Memorial Day

Happy Memorial Day

Wishing everyone a safe and happy holiday.

Please take a moment out of your celebrations to remember

all the missing and fallen servicemen and women who have made

the utimate sacrifice.

Writing Short

If you're anything like me, you may like to dabble in different forms. While I'm currently enrolled in a course offered by The Institute of Children's Literature, I also experiment with poetry and adult fiction.

I recently came across an interesting market. Blink|Ink, a quarterly fiction magazine, showcases short fiction of about 50 words.

"A blink of words, just a handful, is how we share our lives and thoughts, with one another."

Blink|Ink also features special issues, downloads, art, multimedia projects, photography, and more.  Their website says:

...Nobody in our organization receives compensation for this, and we cannot pay our contributors at this time. What we can do, in sharing our love of writing, is offer free copies and support to our contributors. Blink|Ink, as part of Full Of Crow, is made up editors who understand community and the need to support our own. If we can be of help to our contributors, please contact us. If you have a concern, please share those as well because we are committed not only to demonstrating appreciation for our readers and writers but to standing by them.

Why not visit their website? At this time, Blink|Ink is looking for dark fiction submissions until June 15, 2011t)

http://www.blink-ink.com/

The Stylish Blogger Award

I have been trying to pass this award to the recipient's blogs without any luck.
Apparently there is a glitch in the matrix and I can't even post comments to my own blog!

Hopefully, blogger will correct this problem soon.

Another Award! Squee!

Yippee!!  I am the winner of the Stylish Blogger Award. 

Thanks so very much Courtney Rene of: http//www.courtneyrene.blogspot.com for giving me this award.  Its a beauty!

For this award I have to share 7 things about myself:

1. I LOVE to travel. When I win the lottery (notice the positivity) I'm going on a trip around the world. I've been to Bermuda, The Bahamas, The Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Mexico, Switzerland, Germany, Lichtenstein, and England. But there's still so many places I want to see. 
2. Even though I moved to the country twenty years ago, I can still parallel park, on either side of the street, in one motion whenever I go back to the city and visit my mom. (Well, my daughter is impressed...)
3. My daughter looks just like me. No. Really. She does. We deny the resemblance all the time and even tell people we aren't related. (We like to see their disbelieving faces.)
4. Whenever I'm driving in an unfamiliar area, I have an anxious need to stay to the right. So much so, that my daughter says she can feel the anxiety radiating from my whole body.
5. I have a habit of singing words and sentences. Sort of like Steven Tyler does on American Idol. Only much more pitchy. 
6. When I was younger, I was a concert freak. My goal was to see every possible band/singer I could afford before settling down and starting a family. In 10 years, I saw The Police, David Bowie, Queen, Neil Young(twice), The Eagles, Bob Seeger(twice), Marshall Tucker, Asia, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Simon & Garfunkel, Bruce Springsteen(five times), Van Halen, Rick Springfield, Joan Jett, John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band, and the icing on the cake-Live-Aid in Philadelphia, which covered a whole lot of groups I never would have seen otherwise. I think I did pretty well.
7. I was raised a Roman Catholic. I even went to Catholic school and when I was young, I wanted to be a nun. I'm sure my daughter is happy I changed my mind.

Okay, so it's time to pass on the award. If you don't follow them already, take a peak at their blogs.
Here are the Stylish Bloggers I'm awarding:

1. http://www.katrinadelallo.blogspot.com/
2. http://www.kristifaith.blogspot.com/
3. http://www.julierosesews.wordpress.com/
4. http://www.feodoraslane.wordpress.com/
5. http://www.inkygirl.com/ (Check out Debbie's comics for writers!) 

Thanks again, Courtney!

How Do You Write?

I used to have a schedule. I would go to my haven every night after dinner and write until I ran dry. Unless, of course, one of my favorite television shows was on television. I also kept a notebook on the kitchen table for late-night-insomnia writing and early-morning, fresh-from-a-dream writing.

Not so much anymore. My schedule went out the window a few months ago and lately I sleep like a log. I barely get up in time for a shower, let alone for writing.

Our repair shop is booming, so phone calls, scheduling, and paperwork have been making me more money than my writing has lately. I do have some priorities. Besides, my hubby gets upset if I don't focus at work.

But lately, all I wanna do is write! I almost cancelled dinner plans this past Saturday because I was on a roll. Since my darling daughter will be leaving home again in a few months, I am already planning out my writing schedule:
Monday--e-mails and market research
Tuesday--Blog posts
Wednesday--Write!!!
Thursday--Rewrites of previous week's work
Friday--Submissions
Saturday--Writing. After the laundry. And more laundry, lol.
Sunday--Novel Course work

Sounds like a plan, huh?


 I know many of my writing friends have much more hectic lives than my own. So, I wondered--
When do you write?
Do you have a schedule?
Or do you write only when inspired?
Do you write at night?
Or during the day?
Do you write with a plan?
Or do you write in bursts?

Doesn't Share Well With Others

There was a time, not too long ago, when I was on the road to organization. I turned a spare bedroom into my haven. Complete with desk, television, bookshelves, and a futon, I had everything in its place.

I knew exactly where everything was stored. I knew exactly where my reference books sat in the bookcase. There was a drawer for office supplies, another for notecards, envelopes, and mailing supplies, and another drawer filled with containers of pens, pencils, and markers.

My Writer's Digest, The Writer, and Poets and Writers magazines were separated into magazine holders. My Children's Writers newsletters were filed in a binder by date, and my Market Books were within an arm's reach away. I thought after 48 years, I was finally making headway into an organized and scheduled life.

Then...after 4 years of rearranging and refeathering our empty nest, my daughter came home from the Marine Corps. We have 3 bedrooms. Since my haven is in the 2nd largest bedroom, guess where her new bedroom is now located? I seriously contemplated giving her the Master bedroom. Hey, we only spend 8 hours in there! I spend more time in my haven than in my kitchen. My haven is where I paid the bills, watched sappy love stories rented through Netflix, and where my daydreams took shape and became stories.

But I figured I would make the sacrifice for my little girl. I would be able to share the room with her. Right? Ummm...No.

Right now, I can't find anything. My supplies are scattered around the dining room and living room. I can't keep to my writing schedule and I haven't watched a sappy Netflix DVD in months. My daughter and I do a whole lot of gabbing, chit-chatting and whatnot. Hubby has dibs on the living room big screen television and my daughter is rarely interested in the movies I rent.

Don't get me wrong. I love my daughter with all my heart and would do anything for her. But, I must say--she is leaving in August to attend Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. More than 1000 miles away and I'm kind of looking forward to August.

Am I proud of her? You bet your bippy, I am. I can't find the words to express my pride.

Will I miss her? Terribly. I'll probably cry for a week and feel like my right arm has been chopped off.

Do I want my room back? Umm...Absolutely!

Does that make me a bad mother? Well, I never let her play with my crayons, either...

Bleeding Rejections



"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."
	-Ernest Hemingway

The Writer Magazine recently published an article by Lisa Shearin: To modify an old comedy routine, you might be a iwriter/i if ... - The Writer Magazine Ms. Sharin posted a writer's version of Jeff Foxworthy's, "You might be a redneck if..."

One of Lisa's points: The stacks of your old manuscripts and rejection letters officially constitute a fire hazard.

Any writer I know, who has submitted their work to publishers or agents, can say this is true. If I made two separate stacks, one of my manuscripts and the other my rejections, the rejection stack would be at least twice as high. Possibly, three times the height, depending on how many times I've submitted a story.

Does this upset me? Sometimes. Ok, most times. Anybody in their right mind will tell you rejection hurts and there's nothing worse than repeated rejection. It's hard to not take a rejection personally, especially when you're excited about your creation.

So, sometimes I cry and sometimes I crawl into a hole for weeks on end and refuse to write but today I realized I need to think with my "write" mind and view the rejections as another chance to make my manuscripts the best they can be. I'm going to take out my pile of manuscripts and see what I can polish. Heck, maybe I'll write new stories while I'm at it.

It's often said that anything worth having doesn't come easy and while I wish acceptances came a bit easier and more frequently, the few times I've had a manuscript accepted, I forget all about the previous rejections and my "happy dance" is all the more joyous.

How do you deal with rejections?