Because life is full of adventures

Category: Writing

Trying to write sometimes things get in our way. This is me trying to get back to my writing, hopefully the things I have found may help someone else.

What is the Best Writing Tool?

Over the years I have found myself using a pencil anytime I have wanted to write. This has been my favorite way to write, although I also have enjoyed using different colored gel pens. While pens are a great way to write I have always wanted to erase things. When they made erasable pens I did try them, yet I didn’t like them. That was back in the 1990s, so I just continued to write with pencils.

My favorite kind of pencil has been a regular number 2 pencil that you sharpened. I have used and still occasionally use mechanical pencils. I enjoy the fact that they never had to sharpen. Still, I prefer a regular pencil even to a mechanical one.

Besides the fact that you can erase a pencil, I cannot tell why I prefer using it over a pen. I feel some of it is the way that it is so easy to write with and flows very nicely. Pens can do the same things yet I seem to hold a pen tighter causing my hand to hurt.

Earlier in the year I was taking a Creative writing college course and trying to get more creative practice. While I am always trying to find ways to spark my creativity, I also am looking for tips from successful writers. In my search for tips, I came across an interview on YouTube with Author Neil Gaiman, by Tim Ferriss. This was my first time watching this YouTuber. If you would like to check out the video you can find it here.

In this interview, Gaiman talks about notebooks he prefers to use when writing a first draft, advice he has for aspiring writers, the way he works on projects, his preferred writing instrument, and a few other things. While I had heard of Fountain Pens, I had never thought of them as a good choice for story writing, but more for things such as calligraphy and fancy writing. Upon watching Gaiman’s interview and hearing him talk about these pens I had the desire to try one out to see how it writes.

Well, I did not just go out and buy a pen. Gaiman mentioned that not everyone is a fan of the pen. The tip he gave on finding one if interested, yet the place he mentions I know there was no way for me to be able to get there. I looked at a few on Amazon but did not purchase any. When Amazon notified me that one of the pens I had looked at was on a lightening deal I used a gift card to purchase it. When the pen arrived, I tried it out and I am so grateful to have learned about this pen.

I earned the gift card from Mistplay where I play games for points. If you are interested in checking out Mistplay use my link here. The link allows me to earn a small amount of points.

Since I was taking college courses over the summer and I enjoy using different colors for the different courses, I ended up purchasing a pack of colored fountain pens to use for my classes. The first pen I bought happened to be one I could buy new ink for to replace the vials.

I would recommend giving them a try. Here are a few options from Amazon. There had been an Amazon Basic one that I bought, but it seems to have been sold out. You can get 20 vials of black ink for $12 here. There are color vials for sale for about $9 for six different colors here. I thought that fountain pens would be expensive, but there are a lot of options on Amazon that are fairly priced such as this one.

I feel as though you just have to find some good ones. Discovering that I enjoy using this pen over any other pen. This pen just seems to glide over the paper and is easy to use.

Let me know what kind of writing material you enjoy using. I am interested in finding new things to use and love learning what others like to use. I am looking for new notebooks to use and would love any suggestions on some or suggestions about good fountain pens.

Finding the Best Way to Remeber Friends

As I mentioned in my last post I have been taking some college courses and one I took was Creative Writing. Since I have been wanting to share my writing with others I thought I would most definitely like to share some of the things I wrote recently on here.

A few years ago right after I found out that I was pregnant with my last son, I discovered that my best friend from third grade had suddenly passed away. It was a tough time and knowing she was gone was hard to handle.

For the last six years as October came closer, I would be very sad and sullen, since my friend’s birthday was coming up. Since she has passed away both of her grandparents who helped to raise her have also passed. She left behind her Mother, two sons, and a daughter.

In my creative writing class, we did some prompts and created short stories, and when I sat down to work on one of the prompts I felt that I would try and focus on things that had happened in our friendship, yet eventually, I moved away from making it about my friend. After a few short stories, we moved on to writing some poems. These poems I wrote came about due to the things that I had experienced in my friendship with her.

As it is her birthday this week I felt that to honor her memory this year I would share one of the poems I created. The following Poem is in memory of J.N. K.:

I Did Not Know How to Tell You

I did not know how to tell you How it made me feel, So I just did what had kept me safe And hid from all the pain.

I could not see how this would hurt you Or take us on different paths, All I understood was the pain it had caused, So I hid from all the pain.

The years went by and by. I tried to see you when I was close by. Things never seemed to be the same, So I hid from all the pain.

I never could forget the friendship That we had. I still could not tell you The reason it was not the same So I still hid from all the pain.

It never occurred to me That you probably felt some pain. I never thought it had hurt you. So I hid from all the pain.

Life could never be how it was, No matter how much I tried. You never told me if I hurt you. So maybe you hid from all the pain.

I can never tell you now all the things I wished to fix. I want to take away, All the pain that did exist. And so I have to deal with all the pain. ~Dixie

Daring First Writing Prompt of the Year 2021 January

So as promised I am here with the first of many Writing prompts of the year. At this time as I stated in my previous post which can be found here I have been searching for writing prompts. When I started this journey I thought that I might have some in one of my writing books that I own, and that was not the case. While they are good resources they just did not have writing prompts as I thought they would.

I have a tool set called “THE WRITER’S TOOLBOX” by Jamie Cal Callan that I thought would have some ideas, and while it is advertised as “creative games and exercises for inspiring the “write” side of your brain” I did not feel it is what I was looking for. It does have a nice feature of helping you if you are stuck on your first line of a story, as well as ones for the middle and ending. It has a lot of different things, but I just did not feel it was what I was looking for, so I went to the internet to find some writing prompts from other sources.

While I was looking I discovered that there are a lot of options out there and I have been working on compiling a list of the ones I find interesting. With that being said I feel that I am falling a little behind on what I was planning to do. It was not my intention to take this long, but in the course of going about my days I happened to be playing with my youngest child and was getting some Nerf guns ready for a little Nerf battle when he decided he needed to try and shot one of them right at my face. Unfortunately he was able to do just that and ended up hitting me right by my eye and made life a bit difficult for a few days.

Writing Prompts

Recently my friend Alex Schenk asked if I wanted to join her and one of her other friends in a writing prompt challenge. They had picked a prompt to start off of and you just had to write from that one idea. Being a writer who is trying to get back into the groove of writing I agreed to join.

Within the week I had taken the time to start on this prompt. As with life things seemed to have gotten into the way of me finishing up the writing on this prompt. Here it is a month or two after she had asked if I wanted in on this and I have not finished the prompt writing.

As with most things in life I would rather continue to work on something over time and eventually complete it, than to just give up on something even if it has taken me an extra long time to complete. If I leave something and never return to it I feel like…well actually I am not really sure what it makes me feel, but I do not like to leave things like that. I have to eventually find a way to complete something that I have started.

Is Writer’s Block Real?

For the last fifteen years or so I have had a hard time with my writing. While I have been able to do a little bit of writing I feel like for the most part I have had writer’s block. I say this because when I sit down to do some writing nothing comes, or if it does I feel like it is just me forcing myself to write.

The last eight years have been rough to find the time to try and write since I have been raising my children and focusing on their needs more than being able to do the things that I may want to do all the time. The first of those eight years I just had my first son, and I was still working. Two years after he was born we moved our family to another state and while I was no longer working I did become pregnant with our second and third children and I was mainly just drained all the time. Since then I have been focusing on raising my children, a few times off and on, on my own while my husband was working in another part of the state.

While I am trying to find the part of me that use to write, I am still having a hard time coming up with things to write about. I hope that this blog would help me to be able to bring back the creative writing I have missed all these years, but so far I have not been successful.

About Me

My name is Dixie Satterfield. I am a wife of twelve years and a mother of almost seven years. I have four children, three boys, and a girl. My middle children are a boy and girl twin.

This is my most recent picture courtesy of my Sister in law Amber Baker

Life with twins has been an adventure and I know that it will be a very long adventure. So far all of our children love to learn new things and are always ready to learn. Since my oldest has been going to school his brother and sister have wanted to as well. We do learning things at home all the time, but they see big brother go off to school and want to be like him.

I am an avid reader, although with four young children I do not always have the time to read the things that I want to read. I do always try to read books with my children in hopes that they will always enjoy reading as they grow. I know that every book is some kind of adventure to be read, some are just the adventure of someone’s real life. My all-time favorite book is Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. I would have to say my favorite author as a child was Dr. Suess. I remember reading all of his books that we had in our house and to this day I enjoy reading his books to my children

Welcome to My Blog

This blog is about the things that I love the most. Those being: having a fun time with my children and other family members,  as well as reading books and working on writing my own works.

I enjoy taking time to teach my children the things they will need to succeed in life, all while trying to have as much fun as we possibly can. We take family trips to visit family we have throughout the United States. We have been moving around quite a bit the last five years and learning to settle into a new environment each time we have done so. While we never really know what the future holds for us as long as we are together as a family we can have fun and live life to its fullest.

I want to bring my love of books to anyone out there that is looking for new books to read. I am always teaching my children to love to read books and comics. We go to the library most weeks and check out new books to read at home. As we explore those books I would like to be able to let others know about them as well. With all the moving around I have been doing in life, especially in the last five years with my family, I have not been reading as much as I used to. For one of the short times we were living with my parents I was able to join my Mom with going to her book group, but since I am no longer there I have not been able to find a book group I am interested in joining and so with starting this blog I thought I could create an online book group that could be joined from anywhere you are, whenever there is time to do so. While I will be doing reviews of books I have never liked the way that people go about giving stars to the things that they like and what not and so I have decided not to use the star system. 

While I do not feel that I have as much time to dedicate to writing as I use to, I still enjoy it. At this time I have been trying to get back into my writing and since I feel like there is strain to it I have been searching ways to get out of this stuck position in writing and would love to share what I have found and what I have gotten to work for me.

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