OH, THE PLACES I'VE BEEN

 <Originally Published October, 2011>

 

Congratulations!

Today is your day.

You’re off to Great Places!

You’re off and away!

 

So begins the motivational book Oh, The Places You’ll Go by the esteemed Dr. Seuss. The book was first published in 1990, years after my own graduation from high school, but if someone had given it to me, I would have scoffed. Why would anyone want to go explore that big scary world when everything I wanted/needed was right here in my small Ohio town? I planned to live in the same area–possibly the same house–where I had grown up and raise a whole passel of children who would wear the same unflattering Orange and Black school colors and then they’d grow up and have babies of their own and live right next door to me. In a word, I was wanderlust-less. So even if Oh, The Places You’ll Go had been available, its encouragement to go off and see the world would have been wasted on me. 

SWEET KINDNESS

On the occasion of a recent celebration on my behalf, a dear friend contacted a woman who not only makes the best sugar cookies, she also specializes in custom decorations. My friend ordered two dozen cookies, telling the baker that I am a writer and suggesting she decorate them with writerly things like quills or a typewriter or other icons that represent my love for creating stories. The baker asked my name and my friend shared Jayne Ormerod. Isn’t that a thoughtful surprise?

When my friend picked up the cookies, the baker was so excited to share her beautiful creations reflecting images of my book covers. The sweet woman had gone above and beyond to look up my writerly profile and decorate the cookies accordingly. Isn’t that a delightful gesture?

Beach Musings: A Rose by any other name can always be changed…

          If you have a character named Rose and need to change it, it’s a simple as using the find and replace function in Word.  How do I know this?  Because I just changed the names of four characters in my latest WIP (that’s Work In Progress for those of you not fluent in writer-speak.)  Is a character’s name important?  You betcha! 

          I love the writerly life.  Well, most of the time.  But it’s a challenge for me to name characters.  Like most writers I know, I have in my writing toolbox a dog-eared copy of The Very Best Baby Name Book in the Whole Wide World.  I use it find good first names for my characters.  Back in the old days I also had a copy of the White Pages on hand so I could thumb through and find the perfect last name to go with the first name.  When’s the last time you saw a copy of the White Pages?  Yeah, it’s been a while for me, too.  The online version is not the same because you can’t just skim it but have to give it a name to look for.  Sigh.  Technology is making my job more difficult.