Sunday. Did not sleep well last night, probably due to keeping Penny in my office and giving Paul my big bed. Daylight savings time has ended. Paul woke after 7 a.m. and demanded waffles, which I am glad is becoming a standard breakfast at Grammy’s.
I have to include two sticky notes Paul created and put on the two entrances to the living room area. He wanted to prevent Penny and Ernie from romping through there, destroying the elaborate race course he had constructed for his Hot Wheels car, using pillows, game boxes, books and magazines, and dominoes. They kept breaking through his barriers, so he put up this note to keep them out:
We all went to the 9:00 service, and I invited Neal and Estee to noon dinner after the later service—leftovers of roast chicken from the night before, and warmed-up mashed potatoes from Thanksgiving (still good!). Also leftover squash and applesauce and a fresh salad. It was good to have them around the table again.
After cleanup, Phil and I collapsed into naps, and then I went on a 3.5-mile walk in an attempt to burn through my 700 calories. It did add 300 calories, so good. The day is cold and blustery, and all the leaves are off the trees. I took in the lemon to protect it from frost, and Phil and I got the leaves raked and onto the garden beds.
Read some of C. S. Lewis’s musings on stories for children this afternoon. He said that he wrote from images: “I see pictures. Some of these pictures have a common flavor, almost a common smell, which groups them together. Keep quiet and watch and they will begin joining themselves up…. More often there are gaps. Then at last you have to do some deliberate inventing, have to contrive reasons why these characters should be in these various places doing these various things. I have no idea whether this is the usual way of writing stories, still less whether it is the best. It is the only one I know: images always come first.” He began the Narnia series after imagining a faun serving a girl an elaborate high tea.
One of Lewis’s comments resonated with how and why I write: “Ask ‘What moral do I need?’ For I think we can be sure that what does not concern us [as authors] deeply will not deeply interest our readers, whatever their age. But it is better not to ask the questions at all. Let the pictures tell you their own moral. For the moral inherent in them will rise from whatever spiritual roots you have succeeded in striking during the whole course of your life.” Amen.
Critiqued Christine Widemann’s submission for Inner Circle; still need to critique the GR group’s. Perhaps on the plane? I have completed a rough, revised trajectory for Freya’s story and must start writing immediately! Onward!
