Lucy Toppetta: Musings and Other Bits

Lucy - 7 : Procrastination to write daily – 0
I procrastinated about starting this challenge until the registration deadline.As much as I wanted to write more, I had a sinking feeling I would fail two days in.To my great surprise, in the first 3 days words flowed from a reserve I didn’t know I had. A random rhythm-less poem shot out of me like arrows from an expert archer never missing his mark. I thought at that point, surely I would have nothing left in me to continue the challenge. The well must be dry. Where will I find 50 new words to string together coherently, let alone 300? I have little imagination to write eloquent dialogue pouring out of interesting or complicated characters but somehow I do still have something to say. 
I do not know how to categorize my writing if I were to, but it appears to me as a spilling of words onto paper, describing any sentiment, emotion, thought, passion or perhaps, challenge. Sometimes the words flow like a rushing brook and at times they drip ou…

Squash Me
The squash comes in all shapes, sizes, textures and colors. From the deepest orange of pumpkin, to the greenest green of a zucchini, from the pretty shape of the acorn squash to the bottle formed butternut squash, this vegetable is probably the most versatile. I discovered today that the squash got its name from the Native American word askutasquash, which means "eaten raw or uncooked." I also learned that they can date these vegetables back over 10,000 years. 
For many years, I would come across butternut squash at my local market but didn’t know quite what it was. We never had this vegetable on our dinner table. I was attracted mostly to its shape with its long narrow neck and mostly perfectly shaped round bottom. It had a beautiful pale yellow exterior and was very smooth to the touch.

When I decided to take one home, I learned that once I cut through its thick hard skin, the squash had a beautiful orange colored flesh interior, and in its round belly were little a…

Writer's Block Be Crushed


Unless I am driven to write from a strong emotion, homework (when I had some) or a writing challenge, I am not motivated to write. I tried to write in journals and I would stare at the blank page for what seemed like hours before I made a pencil mark. Most often, it ended up being just a doodle!
Last summer I attended an 8-week writing workshop where we always spent a portion of the time writing with our non-dominant hand. It was very odd at first as I couldn’t hold the pencil let alone move it across the page. It is believed that writing with our non-dominant hand expresses our inner child, or our soul’s voice.I gave it whirl and after I managed a few chicken scratches (with all due respect to our feathered friends) on the page and learned to decipher them, I discovered that my other hand was rather chatty. Ideas flowed freely, without judgement, without second thought.Meaningful messages seemed to appear effortlessly on the page. I just let it flow.


Since…

My Imagined Mentor
I can’t say I have had a mentor any time in my life but I have had a lot of teachers. The saying “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear” has been a constant in my life. I have always been guided towards places, people and inanimate objects to collect my lesson for the moment or to be inspired to be creative. I may not have thought these to be helpful at the time, but the lesson was always there. I would refer to some of these to have come in the form of tough love. A quick scan of my life’s outstanding moments assures me that I have learned my lessons well when the time was ripe for teaching.


The teachers have come in many forms. Some were in the form of actual people for good or for bad slipping in and out of my life. They were there to inspire me, to hurt me, to love me, to ultimately teach me something that would bring me to the person I am meant to be. Sometimes, books would literally appear with a title that held a message, or the content to enrich m…

A Work in Progress

I do not have a writing project but I have aspirations to write a string of stories, both inspirational and thought provoking. I know deep inside me live many stories eager to live on a page touched by the ink of my passions. As I sat quietly waiting for the next words to come to my mind to answer the prompt of the day, these words wrote themselves. 

For those that follow numerology, this was posted on 4/14/14 at 8:44pm 




Out of the Muck
In my perfect world
I read, write and sip tea
From a porcelain cup

Served by the man I love
He inspires me to be
More like the me that he knows

Lives deep beneath
The layers thick
With nonsense from my past

He reads what I write
And holds the mirror so I see
That deep below live in me

Talents, life purpose
Gifts for all to see For me to share, to enrich
Encourage and inspire others
To pull away layers of muck
Dilute with kindness and self-love

So the words can flow
And reach those stuck
With more muck and less hope


Be the light
To s…

Step by Step
Writing does not come easy for me.I always felt that my English grammar was not good enough because it is not my first language.The first words I ever heard in my home came from a family who immigrated but two years before I was born. We lived in a predominately English neighbourhood but I only really began speaking English in the first grade.
As is evident with many university students, schools in Quebec continue to spend less time teaching English grammar then they do French. I will not get into a political debate here but the point is I never learned the proper conjugation of English verbs, syntax and many other English language rules. I learned through hearing conversations and of course from reading books.This said, writing builds up in my head in a mosaic of words, run on sentences, images seeking words, and strong emotions looking for that gateway to freedom.
I am rather certain that I am an emotional writer. As an adolescent and young adult, break ups were always a …

How does reading inspire me? What do I like best about reading?  What are my earliest memories about reading?  


Just weeks away from another milestone birthday, I find myself transported back to when I received my very own book on my 9th or 10th birthday.  It was a book I could keep and put on my own shelf. I was so excited. I didn’t have to leave it in the classroom or return it to the library risking a fine if it were late. Today, my shelves are filled with books of many genres but it was easy to spot this particular book this morning. Canadian author Mary Grannan who penned this book of a little freckled girl with pigtails and her many adventures is written in short story style. The book is called “New Maggie Muggins” and although I lost its jacket, its red hard cover has survived the test of time and looks as new as that first day I received it, over 45 years ago.
As an adolescent and young adult I learned very quickly that I enjoyed being alone and losing myself reading about other…

Those who don't know me well usually get the wrong first impression of who, and most importantly - what I am. I've been called quiet, shy, unapproachable, anti-social, lazy, weird - just to name a few. Most of my life, I often wondered what made people think this way and I secretly thought that perhaps there was something very wrong with me. I wasn't like many people I knew. I wasn’t the first to start a conversation or easily jump into one. I was uncomfortable bragging - and I use the word lightly, about something amazing that happened to me if someone just shared a wonderful event in their life.I usually kept to myself not to draw too much attention.This smells of low self-esteem but I came to realize it is much more.Although many life experiences will often have an indelible effect on a person's personality, their innate character traits are often determined by brain wiring. Carl Jung explored this topic in depth and his personality testing continues to be used as…