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A couple of weeks ago, I gave you several writing tips based upon fortune cookies. Now, it’s your turn to come up with the best writing tip based on this fortune:

Adventure is worthwhile in itself.

What tidbit of writing wisdom, pithy tip, or hilarious anecdote can you offer today? Or let me know what your best writing tip is in the comments!

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Your Hands moved

Dust and mud

Caked together

To form us.

Oceans, trees, mountains–

A word sufficed.

But humanity needed

Your hands.

How have you seen God’s hands in your life?

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Dear God,

Empty pew seats once occupied

By a limp wrist, sweet voiced boy,

And a stocky, ballsy girl too loud to be proper.

Both exit the pew stage left, down the aisle.

Away from the poisonous voices,

Calling them–unnatural, sinful, damned

Behind the protection of a church bulletin.

This week, we stripped liberties from those not like us. Fear-mongering hate prevented justice from being done. I am grieved that North Carolina chose to alienate so many for the benefit of so few.

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Sunset droops behind knotty pines/ and the hush of wind whispers/ Sleep, Sleep, Sleep/ Tonight, the fan whirrs and small lights flicker in the dark/ You dream/ Pink candyland pony wonder falls/ I wait/ Morning comes too soon/ Robs you and me of our fuschia tinted faeryland/ Plants us in the now/ Book bags, blaring bells, long quiet days/ So, let’s tiptoe past day’s guardian/ Sneak away to the moon dancing./

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With fine words.

For they are empty,

Sloughed off shells–

Hollow.

Do not sernade  me

With silver-lipped songs.

For I hear not

You angel tongues–

Silent.

But woo me

With your whisper

Raw and soul filled

This I hear–

Listen.

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Picture courtesy of Mark Askins

Last night,

Moon so close

I asked her for a dance.

Standing in silver grass

Almost knee-high,

We twirled

To the wind’s

Unsteady rhythms.

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Hello, Saturday. Such a pleasure if I weren’t suffering from allergies. But I shan’t let this bit of irksomeness weigh down my spirits.

Today, my blog friend, Elizabeth Esther, is hosting THE SATURDAY EVENING POST. We link up our favorite post from the previous month, and we get to make new blog friends, learn about various ideas, catch up on the good posts we missed.

For my selection, I chose my poem WRONG. It represents how I feel in the church as a woman and the new direction my blog has taken. Without further ado, why don’t you check out my submission, then head over and link up or read some of the other great writers?

And, if you want to really make my Saturday awesome, subscribe to this lovely blog(yes, I’m partial).

The best writing advice comes from fortune cookies.  

Courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons and Images of Money

Seriously, if we want to write better, perhaps, we should heed some of the wisdom baked with the oddly orange flavored, vanilla cracker cookies(on a side note: what is the flavor of a fortune cookie?). Today, I am giving you my TOP 5 things I learned about writing from my fortune cookies:

1. You are not illiterate.  Neither is your audience. Right now, you’re reading. I hope you’re laughing too. As a writer, it is my job to treat my readers not as ignorant schoolchildren, but as literate, amazing, highly sophisticated, intellectual readers. It is so freeing. Try it.
2. Only put off till tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone. Pretty much my philosophy on housework, dieting, and exercise. If I die with dirty dishes in the sink but have a beautiful manuscript finished, I say I spent my life wisely. If I choose to catch up with another writer to encourage her, no amount of laundry and well scrubbed floors will take the place of this soul balm.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Because they would make better zombie fodder in your manuscript than actually stewing over their horrid bitchiness. Unless you choose the life of a hermit, people will piss us off so badly that hate feels like the only option. Now, take note: vindictive writing isn’t always good writing. But it is cathartic. Let it heal and move on.
4. What you will do matters. All you need is to do it. Begin, write the first sentence that will amaze you and only you. I think sometimes we forget that we are our first readers not our second cousin’s first uncle’s nephew’s daughter twice removed. One thing that helps me get started is gather notecards, post-it notes and write 1 thing. Just do something. Begin the journey with your characters or yourself.
5. At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet. We will never produce our best work if we believe that everything we do is shit. For our best writing, we must be sweet, kind, loving to ourselves. Encourage another writer. Believe in the revision process can make your words better.

My hands must touch the words.  

Your words inked out on gossamer thin paper.

The vast whiteness of page, filled with You, the Word.

Yet, the more I touch these words–paper and ink–

The less I feel You, the Word, the Word of Glory.

Perhaps, You couldn’t live in the abstract words either,

And You broke free from the prison page.

Clothed in human hands and feet–to mingle and live

With humanity.

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Image courtesy of Keith Williamson and Flickr Creative Commons

Dirt crumbles,

Fingers trace a square

In the dust.

Squatting in the middle, I wait.

You fling a flurry

Of poisoned barbed words.

Silence– I refuse to answer,

Except for my trowel, mortar, bricks.

Slowly, my shield rises up

From bone dry earth.

Higher, higher, I build this perfect room

To keep you out.

But I never intended

To wall myself inside

This prison tomb.

 Today, I am linking up with Joy in this Journey and Life: Unmasked. Come Join us here.

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