mondays

There's nothing like going to a wedding to recapture the wonder and magic of love at the dawn of a relationship. The joy and excitement of the happy couple as they exchange vows before family and friends in anticipation of all the years to come. Their certainty that their love can withstand anything.

What I find especially encouraging, though, are the number of couples I've met recently who fifty-and even sixty-plus years later are still just as in love--if not more so--than they were when they made their vows. They still hold hands, they still exchange loving looks, they're sensitive to each other's needs. They've come through all the difficulties and proved their early certainty right.

It wasn't easy. They would undoubtedly be the first to say that. But they'd also be the first to say it was well worth all the effort.

Everlasting Love. It happens.

Ginger

Thoughtful Thursdays

Is anyone watching Ken Burn’s wonderful PBS documentary series, The War? If you aren’t, you should be. As usual, he makes history and the people who lived it come to vibrant life right in your living room. I’m learning things I never knew before--seeing how the ordinary people, both soldiers and the people at home, coped with the unexpected events that changed most of their lives forever.

Several of my uncles were in the Pacific on ships and my husband had uncles on the ground in Europe. Luckily, they all came home. Others didn’t. Many, many others didn’t. I do remember my mother talking about how sugar was rationed and what it was like to try to keep every bit of light from escaping at night during the blackouts.

What really hits home with me, though, is how through most of the years of fighting we were never sure that we were going to win. There was real fear that we might not. If those fears had come true, what kind of world would we be living in right now?

Makes me really appreciate my uncles, my husband’s uncles, and the men like them for all that they did. As well as those determined women who also went to war—both in far-away lands and on the home front.

How, exactly, this ties in with our stories of Everlasting Love, I’m not sure. Except that bravery and sacrifice through good times and bad, the ability to make the best of what you have at the moment, the fierce determination to survive and to overcome, the sensitivity to know when to look the other way, the blessings of forgiveness along with the power to forget … isn’t that a great part of what love does?

Ginger

A Special Friday

The older I get, the faster time flies. I didn't think it was supposed to be this way! In my grandmother's day, growing older meant a woman had a surplus of free time on her hands. She'd been through the wars of raising a large family and was due the rest. Today, grandmothers often have busier lives than their daughters. They're running companies, managing small businesses, bungee jumping, parasailing, taking adventure vacations...and writing.

Is it already September? Where did the past nine months go? I remember last Christmas and a week or two in March, but not much else. For most of that time I was writing my Everlasting Love and so deep into the story that days slipped past me. I was in the Zone, that magical place where the characters and story take over a writer's life.

The Zone can be a little hard on a writer's mate, though. Someone has to pick up the slack. My husband is a wonder. He cooks the meals, washes the dishes, even cleans the bathroom. He's a keeper! And today is his birthday.

Happy Birthday, my love. More today than yesterday and less than tomorrow!
Ginger

Writing Wednesday -- The Joy of Revising

Have you ever thought of a snappy comeback you wish you'd made to someone who annoyed you ... only you think of it an hour, a day, or a week later?

Well, that's one of the reasons I love to write. I can take that rather lame, "Yeah? Well, you too!" reply and turn it into something poetic in its pointed intensity, or hard hitting and clever, or dripping with sarcasm. And I don't have to worry about the bully hitting me in the nose!

A writer can have a character say whatever they want. Can test out this or that until it's just right. There's no time limit. You are in charge. All you have to do is go back to the page in question and fix it.

Ahh to revise! What joy! Too bad we can't do that in real life.

Ginger