Saturday, March 26, 2011

Today's fortune: March 26, 2011

Today's fortune: Tomorrow your creative side will shine forth with exceptional ideas.

You know, I've opened a handful of cookies during this project that say "Tomorrow you will..." or "within the month..." or "next Tuesday..."

And for the purposes of this blog - where I try to follow the fortune exactly while making a readable post each day - those fortunes stink. I don't want to worry about being creative tomorrow, because tomorrow morning I'll open another cookie, and all of a sudden I'll be following the whims of two fortunes.

But hey, that's life in the open-a-fortune-cookie-a-day game. You have to move pretty fast to keep up.

Tomorrow is Sunday, so I'll be able to spend most of the day at home (which is good since, inexplicably, snow is falling again here in Kansas City, even though earlier in the week the temperatures climbed to the 80s). My creative juices flow best at home, in front of my computer, where I can write.

Incidentally, I'm not at home as I write these words. Yesterday was my mother's birthday, and we're spending the afternoon at Mom and Dad's house. Happy birthday, Mom!

Back to creativity. I could take a stab at editing my book, a much-needed task to which I've promised myself I would dedicate more time.

You might not think there's much creativity possible in editing, but as a former newspaper editor, I can testify that in many ways, it requires even more creativity than writing. During a 10-year journalism career, I worked at mostly small newspapers, and often the reporters working under me did not possess journalism degrees. Not that they were bad writers, per se, but they lacked experience, which made my job as an editor more challenging.

And also more enjoyable. What I loved to do was take a raw piece of writing and polish it, often in coordination with the author. We would tweak and twist and trim the article together until the words floated off the page like butterflies.

Self-editing is no less rewarding. I may dedicate some time to that tomorrow.

During lunch today, my brother suggested that I build something. "Do you have some kind of kit at home you could put together?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said. "I have a build-your-own birdhouse kit Jamie and I bought about a year ago when it was on sale, but we never took it out of the box."

I don't know what I'm saving it for. Seems like there's no better day than a cold, rainy Sunday to build a birdhouse.

Maybe the house will help summon Spring and a family of birds to live inside.

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