This ‘N That

Once again it’s been a while, but at least it hasn’t been another 18 months. :-D

What can I say? The spirit was willing but the rest of me had a bunch of stuff on the go. I was on the committee for the Northumberland Hills Stitchery Guild’s 40th Anniversary Tea, and as such there was planning and meetings, etc., which I took part in. Then there was the baking . . . oh, so much baking: 3 dozen mini plain scones, 3 dozen mini ginger scones, 3 dozen mini blueberry scones, not to mention a batch that was gluten free. Then there was 30 mini quiches, 24 crustless quiches, 30 lemon tarts, 24 mini cheesecakes, and a few dozen brownies – some of which were gluten free.

At the same time, I was also making a dress for the granddaughter’s last father/daughter ball. The theme was Under the Sea, and because it was the last time she’d be able to participate (they have a cut off year for age) I went all out. She requested a dress with squid tentacles, and I was happy to oblige. I used iridescent organza to give it the underwater effect.

I only planned to take the weekend off after that, to give myself time to recuperate, but a funny thing happened . . . I picked up the latest Nora Roberts book (that I hadn't read yet), and when I was finished reading it I may have, kind of, kept going. As in, I pulled about half a dozen previously read books off my shelf and read them, too.

The good news is, I think I’m over the reading madness and I’m back to reading just a couple of hours a day. And I have nothing major going on, except hanging with the granddaughter four days a week. They’re not even full days either, just from lunch time to late afternoon, leaving my mornings free for writing.

But even with my reading binge, it’s not like I haven’t been doing any writing. I’ve been doing my morning pages . . . granted sometimes it’s more like morning page, and I’ve been doing a daily three-minute word, where I pick a word at random and write for three minutes using it as a prompt.

Sometimes I take the notebook I use for my morning pages with me when I go for my morning walk and sit down on the pier to write. I’ve seen some interesting characters, and I’ve come up with at least one potential story idea. It’s something to work on when I need a break from editing An Elemental Spirit.

I’ve set myself a goal for Elemental Spirit. I want to be able to release it into the wild by the end of the year, or, most likely, January of next year. I’m going to deserve those vanity plates yet!

Time and Again

I don't really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it.
— Robertson Davies

You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight saving time.
— Dave Barry

Daylight saving time: Only the government would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom, and have a longer blanket.
— Anonymous

So . . . I got up a little earlier than usual this morning, so I was a little surprised when the cat started howling outside the bathroom door to hurry me up. Usually he only pulls that when I’ve slept in.

I come downstairs, open the curtains, feed the cat, and puttered around the kitchen for a bit. On my way back through the living room before going upstairs for my shower, I glanced at the clock on the bookcase and to my surprise it was closing in on 8 o’clock.

Say what? I thought it should only be closing in on 7 o’clock – how long did I spend puttering around in the kitchen? So I went back into the kitchen and the clocks on the stove and coffee maker both assured me it was almost 7. The clock above the sink insisted it was almost 8 o’clock.

My first thought was that we’d had a power outage for an hour sometime during the night. Yes, I’m that slow in the mornings. Then it occurred to me that if we’d had a power outage the digital clocks would be behind, not an hour ahead.

I checked my phone – it also insisted it was an hour later than I thought. Finally, I checked the calendar on the wall and sure enough, Daylight Savings Time had started. The hubby doesn’t do well with digital time pieces, which is why the battery operated clocks were changed, not the digital ones.

*sigh*

I don’t like the time change at the best of times. I like it even less when it catches me by surprise.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

Despite the fact that my total for new words is higher than it’s been in a while, this really wasn’t a great week for writing. I was in a funk and I just couldn’t seem to pull myself out of it.

I skipped the Monday post on my other blog again because I didn’t have anything to say again. And I just didn’t wanna.

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 1162+991=2,153
Christmas Story – 1,943 words
Total words: 4,096 words

Three minute words – 127+121+141+145+122+133+131=920

Goals For Next Week:
Finish Christmas story, work on journal entries for Elemental Spirit, maybe write a poem.

EDITING:
My editing partner returned Magickal Mayhem to me on Friday, with her invaluable insights. I’ve looked over her notes, but that’s as far as I’ve got so far.

Goal For Next Week:
Start the final edits on Magickal Mayhem.

MARKETING MONDAY:
Okay, so here’s the thing. After two long years my stitchery group was finally going to have an in-person meeting, and it was going to be a “stitch and show” where we show off some of the work we’ve done. And I didn’t have a whole lot to show so I spent the weekend and Monday stitching like crazy to get a couple of things finished.

However, that being said, the wondrous Jamie DeBree passed on a link for a ten word story competition, and who doesn’t have time for ten words? I’m sad you can only send one in, because it was hard to decide between the half dozen I managed.

Goal For Next Week:
Submit two stories and one poem.

TECHNO TUESDAY:
Yeah, this was kind of a bust too. That stitchery meeting I mentioned? It was Tuesday morning, all morning. And I didn’t even have enough time for a bite to eat before the hubby and I were off to a meeting with our lawyer to go over our wills (which took a lot longer than I expected), and on the way home we had to pick the cat up from the vet (where he’d had an ultrasound). So that was pretty much that.

Goal For Next Week:
Set up Paperwhite

CRAFTING:
I found some other lace for my challenge piece and it looked really good around it. Like a lace frame. So then I figured I’d better get my cross-stitched name tag made and as simple as it looked, it was rather time consuming. I stitched my name in red thread on black aida cloth, then I decided it looked a little plain so I sewed red beads around the edges.

Goal For Next Week:
Finish current afghan I’m working on so I can start stitching with a clear conscience.

WHAT I’M READING:
Two Noras last week, one of which I pretty much spent yesterday reading (one of the reasons this post is so late). I read The Witness and Blue Smoke. And now for something completely different – I picked up a copy of Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens. I’m about a third of the way through it and despite the fact it’s a really popular book, I’m not sure I like it. Especially if it’s headed where I think it’s headed.

On the Kindle. I finished Becoming Dragon by Eve Langlais. Next up will be The Merman’s Kiss by Tamsin Ley.

Goal For Next Week:
Stay away from Nora Roberts' books. I cannot be trusted with them. Once I start, it’s highly unlikely I’ll stop until it’s finished, which means I get nothing else done.

GOAL REVIEW:
While I did work on my Christmas story, I didn’t get it finished. Did not work on the journal entries, did not write a poem. I did submit a single story, but it was only ten words. I did not get my Paperwhite set up, nor did I work on my granddaughter’s dress.

Wow, I did really bad on my goals, didn’t I? Well . . . I can only improve, right?

Have a happy writing week.

Anyone Can Do it

A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

Even if there were no more books published ever, there are still more books in existence today than anyone can read. And most of them suck. Good luck trying to find a good one. It's like finding a needle in a hay stack.
― Oliver Markus Malloy

Everyone thinks they're entitled to their 15 minutes of fame. And it's that narcissism that makes people, who have no business writing a book, think they can write a book.
― Oliver Markus Malloy

Another mostly grey and cold week here in no-progress-land, and one particularly dismal morning I read a book on my Kindle. I read a really bad book. A smart person would have deleted it and found something else to read, but honestly it was like a train wreck, I just couldn’t look away.

On a whim, I checked Goodreads for reviews, curious to see who else was as appalled as I was with this book, but to my surprise half the reviews were positive. Either this person has a lot of misguided friends, or there are a lot of people who didn’t actually read the book.

So then I looked the author up on Google. She has a whole series of these books and I can only hope her writing improved with subsequent books. I found it all rather depressing.

But I vented to my good friend Jamie and she slapped me upside the head (metaphorically speaking) and gave me a word to use for my three minute exercise. :-D

This is where tree books are superior to electronic books – quality. You may not like a tree book’s story, but at least you know it’ll be well written. A publisher has invested time and money to make sure of it.

An electronic book, on the other hand, comes with no such guarantee. Anyone can publish online, and they can publish anything they want. Amazon doesn’t care how bad it is. Kobo doesn’t care how poorly it’s written. Smashwords doesn't care the author only has a nodding aquaintance with grammar.

As readers, we take our chances with electronic books. Even had I checked out the reviews before I started reading the book, I probably would have read it anyway because of the number of 5 star revies it got. None of the reviews mentioned the head hopping, the lack of grammar, the structural issues.

Good thing Indigo delivered three new tree books to me this week.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Wordage Report

Once again, the only new words I wrote were on the three-minute word prompts, so there’s not all that much to report here.

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 894+654+945=2,493
Three minute words = 116+113+110+215+101+117+98=870
Total words: 3,363 words

Still no plans for a new Wednesday series, but at least I got the Monday post done on my other blog.

EDITING:
*sigh*

Once again the only editing I did was the story for Friday’s post.

WHAT I’M READING:
I’m still working on, Stop the World, Snapshots From A Pandemic, edited by Lise McClendon. I’ve been reading it a bit at a time to make it last but I’m over halfway through it so I’ll probably finish this week.

On the Kindle I read a young adult story called Prince of Wolves, by Quin Loftis which put me in mind of The Twilight Saga only without the vampires. Now I’m reading Sex, Doug, and a Rocky Road, by Michele Bardsley. I’ve read several of her books and you’re guaranteed a fun time with her stories.

My new Kindle arrived yesterday, but I have not had time to set it up yet. Actually, it’s still in its package. Hopefully it can be charged with the cord from my old one. I ordered the Paperwhite that charges wirelessly, and the wireless charger won’t be here until the end of February.

LAST WEEK’S GOALS
Well, I nailed my first goal from last week. I did all my three minute words, and I posted part two of the cave story.
I’m about a third of the way through the afghan for my mother-in-law. I need to crochet faster because her birthday is in a week and a half.
And that’s it for the goals.

THIS WEEK’S GOALS
1. Continue with the three minute word, and continue the cave story.
2. Continue with my mother-in-law’s afghan.
3. Start the edits/rewrites on Elemental Spirit.
4. Look into online courses.
5. Write.

Happy writing.

Singlemindedness

To succeed in your mission, you must have single-minded devotion to your goal.
— P. J. Abdul Kalam

You want something? Go get it with single-minded devotion.
— Reggie Lee

Success in any endeavor requires single-minded attention to detail and total concentration.
— Willie Sutton

Yes, singlemindedness is a real word, I know because Word didn’t underline it. LOL

It’s been a week, I tell you what. The weather was really crappy, which means my energy was low and my to-do list was high.

This year’s book flood anthology was a lot more work than I expected. I thought I’d do something a little different this year and use the freewriting I did a couple of years ago when a friend and I would get together once a week to write. So I dug the stories out, cleaned them up a bit, and thought I was done. And I would have been, except for the fact that I’d already used half of them in last year’s anthology.

*sigh*

I have a folder for my short fiction, and in it I have sub-folders for things like flash stories, sudden stories, micro stories, prompts, etc. and that’s about as far as the organization of them goes. So . . . I created a couple more sub folders, these ones for my book flood anthologies, and I moved all the stories I’ve used for them into the appropriate folder.

I don’t know why I didn’t do this before, it just kind of slipped my organizational mind. I think part of it was that I figured I might work on these stories some day and try to sell them or something, and I didn’t want them hidden away. But honestly, I can find them just as easily in the book flood folders.

Anyway, this meant I needed to find other prompt stories to flesh out my anthology. Which after much deliberation, I did. And it occurred to me, pretty much all my flash or less stories have been written from prompts. The longer stories come to me in the weird and wonderful way that novel ideas do, but the really short stuff I usually get from prompts.

Once I had my stories picked out I didn’t want to just throw them together willy nilly, so I made an attempt at grouping them together. Then I decided to get all fancy and adding title pages for each section. Kind of makes the anthology a little more cohesive.

And, of course, I had to format the whole thing. The font size had to be just right because when you print as a booklet, the pages shrink down. The space between lines took a bit of trial and error too. Single space (like this is) was too close together, but space and a half seemed too far apart. Eventually I found the “line spacing options” in Word, which gave me a just right option.

Because I numbered the pages, I ended up with three documents to print for each book – the section title pages, the index page and introduction, and the book itself. I didn’t want numbers on the other pages so it was easier to just print them out separately than to try and figure out how to suppress page numbers. The section pages were done in columns and could be printed normally, but the index and introduction were printed in booklet form, which is why it wasn't all printed as one document. I still haven’t figured out how to reduce the space at the top and bottom of the page, but it’s not enough to worry me too much.

Then I discovered, when doing a test print run, that the print menu attached to Word 2019 is very different from the one attached to Word 2007. Namely, it does not allow me to print in booklet form. Oh, I’m sure you can format your document for booklet in Word 2019, but it’s a lot easier to do it from the print menu.

It took longer than I had hoped for, but the anthology is done. And I’m pretty pleased with the way it turned out.

Next year’s mission it to start on it earlier.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Wordage Report

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 984+495+1,134=2,613
Total = 2,613 words

Hey, at least I got the blog posts done. I think I’m kinda done with the spice thing, so it’s just as well I remembered it’s December and I usually run Christmas videos during the holidays.

EDITING:
Other than some light editing on the stories included in the book flood anthology, I didn’t do any editing. This is a really busy time of year so what extra time I had was spent on the anthology.

WHAT I’M READING:
No reading, Christmas shopping and book flood anthology sucked up all my time.

GOALS
Well, I don’t know that I did better on my blog posts. I got them done, but not all of them up on time. I’ve given up on the spice thing in favor of Christmas videos. I may, or may not finish the spices in the new year. Or I might just move on to a series on herbs.

Elemental Spirit is still in the mothballs, but I’ll finish binding the anthologies today, so I’m sure to have time next week to get started on the editing.

Finally, a goal that’s been met! I got the book flood anthology done.

THIS WEEK’S GOALS
1. Do better on the blog posts.
2. Start the edits on An Elemental Spirit.
3. Start doing a freefall exercise every day.

Write on.

Twenty-seven Down, Three to Go!

Having an end date for your quest through the noveling unknown is like bringing along a team of jetpack-wearing, entrepreneurial Sherpas.
— Chris Baty

Despite what you may have learned last month, sustained writing is best accomplished as part of a balanced lifestyle, one that includes things like grocery shopping and speaking in complete sentences with your significant other.
― Chris Baty

I tend to celebrate crossing over with a meditative ceremony where I print the book out and neatly stack its pages on the floor. When everything has been properly laid out, I take a few steps back from the work, close my eyes, and offer up my thanks to the writing powers for another bountiful harvest. At which point, I get a running start and dive headlong into my word-pile, rolling around and snorting like a pig. And then I fall asleep for three days. How you celebrate is up to you.
― Chris Baty

Well, this is definitely a first for me. I actually reached the 50,000 word mark on Wednesday. In other words, I finished NaNo a week early. I still can’t believe it. This has never happened to me in all the years I’ve been doing it.

AND for the first time ever, I never fell behind in the words once. It was steady progress the whole time. But I’m not done yet. I said I was going to do a story a day, and I have three more to go.

When I decided to do an anthology instead of a novel, I honestly never expected that I’d be able to keep up the pace. This week actually went better than the week before. All except Friday. I picked out my prompt for Friday early, and then struggled through most of the day trying to get it done. Finally, in the early evening I gave up and switched to a new idea. Not only did I get it finished in time to log it on the NaNo site, I really liked the story.

And just to prove I’ve been under a magic NaNo star . . . I got an email from one of the organizers telling me my name was drawn from a pool of others who donated (NaNo is a non-profit organization). I’m not sure what it is, but it’s on the way. Also on the way is the shirt I liked but had to wait until they restocked before I could order it.

Once again I used a prompt that I used before, but again the story was totally different. The first one was only 500 words for one thing, and the ending was different. The new one, aside from being much longer, had more interaction between the characters and ended in a budding romance. Definitely a keeper.

Even though I have more energy and time in the mornings, I’m finding I’m getting my best writing done in the evenings. I have no idea what’s up with that. I was really hoping to spend more time in my office to create a routine in there but it just didn’t happen.

One of the reasons is, it’s been sunnier than I expected. Not that I’m complaining, far from it. I’ve been grateful for the sunny days because they energize me. But I can only sit at my desk early in the morning or late in the afternoon. The rest of the time the sun is angled just right to reflect off the screen of my computer.

Of course I’m an early riser, and I’ve got a good two hours before the sun’s a problem, so I really can’t use that as an excuse for the entire day. And it’s no excuse at all for the grey days, which we’re going to be getting a lot of this winter, according to the weather man.

Maybe it’s just a case of mind over matter. I need to stop thinking about it and just do it.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Wordage Report

NEW WORDS:
Flash anthology – 16,161
Blog Posts – 1044+662+365+1204=3,475
Total = 19,636 words

Down to the home stretch with NaNo. There’s going to be a serious drop in new words next week. LOL

EDITING:
Actually looking forward to editing these stories.

WHAT I’M READING:
Despite the fact I’ve getting higher word counts, I did more reading last week. I treated myself to a new Nora Roberts book, a two-in-one called Christmas Everlasting. ‘Tis the season, ho ho ho. I’ve only read a couple of chapters, but it beats playing online games.

On the Kindle I finished reading Werewolves Only, by Carrie Pulkinen, the book about the cop and the werewolf. I really wanted to thump the hero so he’d tell the heroine the whole truth, but everything worked out in end, as it should.

Then, for something different, I read Seduction Games, by Allyson Lindt. It was about three gaming friends, the woman meeting the two men for the first time. The hotness of it didn’t take away from the greatness of the story over all.

Now it’s back to the werewolves with Fated Mates, by Alicia Montgomery. So far all I’ve read in this story so far is the main character (whose name I forget) is a private detective who’s just found out she’s a vampire.

GOALS
Crossed the finish line with NaNo and I’m still going. I’m back to having fun with the stories, maybe because the pressure’s off.

The blog posts all got up on time and I had no problems writing them, unlike the way it was going before NaNo. Maybe I do better under pressure.

I’ve been toying with ideas for my post NaNo plan. Instead of scheduling things for a specific time, I’m going to try listing things I want to accomplish and give myself a time limit for them.

THIS WEEK’S GOALS
1. Finish NaNo and celebrate.
2. Keep up the good work on the blog posts.
3. Refine my post NaNo plan.

Write on.

The Train Is Still On the Track!

You are doing this because you are fantastic and brave and curious. And, yes, you are probably a little crazy. And this is a good thing.
— Chris Baty

As Isaac Newton observed, objects in motion tend to stay in motion. When writing your first draft, being busy is key. It may feel frustrating at first, but having daily writing periods curtailed by chores, family, and other distractions actually helps you get the thing done. This is partly because the hectic pace forces you to type with a fleet-fingered desperation. But it’s mostly because noveling in the midst of a chaotic life makes “book time” a treat rather than an obligation. It’s a small psychological shift, but it makes all the difference in the world.
― Chris Baty

Deadlines bring focus, forcing us to make time for the achievements we would otherwise postpone, encouraging us to reach beyond our conservative estimates of what we think possible, helping us to wrench victory from the jaws of sleep.
― Chris Baty

I don’t know if it’s because of the pandemic, because we’re not supposed to go out and do stuff, but I don’t feel as frazzled with this NaNo as I usually do. In past years I’ve climbed aboard the crazy train trying to get everything done and get my words in, but I’ve been very Zen this year.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve interacted with friends, cleaned my office, made the meals, done laundry, took a couple of trips up to Costco and other shopping, kept up with my blog posts without having to stay up extra late to do so, and even took a road trip with the daughter to pick up her new puppy.

Could I actually be getting the hang of this NaNo thing?

I can remember when doing a story from a prompt once a week became such a chore that I finally stopped doing it. But now, I’m doing a story a day and I’m pretty much rocking it, if I do say so myself. My longest story so far has been 2,808 words, and the shortest has been 1,402 words. In fact, out of the thirteen stories I’ve written so far, only three have been under 2,000 words, and only two failed to meet the 1,667 daily word goal for NaNo.

In case you’re wondering how I’m keeping track . . . I used to keep track with pen and paper, writing down my daily word count and keeping a running total, but someone posted an Excel Spreadsheet template on line about 10 years ago and I’ve been using it ever since. I keep a blank one as a master, and just have to change the year at the top and save as that year.

I really wish I could remember who posted it, they did an amazing job. It shows the goal, the daily quota, word tally, words left, daily average and a bar graph at the top. Below that it has columns for the date, target total, words today, hours today (which I don’t fill out), running tally, percent today, words left, days left, daily average, projected finish date, and percent complete. The only one I have to fill out is the Words Today – everything else is automatic.

AND there are tabs at the bottom for pages for Progress (which is a bar graph), Novel Info (for your cover picture and synopsis), Characters (with a chart for character names and descriptions), Chapters (for titles and outlines), Plot Sheet (with helpful suggestions for plotting as well as space to do it in), Character Sheet (for individual characters), and Plot Example (a filled out plot sheet to show you how it’s done).

Clearly someone put a lot of work into it, but to be honest, the only thing I use is the Word Tracker. Being a pantser, I tend to let my characters reveal themselves to me bit by bit, and I never plan ahead for chapters, even when I do chapters that begin with journal entries. As for plots, well, they never turn out the way I expect anyway.

Still, having worked with Excel, my hat’s off to whoever created the spreadsheet.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Wordage Report

NEW WORDS:
Flash anthology – 14,880
Blog Posts – 1231+707+542+1278=3,758
Total = 18,638 words

I was a little more up and down with the word counts for my stories last week, but I’m still ahead of the game over all. After all the editing and re-writing I was doing over the last many months, it’s kind of nice to write something fresh.

EDITING:
It occurs to me that just because I’m doing NaNo, where you’re not supposed to edit until you’re done, doesn’t mean I can’t be editing something else. I’ll have to think about that going forward.

WHAT I’M READING:
Still not doing a whole lot of reading. I’m about a quarter of the way through The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman. It’s making me want to read the others in the series again, only I’d want to put them in order first. Still working away reading Lichen, and I’ve discovered it’s a literary journal put out by a writer’s group (I think).

On the Kindle I finished Signed, by Layla Nash, which was about mail order brides and bear shifters. At one point I really wanted to just thump the two main characters on their heads – if they’d just talk to each other they could’ve avoided a whole lot of misunderstanding, but of course if they’d done that it would have made for a shorter book, so I guess I’m glad they didn’t. LOL

Now I’m reading . . . to be honest, I’m not sure what I’m reading. I started reading another bear shifter romance, but I didn’t like the way it was starting out so I switched to something else, only it’s been a couple of days since I’ve been on my Kindle so I don’t remember what it was. Oops!

GOALS
Well . . . two out of three ain’t bad, right? I’m still acing my NaNo, and I got all my blog posts up, although when I scheduled the spice post to appear I forgot to schedule it on my regular blog so it didn’t get up on time.

But as far as getting out to enjoy the sunshine, that was a bit of a bust. I did get out one day for a walk down to the beach with a friend, but it started drizzling, and then turned to rain. The only other day I got out was Wednesday, when I drove the daughter to pick up her new puppy (two hours each way). I guess that doesn’t really count, does it?

THIS WEEK’S GOALS
1. Keep up the good work on NaNo.
2. Keep up the good work on the blog posts.
3. Try to get out and enjoy the sunshine, if we get any.


Write on.

Socially Inept

Anyone remember ICQ? I miss ICQ. I miss logging on with a made-up name and talking with people from all over the world who are also using made-up names. It was fun and harmless. It was the first social media I ever experienced and I remember it fondly.

I have to admit, I find a lot of the social media for this day and age a little intimidating. Okay, make that a lot intimidating.

Chat rooms don’t seem to be much of a thing anymore, but I found them a little scary. It’s like going to a party where you don’t know anyone and by the time you work up the nerve to join the conversation everyone has moved on to a different topic.

Twitter is worse. It’s like a chat room the whole world is using all at once. Sure the messages are short, only 140 characters, but the speed with which those messages stream by is insane. By the time you type a reply to one message, another 100 have appeared.

I do spend a fair amount of time on Facebook, it’s more my speed. Admittedly most of what I do is scroll down my newsfeed, occasionally post, and sometimes comment on something a friend has posted. It’s a great way to kill an afternoon or evening.

I have not yet signed up for Instagram, but I know a lot of people who have. From what I understand it’s owned by Facebook and used mostly for sharing photos and videos. So why wouldn’t you just post them on Facebook?

I have yet to be sucked into the Pinterest universe either. Many have tried, but I have remained steadfast in my resistance. I actually know very little about it, other than you can “pin” interesting ideas or images or whatever to “boards” and then put them in categories to keep them organized. Sounds like an amazing time suck, and I already waste enough time on the internet.

I don’t know much about TikTok either, other than it’s Chinese in origin and seems to be geared more to the younger crowd.

I admit to being a little envious of those people on TV who use their tablets like video phones – I’d love to be able to do that. The camera in my lap top doesn’t work (something about the drivers that I can’t seem to resolve) so I have not Facetimed or video chatted and to be honest Zoom seems too much like a chatroom, only worse because you can see who you're talking to and they can see you.

Jeez, I don’t even think I was this socially inept in high school!

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Wordage Report

New Words:

Driving Into Forever – 0 words
Blog Posts – 1056+581+526+1290=3,453
Total = 3,453

Still working on the index cards for Driving Into Forever. I think this might take forever.

While I managed to do Monday’s post last week, I probably won’t this week. Once again there’s been nothing interesting going on and we’re not expecting the final delivery from the cabinet people until Tuesday, so there won’t be any kitchen progress to report until after that.

Editing:

I slacked off last week, according to TraxTime – only 8 ½ hours of editing. In my defense, we had several grey and dismal days in a row and I spent more time crocheting.

What I’m Reading:

I finished Window on the Bay, by Debbie Macomber, and then there was a gap in the reading until Friday when I started Shelter in Place by Nora Roberts, finishing it Saturday.

I was sad to have finished Captured & Seduced, book three of Alien Shenanigans by Shelley Munro because I really enjoyed it. Actually, I loved the whole Shenanigans series. It didn’t take long, however, to find another series on my Kindle, this one the boxed set of the Silverlake Shifters by Anastasia Wilde. I started Fugitive Mate on Friday and, um, couldn’t resist finishing it Saturday. I started White Wolf Mate this morning and I can’t promise to make it last. ;-)

Goals

I met most of my goals from last week, which isn’t too shabby (in my opinion).

The editing on Blood Ties is progressing nicely – I only have about 60 pages or so to go before the first round is done. I solved the guilt feelings about the deletions I was making by starting a new document to copy/paste the deletions into. That way they’re gone but not forgotten.

The index cards for Driving Into Forever are going slowly. It’s a process, I tell you what. I don’t know if it’s because I’m working with a story that’s already been written, or if I’m missing something, but I’ve really been struggling with this. I still think it’s a good idea, but if I haven’t made any headway with it by the end of this week I’m going to abandon it.

Okay, I might be doing a little too well on the crocheting now. I got my yarn delivery early last week, and I’m on ball four already. I think I said I was only going to work on it while I was watching Netflix or Prime, but that’s not the way it’s happening. And I paid for and downloaded a new afghan pattern last week - maybe it’ll be my Netflix/Prime afghan.

This Week’s Goals

1. Continue, maybe even finish the edits on Blood Ties.
2. Finish the index cards for DIF or find a new way to outline.
3. Continue with my balanced reading time.
4. Ease back on the crocheting a little.

So. What have you been up to.

Danger Ahead

There is a danger to posting excerpts from former (and still unfinished) NaNo novels.

With the first one, Driving Into Forever, I got the irresistible urge to go back and rewrite the darn thing. I say rewrite because it’s such a mess I think it would be easier to start from scratch than try to fix it. The next one, Forever and For Always, had me wondering why I’ve let it sit so long. And this last one, the Faery Heart, made me nostalgic for this epic Science Fiction Romance universe I’d created.

I need to get Blood Ties finished first.

Then I need to get An Elemental Spirit done.

Then I can go on to other things with a clear conscience. But man, oh, man, is it ever tempting to work on all of them at once! And what’s worse with the Faery Heart is that I couldn’t resist reading the whole thing and I remember what else needs to be included and I’m wondering where the notes are for it. I distinctly remember the way a couple of scenes were worded that come after where I left off, but they weren’t included in the document file. So where are they? Should I rewrite them as best I can recollect just to make sure I don’t forget them? Should I spend some time hunting around on USB keys and various hard copy files to see if I can find them?

You see the danger I’m in.

And I fear it’s only going to get worse. This week’s excerpt will be from Quest of the Valkyrie, which replaced Knightsong in my 2010 NaNo, and which starts the whole epic science fiction universe series. It’s the first of a projected trilogy, as the Faery Heart is, and did I mention that the whole Elemental series takes place in that universe?

Must edit faster.

Must write faster.

And that’s the good news. I have a renewed desire to buckle down to work.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Wordage Report

New Words:

Driving Into Forever (rewrite) – 1,644
Blog Posts – 880 +484+605+1557=3526
Total = 5,170

Even if you take away the excerpt from Friday’s post, I did better word-wise than I have in ages.

Editing:

According to my trusty little TraxTime program, I spent 8 hours and 22 minutes editing Blood Ties last week, plus about an hour last night after I’d already written and scheduled this post. Finally! I’m making progress.

Publishing:

None. And my mermaid story was rejected *insert sad face here*. Seeing as I haven’t really been making any effort at publishing, I might just set this one aside for now.

What I’m Reading:

I received The Jackal, by J.R. Ward, in the mail this week, but I haven’t cracked it open yet. I made it through about three quarters of Troll’s-Eye View, the anthology edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, before I started jonesing for an actual novel. So then I did a stupid thing. I picked up a Nora Roberts book, but not just any book, no. I picked up the first in her Chronicles of The One series, Year One

And of course I couldn’t just leave it there, I also read Of Blood and Bone, and The Rise of Magicks as well. I love me some end of the world as we know it scenario, and this one was well done. And it also struck a little close to home seeing as it started with a swift spreading pandemic. You know, sort of like Stephen King’s The Stand, and sort of like what’s going on in the world around us.

I find it kind of interesting that both authors show how a world-wide crisis brings out both the best and the worst in people, just like it’s doing in reality. But unlike reality, both fictional stories are ultimately the fight of good against evil. And though there are certainly similarities, both stories are very different.

It just goes to show you that authors can have the same idea and totally different approaches to it.

Goals

While I’m not unhappy with the progress I made last week, I could have done better. Part of it wasn’t my fault though. The hubby was laying new flooring in the hallway outside my office, so although I spent some time in there, it was a little distracting when I was.

I had my best week so far editing Blood Ties, but I don’t feel like I’m making a lot of progress. There’s this one scene I’m stuck on – writing and rewriting – and it’s starting to annoy me. If I was writing, I’d just skip it and move on, but I’m editing and this is one of the things I have to fix.

I gave up on the note taking for Driving Into Forever and I dove right into rewriting it. Rewriting makes better sense than just editing because I have about 5 or 6 different beginnings to it and I think that’s why I never got anywhere with fixing it. I need to settle on one and stick with it.

This Week’s Goals

1. Keep up the good work editing
2. Keep working on Driving Into Forever
3. Limit my reading time.

This is where you cross your fingers for me.

And Away We Go . . .

I’m still messing around with a routine, trying to find something that works. I’m sure it would help if I spent more time in my office and less time on the couch playing online solitaire or Text Twist, but it is what it is. I’ll get there eventually.

You’re going to notice a bit of difference to the format of my weekly update. Seeing as the goals I’ve set myself for the year are pretty much ongoing, I thought I’d use them as the headers for my report – sort of.

Instead of “write more” I’ll keep “new words” from my old wordage report. This is where I’ll discuss the progress I’m making on my various projects, like Knightsong (which had no progress at all this week, other than an idea I jotted down in the dead of night).

Seeing as editing is going to play a big part of my goals for the year, it’s getting its own heading. This is where I’ll report on my progress (or lack thereof). Having to be accountable for my actions might be the incentive I need to be . . . active in this area.

I’ll also have a heading for publishing, and by publishing I mostly mean what I’m submitting and whether it’s accepted or rejected. Maybe I'll even get to brag at bit. But I also hope at some point to be able to announce Blood Ties is available.

And finally, I’m going to share what I’m reading. Once upon a time, on a different blog, I talked about what I was reading, and gave little reports on the books. This lead to people offering me free books, most of which I wasn’t interested in. Let me make this clear. I am NOT going to be reviewing books. I’ll tell you the name of the book, who wrote it, and just a general “I like it enough to read it to the end” or “it’s not my cup of tea so I switched to something else.”

We’ll try this new format for the month at least and see how it goes. And if it doesn’t feel right, or becomes too tedious, then I guess I’ll have to revisit it again.

Oh, and like I said at the beginning, the goals are kind of an ongoing thing, so I’m not going to bother setting any weekly ones. It seems a little redundant.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Wordage Report

New Words:
The first part of the week I wrote a 4500 word letter to my sister and updated my journals. Not exactly a great start to fulfilling my goals, but words are words, right? Then I found a market I wanted to try and I took an exercise from the Speculative Fiction course I took a couple of years ago and tried to turn it into a light and fluffy flash story.

It turned out okay, but it didn’t have a lot of substance. But in doing some research for it I came up with a much darker idea and ran with it. I really liked the way the new story turned out, all 850 words of it.

Despite all of my good intentions, I only did the three-minute freewritng twice last week. In the grand scheme of things, three minutes isn’t that long and I actually had fun doing them, so hopefully I’ll do more of them this week.

Editing:
Be still my heart I actually got some editing done on Blood Ties last week. According the TraxTime, the nifty little program I downloaded to keep track of how much time I spend on various projects, I spent 2 hours and 17 minutes. Not as much as I’d like, but you gotta start somewhere, right?

Publishing:
The story I submitted before Christmas was rejected, which didn’t surprise me at all. The story was good, but the timing was at fault. It was about the side effects of the cure for a pandemic virus – not something anyone’s going to want to read currently.

Not to be discouraged, I submitted the flash piece I just finished to an online magazine that had a limited window for submission. I should hear back from them by the end of the month.

What I’m Reading:
After an extended hiatus, I’m back on the bike which means my poor neglected Kindle is seeing some action again. This week it’s Shifter Shenanigans by Shelley Munro. It’s a three book set and so far I’ve only finished the first one, which was about a panther shifter, and I’m really enjoying it.

As for tree books, I’ve ventured back into the realm of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, a series by J.R. Ward. I read the first 11 books before moving on to other things, but kept buying them as they were published so I was able to pick up where I left off. Right now I’m halfway through the King and while I’m liking what I’m reading, I’m also struggling to remember events from the previous books to keep things in perspective.

Wait, It’s Sunday Already?

It’s a grey and miserable day out there, which makes me kind of grey and miserable, but there was nothing really to watch on TV this morning so when I found myself nodding off I figured it was time to relocate to my office. And if I hadn’t, it might have been quite some time before I realized I’d forgotten all about today’s post.

Sorry about that.

You can blame both tiredness and the kitchen renovation on that. Tiredness from eating too many unhealthy meals (and too much of them), brought about by not having access to a proper kitchen. I have a stove, and a TV tray with the toaster and coffee maker sitting on it. But I have no sink, no counters, no cupboards, and trying to find anything in the plastic bins in and around the dining room table is like searching for buried treasure.

I think the most annoying thing about the renovation is that I was just settling into a workable routine – editing in the morning, writing in the afternoon and evening – and it’s just not possible now. Everything’s a crowded mess. Even my office has an extra chair in it with a box of stuff on top. Not very inspiring.

Anyway, I know I had this great idea for a post today (instead of just whining about how chaotic my life has become) but if I wrote the idea down somewhere I can’t remember where.

That being said, the stars must be in the right alignment or something for this year’s NaNo, because my progress has been steady. I was actually ahead of the game a bit, but then last week I had to use up some of those precious words to make my daily quota. I was still on track though, and Friday I managed to pull ahead again which is good because yesterday I didn’t quite make my quota again.

So a little bit of the seesawing, but not the extremes of other years.

My main character has a name now, it’s Brand. His horse is named Raven. :-) And remember how I was starting this as a back story to lead into the real story? Well, I’ve done that in spades. Brand has had a lot of adventures in his short life, most of which will end up cut because despite all the detail it’s the results that are important, not how it happened. Even for a fantasy it takes too long to get to where the story actually starts, which is something that will happen in the next day or two.

That’s right, I’m at the halfway point in NaNo and my story is only now just starting. I’ve heard of others who just start writing and hope a story appears to them along the way, and it looks like that’s what I unintentionally did.

It’s not like I didn’t know what my story was going to be, I guess it was just how to get there that eluded me. There’s a lot of bad writing, and a lot of unnecessary writing. But this is NaNo, people. That’s the name of the game.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Wordage Report

Today is the halfway point in NaNo and I am right on track – just over 25,000 words. How awesome is that? Normally this would be the point where I’d tell myself, “Oh, look. You’re halfway there, time to take a break.” But not this year. This year I want to keep going and, be still my heart, finish early.

Goals From Last Week
1. Blood Tie edits – didn’t really happen. And even if they had, I was kidding myself if I thought I was going to have the book ready for a Christmas release. I don’t even have a blurb or a cover yet.
2. Blog posts – again, this one is late, but I got them all done.
3. NaNo – ready to tip over the halfway point. It’s all uphill from here! LOL

Goals For This Week
1. Instead of edits on Blood Ties, maybe I should be gathering up stories for my flash anthology for my book flood.
2. Get all my blog posts done on time.
3. Keep up the good work on Firestorm.

Last week I talked about playlists for writing. Have you ever found a song that just seemed to fit your character perfectly? Well I did. Brand’s theme song is Rune, by Two Steps From Hell.

Got Cheese?

You know, to go with all that whining I’ve been doing lately. ;-)

Here’s the part where I confess that I’ve been working on this blog post for the last two three hours. I keep deleting what I’ve written because it also seems rather whiny.

“This year’s been a struggle” – whine, whine, whine.

“I suffer from depression” – whine, whine, whine.

“I also have seasonal affective disorder and it’s raining” – whine, whine, whine.

So then I tell myself I need to be more positive, and myself sits back with her feet on my desk, sticking her tongue out and shooting rubber bands at me.

Take a deep breath.

The best writing I’ve done this year is when I don’t stop to think about it, I just do it. I don’t know if that’ll work so well with the editing, but I’m going to give it a try this week. I have come to the conclusion that I will probably not have my anthology edited before the end of next week, but that’s okay. I have an alternate plan for it which might work out even better.

In the meantime, if you saw Saturday’s post then you also saw the picture I posted with the suggestion it be used for this week’s writing prompt (which is why I’m not ending this post with a prompt).

I’ve been posting here on Saturdays and Tuesdays to make it easier on myself because I post on my other blog on Mondays and Fridays. I was going to switch the writing prompt to the Saturday post, like I did this week, and Tuesdays I was going set my goals for the week (with the results showing the following week) but that just seems weird to start the week on Tuesday.

Hmm. Maybe I’ll start setting my goals on Sunday and go to Thursdays for sharing and prompts. Well, for sharing anyway. I’ll probably just forget about the prompts for the month of November while I’m busy with NaNo. And maybe I won’t make the switch until the first of November.

Confused yet? Yeah, me too. LOL

In a nutshell. This week I’m posting today and Saturday – here’s the LINK to that post if you want to give the monk story a try. Next week I’ll post my weekly goals on Tuesday (this week’s goal is simply to get myself organized and moving forward), but then my next post will be Sunday, which will also be a goals post and my strategy for NaNoWriMo.

What’s NaNo, you ask?”

Come back Saturday and I’ll tell you. :-D

Revisiting Goals

Summer’s half over and it got me to thinking that the year is half over as well. And I think it’s high time I checked out the goals I set out at the beginning of the year to see how I’m doing.

First up, a reminder of those goals:

Publishing: Wandering Wizards and an anthology; start submitting poetry and stories.
Organizing and indexing
Writing every day
Less gaming & social media, more exercising and eating healthy

Doesn’t look bad, does it? Because technically there are only four goals. But three of them are multi-part goals so it’s not as simple as it looks.

Publishing — utter fail
Wandering Wizards has been moving forward at a snail’s pace and the anthology is still nothing but an idea. And I definitely haven’t been submitting anything to any kind of publications.

Organizing and indexing — utter fail
I did get the rest of my files pulled off of my old lap top, but they’re still scattered amongst various USB sticks. And I think I’ve pretty much figured out how I’m going organize my poetry, but haven’t made any effort to do so.

Write every day — sort of fail
It’s kind of feast or famine with me, especially lately. The spirit is willing my but mind is weak, and the distractions are many.

Less gaming & social media, more exercising and eating healthy — semi-win
The gaming and social media are kind of hit or miss – some days are more successful than others. It’s an ongoing process that I’m still working on, especially the games. But the more exercising and eating healthy is going well. I haven’t lost any weight yet, but my A1C (I’m diabetic) has gone down 1.4 points.

So . . . it looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me if I’m to reach my goals by the end of the year. But the grandbaby starts kindergarten in the fall, which means I have my days to myself again. So if I can’t reach at least one of my writing goals by the end of the year then maybe I’m not cut out to be a writer.

Prompt of the Week

The Story Shack still won’t let me in, so this week I used the Seventh Sanctum writing challenge generator, which came up with the following:

The story takes place in the early morning. A character will send a letter.
A character will prepare for a religious ceremony. A character becomes attracted to someone during the story.
A character writes a book, but the action goes terribly wrong. A character becomes happy during the story. During the story, there is a sudden change in weather.
The story must have a giant at the beginning. The story must involve a pendant at the end.
A character is misunderstood throughout most of the story. During the story, a character drinks something that disagrees with them. The story is set during a day off. The story takes place at noon exactly. During the story, someone is mistaken for someone famous.

Last week I spent way too much time thinking about my story and doing research, but to be perfectly honest it just wasn’t happening for me. Hopefully this week I’ll have better luck with one of the prompts from above.

All Good Plans…

Let me start by saying I did get some writing in last week, just not enough to include in a proper wordage report. And as I promised to be honest here I have to admit it wasn’t so much that I was busy (which I was) it was more that I got lazy and doing online jigsaw puzzles is much more fun than writing.

Plus I’m sick. *cough, cough* I have a really bad, over the counter medicine resistant sinus infection and a dry cough. But the good news is that I already had an appointment scheduled with my doctor for Wednesday so hopefully she’ll give me some antibiotics to knock it right out of me.

I am also forced to admit that despite my vow not to worry about how messy my office was I spent the first couple of days last week cleaning it up. But after shopping and doing a minimalist indoor decorating job for Christmas, it now looks like this again:

Here’s my white flag of surrender office, I promise not to try and clean you up again until the holidays are over.

But I hope you noticed that I did get all my blog posts done last week, so I think I deserve a pat on the back for that, don’t you? And I didn’t once revert to my old stand-by for December and fill my post with holiday music videos. I’ll save that for next week. :-D

I’ve already started thinking of a few goals for next year. One is to finish Shattered, another is to finish Wandering Wizards which really should have been out for last Christmas. I’m also determined to gather up some of my shorter stuff (and there’s a lot of it because I’m a sucker for a good writing prompt) and put together an anthology.

Last year I embraced the Icelandic tradition of jólabókaflóð, or Christmas Book Flood. I sent a book and tea/hot chocolate to a select list of friends and family as a present to be opened before Christmas so they could enjoy both on Christmas Eve. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to send everyone on my list my own anthology next year? I just have to get it done in time. LOL

If you’d like to learn more about the Christmas Book Flood, go HERE.

Better Than Nothing

New Words - 614
Poetry - 177
Total - 791
Editing Hours - 0

Okay, so maybe not a lot to show for my week, but it’s better than nothing, right? It’s certainly better than the last couple of weeks.

The new words were for a story for the Brazen Snake Books weekly prompt (check out this week’s prompt HERE, and if you scroll down you can read my story.) I got the idea while I was parked on the pier, sipping a cup of coffee late Saturday afternoon. Fortunately I had a notebook with me so I sat there and jotted down notes, and when I got home I sat down and started typing it out on my lap top.

IN MY OFFICE!

That’s right, I wrote that story in my office. No, I didn’t finish getting my office cleaned up last week, but I did clear off enough space on my desk for my lap top and notebook. It was one of those rare occasions when a story pretty much came to me all at once and I wrote it out in one go.

Okay, technically it was two goes. But I got the bones of it done out on the pier and just had to flesh it out when I got home. Normally even with flash fiction I take at least a couple of days. Of course I may have been influenced by the fact I was ticked at the hubby at the time. Nothing like anger at a dumb-ass spouse to get the creative juices flowing. ;-)

The poem was also written for the BSB prompt, but it was written over the course of several days. The prompt was to write about a favourite or least favourite carnival ride, and I knew immediately what I wanted to write about. But first I had to do some research - that’s right, I had to do research for a poem - and then it took me a couple of days to actually write it.

This week I was hoping to implement my plan to get back into the writing habit. I considered everything I had to do during the week, and what time I had free, and figured out a couple of times during the day I could spend in my office writing.

Normally I take the hubby to work at 10:30 a.m., and my normal morning routine would allow me to spend between 9 and 10 writing. However, this week the brother-in-law is on vacation and the hubby needs to be to work for 9. I’m not sure whether this will give me more or less time for pre-babysitting writing, but whether I write or not I’ll be sitting in my office. I’m trying to develop two habits here really, daily writing and writing in my office.

Eventually I’d like to have different days for specific kinds of writing, but for now I’ll just be happy to get the words in.

This week's goal is to beat last week's total.

Let the games begin!

Bucket Lists

Do you have a bucket list?

No, I’m not avoiding the Monday subject, which is supposed to be a report on how my writing week went. It’s just I don’t have a lot to report and bucket lists have been on my mind lately.

But just to get the writing stuff out of the way first...the week did not start out well, writing-wise. The hubby was on vacation, although he spent most of his time working around the house. But just having him home all day kind of threw me off my game and I spent more time reading than writing.

I really struggled to write something for this month’s picture prompt, and when I didn’t have anything to post on Friday I ended up writing both a poem and a story for the weekly Brazen Snake Books prompts. You can find my story HERE, and you can see both my poem and Jamie’s HERE. It’s kind of freaky how we had similar ideas, although we didn’t see each other’s poems until they were done.

Saturday I spent pretty much the whole day agonizing over my picture prompt before deciding my idea would work better as a poem. I really wanted to do a story for that picture, but it just wasn’t happening.

Sunday I spent the first half of the day shopping and the second half entertaining the in-laws for dinner. I was lucky to get the post done for my regular blog, let alone anything else. As it was, I was up past my bedtime doing it. Hopefully I’ll do better this week. :-D

Back to the bucket list.

A bucket list, for those of you totally out of the loop, is a list of things you want to do before you die, or “kick the bucket.” It could be travelling to places, getting married, getting divorced, getting that dream job, running a marathon, making a million dollars ... you get the idea.

I don’t have a bucket list, although there are oodles of things I’d like to do before I die. But as I said, I’ve been thinking about them a lot lately, and then I started making a list. I say a list, because I think it’ll have to be refined before it’s my official bucket list.

I started listing random “stuff” and realized making a bucket list is harder than it looks. It’s not like there are any rules to it - no set number of items to include, no guidelines as to what kinds of things should be included...

In my case, I’ve come to the conclusion I’m going to need three lists: things I want to read; places I want to visit; and miscellaneous. And I’m putting a self-imposed limit of the top ten in each category. This will still give me a total of thirty items to work on.

I did a Google search for ‘bucket list’ and wow, there was 115,000,000 results in 0.61 seconds! Unique Bucket List Ideas; 101 Things To Do Before You Die; 10,000 Things To Do Before You Die; 10,000+ Bucket List Ideas ... However, I only did the search for fun, I’m not going to waste time clicking on any of those likes. I figure if I can’t think of it myself, it doesn’t deserve to go on the list.

Limiting myself to a total of thirty items on my list means I’m going to be thinking long and hard about what goes on there. Ideally they’ll be things I can actually do, and I’m not going to be including namby pamby things like losing 20 pounds or getting a tattoo (which I already have). I think the hard part will be limiting myself to just ten places I want to visit - I’ve always wanted to travel - and coming up with ten books I want to read - I’m a prolific reader so I’ve already read a lot.

This might actually turn out to be a lot of fun!

So... what’s on your bucket list?

Pet Peeve

I spend a lot of time on Facebook, not posting so much, just reading. And I’ve noticed a disturbing trend of late. People using old, perhaps relatively unknown, stories or poems and creating smarmy Facebook posts from them and riding on the coattails of someone else. Let me explain.

I’m sure there are lots of examples out there, but the first one I noticed (a couple of years ago) was a poem that was attached to a picture of a really old man lying in a hospital bed and the caption read that the poem was found amongst his things after he died. I’m sure you’ve all heard the poem before:

“Look at me nurses, what do you see?
What are you thinking when you look at me...”

The thing is, that poem was one of my mother’s favourites some 30 40 many years ago. It was actually written by a woman named Phyllis McCormack, who lived in Scotland, in the 1960s. I was rather appalled that this was being used to generate “likes” on Facebook and just how many people were buying into the idea that this was a recent occurrence.

Just recently I watched a moving video account of a young man who was orphaned in the Philippines 30 years ago and was adopted by an Australian couple, and who was seized by the desire to find out what happened to his parents all those years ago. So he went to the city he was adopted from and found his birth mother. Sound familiar? If you’ve seen the movie Lion, or read the book, it should.

A few days ago I watched what was supposed to be a video to inspire you to think of others. It told of a young married couple - she had long hair and he had a broken pocket watch. He sold his watch to buy her new combs for her hair, and comes home to discover she’s sold her hair to pay for the watch to be fixed. C’mon people, do you live under a rock that you’ve never heard of O. Henry’s feel good Christmas story called The Gift of the Magi? One of my all time favorites, it’s both touching and humorous. And I really resent the fact someone ripped it off for another smarmy Facebook post. They ought to be ashamed of themselves!

There are lots more examples, but I think I’ve made my point. Between stuff like that and all the political stuff going on, I find myself going on Facebook less and less.

And does anyone else find the way the internet keeps track of where you live and what you’ve been looking at creepy? The hubby and I were looking at ceiling panels for the kitchen and suddenly I keep getting ads for Home Depot popping up in my Facebook feed.

/end rant. ;-)

Last week wasn’t exactly a stellar week writing wise, but it was certainly better than the week before. I got all of my blog posts done, some of them even posted on time, plus I did a story and a poem for the Brazen Snake Books weekly prompts, AND I managed to get a super short story done for my monthly picture prompt.

But that was pretty much it because it was a holiday weekend and a busy one at that. And considering the wet, depressing week during which I was suffering from a sinus cold and migraines, I think I did pretty good.

This week’s goal is to get my blog posts done, at least attempt the Brazen Snake prompts, and actually get some of those word things in on one or more of my current WIP.

So tell me .... what are some of your pet peeves?