Marie at 1 Write Way

Still Writing About Five Things

I’ve only missed one day of writing in the last 24 days, a streak I haven’t had in a very long time. My writing has been quite inconsistent, though. At first, I firmly adhered to writing per the five-things essay promoted by Summer Brennan as such:

It does not have to have five paragraphs or five topics. The number five functions more like five little shoves to keep you thinking, to keep your pen moving across the page or your fingers on the keyboard.

(For more on this, read Summer’s description of the Five Things Essay here: The Five Things Essay.)

Initially, I wrote about five distinct things (writing, walking, friendship, family, weaving). Then, occasionally, I’d start with one thing and let it flow into another thing (for example, reflecting about friendships could lead me to also write about loneliness). More recently, my writing turned into talk therapy as I used it to vent and analyze. Even more recently, I started “cheating,” using the five things prompt to read and comment on blog posts, with my comments being the “five things.” This way I can keep up (more or less) with reading blogs as well as fulfill my daily writing assignment.

I’m not sure where this is going to lead me. I firmly believe that any writing is writing that counts, whether the words are for a novel, a blog post, a poem, or a list. Comments on blog posts counts, at least to me, because I always reread what I wrote before I hit send and often edit as well. I don’t want to be misunderstood.

Today, I am going to write my five things here.

Weaving

I recently finished weaving and sewing together 16 potholders to make a tripod mat for my husband. He wants to be able to view the night sky with his telescope out on our patio, but was worried about slippery fingers and dropping lenses down to the hard stones. Hence, this thick cotton mat which fits neatly under the tripod.

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For the four center pieces, I used the pattern Shadow Fern by Deborah Jean Cohen (from her book In the Loop: Radical Potholder Patterns & Techniques, p. 100). The rest of the squares were simple stripes or plain weave. Loops are flax, leaf and autumn from Friendly Looms. In the photo of the full mat, you can see a mistake I made when sewing the squares together. One of the corner squares has its stripes going horizontally instead of vertically. My husband, ever resourceful, said that square will represent North.

Sunsets

Before we set the clocks back an hour, my husband and I enjoyed long evenings on our patio, watching the light turn golden before heading back into our house for dinner. Now it’s a bit of a scramble as I like to prep for dinner ahead of time, before we relax on the patio. One evening I was running late. I was in the middle of prepping for dinner when my husband remarked that it looked like we might have a nice sunset. I thought I would shrug it off (surely, there’ll be more sunsets to enjoy) until he said, “Honey, you have to see this!” As quickly as possible, I put everything in the frig or the microwave for safe keeping (i.e., away from Wendy and Raji) and hurried outside only to have to run back inside to get my phone. He was right. I had to see this.

Sunset over our neighbor’s roof.

Life

One of the joys of having a garden is seeing life bloom. We’ve had some warm days, and the long-winged zebra butterflies have been busy laying eggs. Now we have larvae on our passion vine which will eventually yield more butterflies.

You have to look closely for the larvae. They are there.

Flowers

Actually this could fit under Life, but I’m trying to write five things so … This lovely red Gerbera flower is from a plant that I bought a few years ago. I used to keep it on our deck but everytime it bloomed, a squirrel would decapitate the flower. I was going to give up on it when my husband suggested putting it on the patio. After several months there, it has started to bloom again. And, so far, no squirrels have attempted to make off with the flower.

Red Gerbera daisy

Cats

A few weeks ago, our neighbors had a guest who liked to park their car directly across from our driveway. So it didn’t take long before I noticed some unusual but delightful stencils on the passenger and driver-side windows.

 

I’d love to get these for my car!

Thank you for reading. To those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you had a wonderful holiday. To the rest of you, I hope you had a wonderful Thursday.

Marie A Bailey

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50 responses to “Still Writing About Five Things”

  1. What a wonderful read, Marie!
    And hey, I think all the writing you have done counts, so there.
    I love you husband’s attitude. And it just adds to its cachet of being lovingly hand-made.
    Have a marvellous day!

    Liked by 1 person

  2. I like this concept. If not 5 then 4 would do, or 7 even. It’s a brilliant way to get to know someone by reading about what interests them, randomly presented, in a somewhat organized way. Delightful.

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  3. A lovely post, Marie! Definitely writing, and snippets that you can expand on at some point, if you choose to. I love your mat, and that your husband appreciates it. Those cats in the car windows are so cute. 💙

    Liked by 1 person

  8. I love the idea of a Five Things post and have considered doing them myself now and then. Some topics just don’t need a whole post to themselves. Five is a satisfying number of snippets. And I agree that any writing counts… it’s just important to keep the creative juices flowing.

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    • Thank you, Janis, and yes, indeed, five is a satisfying number. As Summer teaches it, five things can be just one word each or whole paragraphs. What counts most is showing up and writing something :-)

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  13. Have you ever heard of the style of journaling called Morning Notes? A YouTuber by the name of Jared Henderson was how I discovered it. It’s a lovely way to simply sprawl through your mind encountering thoughts and letting them form how they’d like without filtering or restraining them. What you wrote about in your five things reminded me of it somewhat. If you haven’t tried it before, I’d give it a shot! And I’d recommend Jared Henderson’s video on it, he has a very calming yet intellectual demeanor.

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  14. Congratulations on your 24 days of consecutive writing (minus 1 day!). I know from personal experience how gratifying it is when you achieve consistent days of writing, especially if you’ve not managed it before.

    I’ve not heard about the “write about 5 things” before, so will check out that link to learn more – thanks for sharing it.

    I couldn’t see your mat, for some reason my Kindle shows only a blank dark square! The sunset though is absolutely gorgeous!

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