Great blog post!

My writing peeps over at Notes from the Slushpile ran a recent blog post entitled Notes from an Editor - How (NOT) to Get Published  by Bella Pearson - editor and guest blogger. 


Check it out for some great - and funny advice!

Dear Blog: I'm Sorry!

Alright, it's been a while! I'm sorry. I know I've been neglecting you. I've been busy finishing the first draft of my contemporary young/adult. What's that blog? You're busy too, everyone is busy, but you're still here for me. Alright, that's fair. Stings a bit, but fair.

What's that blog? If only you'd been a better blog, maybe I wouldn't have neglected you so badly for so long - crikey, I still have a Christmas blog post up!

No blog - it's not you it's me. This one is all on me. Don't blame yourself. I'll try harder to update you regularly.

What's that blog? "No! Try not. Do, or do not. there is no try." ~ YODA, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. 

Oh, you are seriously not quoting Yoda to me are you blog? Is that where this is going, you're going to lay a Yoda wisdom guilt trip on me? We'll that's it! I'm not even saving you in draft - I'm posting this as is.

(Some time later after a chai tea).

So, I'm back in full blog-on fashion. I am in the throes of re-writing hades and will be posting some of my writer friends thoughts on rewriting. And, yes, I'll be nicer to my blog and followers! Thanks for sticking around during my brief hiatus! 

Grinch, Sasquatch, and Flash Mobs

Yes, it's that time of the year again! 

Christmas! 

Or as I like to call it, the time of the year I pontificate on how the Grinch looks like Sasquatch who looks like Santa Claus. 

But this year, I'll spare you the thesis and share some of my favourite videos. 

First there's the original Grinch who Stole Christmas:

Now you know I lovz me some flash mob. Flash mob = happy people. Let's shower people with song and not bombs or bullets!  

Here's a famous one you've no doubt seen - it's a flash mob with a side of fries in a food court! Hallelujah for the fries! 

And last, but now least, I always take a chance to brag about my various nieces and nephews. Here's my niece doing a solo with her singing group in a downtown shopping mall during the Christmas shopping frenzy (no, it's not a food court - no theme here!).  You'll recognize her, she's the gorgeous one who takes after her auntie!

Here's to a peaceful Christmas and holiday season and a healthy 2012 with lots of writing.  


  

Blogging Break

Due to my recent, unintended participation in that zombie apocalypse that we hear so much about - my infected gall bladder was ripped out and I'll be out of commission for a while.

Darn zombies - hope they choke on that gall bladder!

I'll be taking a blogging break but will still be on facebook and twitter.

Catch ya later bloggowers!

Jocosa of the book review blog

You’ll remember my friend Jocosa of the Earrings from her previous guest blog posts. She’s the one, in a fit delirium from all the excitement at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference (SiWC) a few years ago, took a vow to not cut her hair until she was published.

okay peeps, her hair is way longer than this!

Her hair is long – think Rapunzel, think the 1970s long, her fingers are nubs from rewriting and she’s not giving up her goal of getting published or cutting her hair (well she can’t – she made a vow). 

In the meantime, she’s started a book review blog. I’ll let her speak in her own words and introduce it to you:

“My son says self-promotion is The Way of the World. I thought is was a restoration comedy by William  Congreve.

Anyway, after coaching for some 30 odd years, I thought blogging about the interconnectedness between writing and acting would be a snap. The format was NOT a good fit. Not really a surprise, I guess. On my journey into wisdom, I've found what comes natural to us or what we excel at often times is not where we think or believe we belong, but rather where we thrive without effort. For me this happens when I write book reviews. In fact, I get downright giddy whenever I'm composing one. 

 

I'm launching Jocosa's Bookshelf. My ultimate goal is to write reviews for new and classic books. But first I need to get through my TBR pile. Fingers crossed.

Thanks for listening. Blue Skies, jocose”

Yeah, she’s kinda hippy like that!

Check out her site – she’s got loads of reviews up and she’s working on loads more. (while I am slowly working through my to-be-read pile which reproduces itself  … then all my friend’s book launches!)

Lots of awesome reading ahead! Let Jocosa help you read your way through it!

How a cookie is like a plot

In grade four I had a spelling book that had a recipe for Thumbprint cookies. What’s a spelling book? And why didn’t you just use spell check? you ask.

Hold on, let me get my Roy Rodgers & Dale Evans lunch box, time travel back to grade four and answer that question. Clearly, spell check, and the world wide interweb hadn’t been invented yet.                                                                         

Why my spelling book had a cookie recipe is an even better question.  

So, the assignment was to go home and make Thumbprint cookies. What’s a Thumbprint cookie? It’s a cookie that you press a thumbprint into (hand sanitizer wasn't invented either!) and then fill the resulting crater with jam. My big sis and I made the cookies.

Nice story Jan, how does this relate to writing?

Hold on, stick with me, just need to finish this cookie that I got at Lena’s Italian Market.

Every kid made the cookies from the same recipe but they were all different. 

Just like the plot of a book. 

All books need a plot and plot devices, but you can take the same story idea, give it to five different authors and you’ll have five different stories. 

So, write the story you want to write – it is unique to you. Don’t write what you think is popular right now in the market – unless you want to write that.

And don’t read spelling books looking for cookie recipes.    

Stubby weighs in - literally!

Keep that manuscript warm Stubby!

I won’t say I’ve finished a draft of my young adult contemporary (entirely lacking in vampires) work-in-progress manuscript, but I’ve written the story all the way through.

So, isn’t that a first draft? I hear you say.  It might be if it wasn’t 20K words too short. Maybe it’s a first draft and the second draft will conclude the search for the missing 20K.

I’ve read it through and edited it on-line until my eyes bled, then decided it was time to print it out and read the whole thing in one sitting. 

Stubby, are you rejecting my manuscript?

In the olden days (i.e., before the internet was invented by aliens) popular wisdom dictated that you should print out your manuscript and then hide it in a drawer for six months. The idea being that enough time would pass that you would be able to spot what’s missing in the story. Great idea. But who’s got that kind of time? I was never able to do that in the olden days and in the nowadays when we check our email five times a minute, I don’t see me leaving anything in a drawer for six months (unless it’s those unwashed dishes I do go on about).  

It’s been a little over two weeks that I’ve left it unread and that’s my limit. 

I thought I’d let Stubby the cat weigh in on my manuscript then sit in the sun this weekend, read it like a book and see what I think of it.

My to-be-read shelf of books recently supplemented by a shopping trip
@ Powell's Books Portland, is on hold until my to-be-read manuscript is read!