Hi everybody. Hope you had a tremendous week with good blessings chasing you everywhere you went. You know sometimes we stay so busy that we don’t always pay attention to the blessings around us. At church we have a Thanksgiving and Praise List in our bulletin where we mention special blessings of the week and those everyday blessings too. Things like the sunshine and the rain. The birds and the flowers. The smile of a child. A good sermon. An appreciated card. Being alive. There are so many reasons to be thankful. What are some of your everyday blessings? A good day at work. A restful night’s sleep. Maybe a baby sleeping through the night for the first time. A new rosebush. An old rosebush blooming. We are so blessed.
We’re also blessed with numerous electronic devices to entertain us. At least I think that’s a blessing – most of the time. But I read an article this week about boredom and how now we have so many electronic means of entertainment such as i-pods, cell phones, laptops, and DVD players, that we don’t have as many of those times when we’re not busily trying to fill our minds with outside noise and pictures. Times when our minds are just idling with nothing to occupy us. Times when we might be bored. But those times are also times when we allow our thoughts to wander and from that wandering comes new ideas. When I first got married and had two little children, time was at a premium. But I had to iron every week. There’s nothing much more boring that pressing pants and shirts, but that was when I could think up new things and write poems in my head. And what sounds more fun than sitting on a porch as the sun comes up or goes down and letting your thoughts meander down memory lane. A person has to have a few quiet moments now and again and a little boredom never hurt anybody. Unless of course you grew up on a farm and you made the mistake of telling your daddy you were bored. Then you might be out in the field picking up rocks or chopping thistles! So hope you have some restful moments this week to gather your thoughts and come up with some great new ideas.
A little writing news update – the Blue Grass Book Festival wasn’t all that well attended this year. No Paula Deen to pull them in like last year, I suppose. I didn’t get to go to the Blue Grass Festival last year, but all my writer friends who did kept telling me how wonderful it was and how many book buyers were there. So I was really looking forward to seeing a lot of readers this year. But alas, the sun came out after several days of rain and I think everybody stayed home to mow their yards and plant flowers. Who can blame them?
Still it was a fun day. I met some great writers and a few kind readers. I sat at the same table with Susan Green Gilmore whose book is titled Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen. Isn’t that a great title? And the book looks like fun. My titles aren’t bad. Summer of Joy and Orchard of Hope. But let me tell you, when people walked by our table, they were pulled in by Susan’s title and more times than not bought her book. I told them I was going to rename my book Summer at McDonalds. No, that doesn’t do it. It has to have the salvation in there too. How about Joy and Salvation at McDonalds? Of course there weren’t any McDonalds in Hollyhill back when I wrote about Jocie and her family, so that won’t work either. Oh well, I’ll just stick with Summer of Joy.
Titles are important eye catchers. I sat next to a guy once at another book fair whose book was The Aluminum Christmas Tree. People were drawn to that one as well. It caught their memories. Next time I want to sit next to somebody whose book is titled something dull and uninteresting, say Today is Another Day or The Brown Cow. Or Red? Oh, wait, I think that one did very well. What is your vote for most un-eyecatching book title? Whatever it is, I don’t want to use one like that on my next book. I want one that makes people stop and pick up my book to read the back copy. Maybe my new book, The Outsider, will have that kind of title. For sure it has that kind of cover art. It’s very eye-catching. You can check it out on my website www.annhgabhart.com if you want.
So count your everyday blessings this week and I hope you run out of fingers and toes to count them all on. 😉 Check in later this week for the quotes of the week.