HAPPY TURKEY DAY EVERYONE!

A few flowers for your holiday table!

Three things I'm thankful for:

Freedom
Family
My love of writing

There are many more, but I have the Thanksgiving meal to cook.
Readers, what are you thankful for (and my other blog friends all over the world, chime in, gratitude increases creativity, it's a proven!).

And everyone...

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Three Seconds of Fame via Social Networking

Bruce on Manzanita Beach

Bruce mentioned the idea for this post, hence the picture of him above. Social networking is all the buzz right now. Or at least it's the buzz I'm hearing because I have one short story out in an anthology, L&L Dreamspell Nightmares, and two more coming out in other anthologies in the next couple of weeks, plus a couple of articles in e-format. I'm also shopping two novels and working on a third during NaNoWriMo.

I've been reading up on platforming, branding and social media and I've come to the conclusion that six billion of us know each other now and we all get three seconds of fame. Okay, maybe because my mind is spinning with all this stuff, I'm exaggerating. I find all this a bit overwhelming...and a bit frustrating, not to mention time consuming. I could use some opinions about all this brand new world.

So, I'm asking my readers--what do you think about social networking? What do you do with social networking? What works for you? What doesn't? Any advice on how to focus efforts/time/whatever in this vast world? Help!

It's also been suggested that now is the time to set up my writer's web page. Once upon a time, I had a web page for my exercise classes. This was not a great experience as I never had the time/knowledge/ability to change/update the page. I'm not a techie, I struggle with doing new things and updating the old on my blog! I've heard good things about wordpress, the best being it's easy to update, change, publish more--more like a blog than a webpage? Dear readers, what do you think? What do you know about webpages? Again, any help is truly appreciated!

Kill the editor

This year, I'm doing NaNoWriMo again. Yesterday, I had a great meeting with my writing friend Kathy of Well Placed Words.

My main struggle in the first three days of NaNo--I know too much. By that I mean I know too much about writing. I was editing every word, sentence, paragraph. Which made writing terribly difficult.

So, here's a few suggestions to kill the editor:

1. Repeat often: it's a first draft, rewrites are for the second draft.
2. I can always remove it later.
3. If I don't write it down, I won't know what it says.
4. Sometimes I have to write the bad stuff before the good stuff.
5. Often I don't know what's good when I'm writing it.
6. I can't edit a blank page.
7. NaNo is to get me writing, not stop me writing.

Okay, readers, how do you kill the editor?

Happy Halloween--NaNo coming up! EEEK!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

This post is going to be quick--I'm alive, I'm alive. And I'm doing NaNoWriMo! Why? Because this year has been crazy and my new book is aching to burst forth ala Alien.

On one of the NaNo threads, someone asked me about healthy edibles during long hours of engorging pages with words. My favorites: plain yogurt with cinnamon, yum, and peanut butter (only a tablespoon or two, max!) with cinnamon--the cinnamon lowers blood pressure (easier to think) and the peanut butter and yogurt are packed with healthy stuff to keep you healthy--add half an apple and you've got great fiber as well to keep you going. Add a couple of cups of green tea with a bit of lemon and you'll live forever--or at least be undead enough to finish NaNo!

Good reading, a new publisher market and a short story of mine

Thanks to Carol and Ann.

Carol Kilgore of Under the Tiki Hut tagged me, ahem, a bit ago. So did Ann of Long Journey Home. Thanks to both of you--although life got away from me and I never did my bit.

Speaking of Carol, she has a great, fun story in the anthology Map of Murder called "Buñuelos for the Beach." Good work, Carol (and the rest of the anthology is good too).

This is a market call from my friend Jane Freund (her last name means friend!) http://www.janefreund.com/freundship-press.html:

I am looking to get as many high caliber writers and authors to publish e-articles and e-books (non-fiction and fiction) as a part of my November 1 kickoff of the newly redesigned Freundship Press website and mission. If you are interested, contact me at jane@freundshippress.com.

The writer gets a percentage of each sale--and Jane is looking for all sorts of things, give it a try!

And last, I've had a couple of requests for a short story of mine to read, here's a link:
http://www.untiedshoelacesofthemind.com/Issue3/sweet.php

Next post may be from my vacation in Manzanita!

Flowing into glorious lives

My Friend Kathy of Well Placed Words dog Mattie, the catahoula hound and my rat terrier puppy Puck, BFF!

The illustration illustrates what I believe we, as writers, should do. Embrace the joy of being what we are. Or, as Kathy said with her own well placed words, "It's supposed to be fun."

Yeah, it is. For most people, writing is not an 8 to 5 job. Not a requirement. So if it's not fun, why do it? I think we all get caught up in writing for the markets, rewriting, editing, selling, re-editing, promoting, blah, blah, blah. Of course, that's part of the creative process too--BUT it's so easy to forget the simple joy of simply creating. And, of course, when I fell so far behind in my entire life, the guilt was great and a glorious excuse and energy suck to not do any thing--even write on my blog! Am I the only one who struggles with these problems?

I suspect not, as was also brought home to me at the Pixie Chicks meeting on Saturday. It's a group of writers of all ages and stages of writing headed by Jane Freund of Freundship Press. All ages and stages, and yet we all struggle with the same blocks to our creativity. (Note: you can join the Pixie Chicks Writers Group on Facebook and participate, even if you don't live in Idaho--although it might be hard to get to the meetings.)

The best is to get into the joyful flow of creating--so how do we do that more often? Readers?

"I'm not dead yet. I'm feeling much better and..."

...I think I could blog a bit.

Yes, I mangled Monty Python--I doubt they mind. In fact, I think they like being mangled. Or at least twisted.

This is a post to mention I'm crawling back into what passes for my normal creative life, with an addition of film, which is no longer film but now digital. What did I learn most these last few weeks? EVERYTHING TAKES LONGER TO DO THAN I THINK IT WILL.

Repeat, repeat, repeat. Time is supposed to be malleable (ala Einstein) so how come I can't stretch every minute, every hour, every day enough? Because everything takes longer than I think!

Do you have this problem?