Ruby Standing Deer's Blog, page 4

From coming Spirals book

While writing Spirals, many things have come to me through dream visions. This one really gave me pause and reflection.

This are special words from an elder to Shining Light:

Shining Light, bewildered asked how he knew so much.

He clicked for his mice and they returned. “Age, young one. Many lonely moons as I found my way walking along the Spiral searching for myself. The person we see in the reflection of still waters is only a skin. We never truly find ourselves through others either, they reflect who they think we are back to us. Only when we spend time within the Circle letting go of our skin of who we think we are, will we find ourselves.”

He picked up a handful of dirt and let it run through his fingers. “Each tiny bit of dust tells us something, but only if we are willing to sift through all of it will we ever be able to understand. Some people only hold dirt. Others feel the Energy in each speck. Even what we cannot see lives and if you try, you can feel the Energy. You do not see the air we breathe, yet without it, we would be no more. When you take in air, you take in life.”

SPIRALS BOOK-2 Coming In Later Fall

SPIRALS

A Holy Man, who lives in both this world and the Spirit world, waits hidden in a cave in the canyons, as a newly made woman runs toward him. She flees her would-be suitor, who wants from her more than she can give, and runs right into a snowstorm.

The Holy Man and his constant companions, a colony of mice, accept the woman within the cave. She worries that the Holy Man may be crazy, but given her fear of the man who desires her, maybe crazy is not so bad.

Shining Light, now grown and with family, dreams of the woman and the Holy Man in the canyons. After four seasons of calm and peace in the Forest of Trees, he must go to them. He seeks guidance, but the Spirits tell him only that he must rescue these two people. Ever Shining Light’s faithful companion, White Paws, now with a larger family of his own, senses he must follow his Human Brother.

Shining Light thinks he is going to sneak out with only his cousin, Gentle Wisdom, but he is wrong. His strong-minded woman refuses to be left behind, even though she has just given birth. Shining Light may be a man, but the women in his life keep deciding things for him.

He starts his journey with part of his family, and a hairy-faced one they once called their enemy, in tow. White Paws and his entire pack join them, as does one stubborn, overbearing mustang with her own ideas of who is in charge.

The adventure exceeds all of Shining Light’s expectations. He learns more about himself, and about Gentle Wisdom, than the Holy Peoples of his band could ever teach him.

LOOK FOR BOOK IN LATE FALL

Throw Away People

Both my husband and I met at the now dead Rocky Mt News. Not as writers, but as pressmen, the ones who print the news. Thirty-four years of service nearly gone. Soon my husband will be a part timer at the newspaper he works for now while they go online only, then he will be out in the streets.

Me, I ended up getting hurt there bad enough that they found a way to fire me and my injury led to drug addiction. BUT! I am now a writer with her first book published through a editor of a new company, Evolved Publishing.

We all still cling to what we can in our old age, if you can call fifty-five old. It appears the newspaper here does, they do not want to the “old” people and offer buyouts as soon as they reach sixty.

My hope is people will still read, at-least books. What a great country we live in eh? Throw away people.

Never Allow Self Doubt To Take Control

I admit right here and now that I am a pessimist. Not just a little one either. Being a pessimist make one negative. Being negative will kill you as fast or slowly as drugs. Your body reacts to your emotions. Did you know that? Dentists found bad teeth can affect your organs. I am here to tell you so can being negative.

Waking with unexplained pain? Been to the Doc and they tell you there is nothing wrong? Maybe it is in your head? Yes, it very well may be–and in your entire body. Have you heard the term, “Depression Hurts?” Yes it does and it starts with Pessimism growing into negative thoughts.

So what if someone does not like you, the way you look, your personality. None of that matters. Unless you allow it to dig inside your very being. Like a small blister, if you let it alone, it will go away, but if you mess with it, what happens? It grows, gets worse, possibly infected. That infection can go deep. I know someone it killed.

Never allow self doubt to take control. This is the beginning of the end. You do not think you have what it takes, someone says you do not, you take it to heart. Far too much to heart. You begin to believe it and make it real. You become that reality and you no longer feel you have worth.

STOP IT NOW! We all have worth, we all REALLY do have a reason for being here. We just need to know we can find that reason, push forward and live. Really live. As a Trees drops leaves it no longer needs, drop the attitude.

Today I have dropped my poor attitude, my negative thinking, and have lost my self doubt because I BELIEVE IN MYSELF.

Say it, Believe it, and say it again. Again…. Never stop believing in yourself.

Slow Down

A little lady beetle crawled across the sidewalk in front of me. I bent over and watched this determined creature scamper across to the grass. I did wonder, why not fly if you have that ability. I would.

I began to think of everything I could see way above all else. Soon, I transformed my beetle into Eagle soaring on the air currents over the city, over the mountains and beyond. What a thrill!

But what did I miss at this great height? I asked myself and as quickly, the answer came…simple things. I could not see the cracks in the sidewalk, see the struggle of the wild plant determined to live.

We miss so much by not stopping, catching our breath and being still. As in Circles, Mouse sees what others cannot, will not by just using is his eyes, but his senses. He sees with his inner eyes things others miss. He feels with his mind.

The next time you pass by a plant, animal or person do not pass by in a rush. Take a single moment out you life and observe, or smile. A singe thought or smile will go deep within and if you give it just a second of your time it just may blossom into something wonderful.

Editors needed? You bet!

Too many people are talking the plunge without an editor. That is great if you know “it all” but I get the feeling most do not. I have downloaded many books In the past month and deleted some, Ok more than some.

I may read about half way through a chapter and the grammar, the story wandering, turns me off. I am not vain, I do not expect the best possible writing, but I do expect a book to lead me in and keep me there, not wander off away from the main reason that I opened the book in the first place.

I read one book, and I wonder where the editor was, or if there was ever one. I found so many mistakes, such as on one page, there is an army of forty-eight people following, ready to strike, and FIVE pages later, before the battle there are now eighty-four. Easy to make a simple mistake, we all do it. But, when the battle now begins with the original forty-eight It pulled me out because I had to stop and wonder, Is this a Writer’s mistake who simply did not go back and review what he said, or it is someone (writer) thinking they cannot make a mistake and keeps on writing?

I went over and over Circles and still found silly mistakes. Lucky for me, Lane Diamond, my editor, has a sharp eye and skilled mind and catches what, my own reviews did not. I read my entire book FIVE times and still did not see what he did, what he found.

Never assume as a writer, you can see your own mistakes. I have a writing group that catches a lot, but not all of it. We are human. Editors look with a fresh eye, a mind that sees mistakes because he is not attached to the story as the writer is. Attachment to our characters, our perfectly written scenes full of adjectives describing excessively too much, and our thinking it cannot possibly get better are a writer’s flaws—of perhaps vanity—can be our undoing and we may never get another chance after one poorly written book. It is the first book that will give up a reputation good or bad. “THINK EDITOR.” DO not think you are infallible or you may find out too late.
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Know what you need, not what you want

One of the hardest things a person has to do is decide what is important and what is just taking up time. I have beaded for twenty-five years because I enjoy it. I enjoy it so much I sometimes forget what is really important.

Just two days ago I picked up some new beading magazines and was about to buy some more items for a new project. I heard someone in my mind say “To know what you truly are meant to do, sometimes sacrifices must be made.”

I put down the magazine and thought about that message. What did it mean to me? I looked up at my bookshelf with all my books that hid behind my containers of beads. I understood.

I got hold of my son and told him to come get my beads. Twenty-five years worth. While packing them I started to change my mind. I sat down and was going to email my son and tell him I had changed my mind. When I clicked on my emails one was waiting for me from a site called “White Bison” daily saying that offer guidance. It talked about sacrifice. I cannot quote it here but what it said hit home–

“Good is always available to us, but we often can’t bring it within until we let go of the old ways.” I knew I could no longer split my time between beading and writing. One would suffer, and had suffered. Circles came to me in my dreams, and I wrote my story from those dreams. Now, the dreams are coming back. I have started writing again, the second Circles is being born right now.

My son, already an artist- painter, photographer, had started beading on the side. He showed me the beautiful bead work that he’d been doing, but could not afford the beads he needed, and I needed to be free of mine. The decision had been made for me, I just had to have to courage to give away all my beads. I now understood the sacrifice I needed…had to make happen. The vision, the magazine, my son showing me his gifted talent, all this came together at same time.

I no longer have beads to distract me but miss them very much, so much that I told my son that I envied him. He told me, ” Your book, is just like beading. You are beading words together.”

Wandering

Circles is a story about not just one Peoples, it is our story, all of us. We find life leads us to places we never expected to venture into. Imagine if we did not have that need to explore, experience? We would never grow and simply turn to dust to be blown away.

I have wandered across nearly every state searching. Wondering what was out there. I looked for years until I happened upon an old broken mirror in a restroom of a gas station that was slowly rusting back into Mother Earth. In that mirror, I found myself. The heart and Soul of a real explorer, the explorer of what I could do if I just let myself go…I became a writer.