Jennifer Morash

So, I did a thing. 　 Those of you who have been reading this for awhile already know about this thing. Those who know me in person absolutely know about this thing, and may wish that I'd just shut up about it already. 　 I wrote a novel! 　 See, here is the thing. I've spent my whole life thinking that I should write a novel. That if I just did write a novel, it would be great. But I didn't. 　 Why? Because while a part of me thought that a novel I did write would be great, a differet part of me thought that I couldn't actually do it. No idea was quite good enough. This was a case of my confidence on the big picture being overly enthusiastic while my lack of confidence on the small stuff kept me from ever doing it. And the latter turned out to be more of a problem. 　 I think we all have that little voice. It isn't shouting at us about how we are utterly without worth. It lets us see that there are things we probably could do, if only we... <...

I wish the world could see the way I see, sometimes. Not all the time. Not really. Not literally. Yet I do wish the world could see as I do, or at least see one another. 　 Because I don't see through my eyes. I see through my ears, my hands, my nose and my heart. Largely through my hands. 　 I became a massage therapist in 2013, though I decided that I wanted to be one in early 2008 or so. It took me awhile to get my backside in gear, and then it took me much longer to get through the program. 　 Because I also became blind in 2002. At least, that was the most recent time. Another story for another day, that. 　 My name is Jennifer, though many know me as Jenny, and I am a blind massage therapist. 　 Are you one of those people who secretly wants to try massage, or go more often, but you keep feeling like the person working with you is going to be making judgements on your health, your physical fitness, the garlic on your breath, your degree of body hair, or r...

A question I get asked frequently, generally by a client partway through a treatment is, "What made you go into massage therapy?" 　 The simple answer is that my first massage was a completely transformative experience that left me feeling better, both physically and mentally, than I could remember feeling, and I wanted to provide that experience for other people. 　 But of course, the truth is more complicated than that. 　 When I was a child, I spent a lot of time in the hospital for eye surgery, and I wanted to be a nurse or doctor when I grew up. Partly, that was immitating what I was exposed to, but I do now realize that there was a part of me that wanted to help. When I got older and my geeky tendencies led me towards role playing games, I found playing a healer to be initially the most appealing. Until I realized that playing a straight healer got boring in long combat, but that's another story. 　 Part of me yearned to be someone who made others fe...

I step out onto the new, covered porch of the family summer home. I can hear the sounds of the waves of Cobequid Bay rolling in onto the beach. I settle into the embrace of the wicker love seat that waits for me, and I close my eyes. 　 Though I cannot see, I can hear the sounds of nature all around me, and I know that it is the same as when I was a child. The building has moved, the layout has changed, but the sounds of home are still the sounds of home. 　 This is home, where the sun sets in the west over the water, where morning dew creates spiderweb patterns in the grass of the fields, where wild blueberries grow, where the world's highest tides ebb and flow, where sun bakes the sandbar at low tide than comes in to create bath-warm seawater to swim in. 　 These are the fields I ran in as a child, picking wild violets to bring and put in jelly jars. Eating the tiny strawberries that grew without the aid of man, more perfect than those at the store. These are my home...

I think of the part of my brain responsible for writing like a muscle. When I don't use it for awhile, it starts to atrophy and it is then a lot harder for it to do its job with any degree of adequacy. If I want to strengthen it, the only way to do that is to start regularly using it. 　 Just like starting a new workout regime after a period of inactivity, you can't really expect that things are going to jump from bad to excellent right away. You need to be patient, and you need to be kind to yourself, but you also need willpower. 　 In May, I decided to start "working out" with this rather atrophied muscle of mine. I hadn't been writing regularly for far, far too long. I set myself a goal of writing something every day. If I had the time, it could be a lot. If I didn't, it was okay to simply write a paragraph or two. The important thing was that I stuck to that plan. To help keep myself accountable, I told other people. 　 My sister started trying...

I think of the part of my brain responsible for writing like a muscle. When I don't use it for awhile, it starts to atrophy and it is then a lot harder for it to do its job with any degree of adequacy. If I want to strengthen it, the only way to do that is to start regularly using it. 　 Just like starting a new workout regime after a period of inactivity, you can't really expect that things are going to jump from bad to excellent right away. You need to be patient, and you need to be kind to yourself, but you also need willpower. 　 In May, I decided to start "working out" with this rather atrophied muscle of mine. I hadn't been writing regularly for far, far too long. I set myself a goal of writing something every day. If I had the time, it could be a lot. If I didn't, it was okay to simply write a paragraph or two. The important thing was that I stuck to that plan. To help keep myself accountable, I told other people. 　 My sister started trying...

As I am writing this, a completed second draft of the prelude and first chapter of my novel is sitting, completed, on my hard drive. I didn't do a comparison on the prelude, but I will say that Chapter 1 grew by over 1000 words. I am fairly pleased with it, actually. This is by no means even close to meaning novel completion, but I have decided that I should start thinking about beta readers now, rather than later. It's going to take some time to get a workable batch together, and besides, they may find big problems that I have overlooked that should be corrected for ASAP. What, I hear some of you asking, is a beta reader? Essentially, a beta reader is a test reader. A volunteer who willingly subjects themselves to my writing and commits to offering their feedback. But what am I looking for? So glad you asked. 　 1. General readers. I do need some of you to just be plain old reading folk. Preferrably ones who enjoy fantasy, as this is a fantasy novel, and if you h...

Last week, I wrote about the reasons why I write. Further along that theme is the question of how I write. The pedantic answer is with a laptop, a wireless keyboard, text to speech software and Wordpad, because I like barebones in my word processing. But that's not what most people mean when this question comes up. This is how I do it, and I honestly have no idea if it's orthodox or not. It's just what works for me. I start off with an idea, and more often than not this idea is not a plot, but the basis for the plot. Or at least, the problem the plot needs to resolve. Sometimes, it isn't always even that much, but is just a situation. See, with me, I usually have to write the story if I want to find out how it ends. Which might explain why, as discussed last time, these ideas keep haunting me until I write them out. So, with idea firmly in hand - or brain - I sit down at my computer, open up a document, and start typing. I don't edit as I go. Typos, spellin...