Just For Laughs

Happy Friday! Here are a few giggles I found around the interwebs. Enjoy!


If Moses were alive today he’d come down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments and spend the next five years trying to get them published.
- Anonymous

The dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he’s given the freedom to starve anywhere. 
- S.J. Perelman

As far as I'm concerned, "whom" is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler.
- Calvin Trillin

Writing is a socially acceptable form of getting naked in public.
- Paulo Coelho

How many mystery writers does it take to change a light bulb? 
Two. One to screw the bulb almost all the way in, and one to give a surprising twist at the end.

Two Small Town Writers And One Large City

I'm sure some of you have one of those online friends--someone you only know through the cyber-world. I met Courtney Rene, or 'Cornty' as the people in Starbucks like to call her, back in 2008. She posted a story, which I loved, in a forum on the Institute for Children's Literature, and we became writing friends, swapping manuscripts for critique, offering advice, and sharing markets. Now, Courtney Rene is the author of FOUR YA novels!

When she e-mailed me, saying her family was coming to New York, I jumped at the opportunity to join her for a day in the city. This get together has been two years in the making. We had also planned to meet up Cindy, a fellow writer who lives in New York, but Cindy couldn't meet us until later in the day and unfortunately, Courtney and her family had evening plans. We missed you, Cindy!

In my younger days, I worked in various jobs all over downtown and midtown NYC. Since moving to Blairstown, I've only been back to the metropolis a few times, but I kinda sorta knew where I was going, so I mapped out some of the tourist spots in midtown.

I met up with Courtney and her beautiful family at their hotel. After swapping a signed copy of 31 More Halloween Nights for a signed copy of her long-awaited Shadow's End, (SQUEE!) we boarded a bus to Manhattan and started our day from the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

We walked up 42nd Street through Times Square, and then through a beautiful, but disappointing-because-of-renovations Bryant Park, and then on to the NY Public Library.

Oh my! What a building! 

Of course, we checked out the two large rooms in the children's area, but there were no books in sight by Courtney Rene. :(

But the library had lots of marble and stairs.

They had old wooden phone booths and lots of stairs. There were individual rooms of books and inside those rooms were stairs. Did I say there were an awful lot of stairs?

Me & Courtney standing on the stairs in front of the library.

We walked up to Fifth Avenue and made our way to the American Girl store. We saw lots of overpriced dolls, matching girl/doll clothes, and bug-eyed little girls mentally writing their Christmas lists. Who wouldn't want Santa to bring them a $150 dollar baby grand piano for their doll?

 Aren't these dolls kind of creepy? Makes me think of Stepford Children...

St. Patrick's Cathedral was also going through some restorations. This church is almost as beautiful as St Paul's Cathedral in London, but not nearly as massive. For $2.00 we could have lit a candle (a stub of wax) at one of the many devotionals for different Saints, but we decided to move on.

 We made a quick detour into Rockefeller Center. No tree yet, but the skaters were already on the rink.

After a yummy lunch at Five Guys, we popped into Nintendo World, a pokemon-lover's paradise! I thought of you, Amanda!

 This picture of Link is made up of thousands of fan photos.

 Gotta catch 'em all...

We did some souvenir shopping, a couple of stops for coffee, and got sucked into a chocolate store. Our noses were pressed up against the glass, trying to choose the perfect piece of candy, but I never thought to take a photo of the little works of art.

We were running out of time, so we headed straight for the Empire State Building. We waited and talked and waited some more. We made it to the observation deck without giving in to the urgent advice someone yelled at us every 15 minutes: "...There is nobody on the deck to tell you what you are looking at. You NEED one of these maps. We have maps in 10 different languages..."

We were fine without a map.

It was a beautiful clear day, and not as cold as I feared it would be 80 stories above New York City.

Courtney and her gorgeous daughters.

Me and Courtney 

When I was getting ready that morning to meet Courtney, I was excited, but also a little nervous--like a fan-girl meeting her favorite author. But our easy conversations and lots of silliness (including duck-lipped, hiding-chins Empire State souvenir photos) seemed like we'd known each other forever.

Thankfully, I only got everyone lost/side-tracked/turned-in-the-wrong-direction once and we made it back to the hotel safely.

Next year, we're doing lower Manhattan--

The 9/11 Memorial 

and South Street Seaport.

Why not meet us there?

Inspiration

(I took this picture on my way to work one morning.)

I've never suffered from writer's block. I have a box full of story ideas, character profiles, scenes, and picture prompts. Not to mention the ideas still rattling around in my head.

My problem is--after a long day of work, I come home to dirty laundry, dust, a full litterbox, and a stack of mail. Besides all that, three of my favorite TV shows, House, Survivor,and Fringe, are recorded and beckon me to watch them. Thank God, Hell's Kitchen ended last month!

Carving out some writing time is a daily struggle. I wake up with the best intentions and plan my evening to allow for two hours of writing, but things come up, or a household task proves to be more involved, taking up more time than the hour I've alotted for it.

I find that unless I write every day, whether it's a blog post, a poem, a chapter in my WIP, or even a story idea, I lose my momentum. One night or one morning without writing can send me into a tailspin of inactivity. One day turns into two days, and so on. Although story ideas continue to pop into my head, I've gone weeks without writing anything down on paper. I cringe when I think of all the ideas I've forgotten because I was too busy to write them down.

So, how do I get back on track? What do I do to drag myself away from the Facebook ticker and the Twitter timeline?

I read writer's blogs. Not the, "How-to" type of blogs where there is heaps of info about how to make your characters stand out or how to fine-tune your plot. Those sites come in handy when I need help with my projects, but when I'm not working on anything, it all sounds like, 'blah, blah, blah.'

I'm talking about the writer's blogs with posts about their own struggles to fit writing time into their schedules along with hobbies, day jobs, families, illnesses, and other crises. Reading blogs such as:

Sarah's Blog

Pam's Blog

Lynne's Blog

and

Courtney's Blog  (Just to name a few...)

usually does wonders to push me out of that "writing funk" I so easily slip into. These are real people with real lives and struggles and still they manage to find time to write and (the ultimate writer's goal) get published. Reading about their accomplishments through all the hardships of daily life is like a swift kick in the butt, for me. A shot of motivation to get to work on my own dreams and goals.

With all the talk about blog fatigue and how bloggers and readers are losing interest, I can only hope that my favorite bloggers continue to post about their lives and their accomplishments. Not only do I find their posts interesting, I also find them inspiring.

What inspires you?

Seven Things I've Learned

Although I've been an avid reader since grammar school, I'm convinced I lived under a rock my whole life.

Unlike so many of my writing friends, the writing bug bit me late in life. In 2008, I enrolled in the Children's Institute for Literature and I suddenly discovered a parallel universe filled with writers, agents, editors, and publishers.

I felt like an ostrich who pulled its head from the sand and realized a whole new world. I've only been writing for three years but I've learned so much so far.

Chuck Sambuchino's Editor's Blog Guide to Literary Agents does a recurring column asking writers for 7 things they've learned so far. Since I will probably never make Mr. Sambuchino's column, (no matter how much positive thinking I do,) I thought I would share 7 things of my own:

1. There are so many writers, both aspiring and published, and sometimes I get the feeling there are more writers than stars in the universe.

2. I've learned there are more children's writers than I could have ever imagined and most of them are trying to get a story in Highlights.

3. I haven't met a fellow writer yet who isn't helpful and considerate. Even the very successful ones!

4. Even though we are in a very competitive industry, most writers I know share markets.

5. There are so many stories that have already been written but there are still so many more that haven't been written yet.

6. I have more ideas than hours to write.

7. I will never stop learning new things.

What have you learned so far?