Extra Extra Read all about it! Art Trend in Apex NC!

Pole Gallery Art is popping up in Apex, NC this summer. Keep your eye open for monsters, racoons and critters of all kinds displayed on random street corners! It's nice to have something to smile about in traffic for a change! :0)

For more pictures, click here: Polegallery.blogspot.com

Literary Fertilizer

ImageChef.com Flower Text

Literary fertilizer:

Sickness
Vacations gone wrong
Moments of uncharacteristic madness
Pain
Sorrow

Ever happened to you?

If not, well. . . I feel bad for you, ‘cause this is the stuff that the rich soil of literature is made of. ;0)

Got crap in your life? Don’t ignore it. Whine about it all you want and put it to paper! ;0) Shape it. Mold it and watch your characters come to life. It’s kind of like your own personal Frankenstein. (If the thought of your work being compared to a monster freaks you out, then use your creativity to insert your adaptation here ____________________.)


Some of my examples:

I still remember the pain from my broken arm 20 years ago. It broke in two. It looked like a V made of flesh. (Why didn’t Sesame Street ever use that visual on the letter “V” episodes?) The dr’s had to put Humpty Dumpty back together again by surgically attaching my bones with metal plates. Sound painful? It was. The Tylenol with codine barely took the edge off. You better bet your bippy that I will pass on this pain to my protagonist. Why let such a vivid memory go to waste?

Bad vacation? Think of what your protagonist might do in your situation. How is his/her personality different than yours? What would they do?

Sorrow. There’s no other way to say it. It stinks. Nobody wants it, but it's gonna happen. But if you pass it on to your characters, they become more authentic and your readers can relate to them, maybe even help.

Writing down what ails you, is not only theraputic, but you can use the emotions and thoughts to mold current or future characters in your story(s)

Funny how the very things that seem to suck the life out of us are often be the very thing that breathes life into a character or breeds creativity. Ironic. Isn’t it?

So, my challenge for this week is: grab a shovel, dig up that crap and cultivate that literary soil! There’ll probably be a whole field full of wildflowers waiting in your future . . . after all, life emerges from the dirt, not from gold, the mall or even e-bay. It's comes from the stuff we try to sweep away and forget.

Plus, you never know. . . you may even help someone along the way.

The True Story of Wessley, The Mostly Dead Fish

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. I'm baffled. Which is why I have to tell this story. But first, before I can go on I must make an embarrassing confession. I have been harboring a dead fish for a week.

Why keep a dead fish?

Well. . . because the fish belongs to my daughter and it's my fault that the fish died. We went away for the weekend and I forgot to make arrangements for his feedings. Bad mommy!

Beta fish are very active and aggressive, so when the fish went nose up, tail down and didn't move for a couple of days, (despite my tapping on the glass and shaking the bowl to get him going) I had to finally admit that he was dead. But my daughter is VERY sensitive. She gets upset very easy and I had a hard time bringing myself to tell her, but I wanted her to be able to have a "ceremony" to say good-bye to her pet. So I couldn't get rid of him without her knowing. That would upset her even more. She needed to say good-bye.

Day after day I walked by the fish bowl only to find the fish, unmoving, in the same position as the day before. I'd tell myself "today I have to tell my daughter." The days went by until days turn into a week. At this point I'm amazed that the fish hasn't begun to decompose yet.

Last night I resolved, "I must tell my daughter . . . tomorrow."

Much to my surprise, when I walked by the fish bowl before bed last night, I saw the fish was swimming! Fans flittering, tail swishing, moving all around the bowl like he used to. May I take the time to remind you that I have not fed the fish over the course of this week. I thought he was dead! Why would I?

Today, he is still swimming and ate the food I gave him.

hmmmmm. . . . I'm perplexed.

So I guess, (to use the words from my favorite book/move, The Princess Bride,) he was not all dead. He was just MOSTLY dead. And now he's mostly alive. So I shall change his name to that of the Princess Bride Hero . . . Wessley.

Introducing the GOALIES!!!!!!!!!!!!

Most of the Goalies Group Members

This is me (middle) Janelle and Joe

My critique group has set up a blog! We call ourselves the "Goalies" because when we were coming up with a name, we were big on setting goals for ourselves. Plus, one of our founding members, Ian Sands, is a goalie for a local ice hockey team. (Ian is also responsible for decapitating our heads and transplanting them on top of goalie bodies.)

The posts are starting to roll! Come on over, add a comment or just say "hi!"

See you on the rink! ;0)

It's my BlogDay!!!

z


One year ago today I started this blog. I don't really know what prompted the blog. I wasn't sure what to write about. I had friends with blogs and I enjoyed reading those. I'm a writer. Heck. The thought of being able to write about anything made me giddy. I always have journals going at home. I figured that a blog is like a type of journal. So, I dedicated the blog to: art, writing, and creativity in general, but I really didn't know if I had anything worth saying. I was surprised to find that I've encountered some unexpected blessings from keeping a blog.


Here's what they are:

1) I learned not to care if anyone thinks if I have anything "worth" saying. I'm learning to find my authorial voice and I'm having fun doing it. (I normally care about what people think, so this is a big deal for me.) I've noticed that my older posts are a little more stiff and rigid, from caring too much about how I sound or look, and I've become more spontanious and free. More me-ish.

2) Blogging has been a creative writing exercise. It gets me warmed up for my current WIP.

3) I've made some really cool contacts from blogging. Something I never anticipated. It's priceless and fun!

4) Blogging about the things I've learned in conferences and workshops helps me to digest and internalize the things that I've learned.

5) This blog has also become a place where I feel like I can lend support to other writers, whether they be successful authors, aspiring writers or somewhere in between. Book reviews are a form of support for authors. I especially like it when I can do a review for an author that I've met in person or online. That just makes it extra special.

I also hope that my shared info helps aspiring writers during their on-line searches. Lord knows I've had my share of frustrations of googling info on editors, publishers or other things that I wanted to know only to come up empty handed. I truly hope some of the info on this blog will be useful. If it's entertaining as well . . . that's a bonus! :0)

AND. . . to top it off, it just so happens that I found out today that I won a captions contest over at YA Fresh. Can this Blogday get any better? :0) I love this blog. The owners, Authors Tina Ferraro and Kelly Parra not only entertain, but they also support other authors by hosting contests with book giveaways. They don't just give away their own books. They support their fellow authors by giving away their books! They've inspired me by their selfless support and deserve a great big "Shout Out" for what they do! This captions contest was so cute! You need to check out all the entries. they are a hoot! :0)

A nice neat Magazine Theme list

For those of you write articles for children, here's a super nice gal, Liana Mahoney, who compiles magazine theme lists and updates them every month! Isn't that nice?

Here's her link www.lianamahoney.com/8.html

And And Now . . . for our next trick: Balancing a Paragraph!

Step right up writers and writermen! Watch and be amazed as our trained acrobat ventures word by word, sentence by sentence, until she reaches the end of her paragraph!

But wait! You too can learn to be a paragraph balancer!

Let's hear it from a pro.

Interviewer: Tell us, Oh great Paragraph balancer. How do you do it? What is your secret?

Great Paragraph Balancer (GPB): Thanks for having me here today. Balancing a paragraph isn't really as hard as you might think. There's only two things you need to remember.

Intervierwer: Only two? Wow! What are those two things? Do tell!

GPB: The first is to balance the action. The reader has to know what is going on AND the characters reaction to the action.

Interviewer: That makes sense.

GPB: Yes it does, but it's so easy to forget about it when there are so many words to cross.

Interviewer: What's the second thing?

GPB: The next thing is consciousness. The reader needs to be able to see the shifts in the characters awareness as he/she perceives what is going on in the characters surroundings.

Interviewer: Oh. I see. No I don't. What does that mean?

GPB: It means that the reader needs to understand what the character is thinking and feeling, but also how she sees what is going on around her and what she thinks about the events that led up to her current circumstance.

Interviewer: Thanks for the great advice Great Paragraph Balancer! I'm ready to start balancing paragraphs of my own! Good luck with your balancing routine! And watch out for those split infinitives! You don't want your rope to break!



(fictionalized interview is based on "Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose, chapter 4)