Mystery Musings

I should call these wanderings today instead of musings.  I’m not very focused, just pondering random thoughts.

When I was young, I wrote darker, gloomier stuff.  Not as dark as my daughter’s bleak poetry period when she turned sixteen.  She wore black every day and wrote poems about death.  Worried me for a while until friends told me that was normal.  And it didn’t last.  It was just a phase–one of a few that I was happy to see gone.

The thing is, now that I’ve gotten older, somehow I’ve mellowed  more.  I’ll never write completely cheerful, humorous stuff, but I don’t push the bleak as much as I used to.  And I was in a happy phase of my life when I wrote it.  But life happens to everyone, and I’ve survived more ups and downs than I ever saw coming.  Bleak doesn’t appeal to me like it once did, (and I think bleak is different than dark.  I still like dark once in a while).  It’s made me think that my writing has changed with age, just like I’ve changed with age.

Stephen King has always written horror, hasn’t he?  I know he plays with different things between books, but when he sits down to write a novel, it’s horror, right?  Has his horror changed over time?  I love Alice Hoffman’s PRACTICAL MAGIC, but I read her newer book that was a prequel to that story, and it seemed a lot gloomier than the original story to me.  But she’s survived breast cancer.  Did that change her writing?

I read a title on twitter and was busy so didn’t take the time to read the actual blog.  But the title was about the different stages of a writer’s life.  I wish I would have read it.  Do we all have similar stages?  Or does each person’s life affect his or her fiction?

It’s the Fourth of July as I write this.  Fireworks are bursting up and down our street.  I’ve made three slabs of BBQ ribs to take to Indy tomorrow to see my daughter and to drop off at my grandson’s and his wife’s.  We were all going to get together, but one of Tyler’s friends was exposed to Covid and he doesn’t want to take any chances and give it to us.  So I’m leaving a slab on his doorstep:)  Along with a container of watermelon salad and a small container of panzanella salad.  We’re taking the rest to my daughter’s to eat at her apartment.  She’s providing the dessert!

It’s going to be a nice weekend.  Have I mellowed because life is good?  Or have I mellowed because I’ve learned that I’m strong enough to survive things that I thought would flatten me?  And fingers crossed, I don’t have any major challenges in my future.  I hope the same for you.  But you know the saying…if wishes were cabbages… and all that crap.  If you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them.