Got a writing gig!

Freelance world...hold on. Here I come. I got a gig to write 5 articles 400-500 words each on Thank You notes. Hmmm. Have to write them by Friday. Already have 2 of them finished. Not a bad deal on the pay either. (yeah, much better than writing for free)

Looking forward to Trick or Treat

I'm so excited! My grandson is 19 months old. We bought him the cutest Tiger outfit about five weeks ago. Then, he went through this growth spurt. Yechhh! We tried the outfit on him with sweat pants underneath and the headpiece tried to strangle him.
Off we went to the store. Sixteen bucks. Ouch. We found the cutest Tony The Tiger costume. He looks GReeeaaat in it.
I will have to post pictures as soon as possible. His baby brother is going as an ice cream cone.

Now, I have to wait a couple days. I want it to be NOW.

Move to new Domain Imminent....

I have been plugging away! Yep. Building a new site is hard work. I must admit, HTML is not the easiest thing in the world. What does it mean? It means Hyper Text Markup Language. Oh, and the choices you have to make! I could have just picked a template and thrown together a site. But, I'm not that easy to please. I like things MY way. I'm plugging away at it. Fairly soon I will have it ready and then I will launch it and make a big deal about it. For now, I am spending about 16 hours a day working on it.

A smiling addiction

I found this priceless video quite by accident. Apparently it won at the Granger Film Festival this year. The whole thing was sponsored by Lightcast Media. It was made by a church group out of Georgia. The sad thing is that it is all over YouTube and nobody is giving it the PROPER CREDIT.
At first I thought it was kinda cute. Then I watched it and realized it was sorta sad. The tune sticks with ya. Go watch it for yourself and decide.

Getting Work in Freelance

Yes, I am. After months of hard work learning how to craft better articles, better short stories and even poetry. I've taken the plunge. Paying markets...watch out. Here I come. Sure, that big Courage word still hangs around and beats me over the head a bunch. It won't win though. Perserverance is my middle name. There are more magazines and ezines out there to submit to than there are rejection slips. I've joined a few groups to help along the way, and I just signed up for a new four week course on article writing.
Never give up, never surrender. Oh, and yes, my behind is firmly in this chair and my fingers are about raw from typing. Julie Ann Amos of Exquisite writing just sent me a database page to fill out so she could determine what writing jobs I qualify for and I look forward to seeing my email fill up with freelance opportunities. Go to her site and sign up and you could be feeling this good.

Here is the site link.

Freelance Writing Organization - Int'l.
Thousands of no charge writing resources.
http://www.fwointl.com

Breaking Elmore's Rules

Why is it that writers have such hard and fast rules about writing the all American novel? Okay, I agree we should keep our use of the exclamation point to a minimum. My adherance to Elmore's 10 rules stops there. Most of his rules are more like guidelines. For example: Don't start a story with weather. I can't even count the number of books I've read where the whole first page related to some dark storm and how spooky the trees or forest were.
I'm wondering if he read any of these books.
Yes, a great many of his rules are very good. He has advice on keeping tight sentences, and not modifying verbs.... most rules I've heard from any good writer. I just get stuck on a few. Check out his site.

Sheesh, I need to get to bed. I was up half the night last night with my 3 month old grandson and here I am typing away tonight. More on writing rules tomorrow.

Courage, Fear and Writing

Is there a trend among emerging writers lately? It seems several of the bloggers who are new to Nano this year have expressed serious doubts and fears on the Forums at the nanowrimo boards. I've openly struggled with courage issues in this blog and with several of my writing friends and groups. According to Holly's site, even the best of writers struggle since writing is a lonely profession and as she points out in this article... we are selling ideas from our mind, to complete strangers.

She's right! Talk about your tough sell. It makes me wonder how I picked writing. Except I felt natural with a book in my hands as soon as I could hold one. I also wrote everything I could from the age I could write my name. I wrote my first full length poem (that was decent) when I was nine years old and I never stopped my love affari with words.

I'm embracing my fears. I figure the best way to get over what scares me the most is to educate myself. My biggest fears at this moment all center around staying stuck in the middle of my novel. How am I helping myself? I am focused on moving the plot forward.

I needed to back away from my character focus and look to fix the plot of my work in progress. The plot had a few holes in it. How could I patch the holes? If I could patch the holes I figured the character issues would be resolved along the way. Sure enough, I stopped stressing and I seem to have built up steam again. I think putting the project in the desk drawer for 7 days did wonders as well.

I spent some time doing grandma things and didn't look at my pages for several days. The power outtage helped a lot in that area. Fresh eyes have helped. I'm less stressed out and more productive.

Oh yeah, tomorrow is the Maple Leaf festival in Baldwin City Kansas. We've gone every year for the past 16 years. It rains about every five or six years. Looks like this year is going to be one of those soggy and cold years. I was really looking forward to the festival and seeing old friends. I hope the sun makes an appearance.

Every year, this clown directs traffic at the main intersection after the parade. I don't know how he has the energy. The festival wouldn't be the same without him. I hope the weather clears so we are able to go without freezing our booties. I like to shop for Christmas things at the festival. I'm not sure why I'm so broke this year!

Trying Nano again this year

Last year I got quite a bit done on my psychological thriller by signing up with National Novel Writing Month. I had some fairly severe health problems and did NOT win the 2005 version because I just couldn't meet the word count. I'm not letting that stop me. I've signed up for Nano 2006.
I plan to work on a YA novel. I'm not sharing much more for now as it is in the planning stages right now and I've changed my mind about the title, plot and characters for this four times already! (go figure)

• I've hooked up with the same Kansas group from last year.
• I've downloaded several writer freebies.
• cleaned up my computer files and organized my computer
• studied up on a few of the basics
• stocked up on food items (healthy ones)
• cleaned up all the corners of my house so I can essentially ignore it for a month! LOL
• cleared my calendar

I hope I'm ready. I can only do my best. Wish me luck.

Missed everyone during power outage.

I'm so happy to be back in the land of the bloggers and the electronic world. I had an amazing week. Monday morning, due to a lot of wind and rain.... a small branch fell on my power lines and knocked out the main line to my house. Amidst squabbles as to whether the landlord or the electric company would be responsible for the bill, we finally got an electrician out to the house and discovered the real cause of the problem.

Three days later we finally got our electricity back. Have you ever sat around for a couple days without electricity twiddling your thumbs? Each passing moment I wanted someone to get out to my house and DO something. Once the problem got solved I plugged my trusty computer back in and found my modem had been fried in the process. GRRRRRR! So, another call to have a tech come to the house. $122.00 later and I have a new modem (which has a crummy 90 day warranty) I cannot believe they can charge that much and only guarantee it for a lousy 3 months. This puppy better last a few years!!!

I have to admit, I rely on the Internet for my freelance career so the money was well spent.

It is time to catch up on my blog reading, my tons of email and so much more. I'm just happy to be back.

Expect few changes around here!

Hold onto your hats folks. I plan to make some changes around here. After the writing conference last week, I decided it was time to present myself in a better light. The good fairy was blessed me when I wished on a star, so I purchased my domain name! (Woo Woo).


I should be switching over to the new host in the next week or so.


I also have A LOT of material to share from the workshops and chats I attended. So watch for a new LOOK! I will have lots of links to share resources etc. I will be changing to a slightly different format that I hope will be easier to browse through. :)