So is this really an exorcise in optimism for me, or what? Lately it seems like my week is going along fine and then Friday arrives and bam. One negative thing after another. Or is it all in my head? Is it the thought of writing about “Only the Good” that gets me focusing on the bad? Well, I am a contrary soul, so it wouldn’t surprise me a bit. But I am also one stubborn bitch, and there is no way some silly little psychological twitch is gonna get its way. It’s Only the Good in Thorne’s World today.

If you’ve been popping in now and then you all know that I’m writing a novel. This is my second consecutive year participating in National Novel Writing Month. There is an awful lot of good in this. On a good energy level, I’m psychically hooked up with about 130,000 other people worldwide who have all decided to put aside their fears, (or at least throw their Inner Editors into a cage with bread and water) and write. Not just think about writing, not just talk about writing, or wish we could find the time to write; but actually writing.
As for NaNoWriMo itself, it is such a good thing on soooo many levels. The Office of Letters and Light is the place where participants and good hearted lovers of writing and education can make donations, or purchace cool NaNo stuff to helpthe cause. Along with running the website and servers for NaNoWriMo every year for 10 years now, it also supports The Young Writers Program, which “provides kids and teens with a month-long language arts experience that improves self-esteem, teaches perseverance, and radically alters their relationship to writing and literature.” In 2007, over 14,000 kids and teens in 366 classrooms worldwide took part in National Novel Writing Month’s Young Writers Program. I think that is something GOOD!

So here’s the concept for Only The Good Friday. Shelly at This Eclectic Life says:

We are living in some pretty negative times, aren’t we? You can’t pick up a newspaper or turn on the television without hearing more bad news about the economy, the war, the stock market, the political candidates. I think that many of us are living in a state of fear (though I’m in the state of Texas).

Fear feeds upon itself. It’s like a contagious virus. I’m tired of adding to it. I want to start another kind of “virus.”

You see, I think that optimism can be contagious, too. If we consciously try to look at the good in the world around us, it will become easier to see.

Thorne’s words on Only the Good:

I really like this idea. Any of you regulars who have peeked in on Thorne’s World once in awhile over the last year know that between my political activism and blogging, and some pretty heavy personal life stuff, I kinda crashed. Well; no “kinda” about it. The world and life pretty much kicked my ass into a sever depression that I have been trying to pull out of for the last several months. It’s rough for me once I hit the blog, because I seem to have gotten caught up in everything that’s wrong, and when I check in online I still see so much that outrages or upsets me that I have a bit of a hard time keeping to my resolve to try to stay a little calm and happy and out of the outrage and anger and sadness. Shelly’s meme is so GOOD for me!! No matter what’s going on, on Fridays at least I can say to myself “Turn it around, woman! What can you say-think-write-feel-do today that is good?! Positive! Hopeful!!”
Won’t you join us?? Help spread the good love for Only The Good Friday!