Just so you don't think I've stopped writing

I'm preparing two presentations for the Gaithersburg Book Festival.  One is on the Purpose of Plotting the Plot, and it's geared towards K-3rd graders about writing out what will happen before plunging into creating a comic book.    Regina did the art, and today, I'm inking it so it will show up when we scan the pages into the computer.  It is a slow process. 

The second piece is called (ironically enough), "I don't have time to write, yes you do!"  and it's geared towards those who aspire to be writers, who want to finish that book or write for a newspaper or magazine and don't know the hows of it, or feel too paralyzed to start. 

It will be 30% merely encouragement to dare, and 70% showing the how of making those darts out into the bigger world more successful. 

How to find time to write.
How to write when you don't have any ideas.
How to submit your stuff somewhere. 
How to succeed in having your stuff somewhere get published. 
Lather. Rinse. Repeat. 

I am tired of COVID-19.  I miss the ordinary encounter of community.  I miss mass.  I miss going on date night to the movies.  I miss restaurants and their ambiance of busyness.   I miss teaching and all the random wonderful energy of teens going about the business of being teens.  I miss all my friends from the various places that became part of the ordinary routine of a week, the drycleaner who always says, "She's so blessed," and she is, the guy at the jiffy lube who told me the last book he read and liked was The Outsiders when he was in high school, the familiar faces of people I know but cannot name, and those of people I consider extended family because they've been part of my life for so long.  I miss everyone. 

Writing helps me remember all I'm missing in a format that doesn't stiffle my spirit such that I feel worse for remembering.   Praying for a speedy end to all of this, for a return to something like normal.   

Here's this week's article: A Time to See Faith is an Always Time Thing.