Genius in the Air

On Saturday at the NM Women Authors’ Book Festival (www.newmexicocreates.org), Taos memoirist Phaedra Greenwood (www.phaedragreenwood.com) talked about slowing down to really appreciate a hillside that was a glowing mass of aspens and hear an elk bugling in the distance in southern Colorado. The amiable Judith Ryan Hendricks (www.judihendricks.com) copped to the fact that, “There’s no such thing as a good first draft. You’re just getting it out so you have something to work with.” And the dynamic Jo-Ann Mapson (www.joannmapson.com) revealed how her newest, “Solomon’s Oak,” was created by layering folklore like how oak trees were sacred to Zeus and the Druids practiced rites under oak trees, with such other inspiration as a Monterey newspaper crime story, the belief that “trouble’s always the most interesting thing in fiction,” and an Indian ghost tale. Web marketer Jan Zimmerman (www.watermelonweb.com) recommended finding eight search terms to describe your writing/business and using them everywhere. So great to mingle with these deep thinkers! There was genius in the air.

On the home front, the giant sunflower is hunched over and looking bedraggled. It’s still staring hopefully into the rising sun, but I can see that effort requires all its strength. Two weeks old, and already out of the youth market. When I walked by it today, I vibed it some encouragement. A block away, a bush of smaller sunflowers was looking better off.