patience

There are some phrases that have crept into the social consciousness that seem to be the only thing that people know how to say these days…and it irritates the hell out of me. As I scroll through my Fakebook news feed, I have to sip on an Alka-Seltzer so that I don’t just vomit from the amount of ignorance and value-less drivel that I’m subjected to there. Ah, yes. I’m back…and with a vengeance! I decided that after taking a good deal of time off from blogging here, I would have to return with something that would contain a few zingers for you, starting with a few phrases that really just have to go. So, without further ado,

“This …… is everything!”

If you don’t already know what’s wrong with this phrase, please exit my blog immediately before you hurt yourself trying to figure it out. Obviously, to say that anything that is happening these days is “everything” is extremely trite and ridiculous. Of course, nothing is everything. And everything is nothing. And so on and so on. If you use this phrase, please just don’t. Stop being such a drama queen and tell us why something is good. What would we like about it? Why do we absolutely have to check it out? You have to give me more than just a generic exclamation that a thing is “everything.” Because it’s not. It just isn’t.

“This is just fire!”

No…again…no. It isn’t. I swear, whenever I hear someone say this phrase, I want to run up on them like Will Smith charging the stage at the Oscars. Hope it wasn’t too soon for that one, but really, that’s how it makes me feel. Whatever it is, unless it is actual fire, it is not adequately described as “fire.” So, can we go with something else? It just sounds ridiculous, especially from grown folks.

“It’s delish.”

Us…It’s delish-us…or as normal people like to say, “It’s delicious.” Enough said.

“A whole nother.”

There really is no such thing. It is actually either a whole other or another. There is no nother. Nother isn’t a word. So, you can’t have a whole or even a half nother. Stop trying to.

“Going viral.”

I’m surprised that I even have to say this, but you would think that in these days where so many are terrified of a virus that the last thing anyone would willingly seek out is for anything to go viral. I think it’s just in poor taste and well, stupid.

As if the phrases weren’t enough, I have to include a bit of beef I have with the actual content that I have to weed through as I’m looking for something that resembles news each day. Here are some of the things I could do without on that front:

Anything that has to do with us absolutely needing to see or hear or know what the Kardashians are doing.

I simply don’t care. I don’t need to see headlines about this family every day. I don’t care who they are dating. I don’t care who they are not dating. I don’t care what they are wearing or what events they may be attending. I don’t care about their sex tapes or their lack of sex tapes. I don’t care about seeing them with or without their makeup or clothing. I just want to know what is really going on in the world and these people are in the way of my being able to get to that.

By the same token, please stop with the Megan Fox/Machine Gun Kelly pics and stories.

For as much as I don’t care about the Kardashians, I care even less about these two boobs. They always look constipated or otherwise hindered in any real emotional expression. Do these two actually do anything other than look morose and undernourished? Who knows? All I know is that I can’t get through a day’s news without seeing them roll through my field of vision. For the love of God, can we talk about something else?

Any celebrity’s take on sex, sexual positions, preferences, partners, etc.

Just ewwwww….

For now, I think this is enough. I would have said, “I’m just going to leave this right here,” but that is also on my list of phrases I can’t stand. It’s there with “let that sink in” and a few others that I have neither the time nor patience to crack open here. I’ll save it for my next rant…which is imminent.

Thanks for playing. Stop by again soon.

I used to get so worried when I wasn’t writing every day. I had books in my head and ideas scribbled all over the place, but I was making no concentrated effort to organize these thoughts. After writing the third book in the Rona Shively series, Keeping the Faith, I realized that it was the waiting and hanging back that helped make the book into something that I am very proud to have written. If I had rushed through it, I never would have developed the story the way I needed to and I certainly wouldn’t have reached novel-length without pulling all of my hair out.

They say that slow and steady wins the race. I have to agree with that. I’ve never been a patient person and once I started writing, I learned quickly that if I am not patient, I will not accomplish what I want to accomplish. If I rush through writing a story, it won’t be any good. If I rush through doing updates to my web pages, I’ll forget something or make a big mistake somewhere along the way. If I rush through my interactions with others, I’ll miss some valuable piece of information or advice that I might need later on. So, writing and the business of writing has been teaching me patience, slowly, but surely.

What this means to me is that I see things happening much more clearly. When I do accomplish a goal, it is because I have taken all of the necessary steps to do so. I haven’t taken any shortcuts. And it seems like the more I back off of things and let them happen as they are supposed to, the more I accomplish. I’m very happy with the way things have been going and I know that even though it is taking me a while to get back into my writing groove, the day will come when I can sit at my keyboard and finish that fourth book in my mystery series. The day will come when I have the finished Women’s Self-Esteem book in my hands. I just need to make sure that I am letting things happen the way they should and not rushing to be finished.

For me, the last three years have been amazing in terms of my writing career. Although I’m not a bestseller…yet, I have met so many wonderful people and learned so much about myself and how my world works. My writing has improved over time and I find that I am giving myself more time to recharge in between projects than I did when I started on this journey. That is so unlike me. I’m still anxious to see what else I will learn, but the difference is that now I’m willing to take the time and let that knowledge make its way to me instead of hunting it down and clubbing it over the head.

How do you pace yourself and your writing? What lessons have you learned about writing patiently?

Until next time…

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