Hi everyone, and welcome to our final Monday Morning Warm-up!

This has been a wonderful month of learning, sharing and growing. Thank you for participating!

First off, thanks to everyone who stepped in to reply to comments left last Monday while I was away.

Last Monday, I asked you all to explore fear, and I know that can be a pretty, well, scary thing to do! But I hope you all gave it a try. Today, I want to switch gears and explore joy. I think many of us have been feeling pretty grim these past 8 months, worrying about our country, and more specifically our country's most vulnerable under this new administration. But even in fear and worry and despair, there can be moments of great joy. Joy in a new season, an unexpected beautiful day, a funny joke, a kitten meme, you name it. Joy can be big and small. And joy can be tremendously hopeful. How do we convey genuine joy in our work in unexpected, fresh ways? Can you describe joy without using over-used or predictable words and phrases? Can you express joy without using the word smile, for example? Or grin? Or happy? Let's try it.

Monday Morning Warm-up:

Write a scene that depicts your main character experiencing a moment of unexpected joy, without using the words above. How do you capture that true, inner feeling of blissful surprise? How can you show your reader your character's pure happiness without explicitly telling us how he or she is feeling? Try it! And enJOY! :) And if you want to, please share!