What to write about

I just asked my daughter what should I write about and she said. "How mean Izzie is." Well, that's not going to work, because I can't write about the attitudes of little girls, they fluctuate as much if not more than adults and tend to be more violable. Today and yesterday are no school days do to Parent Teacher Conferences so what us mommies do is pile all the kids in one house while the other mom's get a chance to talk one on one with teachers, it works well. BUT and here is the BUT, this is the second day we have had to do this and the kids are getting onto each others nerves. It's amazing how they love to hate each other at times. The explosion of emotions can play in a great way to expression of characters in a book. I may be quilty of doing it when needing to exaggerate a sence, kids are a great example of how high emotions can run. We all have to learn somewhere.

family

We all have family somewhere doing something at all times. For me, my family is spread across the great U.S.of A. from sea to shining sea. Funny, we are live in states that touch a different border, let it be land or water.
Anyway, my oldest sister is the guru of the family she has her finger on our pulses, knows everything. Always there to turn to when you need someone to talk to, always has an answer o fix the problem... normally the right answer.
My brother just tries to keep from being swallowed up by mommy do lists. He's your typical biker, mechanic type sweet teddy bear on the inside, scary as hell to mess with. But a righteous southern California Raiders loven Gentleman.
And My other sister has 5+ kids... need I say more. The thing is my sister who lives in a shoe, has a blog she writes in everyday. After reading several posts, I realize how much I missed getting to know her. How I never thought how all our lives impact each other. To me she is my older sister who can do all, be all and survive all. Patience and passion, live your life with pride; it's always how I thought of her. Then she writes about wishing she knew how to shoot a point and shoot camera without getting blurry pictures, or how our father loved country music (I didn't know that) or how she fell in love with Piano bars because she went to one for me. I realize there is more to her that I want to know more about. It fun learning new things, better to learn them about family.

Just wrote a Blog for LCRW

I wrote about my experience with the NaNo. National Novel Writing Month of November, it was fun and highly educational. Go check out my blog at LCRW.
I'm off to write another article for Examiner.

The interview

I have been writing as the Rochester Romance Novel Examiner for a while now. The trick is to keep everything relevant to Rochester. This can be hard when getting handed interviews with top best sellers. But when there is a way there is a how. So after talking over with my critique group I came up with a way. Ask Rochester what they would ask the best sellers.
In doing this, I got to complete the interviews and satisfy my requirements. Not to mention got to bring Top Names to Rochester so to speak.
Monday, I released the first interview and wow, the readership on that interview alone was amazing. So it anyone wants to see the interview with Susan Wiggs. check it out here.
Rochester Romance Novel Examiner's Interview with Susan Wiggs
Have to say, it's a highlight of my writing career for Examiner.com

New blog on LCRW

Today, I ranted on the LCRW blog about should I twit or not. I'm still up in the air. I spend so much time as it is writing, should I be spending it twitting too?
Lately I realize I need to promote more to get my examiner page really going. I want to do that. Some really cool opporunities had popped up and I think would help if I had more promoting.
As a private person, I wonder if twitting is the right thing to do.
Go check out my blog on LCRW and voice your comments or voice them here. What do you think.

Changes in Temperature

Here we are listening to the wind through the trees and enjoying the temperature drop. It's football season. It puts in mind days gone by when the trees turned color and school buses rolled. Apple butter being made and all in all just active weather. It's different then summer when it's a free for all, it's harvest time. Time to clean out and make room for winter. Time to add to the cellars. It's time for fires in the hearth and tea in the evenings. Time for fall TV shows to fill us with intrigue and things to talk about. It's time to learn.
I read a email this morning about an older lady attending college. It's call the Rose. If you have read it, then I hope it touched your heart as it did mine. I think everyday you should learn something new, everyday grow in a way that you don't because just like the email. We grow older everyday, there's no trick to it, we just do. But if we lose our pursuit of dreams then we just grow old and we stop living. These temperature changes makes me wish for school for learning, then I realize I can do it all on my own, with the adventures around me and my passion for the Arts. As long as my dreams are to be published and successful, then I won't just grow old with my each day, but just grow each day.

The Last Weekend

Today is the last Saturday before school starts and we all can feel the intensity running through the house. For the first time all summer my darlings went downstairs and turned on the cartoons without a fuss. Meaning I got to sleep in a bit longer.
My friends and I are running a poll on our feelings of the up and coming first day. Last week one mother was 80% ready for them to return only because she was dreading making them sit down and do homework. As soon as she said that the poll went from 110% to 90%, we all forgot about homework. Homework isn't just for the kids, it's for the adults to make the kids do it. Some parents have taught their children the right way to do homework, no complaints, no whining- just do it. I want that magic recipe. I have tried it all.
Anyway, yesterday while all us mother's were together, we polled again. With the amount of nervous energy, anticipation, and the moon, all the mother's agreed, homework was totally doable and we all were at 110% ready for school. Ready and waiting.
I agree, but I'm going to miss them. It's nice to have the little ones around, to eat with, to talk to and to watch them grow. Once school starts, the lazy days of summer disappear into the mists of time and we start over again. The song has started to play in my head, the guitar has been in my dreams, it's time to welcome Don Henley, The Boys of Summer. Gets me every time, summer is becoming out of reach. Way to bittersweet.

My first submission

Well, I finally bit the bullet and submitted my first short story to The True Romance Magazine. I hear it will be up to a year to see if they reject or accept so time is on hand now. But I feel like I am in the mix now.
This has been a busy but productive summer. And it just shows me how lucky I am to live the life I have. We all may complain a time or two, but we make life what we want it to be.
Happy is how I'm feeling today as I look down the leaf cover path to a new school year.

Rochester Romance Novel Examiner

Whoa!
I just began the Rochester Romance Novel Examiner and I am so excited.
It's a real job, maybe not paying much, but real.
I'll be writing book reviews, lists and q&A. Hopefully, tieing into Rochester as much as possible. So many things are floating in my mind, now just got to get it done.

As for my writing, I have completed on short story that I want to summit to the True Magazines.
I am busy on my current WIP happy that the excitement is still running deep.
School starts up in six days, then bring on time, time to write, time to clean, time to be me.
Wow, what a concept...time.

Something new

Excitement, fun and adventure. Currently, I began my new WIP. I am only 1,000 words into it and the feeling is superb.
I decided to make myself more accountable. Writing at least 200 words a day. It's hard in the summer when the kids are home and life flies by like bats out of hell, but in the last few days I have written enough to get to 1000 words.
I am hoping in a few weeks I will have enough on paper that I will go back to my last story and start layering. I need new eyes on that one.
A fellow writer wrote how writing is her choice of drugs. I completely understand. If I don't write I feel bogged down, but when I do write it feels like I can fly.

Writing is like a big whole in the ceiling.

Recently, we have had plumbing problems. Ok, I can still see the 8 foot x 4 foot hole in the TV room's ceiling. The plumber put a patch on the leaking pipe last week and we have been waiting for him since to replace the pipe. He finally called, he is to come tonight!
For the what feels like a eon, I have been writing this story that has me flip flopping around the cavernous whole of my imagination. I am finally at the end of it and I feel like I am waiting for the emperor of my imagination to come in to save the day. The last bit of the story is the hardest, I feel. How to wrap it up so everyone in happy. I know I have to simply get it down on paper, I can go back and make the scenes right later with a plot line.
Being, a sit of her pants writer, answering the questions what, when, why, how and where as I go, sometimes makes me nervous. It is part the excitement and part the insanity that drives me to write. So maybe, just maybe after the plumber comes life will get someone back to normal, then I can have an audience with the emperor. Let my imagination run wild and finish the story.

When Do you Write?

Last week, at the Creative Writing Workshop through Barnes and Nobles in Greece, one question that popped up through out the night was 'when do you write?'. The group is from all genres and writing levels. One was getting back into writing after a twenty year break while others were just finding their groove.
Some say in the morning after cleaning, going to Barnes and Nobles three times a week, or in the car while driving... it comes down to when we all have time throughout our busy day. Personally, I used to write before bed, but life has put a stop to that, now I am trying a new routine.
Stephen King wrote contracted work in the morning and for fun in the afternoon. It was the fun piece that he first sold well. So if you can commit yourself to writing all day long, do it. Find your groove.
If you have to buy a package of white paper napkins for paper, hide yourself in a single lite room with a table and typewriter, or upside down on a lounge chair by the pool just do it. The sky's the limit as long as we write. Because you never know what you have until you read it on paper, or a computer screen.

Learning

Several years ago, I wrote two manuscripts that have everything plus the kitchen sink shoved into it's pretty pages. Last year I decided to get up from my chair and hit some writer's group to see if I have something worth continuing.
Well, well, well... I have found a new world of trade. And learnt so much that my head is now spinning. Now I know I am not really a plotter, more a pantser. And to top it off, I have to write to get to the answer why? The characters demand surprise.
In the last year, I have started four stories and all are in varies stages of completion. The problem is in my head I have already figured out why it has happen and the stories hold no appeal to me now. This is the frustrating part of writing. When you learn just enough to question your every word, and lose what you were wanting to write.
Now, I am working on a balance. My new approach is to let it rip and then pick up the pieces when it's over. Maybe then I could complete something and have my ahhhh moment.

You've got to be kidding me?

We've all said the phrase at least once in our life, and never really thought of it, the inflection behind it or the expression we use. You've got to be kidding me, right.
The other day, I was driving my five year old to soccer practice in the pouring rain. Now a little back story, he didn't want to go to practice because, of course he was so tired and by the time we were half way there he noticed the rain.
Out of the blue he says over the rain, over the radio... "You've got to be kidding me, they're going to make us play in this." He throw he hands over his shaking head, his lips were pressed together in frustration and he watched me for some hope that it wasn't true.

Other than the smile that spread on my face as he waited for my response it took me a few minutes to come up with the right thing to say. Perhaps it was the first time the phrase really hit me, but it made me think of all the times I've said it. To the computer when I was frustrated on a piece of work, to the refrigerator when I forgot something or to the dog when she is... well being a dog in the wrong moment.

All this comes down to being expressive starts young, imitating life around them, and when we grow older we still do it without noticing. His reaction got me thinking of the little things in my writing that I have left out, especially in my characters. It seems I have forgotten that they too mimic life, and need to be expressive. I think it's the little things that make a story great. It's those little things that have me throwing my hands in the air saying, "You're got to be kidding me, why didn't I see it before."

Writing as always gone hand to hand with art for me. Years ago as I was drawing, my medium when I was young was charcoal, years and years of working with black fingers. But when I wanted a break I would write a story. I still remember the basis of that first story when I was in middle school, it was a Phoenix rising story surrounding these three friends. Good vs Evil and all. In High School it was all about how to embarrass my teachers. Now I find myself writing romance and my medium is photography. At times I blend the two, I find inspiration from the photos I take. It still astonishes me how trends in our life start from a young age and define who who and what we become.

Sometimes

Photography has always been a joy for me, but lately I have fallen into the just taking pictures of the kids and occasions. Funny, how this has been how writing has been for me as well. I had fallen into just looking over my own work without much inspiration. The feeling is similar to the lost and not yet found emotion. But I think I am on the track now, for the past week I have given into a thought that has excited me. I'm not ready to tell the world about it, but I am encouraged by the new world opening in my head. And the scenes of places in which I dream of capturing on film. Perhaps this is due to the feelings of spring or just enough sleep or the prospect of needing an outlet with the kids are home from school all summer long. What ever the case may be, I am trilled.