Tag: Writing

5 Ways an Author Blog Could Kill Your Writing (and What to Do Instead) | WritersDigest.com

I discovered I am not unique. Just like other writers who start a blog because they were told that we must build an online presence before we publish our books: I started my blog – my posts were fewer and fewer each month – I posted excuses for my absences. Now I find out that this might have been my biggest mistake:

Static author websites are great, and you’d be crazy not to have one. But starting an author blog is a different (and often tragic) story. In fact, your author blog might even kill your writing. There are hundreds of authors who started blogs, churned out posts for a year, and let it come to a dead stop.

Source: 5 Ways an Author Blog Could Kill Your Writing (and What to Do Instead) | WritersDigest.com

Free Poems with Thorns

Poems with Thorns

Many of you already know about my oldest son from a previous post, This Man Is My Son . I have another son with different challenges. While my oldest son still lives in the imprisonment of addiction, my other son lives imprisoned behind bars. Every week or so I receive an envelope prominently stamped across the front of it in bold black ink “__________ Prison.”  It breaks my heart. At first every envelope contained a hand written poem. I typed each of those poems and published them as “Poems with Thorns”  a few years ago. There are two more volumes waiting to be processed.

If you happen to be a Kindle Unlimited member, you can read the book for free. The Kindle version is only $1.99.  I love to read on my Kindle but its heart warming to hold my son’s book in my hands. I’m giving 3 readers the opportunity to have a copy of the book.  All I ask is that you consider leaving a review. All you need to do is be one of the first three to claim the book here. Note, the book is written under a pen name, Onslow Mansbridge.

I look forward to your comments and it would be fantastic if you would be kind enough to post an honest review.

Bullet Journal Addiction

So I disappeared again. This time I fell in a rabbit hole. Deep in the hole. I fell and I couldn’t climb out. This time it’s a new addiction. I blame it on my Bullet Journal and all the bullet journal junkies out there.

It all started with one A5 Leuchttrum1917 journal. The journals multiplied. Everything from the Rhodia journal to some inexpensive notebooks from Michael’s piled up on the corner of my desk.

Then came the quest for the perfect pen. One that wouldn’t bleed through the paper. One that could write in any notebook without ghosting. One that writes with the smoothness of oil on a cabbage leaf. (Metaphors are my downfall). I spent so much money on fountain pens, cartridges and ink that I could’ve bought a Namiki… well maybe a Visconti. For now I’ll settle for my TWSBI and see if big brother is listening.

I’m living in a nightmare of stickers, washi tape, stencils, pencil boxes, dual point markers, rubber stamps, ink pads, dashboards, and pen holders. Every time I get near a store, especially a craft store with aisles catering to people like me, my car stalls right there in the space closest to the door. I can’t help it. I need just one more pen, one more sticker. I need to find the one thing that makes my Bullet Journal better than anybody else’s. I need to stop stalking Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube #bulletjournals that feed my habit.

I’ve been sneaking home before anyone else gets there, hiding my stash. But I got caught. I had to confess. I promised my husband that I would have a “no spend” March. But wait – it’s still February – does it count if I shop online today but delivery happens in March?

I Wanted To Write

Dorothy Parker’s Mink Coat

I wanted

  • to write a book that would tear your insides apart with laughter, not heartbreak.
  • to write tiny bites of my life with enough humor to leave my readers with howling belly aches over exaggerated blimps and bleeps.
  • to write the best selling memoir full of wit and wisdom, one that would live on the nightstand of every parent on this earth who might need a quick dose of humor following a particularly harrowing day.
  • to write with a keen sense of humor to keep my readers turning the pages (or swiping their Kindles) to the very last word.
  • to write the takeaways that would lead to joyful resolution for all who read my words.

Meanwhile I have

  • written the necessary 90,000 words of a pitiful and shitty first draft (ala Anne Lamott), just to get over it.
  • highlighted the questionabull, deleted the distractabull, rewritten the sustainabull, and added the conceivabull.
  • hit the muddy middle and squirreled away at least sixty hours of mindless FaceBook gaming in the last thirty days.

The time has come

  • to send away the critics and bring in the clowns.
  • to let go of the past.
  • to write that final chapter.

If nothing else comes of this

  • I can say I wrote a book
  • My inner self will be sufficiently mended.
  • I can be a better person.
  • I still have a sense of humor.

BUT maybe one day I’ll sit at the Algonquin table in Dorothy Parker’s mink coat signing copies of my phenomenal book.