Now if you do not have any children in your life-borrow one from a family member or neighbor. Not literally, but talk to the parents and see what appeals to their child and see what you could create. There are many software programs that let a person read a story to a child. See if you might be able to do the same thing. Write then record the story you want to test on the child and let them listen to it. Get the feedback about their response to the story line.

While you might not be interested in childrens writing as a long time project, it can give you some connections to the stories that appealed to you when you were younger and help you unravel what about those stories that you liked that still makes you remember them.  Adding that insight to your writing can change how your reader will connect with you and your stories. Besides it can be fun once in a while to get nostalgic and remember the romance of those old stories and some of the other things that were happening to you and your family during that time that were positive influences on you that still impact you today.

I recently saw a movie and the teacher was contrasting the way fairy tales started and ended and how that often was different than in real life. However, I have had some of those happily ever after results and I’d guess if you really put on your thinking cap you might be able to connect with some of those results too.

Hey, it’s just a bit of time and a few sheets of paper if you are writing manually or a few pages of copy in your word processor. Give it a shot.  It could be great fun and the benefit to your reader will be huge because it makes your writing more believable.

Thanksgiving means many different things to many different people. For some it is a time to reach out to ones that don’t have or aren’t able to visit with their family. For others, it is a time of service, giving time at a homeless shelter or helping an elderly neighbor.

I think for most of us in the USA, it is a time for family and friends: Sitting with the kids (big and small) to watch the Macy’s Day Parade, cheering on your favorite football team, or taking a nap after that “one last piece” of pie. It’s a true moment to express our gratitude and thanks for everything that happened during the year.

Write about the traditions in the country where you live and how you spend this time of year expressing thanks to all of those around you.

Five Fun Turkey Facts
1. It is NOT the turkey that makes you sleepy after a Thanksgiving feast. Tryptophan can only make you sleepy if taken on an empty stomach without protein – hardly the case on Thanksgiving! It’s the carbohydrates in the other foods we eat with our meal that make us sleepy – neither of which are traditional from the original pilgrim’s diet.
2. Ben Franklin liked the Turkey so much he thought it should be the official bird of the US.
3. A wild turkey has excellent vision and hearing. Their field of vision is about 270 degrees and they see in color.
4. Commercially raised turkeys cannot fly due to their weight.
5. The average American eats 18 lbs. of turkey a year. The average person consumes 4500 calories on Thanksgiving Day.

Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for stopping by my writing blog. I hope I have inspired you to begin to write.

It was a beautiful summer day and I was enjoying the day contemplating the wind in the grass while listening to the family laugh while mom finished getting the picnic ready.

This was a happy memory of spending time with the family and the fun we had that day. It would make a great beginning to a story that could be shared with the family.

Memories of events have great value for your documentation of your family history. When you have a memory, start to write about it as if you were still there experiencing it.

When and where might you have a memory from the past that you can begin to write about?

I remember hearing that the hot dog eating champion won again by eating over 50 hot dogs on buns in just a very short time.  Wow, I wonder how that competition got started? Now there is a story!

From eating competitions to parades in all of that activity, there are things to write about. So get those writing instruments out and enjoy jotting down the details of your favorite holiday and the things that make it special to you.

We are always looking for a good story, and who knows, maybe your favorite will become a favorite of others as well.

It would be fun to take a topic and look back to see how it was communicated say 5 years ago, 10 years ago and contrast that with today. Who knew we would have email rather than regular mail and how that has changed our lives or just being able to use the internet to share information with others around the world.

I’m just as happy riding across country in a car rather than on a horse, for  example. Can’t imagine not having some of these conveniences in my life.  How about you?

Every part of your life can give you topics to write about and your experience not only could help others but help you handle how you feel about what happened.

Write About Yummie Brownies

Their are so many recipe books but always a need for more. Describe your favorite food, how it made you feel when you were sharing it with others, some of the events where you might serve the food and the memories you made or will make over sharing this food with others.

Another direction you can go is to write a story about an experience you had and why the food you had continues to bring back memories for you.

Labels can be so useful. When you go and buy your food and groceries, you can pick out what you need easily by what’s on the label.

Imagine going into the canned vegetables aisle of your local supermarket, and none of the tins having any labels. There are just shelves and shelves and naked silver tins, with a hundred different types of vegetable inside, but absolutely no way of knowing what they are without opening the can.

Labels in this instance are a very helpful idea!

Not quite so when it comes to people though. Because when you give someone a label, they will more often than not live up to it.

Tell someone they’re a loser, a waste of space, stupid and incompetent, and they will probably do a very good job of being a loser, a waste of space, stupid and incompetent. In fact they might even been so good at it they virtually make it into an art form.

On the other hand, tell someone they’re creative, talented, capable and courageous and they will most likely rise up to this label and prove it to be right.

But we’re not just talking about “someone” here, we’re talking about you. And when it comes to labeling, the person who labels you most is you.

To reveal some of your favourite labels for yourself, try this quick exercise.

Take a sheet of paper and write in the centre – “I am…”, and circle it. Then, start drawing lines coming out from that central circle, filling them in with all the things you believe you are, all the labels you have given yourself.

Write whatever comes to you, maybe “a father, a writer, a photographer” and “capable, inconsistent, talented, naive”, get down everything that comes.

This will soon give you a good idea of how you see yourself.

What kind of phrases came up? Did you write things like “I am creative”, “I am intelligent”, “I am compassionate”?

Or were they more like: “I am an underachiever”, “I am useless”, “I am lazy”?

If you wrote the positive stuff, then that’s brilliant, you obviously have a strong belief in yourself.

If you wrote the more negative, restrictive phrases, then your beliefs about yourself  won’t allow you to be all you can be, and to be yourself.

Let’s go back to our aisle of canned vegetables for a moment. (Please try to contain your excitement.)

What if there was a mix up at the factory? What if, you thought you were buying the basic, own brand mushy peas, because that’s what it said on the label. But when you got home and opened the tin, inside was not cheap mushy peas, but caviar, worth fifty times what you paid for it.

Labels aren’t fixed, they’re not permanent.

And it’s likely that though you’re more precious than caviar, early in your life (in the labeling area of the factory) someone slapped on a label that said “mushy peas”. Or “kidney beans”. Or something equally uninspired and unfitting.

It’s time to rip off those labels and run free.

How do you do this? It won’t happen overnight, but there are steps you can take today, and every day, to help you live up to all the incredible talents you really do have.

The first step, you’ve already taken. Identify all those negative labels you’ve attached to yourself.

The next step is to remove and replace them, one by one. Turn them around.

“I am an underachiever” becomes “I can achieve anything I set my mind and focus to”.

“I am useless” becomes “I have all the talents and abilities I need to be whoever I want to be”.

“I am lazy” becomes “I am focused and committed to becoming the best version of myself I can be”.

And so on. Start now, take the label that you feel holds you back the most. Write it on a piece of paper on its own. Then rip it up into tiny pieces.

Take a new sheet of paper and write down your new label, the positive turnaround. Doing this once will help, but you must keep reprogramming those old labels every day, many times a day, to make the new positive ones stick.

So, are you ready to rip off YOUR ragged old labels and run free?

Share with us below the labels you carry around with you that hold you back most.