Close-up of gingerbread cookie face.

Holiday Survival and Crystal Stewart’s Writing Journey

Posted on by da-AL
burnt gingermen cookies
Singed ginger cookie people can still be tasty!
Photo courtesy of Getty Images

Holidays can be nice — and terrible! Family can bring us to our knees — both to swoon and to cringe. Romance can make our hearts flutter or seize.

From Halloween to New Year’s, at least here in the U.S., 24/7 we’re inundated with messages of how this is the time for families and lovers. We’re instructed to either kiss, or to kiss and make up.

Sometimes they’re not possible. At times, they aren’t in our best interest.

Close-up of gingerbread cookie face.
Imperfect ginger cookie people can still make us smile!

Traditional or sacred, I invite you to join me in acknowledging that some holiday seasons are best ignored. It’s ok to give them a rest. Some years, it’s fine if we just get through them!

We’re allowed to do whatever it takes to mark time, to survive, to thrive through and into gentler times.

Today’s Guest Blog Post

Blogger/writer Crystal Stewart’s writing life sounds like it was as much of a surprise as it was destiny. For more about her and her writing, check out her blogs: CRYSTAL AND DAISY MAE’S PHOTO-BLOGGING SITE and WELCOME TO CRYSTAL’S SITE (ORIGINALLY COUNTRY LIVING). She’s just finished her first book, “Secrets Buried Within”…

Writer/blogger Crystal Stewart.
Writer/blogger Crystal Stewart.

My Writing Journey by Crystal Stewart

My writing journey actually started in College and also everything started as a fluke and I owe it all to one of my College Professors who took the whole class one day to hear Maya Angelou speak as an assignment of ours and a perk was we got to meet her if we wanted to so after hearing this author speak I decided to the opportunity to meet her and OH WOW what an experience and the one thing I remember her saying to everyone was NEVER GIVE UP.

And after hearing her talk I started dabbling in writing poetry and short stories nothing serious just dabbling to see if I was talented enough to be a writer and then after graduation I continued to dabble in writing poetry and short stories when I had the time.

However on February 6, 2019 I started to write more seriously and what I mean by that is I started to write Novels starting February 6, 2019 and yes I still wrote short stories and poetry and every now then did pet poems after they had gone to the Rainbow Bridge.

So I guess you could say I have been writing for quite a while now in fact I just finished my very first Novella so if you broke things up it would look something like this:

  1. College to February 5, 2019 – Short Stories and Poetry.
  2. February 6, 2019 to Present – Novels mostly and Short Stories and Poetry I haven’t done a Novella yet the only thing I haven’t done.
  3. Wrote short stories about my Cat Tigger from her POV and wrote a short story about Daisy Mae from her POV. Will soon be publishing them.

Ever since I have found out that I have a gift for writing stories my dream of being a Published Author someday is something that I hope I can accomplish but for now I will keep writing for fun until I accomplish that dream.

However I am getting noticed I have been interviewed once and now I have the opportunity to talk to all of you about my passion for writing and all of the Books and Short Stories and Poetry I’ve written.

But the one book that is a novel that I am quite proud of is the one I just finished and is also the biggest and longest book I have ever written it is 171,380 words long and is entitled SECRETS BURIED WITHIN… now that the book is written I just have to publish it something that is a lot harder to do.

Cover of Crystal Stewart's book, “Secrets Buried Within.”
Crystal plans to publish her book, “Secrets Buried Within,” soon.

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Published by da-AL

Happiness Between Tails speaks to and from the heart. It connects lovers — of pets, authors, books — and of my still-unreleased novels, “Flamenco + the Sitting Cat” and “Tango + the Sitting Cat.” The stories are my love letters to all who fear they're too odd, too damaged, too old, too whatever to find happiness. ContactdaAL@gmail.com • BuyMeACoffee.com/SupportHBT

20 thoughts on “Holiday Survival and Crystal Stewart’s Writing Journey”

  1. Maya Angelou is one of the smartest people I’ve ever read. I would have love the oppotunity to hear her speak. Not a week goes by when someone in the writing community isn’t repeating one of her quotes.

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  2. Best wishes for the next stages in your career. I found the whole process so much fun, but also incredibly tough as there is far more behind the scenes work, even for self pub authors, before you hit the publish button on KDP or whatever you choose. Fun times ahead, for sure. The thing is to never give up.

    Erin

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  5. We have been enjoying cooking our vegetarian Christmas spread and eating it. We still have to wait with the dessert, as we ate too much, haha. I haven’t got many family members left, a cousin and his mother in Germany and my younger brother in oregon. Oh, I am forgetting a newly found cousin of my father’s, who immigrated to Denmark 10 years or so after me. That was fun, we met a few times but not enough to build up a very close relationship. He and his wife are very nice though.

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    1. that sounds like a perfect way to celebrate the holiday season. can’t remember if I mentioned that for the last few years, we’ve being a very local nondenominational ‘Jewish Christmas’ of local movie and local Chinese restaurant dinner

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