I am participating in the NaNoWrite Challenge for April 2019.
I will be writing my novel in progress, as first draft.
A twofold Bildungsroman with two main protagonists, two settings, same time frame.
If you would like to know more about the NaNoWrite Challenge go here
I am writing with Camp NaNoWrite go here
an excerpt from a possible first chapter:
Life in Poetry reading, writing, reflecting
April showers bring May flowers
Tuesday, 2 April 2019
Monday, 1 April 2019
⌗AtoZ Challenge, April 1st 2019
Good Morning April Fool.
Here is my contribution to the A to Z Challenge of April 2019.
This is the first time I am participating in this challenge, so we'll see if I have the stamina to complete the whole month !
I am also, very ambitiously, writing for the April NaNoWrite ! So the challenge is twofold !!
Hang on to your horse and enjoy the ride. And good luck to all my fellow participants.
if you would like to know more about the challenge go here
A is for Alice, my eldest daughter, 24 on the 18th.
I first wrote this poem in 2015, she has found her way since.
Please react, comment and I will be sure to reply. Sharing is what brings the words alive.
Thank you for reading.
Susan Baury Rouchard
Here is my contribution to the A to Z Challenge of April 2019.
This is the first time I am participating in this challenge, so we'll see if I have the stamina to complete the whole month !
I am also, very ambitiously, writing for the April NaNoWrite ! So the challenge is twofold !!
Hang on to your horse and enjoy the ride. And good luck to all my fellow participants.
if you would like to know more about the challenge go here
A is for Alice, my eldest daughter, 24 on the 18th.
I first wrote this poem in 2015, she has found her way since.
To my Daughter
She
is sailing without the wind,
bobbing
on the waves.
Without
direction she bales
out
onto a smaller raft.
Deadlines
on the horizon close in.
A
storm struggles
with
the sunlight as she scrambles
up
a bank of intelligence
she
does not possess. Out of reach
the
goals she sets
flounder
with the dusk.
A
long time will pass
and
once again
her sail
will swell, catch the breeze.
She will blow towards the day.
©Susan Baury Rouchard
Please react, comment and I will be sure to reply. Sharing is what brings the words alive.
Thank you for reading.
Susan Baury Rouchard
Friday, 29 March 2019
⌗FMF Five minute friday, MEASURE, March 29th
It’s Friday again. We are officially in Spring.
I am participating in the FMF, writing challenge.
Write for five minutes flat every Friday and post your entry on your blog and on the Facebook group FMF. You don’t have to be on “fesses-bouc” as we chide in French, to participate.
Just go to the Landing page
And follow instructions.
Here is my contribution to the prompt.
❀ A good measure of love in all things, of tolerance, compassion, kindness, joy and peace.
❀ A book by Margareth Forster, one of my favourite authors,
How to Measure a Cow. The difficulty and consequences of shutting out the past.
if you would like to know more click here
❀ A poem/recipe I wrote in 2015, on Blackberry and Apple Pie.
Blackberries
Pick
the blackberries from brambles
along
a meadow in late August.
Brush
away giddy wasps that whip around.
Clothe
yourself with long sleeves, jeans and socks,
although
the weather is blazing hot.
Or
be prepared to tweeze thorns from lacerated skin.
Take
a walking stick with a curved handle
to
reach those juicy nut size ones at the top
Long
legs and long arms cannot be found in a shop.
Wear
a cap and sunglasses to fight off the glare.
Don't
forget to lift those leaves
where
excellence shrinks from the pick.
Bend
down to scoop up the apples to balance
the
taste. They are easier to free from nature;
they
fall from the tree.
Simmer
the two combined, with nutmeg
and
cinnamon. A whiff signals
Sunday
dessert as it coils up the stairs.
Cut
up the soft butter into dice:
clack
clack on the side
of
the enamel bowl.
Sieve
the flour like snow
falling
onto yellow clay.
Grip
the sticky cubes with cool fingers.
Crumb
fat and flour together, roll
the
paste between forefinger and thumb.
Lift
lightly through spread fingers,
like
a prayer, an offering to the god of sweets.
Like
fluffy feathers dancing between open palms.
Knead
and roll out a circle of pastry.
A
blue and white striped egg cup holds up the tent.
Stab
it ten times to release the steam,
and
place it snug in the oven.
©Susan Baury Rouchard
Have a pleasant weekend. Please react, comment and I will be sure to reply. Sharing is what brings Peace into this world.
Thank you for reading.
Susan Baury Rouchard
Saturday, 23 March 2019
#FMF Five Minute Friday challenge, March 22nd, 2019, REWARD
It’s Friday again. We are officially in Spring.
I am participating in the FMF, writing challenge.
Write for five minutes flat every Friday and post your entry on your blog and on the Facebook group FMF. You don’t have to be on “fesses-bouc” as we chide in French, to participate.
Just go to the Landing page
And follow instructions.
As I didn’t have the prompt on Friday morning (French time, you were all still asleep !), I improvised and started writing about something completely different : Equality, following a series of conferences/debates going on in Toulouse this week. So that post you will get later today or tomorrow.
However, here is my contribution to the prompt.
Rejection and Reward (June 2009)
It was a spiffing bit of poetry.
Rhyming lines and bouncing
rhythms. It was about my wee
Alice who when just a babe,
bubbling bubbles would rock
herself to sleep.
bubbling bubbles would rock
herself to sleep.
Startling images and rich assonance
it held. Meaning seeped up
from colourful words, reverence
from colourful words, reverence
for darling daughter peeped
out from stanzas, beats and feet.
Oh woe that my reader should
reject this wonderful piece.
See what you're missing; if only
you could, I shouted to the heavens
in Greece.
Reward lies in the writing,
that's the feat !
Reward lies in the writing,
that's the feat !
©Susan Baury Rouchard
I don’t believe in heavenly rewards, only earthly ones. I think you create the opportunities for reward yourself in life by staying true to your inner being and living everyday with gratefulness, respect and compassion.
Although I am glad to write as part of this group, with Kate, I do not believe in God. I believe in Nature and the laws of Physics. I was baptized an Anglican Protestant and brought up within Christian traditions, more than Christian faith. I enjoy going to Church and sharing a spiritual moment, but I enjoy it just as much in a mosque as I do in a Bhuddist Temple or under the roof of La Case a Palabre in an African village.
I respect and accept all human religions as I do their followers, except if their faith is turned into hate, like it was last Friday in Christchurch.
However, I fundamentally believe that the Big Bang created life in the Universe and that the Big Crunch will end it. I also believe that human beings descend from apes, following Darwin’s theories of evolution and that ‘Lucy’ is one of all our common ancestors, ALL from the Rift Valley in Eastern Africa to Homo Sapiens Sapiens. The change in the color of our skins stems from generations of living under certain, different climates but climate did not alter any other Homo Sapiens Sapiens common traits.
I believe that education, knowledge and keeping the memory of the whole of the Earth’s and its inhabitants’ history alive in the minds of young and future generations is the duty of every human beings.
However, I also believe that we are all free to tell stories, perpetrate traditional legends and dream the day away, after all, that is what makes us human, our thoughts, our imaginations.
As long as we cut a CLEAR line between FACT and FICTION.
Have a pleasant weekend. Please react, comment and I will be sure to reply. Sharing is what brings Peace into this world.
Thank you for reading.
Susan Baury Rouchard
Imagine, John Lennon, Lyrics https://youtu.be/7FX4D1jU2m8
I don’t believe in heavenly rewards, only earthly ones. I think you create the opportunities for reward yourself in life by staying true to your inner being and living everyday with gratefulness, respect and compassion.
Although I am glad to write as part of this group, with Kate, I do not believe in God. I believe in Nature and the laws of Physics. I was baptized an Anglican Protestant and brought up within Christian traditions, more than Christian faith. I enjoy going to Church and sharing a spiritual moment, but I enjoy it just as much in a mosque as I do in a Bhuddist Temple or under the roof of La Case a Palabre in an African village.
I respect and accept all human religions as I do their followers, except if their faith is turned into hate, like it was last Friday in Christchurch.
However, I fundamentally believe that the Big Bang created life in the Universe and that the Big Crunch will end it. I also believe that human beings descend from apes, following Darwin’s theories of evolution and that ‘Lucy’ is one of all our common ancestors, ALL from the Rift Valley in Eastern Africa to Homo Sapiens Sapiens. The change in the color of our skins stems from generations of living under certain, different climates but climate did not alter any other Homo Sapiens Sapiens common traits.
I believe that education, knowledge and keeping the memory of the whole of the Earth’s and its inhabitants’ history alive in the minds of young and future generations is the duty of every human beings.
However, I also believe that we are all free to tell stories, perpetrate traditional legends and dream the day away, after all, that is what makes us human, our thoughts, our imaginations.
As long as we cut a CLEAR line between FACT and FICTION.
Have a pleasant weekend. Please react, comment and I will be sure to reply. Sharing is what brings Peace into this world.
Thank you for reading.
Susan Baury Rouchard
Imagine, John Lennon, Lyrics https://youtu.be/7FX4D1jU2m8
Monday, 18 March 2019
⌗AtoZ Challenge April 2019, Theme revealed.
I am participating in the A to Z Challenge of April 2019.
On this blog, I will be writing poetry and short stories, some new, some older but never blogged.
I am also participating in the Nanowrite Challenge of April which will be more to do with my novel in progress. (Outline described in my post of March 6th, IWSG, heroes and villains).
Hope you’ll join me here and share my journey from April 1st.
Blogging from A to Z April Challenge
http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/
Landing page
On this blog, I will be writing poetry and short stories, some new, some older but never blogged.
I am also participating in the Nanowrite Challenge of April which will be more to do with my novel in progress. (Outline described in my post of March 6th, IWSG, heroes and villains).
Hope you’ll join me here and share my journey from April 1st.
Blogging from A to Z April Challenge
http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/
Landing page
Saturday, 16 March 2019
⌗FMF Five Minute Friday, March 15th, PLACE
Here is my contribution for this week's Five Minute Friday.
A challenge in which you write for five minutes flat on/about a word prompt, whatever it inspires in your writing self.
If you would like to join go to the landing page here
PLACE
1) "The Potty's the Place", a quote from a 'favourite stories for under fives' video from 1991.
'I Want My Potty', a story written by Tony Ross for Walker Books Ltd, turned in a film by King Rollo films Ltd, Anderson Press Ltd, Abbey Broadcast Communications plc.
if you would like to watch
2) "There's no place like HOME", a quote from the Wizard of Oz, if you would like to see the extract I am referring to
Extract number one. Glenda asks 'What have you learnt'
EXTRACT NUMBER TWO, "There's no Place like Home"
However, this fairy tale had dire consequences for the actors has you can see in this short documentary, especially Judy Garland who never really found her happy place in this world, and died in 1969 at age 47.
go here
3) On Friday 15th March 2019, the place to be for me was in Toulouse for the March to Preserve the Climat. A March on Friday for high-school children and students.
There were adults too with smaller children and older people, even very old, in wheelchairs.
From 16.00 TO 17.30, the Place to be was Allés Jules Guesde, in the heart of Toulouse.
From 17.30 TO 19.00, we marched from the Allés Jules Guesde, Palais de Justice, Les Carmes, Rue Alsace Lorraine, The Capitol, Place St Sernin, Place Jeanne d'Arc.
If you would like to watch some videos I took at Allés Jules Guesde : banners, costumes, singing, dancing, slogans chanted, all the different kind of people coming together to protest against the Government inaction in face of the threats to the Planet,
A challenge in which you write for five minutes flat on/about a word prompt, whatever it inspires in your writing self.
If you would like to join go to the landing page here
PLACE
1) "The Potty's the Place", a quote from a 'favourite stories for under fives' video from 1991.
'I Want My Potty', a story written by Tony Ross for Walker Books Ltd, turned in a film by King Rollo films Ltd, Anderson Press Ltd, Abbey Broadcast Communications plc.
if you would like to watch
2) "There's no place like HOME", a quote from the Wizard of Oz, if you would like to see the extract I am referring to
Extract number one. Glenda asks 'What have you learnt'
EXTRACT NUMBER TWO, "There's no Place like Home"
However, this fairy tale had dire consequences for the actors has you can see in this short documentary, especially Judy Garland who never really found her happy place in this world, and died in 1969 at age 47.
go here
3) On Friday 15th March 2019, the place to be for me was in Toulouse for the March to Preserve the Climat. A March on Friday for high-school children and students.
There were adults too with smaller children and older people, even very old, in wheelchairs.
From 16.00 TO 17.30, the Place to be was Allés Jules Guesde, in the heart of Toulouse.
From 17.30 TO 19.00, we marched from the Allés Jules Guesde, Palais de Justice, Les Carmes, Rue Alsace Lorraine, The Capitol, Place St Sernin, Place Jeanne d'Arc.
If you would like to watch some videos I took at Allés Jules Guesde : banners, costumes, singing, dancing, slogans chanted, all the different kind of people coming together to protest against the Government inaction in face of the threats to the Planet,
Saturday, 9 March 2019
#FiveMinuteFriday, March 8th, MORE
I am posting with the Five Minute Friday Challenge.
If you would like to participate, sign up here
MORE
“Please Mr Bumble, can I have some more...” Oliver asked in a small, quivering squeak.
“MORE !” thundered Mr Bumble
In the Yemen, women, men and children need more to eat.
In Cameroon, men, women and children need more health care, more public infrastructures and more political freedom.
In Dubai, immigrant workers need more basic rights, more labor protection and more permanent houses and shops. Not the shanty towns where they are left to slumb their lives away in squalor, while the rich get richer in their glass and metal towers, oblivious to their plight.
To cite but a smithering of the issues the forgotten populations of the world are facing. And they are many and live far and wide across the planet.
So when the rich Northern countries cry for more of everything, I shout back at them :
“ Shut Up and look around you. The world needs more of your Attention, more of your Care, more of your Engagement, more of your Financial Help and more of your Love if we, as a species are to survive !”
An extract from the musical Oliver, that painted a fairytale version of Charles Dicken’s grim novel.
Here
If you would like to participate, sign up here
MORE
“Please Mr Bumble, can I have some more...” Oliver asked in a small, quivering squeak.
“MORE !” thundered Mr Bumble
In the Yemen, women, men and children need more to eat.
In Cameroon, men, women and children need more health care, more public infrastructures and more political freedom.
In Dubai, immigrant workers need more basic rights, more labor protection and more permanent houses and shops. Not the shanty towns where they are left to slumb their lives away in squalor, while the rich get richer in their glass and metal towers, oblivious to their plight.
To cite but a smithering of the issues the forgotten populations of the world are facing. And they are many and live far and wide across the planet.
So when the rich Northern countries cry for more of everything, I shout back at them :
“ Shut Up and look around you. The world needs more of your Attention, more of your Care, more of your Engagement, more of your Financial Help and more of your Love if we, as a species are to survive !”
An extract from the musical Oliver, that painted a fairytale version of Charles Dicken’s grim novel.
Here
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