Cliff hangers

Lets talk turkey.


Six turkeys to be exact. Bill and Ted and Thelma and Louise, Vern and Ernest.


They were my prestent to myself one day when I was feeling down.


I didn't know turkeys could enrich your life in more ways then by consuming them.


I scooped up the white turkey chick and showed KSS how one leg was twisting and turning backwards.


"This deformity sometimes happens to Turkeys K, Ernest will never be able to walk on it. He will be in pain all his life. That's why he has to be put down." I said without feeling. I gently set him back in the warm hay filled box. "farm life is filled with hard desisions." I turned to her and met her five year old tear filled blue eyes.


She awkwardly shifted her weight and readjusted her crooked leg with its heavy brace on it. She squeezed my hand. "If I had been born a turkey, you would have killed me too?" she whispered.


The crushing weight of her question leveled my heart to a point I stuggled to breath.


Many time in my life I have been biffed and sent straight to the mat in an emotional knock out.


I turn the page over to keep reading...only to find it blank. WHAT THE ?! AAAUUUGGHH! I did it to myself again! I flip the page back and re-read it, where was I going with this story? What happened next!

Sigh.

My writing folders are like that. Filled with snapshots of story fragments that I had hastily jotted down with full intention of expanding on at a later date. I get sucked into reading those files sometimes, totally oblivious to the fact that I am the author. That what I am reading are my words, and I can just pick up my pen and at any given moment and write more.

Enter discipline. Getting my mind to focus and write even when it doesn't want too. Writing for some comes easy, and to some extent its easy for me. When I am motivated. When I am not its like trying to cook pancakes from scratch with only having a bowl and a cup of flour to do it with.

I have lots of ingredients for my writing laying around. I just need to find the right motivation to get me to write. I am hoping this blog will give me some focus...cause heck I have been reading this author's work for sometime and she is really good. (P's first rule of being a writer, be your own biggest fan. If you don't want to read what you write how can you expect others to want too?) I need to stop wasting my talent and do more writing. I am a good writer and I have lived an interesting life, why not combine the two? I am a writer worth reading.

Need proof? check this out:


It definetly was not what I expected to hear when I picked up the phone.


"Medical records, this is P"


"Its JEH" his 10 year old voice cracking and a gaspy choking sob added the punctuation in his statement. "I ran over KSS she's laying in the drive way bleeding"


The adreneline reved and my heart stopped beating. I stepped up to the plate. "is she breathing?"


" I don't know, she's just laying there not moving"


"JEH hang up and call 911"


"I can't" he wailed and disolved into tears.


"JEH, hang up and I will call them" 


That moment seemed like forever. The severing of my one link to the kids. Silence in my ear as I tapped the receiver and punched in 911. As I calmly relayed the info to the dispacher, I became aware that my heart wasn't beating. I was in a weird frozen moment in time. No emotions, pure action.


The 911 operater commented "I have an ambulance responding, stay on the line...."


"No" I told her, "I'm on my way out there, those are my kids!"


I hung up the phone whirled and grabbed my purse and keys, and took flight. The over head page caught me as I was running past the nurses station. "P you have a call on line 2"


I lunged over the desk and grabbed the phone expecting it to be him telling me she was dead.


Instead I heard something that set my heart to beating again. 


"P its KSS! I'm ok!"


Over the course of my life I have heard many things that have set my heart to beating and have stopped it cold.


The nurse rushing into my hospital room and pointing at my 11 hour old son "PUT HIM TO BREAST HIS BLOOD SUGAR IS NON-COMPATIBLE WITH LIFE"


Stop.


Entering the NICU and hearing his tiny voice filling the place as he hollered about being hooked up to all the tubes.


Start.


Grandma handing the phone to me and as she ran for her car keys "MPs at the house with a gun"


Stop.


Putting the phone to my ear and hearing C and baby KSS both crying in the back ground.


Start.

You can stop frantically scrolling down now. I just did it to you again. I did warn you though heh, (Cliff hangers)

I made myself this deal years ago. I was in high school struggling to write and feeling discouraged. Part of it was I knew with my spelling/grammar issues, it was likely I would never be published. Um yeah, I am so old that when I went to high school there was no internet. Anyway I made this deal with myself..."you keep reading, and I will keep writing."

I think I want to amend that deal.

P lets work on breaking that bucking bronco of a writer in you. I see an unfocused talent there. Imagine how beautiful it would be if it was polished and perfected and dancing dressage in a show ring.