When Life Hands You Lemons...Write a Story

When life hands you lemons...we've all heard that saying, and many of us can certainly look at the events in our lives as a little (or a lot) sour at times.  My own personal bout with breast cancer has made my mouth pucker a time or two.  The funny thing about it though is I haven't let it slow me down much.  With a career in both education and writing, a husband who can't sit still, and three young children, a pity party just isn't going to happen, and I certainly don't want one.

For a while now, though, I've been thinking about my experience, and a meeting with my local Kentucky Romance Writers opened my eyes to something I'd been toying with.  A guest speaker by the name of Shirley Garrett (click on her name to visit her website), author of A Tap Water Girl In a Bottled Water World, explained that it was a story about her early childhood that got her speaking and writing for a living.  You see, she and her siblings were abandoned by their mother at an early age to live with an aunt who wasn't exactly the nurturing type, and their father was in the military and gone most of the time.  At the age of four, she and her siblings were adopted (by two separate, but close in proximity, families), and the first Christmas the family spent together was her first story she wrote and published.  This is a perfect example of taking the lemons of life and making a very nourishing story.

I have my own ideas for what I'd like to write down, and I kind of had an epiphany of how to go about it.  For a long time, I could only focus on the negative aspects of having cancer (typical mortal me), but now I realize that I need to focus on the positives, and yes, there were positives.  What blessings emerged from such a difficult time in my life?  I've made connections I never would have made; I've learned a few things about myself I never realized I had in me; and I've accomplished a few things I never would have dreamt before.  These are the ideas I want to promote about life's bitter events.  I think if you're going to put yourself out there, do it in a way that uplifts.  That's my goal as I begin writing about my personal experiences.

I don't know that I'll ever publish any of it, except maybe on a blog, but I think I'll be better for getting it down on paper, so to speak.

The truth is, we live in a world full of lemons.  I am currently praying for the folks along the East Coast who've been affected by Hurricane Irene.  Many of these same people just experienced a pretty significant earthquake.  We know bad things happen.  Life is all about obstacles and overcoming.  As writers, why not get a good story or two out of the bad?.

Now, I couldn't post to this blog without some kind of eye candy, so I found this oh, so, delectable model named, Nicholas Lemons.  He must be on hard times because he's apparently lost the shirt off his back *fans self*.

Happy Writing!

Cherie
http://www.cheriemarks.blogspot.com
http://www.cheriemarks.com
Into the Fire, releasing October 5, 2011 from The Wild Rose Press