Barbara J. Hamby

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Chicken Soup

I just finished reading Chicken Soup for the Writer’s Soul. My daughter and son-in-law gave it to me several years ago and I never got around to reading all of it. Some of the Chicken Soup books, I thought, were a little too goody-goody and happy ever after for me. However, I think the version for writers could be very helpful for struggling beginners who aspire to success, whatever that means for each of them.

It can be encouraging to read stories from well-known authors about their early failures. Many of them had huge numbers of rejections before they were published. More writers than you would imagine self-published and were later picked up by publishing houses.

I made a pot of real chicken soup today. We’re trying to use up odds and ends of frozen foods in the chest freezer we inherited from Al’s mother. The freezer needs defrosting soon and it is jam packed with garden vegetables, freezer jam, miscellaneous meat, and whatever bargains she found at the super market. She had a lot of chicken backs, and a few legs and thighs in there that made wonderful soup with a few vegetables and rice or dehydrated potato soup mix added for thickening.

Such a treat can really spoil your taste for canned chicken noodle or chicken rice soup.