Happy May Day!

I was just notified that May 1st was my one year anniversary with Word Press. My blog has been a great way for me to keep honing my craft of writing but has also helped me to build a following and meet some really interesting people along the way. Thanks to all of my current followers and those yet to join me on my writing journey. What a way to celebrate May Day!

One other very important thing that May Day brings to mind is my friend Laura’s birthday. Happy Birthday dear friend.

According to Wikipedia, not only is May 1st May Day, a celebration of spring, it is also International Workers’ Day. The celebration of May Day or “Spring Day” for the seasons goes back to pre Christian times. In early European pagan cultures, February 1st was seen as the start of spring while May 1st was the first day of summer. So May Day was initially seen as a celebration of the start of summer. Now a days, we’ve defined the first day of summer by the summer solstice, which this falls on June 20th. Back in those pre Christian times, the summer solstice was seen as midsummer. Maybe that was part of the back story to the title of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Some of the traditional spring celebrations start on May Day Eve and include many flowers and picnics. There’s also the tradition of placing baskets of flowers onto people’s door knobs, ringing their doorbell or knocking on their doors, and running away before they have the chance to answer. The recipient opens the door and finds a bunch of beautiful flowers, typically in a cone shaped holder. Now, there is another type of door bell ringing activity that has evolved from that called Ding-Dong-Ditch. It is the same idea, but with no flowers or gifts involved. Another traditional part of the celebration included a wooden pole that was usually constructed in a prominent place in town. It was decorated with streamers and flowers and a dance would be done around it as part of the festivities.

International Workers’ Day selected May 1st as their day of recognition in the late nineteenth century. This is an international celebration of labourers and the working class. May 1st was chosen to commemorate the Haymarket Affair in Chicago on May 4, 1886. Workers were on strike fighting for businesses to institute a mandatory eight hour work day. One of the demonstrators threw a bomb at the police and they started to shoot at the group. Four demonstrators were killed. Other May 1st protests occurred after this. For the anniversary of the Haymarket Affair in 1890, international protests were requested and there were the May Day riots in 1894. Since it shares the date with the European spring celebration, some people choose to celebrate International Workers’ Day on other dates that are significant to them. In America, this day is celebrated the first Monday in September and has been made into a holiday weekend, commemorating the end of summer and back to school for most kids.

**

I’m happy to report things are moving along with my writing goals. I submitted my short story, Found in West Branch, for A Journey of Words on Friday. It is a book of short stories from many different authors. Hopefully it will be accepted for publication! It would be my first published piece in the fictional world. My Middle Grade manuscript, The Hard Way, is with my editor as we speak. We’ll see what she has to say about it. She did the editing for my short story and that was the first time I had an actual editor go through something I have written. I’ve had friends and other writers read what I’ve written. I even had my book club read The Hard Way before it went to the editor. With that valuable feedback from my readers, I’ve made my writing better. Sometimes that input has given me a different direction to consider for a story line to go too. Those inputs are important to consider, but may not be the best thing to do. They are decisions an author must make to make the story a good one, but also  keep it their own.

Reading through the edits from my editor was definitely a learning experience. She was able to give me copy editing changes and some ideas on how to word things differently. I wasn’t aware of the fact that it was going to lead to more work for me before I’d be able to submit. I thought it would come back polished and ready to send out.

She showed me things I do well and things I need to work on. Writing is a craft, and has to be practiced over and over to make it better. I knew there would be things that I needed to work on, it is good to know what some of them are now. My editor suggested a couple of books that may help me. One is Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browe & Dave King and the other is English Syntax by Dick Heaberlin. I’m looking forward to doing some studying with them while I wait for my manuscript to come back.

As I write this post, I realize how much I love to write. It has been a part of me since I started writing my thoughts and dreams in diaries growing up. Remember the ones with the little locks and keys? I still have a key chain with all of those keys on it. I’ll have to ask my Dad if I asked for the dairies or if my parents just tried giving me one as a gift and it caught on. It would be interesting to know, because it is part of what got the writing thing started in me.

Sometimes it is hard to get the time to write. I know that I’m not the only one that struggles with this. I read a blog today and he was showing his frustration over it. My day job is time and energy demanding and family things keep us moving. But, for something I love to do, I’m somehow able to get it done. Maybe it is in bits and pieces, but all of those small contributions seem to get the projects done. The hard work and dedication pays off when I’m able to submit the short story or get the Monday Morning Blog posted. It’s all a part of this writer’s journey.

#LaborDay #SummerSolstice #FoundinWestBranch #WritingGoals #AJourneyofWords #InternationalWorkersDay #WilliamShakespeare #MayPole #SpringDay #MayDay #EnglishSyntax #ShortStory #AMidsummerNightsDream #Editing #RenniBrowne #WritingJourney #Midsummer #editors #Summer #HaymarketAffair #SelfEditingforFictionWriters #flowers #DingDongDitch #DaveKing #DickHeaberlin