Summer Creativity; PLUS a Sneak Peek!

Summer is a great time to be creative!

Whether it is building a track for your cars,

 Or doing some counted cross-stitch,

The entire piece, so far.

close up of my stitching

What it should look like when finished.

The lions on the bottom.

Or doodling a journal page,

The creativity bug has bitten!

Anything you can do to keep the juices flowing will help your writing. If you can carve out a few minutes, or hours, to do a craft, you can do the same with a blog post or a blank Word document.

Doing a craft with your kids is also a great way to keep in practice. Hit up a sale at your local craft store for anything and google crafts to make with them.

P.S. I've been working on the lion cross stitch for 10 years, doing a little in the summer or winter when I feel like it. I bought it on sale for about 5 bucks. I told my 9 year old I might still not be finished in another 10 years and asked him if he'd like it as a graduation present. :)

Have I also been writing? Oh yes. Would you like a sneak peek? Of course you would!

Vivian had taken down the thick curtains that had given the shop a warm, homey feel and moved the comfortable reading chairs for selling. I only just realized they were gone. Sadness swept over me. The store was really closing.

This place had been my home away from home the past 3 years. I could curl up in a chair by the curtained window and dive into any book under Vivian’s watchful, but distant eye. She was like a great-aunt to me, even giving me quotes as advice and picking out books for me when I had exhausted all the titles I knew. She was a librarian as well as a saleswoman, and more of a guardian to her treasures and wizened old woman than a mother hen. I was going to miss her.

I ran my fingertip across the old spines unfocusing my eyes from their faded titles. The inked letters were all worn away, anyway. Dust mites flew in a sunbeam across the shelf from the naked windows. Something flashed before my eyes, a face, a handsome young man, but he looked sad, troubled, and brooding. It was a face that stopped your heart and left you wanting to help him at the same time. Then he was gone. Such a clear image for a millisecond: one that I wanted to see again. Maybe if I retraced my steps. I ran my hand back over the spines again, slowly. I concentrated, my entire being desiring to find him.