Your Work Reviewed: Fresh Eyes

31
Oct

Sometimes when you’ve been working hard on a piece, no matter how long or short, it is easy to lose perspective. It all looks fantastic…or it all stinks. You are just too close to be a fair judge of the material. This may mean you should set down the pen and slowly back away, or it may mean it’s time to invite someone else to offer their view of your work.

Scary!

This sounds like a terrible idea, and depending on WHO you invite, it might be a terrible idea. Not terrible in that you’ll hear what someone else thinks, but less than helpful if the person you invite has to ever see you again.

This rules out some of the people closest to you.

Your friends and family want the best for you. They like you. They think you’re fun. They’d like nothing more than to see you get published. They’d like you to remember to pickup bread on the way home. This is why they aren’t the most impartial bunch to ask.

It is time to find some other pals, writing pals, people who are connected to you because of a mutual interest in writing, not a connection through blood or housing situation.

I’m telling myself this same thing.

I am working hard to get connected with other writers in my area. I’m trying to find writing friends online. Maybe you will want to be join a writing critique group. Maybe you’ll find someone else who needs an impartial review and you can swap reads. People are out there, you just have to do the work to find them, and that takes away from writing time. But I think it is worth it in the end to get that unbiased opinion.

Here’s another resource that I just happened across. American Christian Fiction Writers are having a contest where you can win a professional review of the first five pages of your unpublished manuscript. Sounds great to me, and although there is a entry fee, it could be worth it if you want to get connected through their organization. Check it out! http://www.acfw.com/first_impressions/

That’s all for now. Don’t worry, I didn’t forget about the Writing Tips. One is on the way in the next day or so. Until then, happy writing!

Motivation for Writers

27
Oct

St. Augustine writing, revising, and re-writing: Sandro Botticelli’s St. Augustine in His Cell (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What motivates a person to write? Is it the desire to be known? Is it a wish to educate or share information? Is it a creative impulse that must be heeded lest it lead to frustration in all its forms?Take this hypothetical situation: what if you were challenged to stop writing. What if you had to store all your ideas, reflections and feelings in your brain. What would have to happen externally to make you sneak off to a dark corner and scratch something onto a piece of bark? Would it be a great joy or deep sorrow? Would it be a new thought that had never previously entered your brain and you had to get it down? What would be the push to get you to pick up the pen (or keyboard)?

In the past, my motivator was strong emotion. It could be joy or happiness, or it could be hard disappointment or sadness. Either would do. Then I would find myself forced to write, almost as if I couldn’t NOT write.

There are times when something in your life elicits such a strong reaction in you that you are moved to action. For writers, I believe that action, even though it is solitary, is the formation of words on the page.

Ultimately then, our motivation doesn’t need to be some grand thing — in fact, I think it is better if it is deceptively small.

Tip #2: Make your motivation an appreciation of language and all it can do.

Why do we write? If we love language and the process of writing, then simply setting coherent words down one after the other is motive enough. Bending those words to our will is a strenuous activity! Other stuff is a sidedish that comes along later, but at its most elemental, there is a relationship with words for people who are prompted to write.

For more on other kinds of motivations, such as fame or success, keep yer ears on because I’ll be posting another Writing Tip very soon.

Breaking into the Writing Life

23
Oct

English: Book and apparatus for writing. Engraving (prints). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some people know from the time they are young what career they want. I am not one of those people; therefore, my career history is varied. Super varied. One of the constants has always been an appreciation for and dabbling in writing.

A couple years ago I started to write a story while I waited…and waited…for my kids to go to sleep. When I finished, I added what should have happened before the part I wrote. And all of a sudden, I couldn’t stop writing. I thought about it even when I wasn’t doing it. I made time to work on it early in the morning, late at night and even arranged time away from home to be able to focus on it. The thing morphed into a full-fledged novel.

Now I have officially entered the writing world since my manuscript has been rejected by a publisher (is this a yay! or a boo! ?). Even though this really knocked me on my butt, I learned that I wasn’t ready to give up on getting it “out there” someday. I also discovered that I really enjoy the process of writing, I enjoy and crave that creative outlet. On top of all that, I’m starting to formulate another story in my head.

This leads to a two-pronged approach for me right now. On the one hand, I love writing and have been told by impartial sources that I am good at it, so I would like to write for ongoing publications, i.e. magazines, e-magazines (“zines”), websites, etc. On the other hand, I am drawn to the richness of what a novel can offer in terms of theme and character development.

Blogging seems to be a good way to get connected to other writers, since often times I feel I am writing only for myself. And maybe we can help each other along the way. I’ll share what I learn, and maybe others will chime in and we can pool our collective intelligence.

The first tip I think is so practical and yet so challenging comes from Anne Lamott’s classic book on writing, Bird By Bird. In it she lays out a thorough attack plan, and what I’ll call …

Tip #1: Get your fanny in the chair and do the thing.

http://twitter.com/ANNELAMOTT/status/228366902668439552

Nothing earth shattering and yet so hard to actually do.

So for today, that’s what I’m going to keep going. I’ll keep chipping away at the creative process of writing, and I will also chip away at learning about the business of writing. These are two totally different parts of my brain, and it makes me a little crazy to hold them both in my head simultaneously, so I will choose one to work on first, then set that aside to work on the other.

Do you have any helpful quotes that keep you motivated? Do you have a suggestion for a book on writing that people must read? Please let us in on your secret! I look forward to hearing from you. Now go do some damage to that keyboard (or whatever you use to write) of yours. Best of luck!

Hello world!

22
Oct

Welcome to WordPress.com! This is your very first post. Click the Edit link to modify or delete it, or start a new post. If you like, use this post to tell readers why you started this blog and what you plan to do with it.

Happy blogging!

The Burn of Anti-aging Moisturizer

20
Oct

English: Photo of L’Oréal’s anti-aging creams in Hannaford store in Orono, Maine, USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My skin has always been sensitive. But I am stubborn and have tried to pretend it is just normal, or maybe combination? I’m always game to try new tactics when it comes to a beauty regimen. My mother loves to remind me of the time when she convinced me, on good authority from a friend of hers, that if before bed I put a dab of plain, paste-type toothpaste on a pimple, by morning it would be gone.She was right.

But what she didn’t tell me was that all the skin around the pimple site would be gone as well.

Then I spent the next week trying to nurse my face back to health.

Hilarious fun for a high schooler.

In spite of this and other ill-fated adventures, my fascination with beauty products persists.

Now I’m to the age when there are little lines around my eyes, just teeny ones, but enough to notice. So what do I do? I fall victim to American culture and attitudes towards aging and march to the store for a night cream with anti-aging properties.

Night cream, in my mind, is supposed to be a thick, dense, moisturizer that goes above and beyond your daytime face lotion. It conjures up an image of a woman’s face covered in light green cream. The cream I picked up was just white (bummer), but it was thick and held promise.

Soon after I put it on I had an eye itch, so I rubbed my eye. Little flecks of something were on my skin, so I wiped them off…them wiped off some more. At first I thought the lotion had separated or gone bad somehow, but upon closer inspection I discovered that in fact it was my skin that was rubbing away.

EWW!

Now listen, I can handle a little pain for the sake of beauty. I use those mean spot treatments for blemishes that sting something awful, and I don’t even flinch anymore. But the idea of a lotion purposely peeling off my skin like an end-of-summer hot shower was just too much. On top of that, my eye area wasn’t even moisture-y afterwards anyway! I actually put on additional lotion after the night cream! That is nuts-o.

I have been duly punished for my vanity and attempted fine line reduction. But I am a repeat offender, so don’t be surprised if you run into me in the make-up aisle at Target when I’m supposed to be picking up milk. It’s like a tractor beam and I am virtually powerless to resist.

What about you? Do you have any products you can’t live without? Anything that was a waste of money? Add your comment, and let’s help each other out!

Wavy Hair in All Its Glory

9
Oct

Two People (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I had my third child, my hair went cuckoo. I had heard the legend of straight hair that turned curly because of pregnancy, but I thought it was one of those super rare occurences. But my hair went from being straight with a little bit of a cowlick (what a word!) in a couple places, to being full blown wavy all over. It has also gotten long-ish, and this has led to various comparisons.

Such as Steven Tyler from Aerosmith.

Such as Eddie Vedder.

Such as Christopher Lloyd playing Doc Brown in Back to the Future.

Such as a male lion.

Such as a late-1980’s Tina Turner.

I wish I could argue with any of these comparisons, but they are all spot on. The funny thing about it is…

I don’t mind.

I am a child of the 1980’s so for me, the bigger, the better. I can’t deny my roots, my foundational years when the pop idols were men with long hair, rockin’ Hair Bands and the female band Heart. Come on, you expect me to flat iron this puff of wonder? You want me to undo what previously would have taken me an hour of work, or the trouble of sleeping with braids all over my head, a rat-tail comb and a cloud of Aqua-Net? Puh-leaze.

In honor of hair kooky-ness, here’s a clip that discusses various hair styles (I can only vouch for the first minute or two). Enjoy.

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/zach-monologue/1207090

P.S. If you have wavy hair, feel free to chime in with tips to subdue or tame the beast, but don’t trouble yourself with any flat iron techniques because they will be wasted on me. 🙂

Are People Unaware of Breast Cancer?

2
Oct

http://whitehouse.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/01/pretty-in-pink-the-white-house-is-lit-for-breast-cancer-awareness-month/

This may come across as callous, but I’m getting kindof tired of hearing about breast cancer.

And I’m a woman, so I can’t even imagine how bored men must be.

Granted, I haven’t had it, nor have I recently known anyone close to me who is “battling” it, (it’s always called a “battle”) so I am writing from a privileged position. My grandmother had it, though, so I’m not completely untouched by it. But my grandfather has had multiple kinds of “minor cancers” and you don’t hear about anybody giving out pins the color of scabby melanoma. Gross.

Keep in mind that in the past 30 years, more people have had skin cancer than all other cancers combined, and each year there are more new cases of skin cancer than breast cancer, prostate, lung and colon cancers combined. (I got my impressive stats from the website of the Skin Cancer Foundation: www.skincancer.org) It begs the question: has the United States been made aware of breast cancer yet?

I’m thinking the answer is yes.

But there’s an entire month dedicated to breast cancer. I feel that’s excessive. It makes me want to know more about how it happened, how much lobbying it took and how much money changed hands, and how many women running how many 5k races it took? I mean, they lit up the White House in pink lights last night! I hope it was only for a night, but either way, have they done this for other cancers or causes? Is this a campaign gimmick? (Turns out it’s not, since they lit it up in 2010 as well…unless you think people in government are always campaigning, which may be true. I couldn’t find out if they lit it up last year.)

I’m just going to say it: is breast cancer the cause we want to be most going after? What about domestic violence? Or what about the institutionalized demeaning of the breasts people are trying to protect through the objectification of women in the media? What about homelessness? What about finding the causes of autism or what about the treatment of the elderly or other at-risk members of society? Are you telling me that boobie cancer is the cause behind which we are all to rally? Even football players wear pink all month: pink shoes, pink sweat rags, pink undershirts, pink doilies, pink tea cozies, pink hair binders (okay, I might have made up a few of those things). Are we to believe those players make a measurable increase in anything breast cancer? There’s a joke in there somewhere, but I can’t bring myself to type it out (think of a t-shirt emblazoned with “portable mamogram”…or something).

[Just for the record, the NFL has lots of charities it supports, and you can find out about them here: http://www.nflcharities.org/, and the Vikings page shows they support a Children’s Fund and an environmental effort: http://www.vikings.com/community/index.html I should also mention that people much more interested in football than I have differing opinions about this: http://1045theteam.com/sports-illustrateds-peter-king-complains-about-nfl-wearing-pink-for-entire-breast-cancer-awareness-month/]

I’m curious to hear your perspective on this. It seems taboo to say anything but positive things about the awareness effort, but when you read that lung cancer is the thing that’s on the rise and is particularly lethal, it makes me wonder if people’s efforts are misplaced (http://progressreport.cancer.gov/trends-glance.asp).

Is it because there are boobs involved? They seem to have a real power over people, men and women, and probably because of the importance that’s been placed on big ones, to have anything happen to them threatens a woman’s womanhood. I can wrap my head around that, I guess, because it is a physical distinction between men and women.

But are our breasts where we get our womanhood? Is our intrinsic female-ness tied up in our chests? And let’s not even get started on talking about female attitudes towards their bodies and where those attitudes come from. Let’s just leave it that not all people have a great love for those extra couple pounds (or less) of flesh — not to imply that anyone would willingly undergo a mastectomy if it wasn’t medically necessary. Don’t go twisting what I’m saying, you rascal!

Lots to think about today, and I welcome any comments, but try not to get too mad at me for sharing a dissenting opinion.

Tomatoes: So Many and Yet So Few

1
Oct

Our vegetable garden has done pretty well this year. I learned a few things along the way (who knew that kale got SO HUGE?!? one plant would have been plenty and I had to go and plant FOUR of them!), one of which is that it takes TONS of tomatoes to produce a can of tomatoes — I have a new appreciation for the great bargain I get at the grocery store.

We have plenty of tomatoes and no one in my family appreciates them raw, so I thought it would make sense to freeze the abundance to use later.

Brilliant idea.

What planning, what foresight.

Let me show you what I learned.

I started with a stockpot about half full of tomaotes, which seems like a lot, way more than my family of five would eat in a week.

This is gonna make tons of sauce, for sure.

Before I did any boiling, I prepared an ice bath, just a big container of water with some ice cubes to make it even colder. The goal is to get the boiled tomotoes to quit cooking, so you dunk them in this ice water.

I boiled the tomatoes for just four minutes so I could get the skins off.

Since I boiled them only four minutes, does that qualify as “blanching” them?

Then came the ice bath. This all sounds putzy, and to be honest, it is. There are a lot of pots, a lot of water, and then you have to clean up all that stuff.

Let them sit a spell until they’ve cooled down.

Now comes the most severely putzy part. Make an X at one end of the tomato, and peel off the skin. This should be pretty easy. What’s not easy is squishing out all the water, seeds and tomato innards. Sometimes all I had left was a palmful of tomato run-off. Here is one picture of peeling skins (which just sounds gross).

Most of the skins should come off easily, like this one.

So after all that effort, I was left with this amount of stewed, skinless tomatoes to use in whatever way I want:

Makes you really think about all that goes into that can at the back of your cupboard!

On the one hand, I grew these tomatoes from little plants and there is definitely something very gratifying about being able to produce your own food. I know where it has been. I trust my dirt. I know how the labor has been treated…since it’s usually me!

On the other hand, this is plain inefficient. I can’t be doing this with every batch of tomatoes that ripens throughout the season. So I’m left with a couple options: start eating more raw tomatoes, cook with more raw tomatoes, be generous and share more tomatoes, plant fewer tomatoes, break down and admit that sometimes a good thing doesn’t have to be efficient. I’ve got a long way to go before our family is self-sustaining, and that’s not even the goal, but it is fun to know we’re able to do it.

What do you do with all your garden harvest? Do you can it, freeze it, sneak it into your neighbor’s mailbox? Help me out with advice so I can work smarter next year!

Replacement Chickens

23
Sep

These chickens have a thing for Cher-hair.

New chickens as they scurry away. Man, they’re fast!

Introducing new chickens into a “flock” is something that presents challenges, no matter how small that flock may be (say, like, two chickens).

We read up before we accepted the replacement chickens (they are replacing two chickens which, over the span of a couple months, were injured by a neighbor dog who developed a taste for chicken). We found out that there can be problems bringing in new chicken pals and they can get picked on quite a bit. Here’s how we did it…

First we put a dog kennel inside the chicken coop run. Then we put the Silkies into the kennel so they could be close but not in danger.

Then after a day or two we let them go into the coop after it was dark and the other two chickens were already roosting for the night. In the morning we tried to open the coop earlier than normal so there would be limited amount of “play time” for the two sets of birds. We kept the Silkies in the coop so they’d learn where home was.

At the end of the day we opened the coop and our other chickens returned home. There was a bit of pecking at this point, but nothing too harmful. We repeated this cycle for a few about a week. Then we let all the chickens out and left the door open so they could come back in when they wanted.

So far so good! Everyone is still alive and we haven’t seen any pecking that’s been anything more than posturing. I’ll have to check in here in a couple months and see if things have continued to go smoothly.

I should mention that the Silkies were laying eggs at their former location but they have yet to lay any for us. We think they are stressed out and need a bit more time to adjust. Our other chickens should begin laying within a month or so, so it is possible that we’ll have four eggs a day for a while, until it gets too cold. Should be fun!