February 1, 2010
January 25, 2010
Check out one of my bizarre writing moments
Sharon Ball is being a gracious hostess, so click on over to A Break from the Norm, and find out how my writer brain sometimes (mal)functions!
See you there!
January 12, 2010
January 7, 2010
Are you a creature too?
Today is day four of the new school semester. Because of the scheduling, a process we refer to “fruit basket turnover,” the students don’t always stay in the same class hour.
So, after eighteen weeks of togetherness, we’re all thrown into a different orbit. It’s unsettling for some of them. I don’t assign seats in my classroom; it’s easier for me not to mess with a seating chart. Plus that notion of seated by alpha is totally skewed when the new kid arrives, as they inevitably do. The students are the ones who actually make their own seating chart. They sit in the same desk everyday. In fact, minor verbal skirmishes have taken place over, “S/He’s sitting in my desk.”
And when I gently remind the person that there are no assigned desks, the response is, “But I sit here all the time.”
Tonight, scrolling through my usual news blogs, bloggy blogs, Twitters and Facebooks, I looked up from my wing-backed chair next to the pie table stacked with books that belonged to my mother on which sits the lamp my husband almost brained the decorator with after she handed him the invoice, and thought, “I sit here all the time.”
Maybe to stir my writer brain I need to move my writer butt to, if not another part of the house or out of the house, at least a different chair.
What habits might you be a creature of?
January 6, 2010
“i thank you God for most this amazing” ee cummings
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
Today, thank God for everything “which is yes.”
January 5, 2010
Are you a SENTENCE or a PARAGRAPH?
Thanks to Jim Burke: The English Teacher’s Companion for the heads up on this video. Not only is it a dynamic and educational video, I believe it’s a lesson in truly effective book trailers FOR AUTHORS.
The video promotes Daniel Pink’s new book, Drive.
So, what’s YOUR sentence?
December 29, 2009
Out with the new for 2009
What do
the following words all share?
GREEN
CARBON FOOTPRINT or CARBON OFFSETTING
MAVERICK
FIRST DUDE
BAILOUT
WALL STREET/MAIN STREET
Internet and texting blues
-MONKEY
<3
ICON or ICONIC
GAME CHANGER
STAYCATION
DESPERATE SEARCH
NOT SO MUCH
WINNER OF FIVE NOMINATIONS
IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN
Lake Superior State University “maverick” word-watchers, fresh from the holiday “staycation” but without an economic “bailout” even after a “desperate search,” have issued their 34th annual List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness. This year’s list may be more “green” than any of the previous lists and includes words and phrases that people from “Wall Street to Main Street” say they love “not so much” and wish to have erased from their “carbon footprint.”
December 15, 2009
I’m in AFICTIONADO this month. Please stop by.
Lisa Jordan wrote a spectacular article about me in this month’s “My First Sale” column in Afictionado…and I didn’t even have to pay her.
What a woman! Check it out here.
And read the rest of this great ACFW ezine while you’re there…including an article by moi about the multi-talented Mary DeMuth.
November 23, 2009
November 15, 2009
Olive Manna designs and Natalie’s book: check them out
My web designer, Natalie Jost, is a remarkable and talented person. In addition to being a wife, a mom of three daughters (one+twins), designing websites, and being tortured by my inane technologically-impaired self, she has an online shop called OLIVE MANNA. At her shop, you can find textiles and paper goods like gift tags, notes, mini-journals,soft and hardback grown-up journals with Natalie designed covers, bookmarks, bookplates, personalized note pads, designer plates, stickers, Christmas notes…
And, in time for the holidays, she’s offering Layaway! Please click on over and browse through her shop. Her fabric designs are lovely and, of course, available!
While you’re there, go to her BLOG and read about her 63-page book entitled Finding My Mother, her story of searching for her birth mother. It’s a compilation plus
of blog entries she’s written, and her desire is to reach out to others who are searching as well. What is special about this book is that half of the proceeds from sales of the book and the supplemental journals will be for CASA and similar organizations. This book is also available as a downloadable e-book.
I’ve been following Natalie’s designs for years, even before I ever expected to need/want a website of my own. She’s been a cheerleader and encourager during my writing, agenting, and selling. My daughter is now a Natalie fan, and I hope you become one as well.
