The sun was shining brightly in the winter sky and a cool breeze blew softly through the garden, teasing native grasses. Birds flitted to and from a large oak and the blooming rosemary where bees buzzed, happy to have food at this time of year. I had decided to take the afternoon off to prune my lovely salvias and native grasses, but one thought kept creeping into my mind disturbing the otherwise peaceful day.
To clear my head, I poured myself a small glass of wine (What? It was almost five o’clock.) and sat contemplating the weight on my mind: the abnormally long length of time it was taking me to write an article. The piece was for a newspaper and about a subject that is a sensitive area for me. Each time I thought I was moving along and making some headway, I would get hung up.


Wine glass created by a potter in Paonia, Colorado
As I sat there under the clear blue sky, staring at the wine cup, I wondered, was the person who crafted the pottery I held in my hands concerned with the time it was taking him to make it? Did he get hung up or become obsessive when his hands were molding the soft clay? I looked at the cup more closely and saw all of its “imperfections” and remembered that the rawness of this piece is what drew me to it in the first place. I knew it was a person who created it and not some machine and this made it special to me.
The wine cup and its creator helped me realize that a written work is no different. It will have its pieces and parts that are not perfectly written and there will be word choices that could have been more effective, but when someone reads it, they will know a human created it and that the writer wrote it from the heart. They will know that I wrote down my thoughts for them because I care. Well, at least that’s my hope.
Here are some words that formed in my mind as I sat watching the sun make its way over the western mountains:
Write for the sake of writing, give for the sake of giving, create for the sake of creating and love for the sake of loving and being loved.
Happy writing!



by Amber Galusha
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