Swirling Breeze

Sometimes the wind blows and bangs doors. The air feels harsh and hazardous.
I have weeks like that.

Sometimes the breeze is so light that I can't feel it. The air feels stilted and stuffy. My mind can't lock onto purpose and direction. I have days like that.

Sometimes the wind is fresh and floating. The air feels uplifting and unbelievable.
I have moments like that.

And His voice was in the small breeze.

Speak to me, Oh God, I'm listening. Craning. Leaning into the quiet to hear your voice.

Where are you today?

Angie Breidenbach
http://www.MyGemofWisdom.com


Author/Speaker Bio:Angela Breidenbach is Mrs. Montana International 2009 working with Hope’s Promise Orphan Ministries, the American Heart Association, the Jadyn Fred Foundation and drawing awareness to Fair Trade practices. She serves as the American Christian Fiction Writer's Publicity Officer and is a multi-award winning inspirational author and speaker. Angela’s calling is as a purposeful life coach and educator. She’s also certified in mentor/peer counseling as a Stephen Minister and Assisting Minister. Not only did she walk the hard line of deciding to donate her mom's brain, but she is also on the brain donation list at the Brain Bank-Harvard McLean Hospital. She is married, has a combined family of six grown children, one grandson.

Personal growth = Powerful living!
Purposeful Living Educator & Coach.
Helping people battle inner pirates and uncover gems of wisdom to live a rich life.
Come uncover your gems of wisdom at www.MyGemofWisdom.com

Writing & Other Adventures

I am on an amazing adventure this week. My very first online class. No, not taking it, teaching it. I have taken so many that I lost count a long time ago. But each one I took I loved so much, I wanted to teach.

My class is titled, Battling Your Inner Pirates--And Winning! It's based on the non-fiction book I wrote called, Insanity Rules: Gems of Wisdom. (Now I'm thinking I need to change the title of the book before it publishes! I hadn't thought of this title before, lol.) It's the first book in my Gems of Wisdom series.

I did all those things a person does the first time on an adventure. Worried, planned, wondered if anyone would take the class, if I had something to offer that someone else really could learn and then dove in cannonball style.

After I hit send, then I worried that I'd sent too much for the first lesson. Silly me, to worry.

As I responded through the day to my students, I gained confidence. Some students even emailed me private notes about how much they appreciated the class and it was relevant to their life now.

I love chocolate, but to hear that something you've never done before, and that you weren't sure you could do, mattered in someone else's life? Pure bliss! There's not enough chocolate in the world to make up for the feeling that something you did mattered.

So tonight I sent off the second lesson to the ACFW Course eloop. Still a little nervous on my new adventure, but gaining confidence like the little engine that could.

It's a steep hill the first time out. I think I can. I think I can.

I'm overjoyed at the reception. I hope to give a much longer class in the fall from my own website. But first, I'll climb this hill and soar down the other side :-)

If you would like to take the free ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers) classes, all you have to do is become a member and then sign up for the Course E-Loop.

Do you have an adventure you've been thinking about?

What is it?

Angie
PS I now have a Mrs. Montana International facebook group. Please come join and I will do my best to entertain you with interesting tidbits about the preparation and the competition for Mrs. International. It's next week in Chicago!
You can find out more about Mrs. International and even vote for me at http://www.mrsinternational.com/contestants
Be sure and leave me questions too! I love answering them. I'll keep it updated through the pageant, July 14-18,

Battle Your Internal Pirates--And Win!

Today I sent the class introduction for Battle Your Inner Pirates and win! to the members of the American Christian Fiction Writers free online class.

ACFW offers free courses 10 of the 12 months to its members. We have about 1900 members now and many love to take advantage of this free benefit. If you are not a member, you can join by going to www.acfw.com and then after signing up, you can find the course links on the member home page to join the classes.

I'll be teaching a one week course starting tomorrow so you have time to join ACFW if you want to take it :-)

As a life coach, I help people battle their internal pirates--all those negative attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that hold you back from reaching your goals and dreams.

Our topics this week will be:
Monday - Friday instruction days. Tuesday/Thursday discussion. I teach this in 17 chapters or in life coaching at your personal pace. It's obvious we can't do it all, so we will do our best to do justice to what we can. We'll try for 3 of the topics and a quick wrap up on Saturday.

Consider this as a way to find what is blocking you, yes, but also consider it a study in characterization. If your main character were going through some of these mental/spiritual issues, how would they respond?

Be sure to make notes on a different sheet than your personal journal for your character's responses. By doing this, you allow your character to answer differently and grow or become more complicated.

As you work through those pirates that hold you back from your goals, you will be battling for a gem of wisdom. Our goal this week is to win 3 for your treasure chest!

We will deal with these battles on M-W-F:
1. Reframing-- Our Pirates: Rumination, Destructive Scripts, & Assumptions -- Awarded Gemstone: Garnet
2. Ownership vs. Empathy-- Our Pirates: Ownership-- Awarded Gemstone: Opal
3. Courage-- Our Pirates: Fear & Short term thinking -- Awarded Gemstone: Obsidian

Here's a glimpse our treasure hunt together. You may find some of these landmarks mapping the journey in our class this week. It's based on life coaching from, Insanity Rules: Gems of Wisdom, while we battle those internal pirates that hold us back from reaching our goals:

Pique Points: Thought-provoking questions to discuss.

Ponder Points: Tidbits to entice an open mind.

Personal Places: I may share a tender and true story, from the heart of a research volunteer, shared to help others.

Pirates: Those cutthroat negative attitudes, situations and feelings that get in the way of healthy living and healthy writing presented through fictional allegory. In this one week class, we won't be able to deal with all of them, so we will give our attention to the three listed.

Putting It All Together: Tying all the loose ends together in each lesson so it’s easy to understand and easy to then put into practice.

Polishing Point: Real life options to solve real life dilemmas and suggestions on how to put them into practice.

Gems: Gems of wisdom awarded as new concepts are learned along the treasure hunt route.

Definitions: A little more perspective on some words and ideas.

Tips: Tried and true, these are little gem chips that have worked for others. AND these may very well come from you or your classmates!

Ahoy there, Matey. Welcome aboard.

If you are more interested in personal life coaching rather than the spin towards writers, you can contact me here or go to the www.MyGemofWisdom.com site for more information.

Teleseminar with Mrs. Montana International 2009

One of the most exciting new methods of communication today is the Internet teleseminar. This is similar to a radio interview but much, much simpler. A teleseminar is an interview that is broadcast over the phone lines and the Internet at the same time. The speakers are using their the telephones. To attend, all you need to do is dial into the special conference number and put in the ID code. You'll immediately enter the conference and hear the entire interview. You can even listen on your cell phone while in the car.

I am an author, speaker and life coach. I've found this wonderful new opportunity to connect to people all over the world.

Or if you'd rather, you can listen from a special web page. The interview will come over your computer speakers just the same as if you were on the phone, but this method is free to anyone in the world--no international charges. People on the web page can also ask questions and hear the presenters answer them right there from their computer speakers.

Tonight, I'm going to be interviewed via teleseminar with Rosey Dow. Please join us and see how this amazing technology works. It's as simple as making a phone call or clicking a web link. And if you can't be there for the live event, you can listen to the replay. It will be up almost immediately on the web page.

To attend, just go to:
http://tinyurl.com/mrsmontana

and enter your first name and email address. Once you do that, you'll get the phone number and also the web page information via email. The interview is tonight. I hope to meet you there.


Angie Breidenbach
Mrs. Montana International 2009
www.MyGemofWisdom.com

Everyone Else

maggie and milly and molly and may

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

By e e cummings

As an English teacher, I always tell my students there is e e cummings and then there is everyone else. I am surprised that he is the poet I chose for this month's bit. Why not chose William Shakespeare? After all he has an April birthday. That would make sense. Many believe he is The Great Writer. I believe it. And cummings writes of simple things...

Maybe simple is good. Maybe we don't need more.

Simple images...Sunset afternoons with popsicle sticky fingers, curling mist among the trees...can mean so much.

Isn't it the simple things in life that bring the greatest pleasure.

I don't know anything better than a little voice saying, "I love you" at the end of the day. I don't know if there is a food that tastes better than a dish made by the hand of a friend. I don't know if there is a vision that is better than the view that touches our hearts.

So maybe it would be okay if we were ee cummings for a time. Simple images, simple words, simple thoughts. Simple, yet powerful!

March Madness

I get sucker-punched every year by the "Ides of March" (Remember Shakespeare's soothsayer telling Julius Caesar to "Beware the ides of March"?) The 'ides' is the fifteenth of March, (my posting day which I may or may not have consciously or subconsciously forgotten)! But I do readily admit to being infected with March Madness. And I'm not talking about basketball.
My theory is that cabin fever got it's rep in the 1800's when fur traders and miners snowed into the back of beyond ran out of their winter stock of booze. In March. So they started "shooting" from the bottom of the barrel, chugging gut-rotting moonshine and grain alcohol meant for medicinal use only. The deadly symptoms of March Madness immediately manifested; obsessive quick draw gunplay, bird delusions which involved flight from high places, cravings for female and/or male flesh (alive and/or dead… i.e. Donner party). But whether we tipple or not, all of us here in the north suffer some form of March Madness, that crazy eagerness to unpack the hot pants and capri's, brightly paint our shriveled, sun-deprived toenails or sprawl in the sun mostly naked.
My Ground Hog's Day test (conducted on March 15th) where I check how much more winter we have left is this: (and you may want to try it yourself). I go outside, spit into the wind and if spit flies back in my face I know we have at least six weeks left before I have to shave my legs. Six more interminable weeks. My writing's already gone south and I can't follow. My plots puddling, my character's faces blur into Picasso-esc montages and their motives gravitate towards Hawaiin beaches and dark skinned native men. With hot tattoos.
Meanwhile I'm loosing track of days, which really messes with my bathing schedule. I have unnatural dreams about Cheetos (don't even ask) and I've watched so much television I've OD'd on male-enhancement commercials and am having gender issues! I mean, every romance writer needs a healthy dose of 'penis envy' (as long as it's kept in perspective!) But I'm here to tell you Freud barely scratched the surface where my Oedipal, Medea and Titus Andronicus complexes are concerned.
So what to do when March Madness roars in like a lion? I go to my happy place. (Not that happy place, though if it works for you, go for it). I pretty much head the opposite direction (no pun intended) and let my inner child loose. The three year old in me that counts diggers and dozers and cement trucks while I drive. The six year old with missing front teeth that lisps everything I say, and slips in inappropriate swear words just to see if someone's paying attention. I caw at crows, chase the dog who's chasing his tail, catch snowflakes on my tongue, build a blanket fort and take a nap in it. I open my child eyes and see. Minute details of everyday life grow in magnitude. I find pine cones the squirrel's have stripped to nubs and remember painting these green to use as trees in a diorama once. I hunt pussy willows, Frisbee frozen cow-pies at fence posts, stomp ice puddles, ride the back of the couch like it's a race horse, cry when I'm sad, whimper over a sore throat, draw and color, cut and paste, mash marshmallows to goo between my fingers. I make no apologies, it's March Madness.
Me as adult and me as writer arm wrestle constantly over the appropriateness of pretending. It's my curse. But if during March Madness my inner child can't come out to play, a blot, a goiter, a cancer begins to stain my writing. The story sucks, I overwrite, rewrite, deconstruct the write until it's too mangled to make right!
You know what my inner child says then? "You're not having enough fun. So let's pretend. And it's okay to color outside the lines."
Writers are children at heart and a child must play. So let March Madness go out like a lamb, tail wriggling happily. Then look for your inner child in the mirror until she shines in your eyes, give her a slobbery kiss and say, "Let's make mud pies out of April showers."

Keep the old head above water 'til next month, Pam Morris

Setting IS Powerful

I was one of the lucky people in our country to be in Washington DC on inauguration day for President Obama. It is not that day I want to discuss, but the day preceding.

I’d like to take you with me as I reminisce about the Lincoln Memorial and what an impact it has made on my memory. I’d like to tell you what it was like to stand on the steps of the most powerful court in the land and how thrilling it was to even just look at the words, The Library of Congress. I’d like to show you how seeing the Capital Building shimmering white in the setting sun filled my heart with pride at being a citizen of this country. I’d like to share with you the deep sense of joy and hope that permeated the air that day as I walked the paths with thousands of others to visit the monuments and memorials.

But, that is not what I want to discuss.

I believe as writers we all have a bit of magic tucked away in our brains. The ancients called it our muse. Through the ages it has been labeled insanity, imagination, lunacy, inspiration. As writers we have all experienced this shot of realization, this startling of an idea. I definitely felt it that day.

All around us music flowed. People laughed. There was joy and hope flitting on the cool breeze. The sky was damp, but no rain fell. It was the optimism of the day that kept it away. The path led us onward as we felt a camaraderie with perfect strangers.

Rising from the ground was the black mirrored image of the Vietnam Memorial. And for the first time that day I felt an ache deep in my heart. I saw my reflection in the black marble, my hair tossed by the wind. My skin felt hot as tears stung cold on my cheeks. I am a daughter of this war. My family, my loved ones, my father, my uncles all gave pieces of their lives for the sake of lines on a map. I know what it is to see a soldier beaten down, defeated. I know what it is to see his bent back, his lowered head. Seeming to all of those around him that there is no more. No more hope. No more life. No more dreams. But he does not fall. Like the heroes of old he rises with some unseen strength, with pride burning out from his eyes.

I stood with my hand against the cold stone, feeling the beating hearts of the men who had given their last breath for their country. Hearing the Bye, bye miss American Pie lyrics blaring on the radio and the muffled, deep thomp, thomp, thomp of the Huey helicopter as it flew overhead. Circling us, protecting us as it had done all those years ago. I felt as if I had been transported back to 1969.

And even as I grieved for men I never met and felt sorrow for those who stood with roses in their hands, the writer in me learned a lesson. There is no other place where this could have happened to me as a human. No other time, no other moment. Each aspect of it is filled with symbolism and metaphor. I couldn’t have written it to be as real as it was. In transferring that to my fiction writers mind, I see how important it is to have the place in which the characters interact be as large as the characters themselves. Setting is powerful.