How many story ideas can you imagine from this photo?

                                           Write a scene. 

                    Try to capture the feel in the photo. Show it with words.

                                          It's good practice!
                
                             And, you never know, you may come up with a

                                     story that even surprises 

                                              you.   

Take in this rock-solid affirmation for writers.

All writers need to hope,

                     to believe

                                and to write!

This cannot be a coincidence. Can’t be. 

I’m at Highlights wonderful  Unworkshop. It's a retreat at a place I'd longed to go for almost 20 years. It’s been a busy day and it's time to sleep, but there’s a book shelf filled with children’s literature and more. I have to peek.

I peruse the titles. BUD NOT BUDDY by Christopher Paul Curtis.  Love that book and have it at home. Joke Books, and lots of Highlights magazines which I read last night. 

One book catches my attention, KINGBIRD HIGHWAY: The Story of a Natural Obsession that Got a Little Out of Hand by Kenn Kaufman.

I don’t know that author. But it looks intriguing and there’s a bird on the cover. I've loved birds since I was a little kid.  Plus, it’s dedicated to the memory of  a person named Theodore.

I’m Theodora.

Okay, so I look up this author. He’s famous in the birding and the book world. Real famous! I should have known him. I also discover  the Kenn and Kimberly Kaufman website and  blog.   http://birdingwithkennandkim.blogspot.com/

Perusing their site, there's an Ibis photo, a bird  I’m struggling to write a  PB about.  And I find one of a woodpecker I saw just the other day in New Jersey. I'd never seen one like it before.

Poke me with a fork; I’m done.  

 I’m  taking the book – no, not stealing it– to read in my bed tucked inside a cozy  writer’s cabin in the Pennsylvania woods far from the August heat of my native Florida. 

But when I return home, I’ll buy this book that spoke volumes to me, not just about birding, but about  living and especially writing. 

I've never experienced writer's block, only foggy days where words won't pop through the brain mist.  Quotes from The Writers Digest List of 72- of-the-best-quotes-about-writing offer comfort. On those days words like these below are:            

                                                                                   "Food for Thought"

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” —Ernest Hemingway

“Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.” —Virginia Woolf

“Making people believe the unbelievable is no trick; it’s work. … Belief and reader absorption come in the details: An overturned tricycle in the gutter of an abandoned neighborhood can stand for everything.”—Stephen King, WD (this quote is from an interview with King in the May/June 2009 issue)

 For more quotes check out:   http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/72-of-the-best-quotes-about-writing