{"id":162,"date":"2015-10-19T21:25:41","date_gmt":"2015-10-20T02:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/?p=162"},"modified":"2015-10-19T21:25:41","modified_gmt":"2015-10-20T02:25:41","slug":"places-not-looking-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/places-not-looking-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"The places we go when we’re not looking"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog post about not having the energy to write about my roots and being able to accept the fact that I faked the writing that day<\/a>. I was (and still am) okay with my decision not to push myself that day, but I am amused by the subsequent turn of events. I also have to laugh about Charli Mills’ writing\u00a0challenge<\/a> this week over at the Carrot Ranch as I am more and more convinced that Charli has spy-bots in my brain.<\/p>\n

When I write, I like to dig deep. Many writing experts harp on the need to overcome our\u00a0fears when writing and even embrace them. Honestly,\u00a0I don’t know any other way to write; when I don’t expose those deep dark feelings, I feel like I am phoning it all in or that I am fraud. So when I called myself out publicly in my last blog post, it was\u00a0partially to give myself a pass for once and partially to remind myself\u00a0\u00a0that I was giving myself a pass.<\/p>\n

But I absolutely refused to give myself another break.<\/p>\n

And then I got an editing project that took all of my energy. While working on it, I felt more\u00a0drained than ever\u00a0before. The project was amazing and fascinating,\u00a0but it was also extremely painful. The book was\u00a0written by a recovering addict; it detailed the deepest, darkest depths of her addiction using a\u00a0no-holds-barred approach.\u00a0Her family situation while growing up was far from ideal, but she seemed to overcome those challenges and traveled the world, established\u00a0a meaningful career, and took\u00a0the steps to build what most would deem to be a highly successful life…only to succumb to her own demons several years later.<\/p>\n

Although her story was\u00a0radically different than my own, I found so many points with which I could empathize that I ended up (tentatively!)\u00a0exploring my roots\u00a0even when I had just said I wasn’t emotionally ready to do so. I can’t help but think that, had I delved into my roots and dug deep for my writing two weeks ago, I never would have survived that editing project. As it happened, I slept for nearly two days after completing the project because I was physically and emotionally exhausted from the work.<\/p>\n

Can you say serendipitous? Charli Mills can, because that is her prompt for this week’s challenge:\u00a0In 99 words (no more, no less) write a story that reveals or explores a moment of serendipity.<\/p>\n

In the Cards<\/span><\/p>\n

Madrid, New Mexico, was barely a blip on our map where we stopped to eat runny eggs and salty hash browns before stretching our legs downtown. We stepped into a mom-and-pop store with hand-painted silverware in the window. We picked through geckos carved into metal and chunks of turquoise until we found old black-and-white photographs turned into kitschy postcards for the tourists. We bought the one showing our seventeen-year-old mother wearing cheap lace. She was laughing with a man whose flattened boutonniere sagged from his lapel. Back on the road, we studied the first clue to finding our father.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

***<\/p>\n

Waaaaaay back in September I used one of Charli’s prompts to develop the context<\/a> of a new short story. I can finally share the story with you, but just as a heads up, it has some pretty vivid (and gory) details. It is the season of Halloween, after all, so I am hoping a little extra\u00a0gruesome is okay. If you’re up for the challenge, it’s called Therapy Sessions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog post about not having the energy to write about my roots and being able to accept the fact that I faked the writing that day. I was (and still am) okay with my decision not to push myself that day, but I am amused by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The places we go when we're not looking #amwriting #flashfiction","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[15,33,16,26,6,20],"class_list":["post-162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-carrot-ranch","tag-family","tag-flash-fiction","tag-mother","tag-writing-2","tag-writing-challenge"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WVQN-2C","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions\/163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}