I love diamonds, don’t get me wrong, but here’s one of the many things I like better than diamonds.
Well, food, of course. And I’m talking about things, not people. Set aside books, because: obviously.
These are all growing just outside my kitchen door.




As Aunt Ora Mae would have said, “Now, ain’t that perty?”
I’m posting today at Fatal Foodies on the topic of a delicious vegetarian (in fact, vegan) stew we had the other night.
A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: What does your character think is better than precious stones?
MA
Mary Montague Sikes
July 29, 2014 at 12:14pmBeautiful! Don’t you just love summer!!!?
Marian Allen
July 29, 2014 at 4:59pmI do! Observing stuff grow is AMAZING!
Jane
July 29, 2014 at 12:20pmNice!
I could see the coleus as BG for a book cover!
Marian Allen
July 29, 2014 at 5:05pmCool!
Dan Antion
July 29, 2014 at 1:58pmI’m going to go with the kinds of things you’ve shown and talked about. Precious stones might make us look better, but I feel better looking at things like those beautiful flowers.
Marian Allen
July 29, 2014 at 5:07pmPlus, I can look at flowers all I want to without somebody calling the cops.
Love quotes Pinterest
July 30, 2014 at 12:29amFirst of all I want to say wonderful blog! I had a quick question that I’d like to ask if you don’t mind.
I was interested to know how you center yourself and
clear your mind before writing. I’ve had a tough time clearing
my mind in getting my ideas out. I do take pleasure in writing however it just seems like the first 10 to 15 minutes are wasted
just trying to figure out how to begin. Any ideas or tips?
Many thanks!
Marian Allen
July 30, 2014 at 8:03amTry doing some free-writing. Set a timer for 15 minutes and just write as fast as you can without stopping to choose words or plan anything out. Some people do this better on the computer, and some people need to feel the ink coming out of a pen onto paper. You could free-write about all the thoughts going through your mind and distracting you, you could pick a word or phrase out of a magazine or your memory at random and write about that, you could take one of the ideas you have in mind or take several and connect them. After the timer goes off, set that aside and work. It might take a while to discover which works best for you.
If that doesn’t do it, maybe you need to sort through your ideas and pin them down a bit before you work on them. I love index cards. Not index card programs on the computer, but actual index cards. If your ideas feel too chaotic to verbalize, sometimes writing them on index cards and then sorting those into relationships can help organize what I really want to say.
Hope this helps! Visit and ask questions any time, and I’ll do my best to answer. 🙂