6 September :: Words for Wednesday & IWSG

Today is Wednesday. And this means Words for Wednesday!

This challenge started a long time ago, and now it has become a movable feast with Elephant's Child as our coordinator; and the Words are provided by a number of people.

The general idea of this challenge is to make us write. Poems, stories, subtitles, tales, jokes, haiku, crosswords, puns, ... you're the boss.
Use all Words, some Words, one Word, or even none of them if that makes your creative juices flow. Anything goes, only please nothing rude or vulgar.

 It is also a challenge, where the old saying "The more the merrier" holds true.

So Please, remember to follow the links, go back and read other peoples' stories. And please leave a comment after reading. Challenges like this one thrives on interaction, feedback and encouragement. And we ALL need encouragement. 

-- 🇦 -- 🌱 -- 🇧 -- 🍋 -- 🇨 -- 

In September River at Drifting through Life is supplying the prompts for Words for Wednesday.

For today we were given:
Random
Haphazardly
Fixation
Vendetta
Christmas
Hugs
    and/or:
Coastguard
Middle
Basil
Carnation
Junk
Ladder

The weather in Denmark has been very random this summer. The spring was somewhat ordinary, but cool. Then Summer began with a hot, dry period in June and the first days of July -- please note that hot in Denmark means around 20 C.
I say hot, but please note that spring in Denmark is not really hot, the ground and just about the whole worlds is cold from the long winter. This means that for instance a barbecue is a day-time thing, because when the sun sets, or some time before actually, it's just too cold to stay outside without several layers of clothes on.
Dry: It rained all in all less than 20 mm from the middle of May to July 1st. The farmers complained, watering with a hose was forbidden, the filing of pools, and washing of cars likewise.

Then in the rest of July and all of August we were treated to sullen weather: Haphazardly violent showers passed by, flooding fields and tunnels and cellars. The farmers who had been bemoaning the lack of rain in the beginning of the growing season, now shared our misgivings as the the rain fell every day, and the cold, autumn-like winds that blew steadily and the in general far too little sunlight to do any good. The grains just never dried in time for harvest, and the EU regulations' fixations on dates made it necessary for the farmers to harvest their grains wet, sometimes even sprouting in he fields and pay for the drying afterwards. Because only when we had passed the deadline for harvesting and re-sowing of the fields, August 20, the weather became somewhat dry. Still it was cold. The only happy ones were the mushroom hunters, who dressed in sweaters and tophats and went hunting the abundance of mushrooms growing in the woods.
It almost felt as if the weather was having it out for us, an old vendetta, making as many people as miserable as possible. The media foresaw a wave of depressions in the coming winter, topping in the weeks after Christmas.
Strangely the coastguards have not had an easy summer. People has been drowning or in mortal danger much more than usual. Maybe it's the winds, maybe it's the lack of sunshine making people longing for the hugs of the gentle waves diving in even though yellow flags spelled danger for swimmers.

I tell this as a background for my happy dance.
For now it is September, but the weather is behaving as if it's summertime. The Basil is finally growing - even thriving - the carnations and many more summer flowers are flowering. Yesterday I picked some ripe strawberries together with the abundance of blackberries. The blackberries grow behind our junk filled garage, they grow high and tall and thorny, and I have to stand on the top of a ladder to pick some of them.
The last two days I have finally biked to or from the town where I go shopping, finally I have shed my woollen slipover, and finally I do not feel cold when I leave my house.
We are many soaking up the Sun's rays during these days of grace, stocking our larders as it is with sunshine to withstand the coming dark winter.
And in the coming days you'll find me in the hedges, picking haws and rose hips that are finally ripening, or in the trees and brambles, picking plum prunes or blackberries, or biking to town and back again, stopping here and there hoping for mushrooms. And at home you'll find me in the garden, having coffee with The Writer and The Walrus and those Owlets happening to be home, or weeding, or doing things to my flax, or planting, or gathering eggs, or harvesting squash, tomatoes, and rhubarb for dinner, all the time breathing lighter and freer in the balmy warm September sunlight.

Wonderful forecast part two!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Today is also the first Wednesday of the month. Time for the monthly Question from the Insecure Writers' Support Group

Question September 6: The IWSG celebrates 12 years today! When did you discover the IWSG, how do you connect, and how has it helped you?

 My answer:  Going back through my blog archives, I see that I simply began answering the monthly question on November 3, 2021 with not a word offered in explanation.
     I must have met the IWSG some time before this, but when and where I do not remember.

In IWSG as in so many places I feel like the odd man out, the proverbial square peg in a round hole. Let me break this up, explaining what the parts of Insecure Writers Support Group means to me. Citing myself from past IWSG Q&A's.

Insecure - As I told before. I do not feel very insecure as long as I'm writing. I hate it when like now I suffer from Writer's block, but normally I do like this (August 22):

"I tell the story, I want to tell. I sit myself down and write the story down - often after composing it in my head while walking, biking or taking a bath.
  Then I wait for some time,and read it again to see if I still like to read the story. If yes, I go on correcting, expanding and so on this story. And when I like to read it, all of it, I consider it finished.
  I might never publish anything at all this way, but then I hope you, my readers here in the interwebs, and whom else in real life reading my story has had just half as much fun reading my story as I have had telling and writing it.
  This suddenly does not sound like it belongs in a The Insecure Writer's Support Group post, but I promise you that I am still insecure while writing. Trying to find that one word catching the atmosphere in just the right way, trying to give that timbre, recreate this peculiarity and so on."

Writer - a writer, who never published a "real" book. Many articles and poems, translations and editing jobs to my name, even a manual, but no real books. And I began writing even before I started school and I have never stopped (only paused) ever since ... but (January 23)

"Do I want to become a writer? The answer to this question is a definitive maybe!
I want to write, I cannot keep away from writing even if I try. But do I want to become a writer? Not if it interferes too much with family life. Not if I have to do too many inconvenient things, like meetings book promotions and so on. In short, I want to write, but all the parts that come after having written a book ... I do not want those.

Support Group: Yes I need a support group. You all are not necessarily part of the Insecure Writers Support Group. but you sure as ... are my support group. When this (May 22) happens - as now - I can feel your good thoughts, prayers and support from all over the world.

Worst of times: I know how my story should unfold from here, I know what I want to write, the Words are just what I wanted, but the words just won't come. I sit staring at the monitor, at the blank paper in Word, and plain nothing happens. Nothing helps, not just writing anything including shopping lists, not gardening, not thinking of someone who would like a story; my old trick, as most of my stories in the beginning were told to The Owlets before bedtime. I just have to wait ... and I hate it!

As you see, I do not quite fit the concept. But then again. It is good fun, I like the monthly challenge - both answering it and reading other peoples' answers; often I cannot relate to what you all write, often I disagree, but always I learn something new.
Thanks for being there, for being who and what you are!