New year, new blog site for West Coast Writers

Hi readers and writers,

This blog is a continuation of the West Coast Writers blog that has been running on Blogspot for some time.  I have a new Wordpress author website and this blog is one of its pages now, connecting parts of my electronic life that used to be separate entities, thanks to Glenda Ebersole at Site-Pro.

I hope all of my literary friends have a new year full of writing, of lovely family events, of bountiful sensory experiences, and of moments of mindfulness.

I'm participating in Fiona and Kaspalita's Small Stones exercise for January and encourage you to consider it too.  Each day in January, take five or ten minutes out and intensely experience the world around you, wherever you are.  Write a sentence or two about your experience, a small stone.  I'll be posting mine here from time to time, and also on their Writing Our Way Home website.

Happy New Year!

Lorelei (Laura Hoopes)

Small Stone #1 from Laura

Warm air is rising outside my front door, with a grassy smell,  and I see one red and one yellow rose blooming, raised high on the tops of spindly stalks like the statue of liberty's torch.

River of Stones Invitation

Hello Writers and Readers,

One of my author friends invited me to join A River of Stones for January, 2012, and I've decided to write all of you who read my blog.  The mother lode of information about it is here and if you want any more information, or to join the mailing list of the two leaders of AROS, please visit the site.  Here are a few clues: a stone is a short, intense observation of the world around you.  If you want to participate in the January, 2012 River of Stones, you commit to writing down one stone every day of January.  The two leaders want to connect us to our world, to catalyze our careful observation and experiencing of the world around us.  I suspect I'll have at least one day when I will not go happily to the stone manufactory, but I still find careful nature-watching so valuable for my writing that I have committed.  I will post my stones on this blog and connect them to the AROS hashtag on twitter.  If you would like to join in, I'd love you to comment about it on this blog as well as signing up to get inspiration on theirs.  This resolution seems much more worthwhile than the usual ones for New Year's.  Join in!  

 Best, Laura