“30 Covers, 30 Days” Deconstructed! | NaNoWriMo Blog

“30 Covers, 30 Days” Deconstructed! | NaNoWriMo Blog.

This whole idea suggested to me that I have a crummy title, not very creative, and I need some fishing metaphors, or at the very least think about it.  Fishing and decisions and choices and consequences and stuff like that.

I’ll be dreaming on that tonight.

 

Query letters will sell your work

This is a great site for writers.  They also publish some great books.

Writing for DOLLARS! Articles DB.

 

November means Nanowrimo

and picking up my novel where I dumped it last November.  I have been thinking and working on it all year, and I still want to finish it this year.  In fact, it’s on my list of things I want to accomplish before I am 60.

Yes, I will be sixty in a bit more than a year.  Yowza.

So, I have several projects, and they all involve words.  I better get cracking.

 

“Let Your Light Shine!” or as I like to think, Finding Your Voice

“Let Your Light Shine!” | AliBrown.com.

I read blogs like this, and scoff, sometimes.  I have heard it all before.

But, it’s because I have heard it all before that I keep reading it, because I haven’t acted on all this that I know already, and am still afraid to act.

In fact, what I and many women are needing is the permission to speak our mind, act with confidence and be successful, in whatever we do.  The biggest struggle in my writing is not the lack of ideas, the time or resources.  It is believing in my own voice.  I know my voice, my point of view.  I don’t always have the confidence to write every day, I have to overcome that message I got years ago, Be Quiet, Diane.  Stop Talking.  I did.  I’d like to stop.

So, I read this, and let go of my scoffing, and bookmarked it and signed up.  We women need all the support we can give each other.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Self-made multimillionaire entrepreneur and Inc. 500 CEO Ali Brown is devoted to creating financial freedom for women globally through the power of entrepreneurship. To learn how to create wealth and live an extraordinary life now, register for her free weekly articles at www.AliBrown.com

 

September is all about learning

I have been resisting the urge to sign up for an online writing course, thinking I should just be writing.

Is there something wrong with asking for help with getting started?

My mom always told me that was one of my weaknesses: Asking for help.

I guess I answered my question.  Is money an objection?  Yes.  Am I worth the money and my own time?

Yes.

 

Editorial – The Rural Life – Perfectly Still – NYTimes.com

Editorial – The Rural Life – Perfectly Still – NYTimes.com.

Every time I read one of Verlyn’s essays I get happy.  I look forward to each one.  His experiences in the country are similar and different to mine and I examine each image closely remembering and comparing.

I also experience this stillness.  I especially like the final sentences.

When I let the dogs out in the morning in the winter I feel the weight of the silence, like a thick quilt.

In the spring, the birds express the anticipation I feel, the pause before the explosion and headlong rush of summer.

Yesterday that rush was there.  Today, the rain holds us back momentarily.  It’s really just fuel on the fire, the rain.

The plants will leap to the sky tomorrow.

 

Editorial – The Rural Life – Native Element – NYTimes.com

Editorial – The Rural Life – Native Element – NYTimes.com.

When I was farming birds were a constant in my daily goings on.

Early in the morning, before the sun came up, I could hear sleepy barn swallows peeping to each other.

As I walked the cows back to the barn from their night pasture the morning birds would be talking about the sunrise.

I would look out my barn door facing the sunrise and the cedar swamp and see in the early morning summer mist sand hill cranes ‘grazing’ and sometimes dancing.

Hawks and eagles soar above, sea gulls stalk the tractor as I would kick over the windrow of hay to dry so we could bale in the afternoon.  They were looking for voles and snakes, a supplement to their scavenging the beaches.

And at the end of the day, I would walk the cows up to their new night pasture, leading my girls, and listen to the red wing blackbirds hanging off stalks of hay, whiporwills on the fence-rows and those swallows dive bombing mosquitoes, peep peep=ing all the while.

 

Family Fridays: Princesses Galore

Ms. Isabelle

Princess of Oshkosh

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Ms. Taylor

Princess of Baileys Harbor

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Our Princesses

All I can say is I am looking forward to these girls getting to know each other. Right now there is a 4 year age difference, which will become important in maybe 10 years. In the meantime, I think the next time they get to play together we will have more than our phone cameras going.

 

Treasure Thursdays

This is where I record all that I’m grateful for.

Did you know, if you do this everyday, pretty soon the list grows so big you can’t say it all as you fall asleep.

I want to remember to say thanks in the morning, but I usually notice the pain and then the need to rush to the loo fast.

So, here it is:

Thanks for the day.  Thanks for my family and for the sunshine and the singing birds and the happy doggies in our life. And thankyou so much for my husband who makes me breakfast each morning.  ( I make the coffee and wash the dishes, so I am not a complete kept woman.)

Here are 10 treasures I discovered this past week:

1. Kisses from my granddaughter Taylor
2. Resurrection Lilies are poking through the soil
3. A blue bird was on our line this morning
4. I could have hung laundry out today it was sunny enough
5. A new mug from a potter (Owen Dearing aka Mugmaker) I’ve never met.  We traded mugs through the mail.  First time, but it won’t be the last
6. I got a book in the mail that I am going to read and review from Tarcher Books.  It’s a journaling book written by Stephanie Dowrick called Creative Journal Writing.  And I am back into writing daily in my journal.  So far it’s all I expected.
7. I made a new friend last week.  I can never have enough new friends.
8. I found an old friend I has lost touch with.  Now that put a smile on my face.
9. It’s April.  And we are closer to summer each day.
10. My knee is both better and not.  Don’t understand it.  I am to the point of not caring.  I just want to walk without pain.

That’s it.

 

Writing Wednesdays ~ What have I done today?

Actually I wrote alot today.  Added to my book, Twittered, blogged, finished my birthday limerick, and thought alot, about alot of stuff.

Stuff thinking is important.

One thing I didn’t do today is read.  I did read both papers at lunch.  I want to start on this new book I got in the mail today.  Promised I’d write a review.  And I am excited about that.

I started a new blog yesterday, a “Write every day in this blog during the month of April” blog that may prove to push me back into journaling more often with my fountain pen.  Hands down, writing with a fountain pen is my fav way of writing, when I am thinking and pondering. Or, I could take a hint from Isabelle (our granddaughter) and her mommy Carly and use a purple crayon.