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Channel: writing – Melissa Shaw-Smith
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Cotter Pin

You’re a write eejit when your cotter pin takes a hike. One summer I was waiting tables in Montauk, Long Island. I bought a cheap bicycle to get from my flop pad to the beach to the restaurant. It...

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Letting Go

You’re a write eejit when you treat your manuscript like your baby. I’m not the overly sentimental type—or at least I do a good job of hiding it. I wasn’t the one blubbing like a baby at “Mary Poppins”...

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Mud Season

You’re a write eejit when you love to play in the mud. It’s that time of year where I live. A few days of rain and sleet have melted the foot or so of hardened snow and ice and turned the top layer...

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Begining of the Gardener’s Year

So, here’s a little essay I read on National Public Radio a few years ago. Catalog Season, The Beginning of the  Gardener’s Year They start arriving during the holiday season, squished in with the...

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REFLECTIONS: WINTER’S END

You’re a write eejit when goofing off is work. Or at least I keep telling myself that. For a writer play is work. Right! So, I was out looking for signs of spring. You have to look deep in mid March in...

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Hot date with your psyche

You’re a write eejit when you haven’t checked in with your psyche since Iceland last went volcanic. Sad thing is, you never know how much you need to do it, until you do it. Duh! So, it’s my late...

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High Jinks in the Harem

You’re a write eejit when you’re visiting the harem of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, and all you can think of is that life here must have been an endless Turkish soap opera. Forget the sex—the...

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Old Writers, New Media

So, there I am, a write eejit, feeling overwhelmed by the level of New Media I haven’t mastered, when a thought occurs to me: How would writers in the past have handled today’s plethora of media...

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Balancing Act

At this time of year my garden goes bonkers. It takes on a life of its own. Just enough warmth and rain has tripped the switch on new growth, and before my eyes the landscape is transformed into an...

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WHAT KNITTING CAN TEACH YOU ABOUT STORYTELLING

You’re a write eejit when you can’t control your knitting habits. It hit me the other day like a blast from a water cannon that I’d become one of those crazy-aunt knitters. I knit things for people,...

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The White Deer

Everyone has a pocket of the universe where they are in their element. This brings me to the story of our white deer. It was born late—a good month after most of the does had dropped their fawns in...

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SUMMER WRITING FLAB

So what’s the problem? It’s a misty, early September morning. A thunderstorm has just rolled through, leaving yellow leaves from the black walnut littering the lawn. The grasshoppers are zithering in...

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Greek Island Adventure, 5

Angeliki putting on her national costume with Katerina & Yaya’s help In 1973 as a seven-year-old child living the idyllic life on the island of Corfu, I was oblivious to the fact that Greece was in...

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November Morning

Quiet world. Feathers of frost on glass. The clack of buttons and zippers in the tumble dryer, Cat snoring stolidly, Radiators ticking, keeping the cold at bay. The lone cricket whose slow trill I...

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I Hate My Cat

I have a confession: I hate my cat. Am I ashamed? Mildly so But I make no bones about it She smells She’s fat I have to wipe her ass I didn’t ask her to stay She snuck into the basement and gave birth...

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PAGAN MOON

The moon is a blank-faced clock Its ripe orb the only thing That pagan man in pre-historic times Could hang his hat on. The deep chill of winter began the slow Rumble of the seasons The waxing and...

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SNOW–LOVE IT OR HATE IT?

It’s that time of year again; my halls are decked with dripping snow boots, pants, hats, and mittens. We’ve been frolicking in the fluffy stuff, building forts, packing snowballs, snapping snow scenes...

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TOP TEN THINGS I’VE LEARED ABOUT BLOGGING

Blogging is not for sissies. It takes time, focus, and hard work if you want to put out blogs that won’t make you cringe down the road. But the rewards are big. As the Write Eejit comes to the end of...

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SUNDAY OUTING IN THE WEST OF IRELAND

They come, pilgrims of another sort Croagh Patrick, a hulking monolith shrouded in mist at their backs, Bent into the gusting wind and salty squalls driving in off the Atlantic, To gawk at the storm...

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DREAMING OF LANZAROTE (A January Visit to the Doctor’s)

      Six grey ponies tearing at frost-rimed grass on the drive in. Nephin sporting a capÍn of snow. Swans, paired, trawling the lake’s inlets. At the doctor’s office Martina still has her coat and...

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