The Daily Journal of An Aspiring Writer

     How much reading do you do? How much of what you read, do you retain? Do you read fast? How do you read?  Recently these are thoughts that have been occurring. Mostly about me but then I began to get curious about all of you. Up until recently I have been, and probably always will be, for somethings, a mouth reader. By that I mean I mouth the words as I reader almost like I am reading aloud, to myself.      However, recently I have returned to reading with just my eyes. It's much faster. What started this, is that Kindle has a ruler that you can customize and move up and down the page as you read. When I was 9, my mom taught me to read this way and I was getting good at, when one of my teachers stopped me from reading that way.  I know, oh no, here he goes again blaming one of his teachers for stopping him from doing something but hear me out.     In fifth grade we were doing speed reading.  It was timed reading and we had one ...

       I am sure that most of you have heard this one and I am sure it’s obvious to all of us but let me tell you why this came to me today.   This weekend was the weekend that my wife, Bridget, and I decided to close the pool for the winter. Honestly, for me opening, and closing, the pool is the most difficult and trying task, that I must do every year. I’ve even made so difficult that one year I had to close it myself. What likely makes this whole task difficult, is that I have had to help open and close a pool, since I was 14, and I have probably just made it harder because it was never a simple task during my teen years. This weekend, Bridget had to work, Saturday morning. So, I had to begin the closing down process by myself. Now over the last couple of weeks we have had the heater off and now the pool is cold. There hasn’t been a cover on the pool and the leaves have been falling and there are plenty of leaves in the bottom of the pool. Obviously, going ...

       Today, I got my nephew’s, who’s in the Ohio National Guard, mailing address, at Basic Training. It got me to thinking that now that I am writing I should be writing letters to people, like my nephew. Now the terrible part is I will, most likely, type them. I hand write in my journal and of course that helps make it better but if I begin writing these letters, I want everyone to be able to read them. So, I will type them.      Now certainly, I will begin writing letters to my friends, nephews and my daughter but who I was really thinking of writing to were politicians and celebrities. Now I am not really talking about TV and Movie stars.   I like their work but most of them, no offense intended, but I am not all that concerned about conversing with them. Politicians that’s a no brainer my writing them will be to share my perspective on the current bills before them or the current crisis and how I think they should fix it, as if I really ha...

        Today, I had the day off from work, at my job. So, I decided to work on writing my story.  As I was typing away, I noticed the number count and wow! I have to tell you, it reminded me of when I was in sixth grade and my teacher, Mrs. Cherry, unknowingly, destroyed my passion for writing. I had had a passion for writing as was evidenced by my creative writing work in fifth grade, but I digress.      Mrs. Cherry, unknown to her, had destroyed my passion for writing. I admit to my own part in this because what she did was punishments for my acting out in class.   What she had done was to assign essays. The first essay was a 100-word essay and each new punishment would go up by 50 words. Now these were not the kind like you see Bart Simpson writing, I will not whatever 100 times.      These essays would be on a topic and you could just copy word for word right out of the encyclopedia up to the number of words necessary....

       So today, I got thinking about this. How many writers are there among my friends and family following this. I'm not just talking about those that have published works but those that keep a journal, write small research papers for the clubs or lodges, write short stories and send them to magazines, or are you an editor for a publication, famous or not?  The reason I ask is because I haven't actually been what I would have called a writer, until now but I have done a bit of writing over the last 10 years.  I have written research papers for college, I have had a short story published in a club magazine, I have had several articles published in several group related publications, I have on and off written a research paper for Masonic Lodges, and I have on and off kept a journal, or diary.      In the end I ask because one of the ways that I was most discouraged, in the past, about trying to be a writer was that I was constantly told, "wri...

             I just realized that I had forgotten something in regard to this undertaking and as a Freemason, it’s really a pretty big mistake. Especially since I do try to live my life as a Freemason, in everything I do. I forgot to invoke the blessings of deity. I’ll be honest that has not always been my way but since joining the Freemasons, it has been. I was shocked to realize that I had forgotten to do that here. My guess is that I really hadn’t thought of this a great and important undertaking because as seriously as I have been taking it, I haven’t made writing a career choice.   Honestly, I am working hard on becoming a writer. I have re-worked my office to make it more comfortable to work in.   I have, funny as it might sound created a playlist on Amazon Music to allow my Alexa to shuffle and play while I am writing. I did all of this before I read the chapter in, The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing, that ta...