Friday, July 29, 2011

correction

I just visited my friend Cherie's website and my short story is on there TODAY!  For some reason, I am scared to death.  Why is that?  She looked over it for me a few times, and I fixed some things that needed fixing and then she said it was fine.  I trust her.  She's a great writer.  I didn't mind her reading it.  I don't mind my other writer friends reading it.  It's all the other people I don't know reading it.  I guess it's the fear of failure that's bombarding me all of a sudden.  If I'm going to be a writer, all I've heard is you have to have a thick skin.

I thought I had a thicker skin than this.  I have got to get over myself.  I've told myself over and over...everybody doesn't like everything.  You can't please everybody.  In my 45 year old mind, I know that, but the thought of having somebody tear it up one side and down the other is a bit daunting.  I guess this is a weakness I need to work on.

So if you would like to read my guest post, (gulp) go to www.readywritego.blogspot.com and take a look.

I think I'll just stay off the internet for a while and not look at what anybody says.  Might be the best option for me. :)

Random writing thoughts

I've been neglecting my poor blog...so I thought I'd better come by and spruce it up a bit.  I have a post from a writer friend of mine that I'll share with you next week.  I'll 'advertise' a little first, to give her a few more people to read it.  Since I'm still new at this blogging thing, I don't have a lot of followers yet.  But I have to say, the 15 of you I have, I appreciate to no end!  You're the coolest people ever to me!  :)

I was writing this morning for Big Black Cat's WoCoMoMo...this is the last day of the contest.  I'm trying to get to 50,000 words for the month, but I had to write this down first.  As I sit in my kitchen table on the laptop, I have NickJr. courtesy of my daughter Cassidy going in the living room.  Not knocking NickJr.  LOVE that station.  It's great, but when you're trying to write about other stuff, and your mind jumps around like mine, it's hard to focus sometimes. 

The scene I was writing today has been in my mind for a long time, but I'd never taken the time to just write it down. Thinking about it and actually getting the words out of my brain is a completely different process.  This scene was way more emotional than I ever thought it would be.  I took my ipod and stuck the earbuds in my ears to drown out Nick Jr. and started seeing the characters.  I played Rascal Flatts, "I'm Movin' On", because it's what my main character feels like he has to do.  Two best friends saying goodbye to each other and one of the guy's girlfriend.  They were so sad.  They'd all been friends for most of their lives.  Tears dripped down my cheeks just like theirs did.  I was standing in the room with them feeling all of their emotion.  I knew I'd wanted to write it, but I had no idea how it would effect me.

I guess that's why I love writing so much.  So far, most of the characters I've created are good people.  They do good things ..there are bad ones...there are always bad ones to throw kinks into plots, but my good characters are people I've grown to love.  Seeing one of my main guys hurting just about killed me.  I know he's not real, but he FEELS real.  It's like watching a movie in your head and you get totally involved in it while you're writing down what's happening.

Writing has become such a gift to me.  Not only have I met some great new friends and blog buddies, but they've challenged me to write and try things I would've never tried other wise.  I have 3 different short stories I pumped out without any prior experience of writing one.  I'm pretty proud of those.  One of these days, I may post a part of them on here.  I've heard not to publish whole works to a blog, because then you can't ever publish it for real.  The one short story will be published on a friend's blog, so I'll be able to put it on mine too.

I'll be guesting on @writercherie's blog  on Aug. 3. AND I'll also be guesting on @MichelleSimpkins ' blog on the same day.  I wrote a post on LOVE for Michelle and wrote a short story from a picture Cherie sent me and my other buddy @AMSupinger.  We looked at the exact same picture, but wrote two completely different stories.  Writing is SO cool.  I just love it.  

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Meme's gone wild. These Twitter people I hang out with...geez.

Ok, I have been tagged yet again in another blogger meme.  This time it was created by my blogger/Twitter/Facebook/writer friend Michelle.  She's at Greenwoman.  I missed most of what happened on Twitter, but apparently she was bullied or peer pressured into making a blog about panties.  There is a group of us on there that feed off each other's comments like sharks feeding on chum.  It is truly hysterical when you get witty writer types to play off each other's brains.  I love it.  That is why I must do Feral Pony's bidding.  (She's the one who tagged me.  Her blog is at The Party Pony.  Thanks Jenny.)
And so here it is...My very first Panty Meme blog.  ;)

What do you call your panties/underwear/undergarments? Do you have any commonly used nicknames for them?
I'm pretty boring.  They're just panties to me.  One of my best friends from high school, Sam, had a lingerie shop.  So when I got married I had some really nice ones. :)

Have you ever had that supposedly common dream of being in a crowded place in only your underwear?
Actually, I've had that dream where I was naked.  I was wishing for at least a pair of panties at the time!

What is the worst thing you can think of to make panties out of?
Jenny said discarded Vampire fangs, which I thought was beyond great. Goat hooves just popped in my head...???

If you were a pair of panties, what color would you be, and WHY?
I think I'd like to be my leopard print pair.  Rawr!

Have you ever thrown your panties/underwear at a rock star or other celebrity? If so, which one(s)? If not, which one(s) WOULD you throw your panties/underwear at, given the opportunity?
I don't think I would ever throw them at anybody ...the size would be too embarrassing...lol.  Now if I was throwing one of my daughter's thongs, I might throw it to....no...he's too young... never mind...;)

You’re out of clean panties. What do you do?
wash some ASAP..until then, it's commando time.  And no...Arnold S. is no where around my house.

Are you old enough to remember Underoos? If so, did you have any? Which ones?
I remember commercials for Underoos, but I was too old for them....dammit.  If they'd had super hero ones, I think I would've been Wonder Woman. 

If you could have any message printed on your panties, what would it be?
Liquor in the front. Poker in the rear.--that was Jenny's ..that was too good not to share further! For me...hmm...Read between the Loins...ba-dum-ch!

How many bloggers does it take to put panties on a goat?
 Have they been drinking before?  At least 20...
Tag Four People and tell them why you are being so cruel to them.     
   
1.  AM Supinger-Inner Owlet-because she is a member of the goat posse which makes her guilty by association.

2.  JLeaLopez-Jello World-because she is so funny, I can't wait to see her answers!

3.  Calista Taylor-A Steampunk Reverie-because until now she's escaped all the meme nonsense.  It's time she got roped into this too.

4.  Riley Redgate-The mighty jungle- she's young and doesn't have enough to do.  ;)



Monday, July 11, 2011

Motivation

I did a stupid thing.  Yeah, I know...you're shocked by this.

I signed up for BBC's WoCoMoMo contest.  Let me translate that for you.  BBC is Big Black Cat.  That's her handle on Twitter and on Agent Query Connect's website.  She announced on Twitter right before the beginning of July that she was having a blog contest to see if we could keep up with her word count.  WoCoMoMo stands for Word Count Motivational Month.  So she's encouraging us to just write.  It has to be fiction and our blogs don't count, which kinda sucks, but those are the rules.  It also doesn't have to be perfectly edited either.  It just has to be a story.  So I think...July...I'm not going to school in July.  School starts on Aug. 1st for me...hmm.  I think I can do this.  It'll be good for me.
What in the crap was I thinking????

I started writing at the beginning of the week.  I had a pretty decent word count, I thought.  Then I panicked.  "What if I have ***words and every body else has like 40,000???  I won't be able to keep up with them at all."  This was the message I kept hearing in my head.  "You're gonna be embarrassed if you don't pump out some stories," I kept telling myself.  So I've been sitting at the computer typing out scenes from three different stories now.  Just to keep the creativity flowing, I keep bouncing back and forth.  Why am I so worried about this little blog contest???  It's not like I'm going to get an agent if I win. 
I have this small problem with my personality.
I hate to lose.

Normally, if I lose at a game, I'm ok with it on the outside, but on the inside, I'm that five-year-old kid stomping their foot and being generally ticked off at myself for about five minutes.  Then I'm over it.....but, I still don't like it.
I'm not sure where my competitive streak came from.  I never played sports when I was little other than playing baseball with all my boy cousins.  Both my parents played sports.  Mom played basketball in high school and my dad was a pretty good pitcher for what was a the equivalent of a minor league team back in the '50s'.  Maybe I got it from them.  Who knows?
All I know is it's a character flaw I have no matter how much I try to not let it bother me...it still bothers me.  Maybe it's the whole stubborn thing.

That's a whole other character flaw I have .  You can bet most of my girl characters are stubborn to some degree, because I don't know how to be any other way.  So maybe that's what it is.  I'm too stubborn to accept that I might not win.  This is the one contest that I feel like I might actually have a chance to win, but I doubt it.  After the first week, which I did win, I'm sure everybody else will step up and pass me.

So I guess I'll be getting out the old bowling brace for my wrist because my right hand is killing me and keep typing.  I'm really liking two of the stories I've started.  I wrote on one all last week and this week I'm working on a different one that I'd written three chapters on already.  And then tonight in the car, I had a scene pop in my head about my second book that goes after the very first one I wrote...so I wrote a scene in that one too.
So there's my motivation to write for this month.  Not only do I love to write about all these different characters and places, but I really want to win.   ;)

"Shameless plug" ---You can follow BBC at @bigblackcat97 on Twitter.  There's a link to her blog on here.  She's at "Writer, writer, pants on fire".  So you can click on my link to her page to see the results of her contest....and hopefully my name will still be on top next week. :)

Saturday, July 2, 2011

You only have this second

I'm writing tonight with a troubled heart.  While we were at the bowling alley today, I got a text from my friend and PE teacher at our school that one of our Kindergarten teachers was in a really bad car wreck last night.  We just got word through phone calls, texts and school email about it.  She was rear-ended by a drunk driver and pushed into a tree.  The tree hit on her side and she is in Vanderbilt in critical condition with a what they're calling a massive brain injury plus some other broken bones and internal injuries.  The last email we got from our guidance counselor from school said that this next week was touch and go and the dr.'s didn't have a prognosis.  To me that means they don't even know if she's going to live or die.  My friend, is in her late twenties, has been married for a few years and was on  maternity leave last year with her first child is now hovering between life and death.  The driver, a young woman, probably early to mid-twenties was uninjured and is now in jail.  In an second, both of their lives are changed forever.  Both of them young and we all assume have their whole life ahead of them, but now because of one girl's stupid decision to drink and drive, now both of their lives will be filled with struggles.  My friend's physical struggles outweigh the drunk driver's by a long shot, but the driver will have to face the possibility that she could be responsible for killing someone if my friend dies.  Also, if she lives, they don't know what she'll be able to do and not do.  Thinking she'll be able to still teach Kindergarten seems like an impossibility at this point, but miracles do happen and our whole school has asked everybody they know to pray for her.  But that's a possibility that the driver will have to face as well.  She's taken away my friend's ability to make a living.  She's taken away her ability to take care of her baby boy, to be a wife to her husband.  How do you live with that?  Hopefully, she's remorseful and she'll learn from this horrific mistake she's made. 
I guess my brain is just swirling around worrying about her and thinking what if it were me?  I was thinking as I was driving home from the bowling alley on the interstate, we only have the second we're in right now.  The one before it is in the past and the one after it is the future.  Once that second is gone, it's gone.  We don't get it back.  And I could be in an accident right now and not make it home.  It could so easily be any of us.  We don't know how much time we have.  I've heard that over and over, so I'm trying to do what I can to appreciate the seconds I'm given every day.  I'm trying not to worry about how clean the house is.  I'm walking outside and feeling the breeze when ever I think about it.  I watch the birds and listen to the bugs sing in the evening.  I'm trying to appreciate being with Cassidy and appreciating every thing she says, except when it has a 'Jr. High attitude' wrapped around it.  I can't let those slip by.

When Shannon walked out of the house tonight to go hang out with some of her friends, it struck me that it so easily could be her laying in that hospital bed.  For the first time ever, I watched her drive off and was truly afraid for a few moments that she might not come back.  I wasn't this bad the first time she pulled out of the driveway by herself to go to Publix for me to get some milk.  I was very aware that she walked out the door and I didn't get a chance to say, "I love you."  We both just said, "See you later."  I always tell her when she walks out the door.  I guess I was hyper-aware of it tonight with my friend on my mind.  So as I end this post, I hope for you reading this long life, happiness and use all your seconds to do good things, be good to each other and to your self, because you don't know how many seconds you have left.