Bonus Embarrassment Post, For Your Pleasure

I had to write a second post today for two reasons. First off, I noticed today that I have 199 WordPress followers, so this is an official shout-out for someone else to follow me! Come on, people! Being that close to 200 is killing me! It’s giving me weird little OCD twitches!

Second, I was wandering around on my computer earlier and came across this video forgotten in the bowels of the internet. I just had to share it because what’s the point of having a blog if you can’t embarrass yourself every now and then? Exactly. XD This was my first (and only) ever YouTube video, recorded several years ago just because. Fair warning: the audio is god awful, so please turn down your speakers before starting the vid in order to avoid blowing your eardrums out. And feel free to laugh. If I didn’t expect laughs I wouldn’t bother posting it. 😀

Accountability Wednesdays: Week 14

Oh, look at that! Another week has passed! My, how the time flies. Did you know that Easter is only a week and a half away? I need to make some more of my edible birdy nests!

Goal #1: Lose ten pounds and become healthier overall.

Are you all getting sick of hearing me talk about this particular goal yet? I’m kinda getting sick of talking about it, because the truth is that it’s been the absolute last thing on my mind. Okay, I shouldn’t say that…it’s been on my mind, but that’s about it.

It’s a combination of things, really, but if I’m truly being honest, I’m waiting to hear back from my doctor. I still haven’t gotten the info on the procedure I’ve been mentioning for a few weeks now, and in addition to that my usual doctor sent me for blood work last week as well. He wanted to check out my thyroid and a few levels (B12, iron, etc), and he’s also looking in several places for signs of arthritic problems, which are apparently common with the issue that we all believe I might have.

It’s sounds really weird, but I’m actually rooting for a couple of these possible issues to be confirmed. No one wants to be sick, and I can’t say that it won’t suck to possibly have to take pills every day for the rest of my life, but at this point I have so many complaints about so many different things that I am just dying for a doctor to say, “Yes, there IS something wrong with you, and if you take this medicine it will be better.” Does that make sense? I hope so.

Long story short, so much of my brainpower has been focused on waiting for my various reports to come back so that my doctor and I can discuss the results, I’ve been completely unwilling to care about anything else. Terrible excuse, I know, and you would think that having health problems would encourage me to eat better and exercise, but I guess you’d be wrong.

Goal #2: Be more active on social media and work hard on my “author platform”.

I’ve got to say, I’ve been really up on this one this past week. I’ve spent a ton of time on a ton of blogs, plus engaging in tons of conversations with fellow bloggers, plus having great success with my Facebook Author page. It’s been pretty top-notch. My week point is definitely Twitter, but I’ve even been gaining some followers over there, and having a couple of pleasant interactions, so it’s still all good!

Goal #3: COMPLETE my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide.

I should be totally ashamed of the fact that I still haven’t actually opened my Scrivener file and gotten to work on the last round of edits, but I’m not. You know why? Because I spent that time this week instead making this:

And I’m so happy with it, I can’t even tell you. I know it’s not the most super-professional-looking cover you’ve likely seen, but it’s mine. It was created using a photo taken by my father, and I made all the adjustments and additions myself. I even modified it using Create Space’s Cover Creator, so I know that when it comes time to set everything up it will fit perfectly. And to top it all off, I made a rear cover as well, which only needs to have the novel summary added to it.

In other words, while I’ve failed to spend any time on the actual manuscript, I am, at least, this one step closer to publication. Yay!

Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.

I’ve got to say, it’s been a bit of a weird week. Wednesday through Saturday I wrote absolutely nothing. Unless you count blog comments, which I don’t. So nothing then. I was having so much fun bouncing around from blog to blog, taking part in the A to Z Challenge, that I wrote nothing.

When I realized this on Sunday, I thought that I’d better do some kind of writing. I didn’t want to blog (I spent so much time setting up the A to Z posts in advance that I’m enjoying the little break, thank you), and I didn’t want to edit (should have, but didn’t want to). And so I found myself opening up the file for my Final Fantasy novelization, and seriously? It was just what I needed. I’ve been typing away like a maniac for the past three days, and with just that one project I managed to squeak 7681 words out of those three days. It’s not exactly the most important thing I have to work on, but writing a little bit of goofy nonsense that I don’t have to think too hard about has been absolutely great. I think I might just have to do it for a little while longer. What do you think?

400 is a Big Number

Since today is a bit of a milestone for my blog, I thought I’d take this moment to express my amazement of the follow set of statistics.

400 Posts
This post that I’m writing right now is my 400th post. To many of the bloggers whom I follow and commerce with that won’t seem like a huge deal because some of them have thousands of posts. But to me, it’s positively amazing. I gained access to the internet sometime around the fourth grade, and in that time I’ve hopped on several bandwagons and tried dozens of times to express myself in one way or another. I’ve “designed” websites (oh…dear Geocities…) and been an active member of several forum communities; I’ve posted web-comics and even had a couple of other blogs. but I never stuck with any of them. Eventually they would get boring, or I would fail to find the time to keep up with them, or some other issue would send me wandering non-nonchalantly in the other direction. But this blog? I’ve stuck with this, even when I couldn’t think of anything to write, and even when I didn’t have the time. I’ve stuck with it for 400 posts and almost two years straight, and I have to admit that knowing that makes me very proud of myself. Maybe I am becoming a responsible adult after all.

336 Comments
Oftentimes I’ve found myself wondering at the lack of comments on my blog. I see that people are reading my posts, but rarely does it seem that anyone takes the time to say anything. But today I saw this number – 336 – and thought, “You know what? That’s not too shabby.” My blog, after all, is not a viral sensation. I’m not a famous person that people flock to speak to, and even 400 posts is nothing in the grand scheme of the internet, so 336 comments is actually a pretty decent collection. So thank you to everyone who took the time. 🙂

Best Ever: 208 Views
Again, to many bloggers this number is going to seem piddly, but to me it’s simply amazing. On March 18th, 2013 I wrote a post expressing my feelings about my grandfather’s death and sharing some of my favorite memories of him, and 208 people read it. For a small-time blogger like me the thought that 208 people came to my blog on a single day and, for a few moments, shared in my grief is absolutely unbelievable. Someday I hope to break that record, but for now I just say thank you for choosing that particular post to show that you’re here.

13,524 Views
Someday I hope to have the kind of blog that gets this number of views in a month, but for the time being I’m amazed to know that my blog has gotten this many views since it’s beginnings. As mentioned earlier I’ve had several webpages since I first started being allowed to roam the internet, and I’m quite certain that this number is the highest one I’ve ever seen for views on something of mine.

103 Blog Followers
I don’t count Twitter and Facebook followers in this stat because, let’s face it, most of my Facebook followers are family members, and most of my Twitter followers are fellow writers who may or may not have the time or care to bother with my blog. But on WordPress itself, the follow specifically meant for reading blogs, I have recently surpassed 100 followers. Again, someday I hope that my blog gets that many followers in a month, but given the relative infancy of my blog I’m amazed and gratified that more than 100 people have said to themselves, “Yeah, I want to keep an eye on this blog and read what the author posts.”

And so here we are, me and my 400 posts, my personal-record-breaking views, and my followers with their comments. It’s been an excellent run so far, and I hope it continues far, far into the future. Cheers!

The Success in the Failure

My Facebook friends and Twitter followers already know about this, but I thought that, considering the subject matter, it bore repeating as a blog post.

Yesterday morning, a little less than one month since I sent out my first real manuscript submission to a publisher, I received an email back from said publisher.

It was a big, fat rejection letter.

And it wasn’t even an overly impressive rejection. It basically read, “Ms Tobin, sorry, but your story isn’t for us, good luck in the future.”

Now, here’s the thing. I’ve been expecting this since the second I hit the “send” button on my submission. While I wanted to have a glimmer of hope, I had a dozen voices shouting pessimism (reason?) at me. I thought, “It’s my first submission, and who the hell ever gets published on their first submission?” and, “You don’t even read romance novels, so what makes you think you would be able to write a decent one?” I wasn’t terribly hard on myself, I was just trying to be reasonable. I didn’t want to get my hopes up when the chances are so terribly low of getting a deal with a publisher these days, particularly on your first try.

But, here’s the other thing: I’d be a dirty, dirty liar if I said the rejection didn’t sting. Despite my 99.99% certainty that nothing good would come of my submission, there was still that tiny little glimmer in the back of my mind, holding out hope. And that glimmer imploded in upon itself when I read the words “your project isn’t right for us”. I had a wave of disappointment, followed by a wave of anger, followed by a wave of almost physical pain – all this within a 30 second span.

But then something wonderful happened. It was over. After weeks of checking my email fifty times a day, wondering if I would get a response today or not for months, telling myself that it was going to be a rejection but also praying for it to be an acceptance, it was over. My story was rejected. Submission saga complete. Nothing left to worry about.

I learned several things about myself and about the system by submitting that manuscript…

For one thing, I learned that I hate the traditional publishing process, not because it rejected me, but because of the time and waiting required. I only had to wait a month to get that rejection letter, and the waiting drove me right up the wall. Most big publishers quote up to 6 months or more, and many of them make it very clear that they expect to be the only one looking at your manuscript at any given time (if they find out you’ve submitted to multiple publishers at once it’s an automatic rejection). So say for a moment that I start submitting my zombie apocalypse novel and that it takes 5 publishers before one says yes (which is generous, as some people submit to dozens of publishers before hitting pay dirt). Now say that each of those publishers requires that you can’t submit to anyone else until they’re done with you, and say that each one of them quotes a 6 month waiting period, which they dutifully use every second of. That means that it would be two and a half years before that fifth publisher decided to take a chance, and that’s before the long process of contracts, cover design, copyediting, etc that can also take years. In other words, by the time my zombie apocalypse novel was actually in print people might not give a flying rat’s tail about zombies anymore, and my sales might be abysmal. Alternately, I could self-publish the book by the end of this year if I put my heart in it…I’d have to do all the cover/editing/marketing work myself, but it would be out years earlier, during a time when there are tons of zombie movies and games around because zombies are in right now.

Another thing I learned is that I’m not nearly as delicate as I thought I was. Sure I had my moment of depression that sparked anger and frustration as well, but it was all over in less than a minute. I didn’t mope or tell myself that I got rejected because my story was crap. I didn’t turn into a miserable ball of self-loathing. I had a burst of emotion, and then it was over. I’ve moved on. Back on the road and heading into the great beyond. No turning back now.

And another thing that I learned is that I’ve gathered a great community of family, friends, and fellow writers around me over the past months. When I took to Facebook and Twitter to announce my first official rejection letter, the response I got was just wonderful. Amongst the messages I got were:

“Some day your writing will pay off for you. You love it too much for it not to!” – my father

“Just save it for when you do sell your book. You can frame it next to a glowing review.” – @writerreese

“Celebrate! It means you’re a dedicated, professional writer!” @SaraMThorn

There were many others, and it really gave me a burst of confidence, an invaluable thing to me. So I want to say thank you. Thank you to the people who rallied around me to make sure that I knew this wasn’t the end of the world (or, at least, my writing career), thank you to all the writers and references that have let me know what I can expect from both traditional publishing methods and self-publishing methods, and thank you to the editor who gave my manuscript a chance and was relatively quick in letting me know that it wasn’t what they were looking for. Now I can move forward, which is the direction that one definitely wants to be headed in.

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 29

Before I get on with the accountability today, I want to mention a couple of things.

First, a huge hug to the new followers I’ve been getting on this blog and on Twitter. I’m not sure exactly what I’ve been doing lately that suddenly has people sneaking in out of the shadows toward my sites, but I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Welcome, thanks for coming, and I hope you stick around! 🙂

Second, on a whim I recently tried Googling myself, and I was quite amused to find that the first three results were actually me. I rather don’t need my 9gag profile popping up on Google, but I was happy to see that the second result was this blog and the third was my 750Words.com account. It’s a good sign when your real persona pops up on Google, right?

Third: a call out for info and/or advice. I’ve Googled this problem many times but I can never seem to find anything that quite matches my issue. I’ve been having trouble sleeping again (it seems to happen for several weeks at a time, a few times a year), and the issue as far as I can describe it is that I spend an inordinate amount of time in dream sleep (REM sleep), meaning that my rest isn’t, well…restful. I’m waking up feeling like hell even when I sleep 9 or more hours, and it’s very wearing. I’ve consulted my doctor before and his only suggestion was to try antidepressants, which I thought was a little silly and insulting since I’m pretty damn confident that I’m not depressed. So since I can’t seem to find any information on my own, I thought I’d ask here on the off-chance someone may know something or suffer from similar. Help?

Okay, on to the accountability.

Health and Body Image Goal

If I’m totally honest, I’ve plummeted miserably on this one. I’ve been doing no form of exercise and have been eating rather terribly. It doesn’t help that I’m experiencing sleep issues, as mentioned above. I keep trying to convince myself to get up a little early in the mornings (before it’s scorching hot out) and do my zombie runs, but I haven’t been able to manage it because I’m so damn tired. I need some motivation, terribly, and that’s a fact.

Editing Goal

It’s been a surprisingly busy week so I haven’t managed to sit down at my laptop for very long periods of time, but I’m still (slowly) plugging away at my supernatural romance. Really, really looking forward to finishing so I can submit it to a publisher and move on to my zombie apocalypse.

1,000,000 Word Goal

It hasn’t been a great week, but I did manage to get a few words in. Between blogging and a return to 750Words, I managed to get in 4802 words this week. I’m hoping to ramp it up this week through a series of ideas I’ve compiled, one of which is to use 750Words.com in the mornings to empty my brain of the dreams I’m plagued with every night. It might be a pro-bono situation…I get extra words, and maybe writing down the dreams will make them go the hell away. Starting this Sunday, as well, I plan to start reading The Artist’s Way and work my way through the 12-week process, so look forward to that.

29 weeks down, 23 to go. Here’s hoping the remaining 23 start to look up a little!

It’s a Bug’s Life

I have a confession to make. I can hide it no longer. I am a Clutter-Bug.

What the hell is a Clutter-Bug, you ask? Well, what does it sound like? My life and my mind are filled with clutter. Mountains of it.

Don’t mistake me for a hoarder, although material possessions are a little bit of the problem. Physically I do have a lot of hoarder-type clutter around my house. I have an entire shelf on my bookcase that is nothing but blank notebooks I’ve never used, and there’s a whole stack of drawers in the dining room that are filled with good old fashioned junk, like rubber-band balls and dead pens. I have a bit of a hard time throwing stuff away, even when I know there’s no point in keeping them.

But the type of clutter that I’m talking about is the kind that distracts, the kind that disguises itself as disorganization and generally messiness. There are almost always clothes on my bedroom floor, for instance, even though we have a hamper in there. I leave my phone, my tablet, and my Playstation Vita wherever I happen to be when I’m finished using them. There are books on top of my headboard that I haven’t touched in weeks. There are boxes of baby clothes sitting in my hall that I simply haven’t bothered to put away, even though it would take five minutes to cart them down into the basement.

I seem to have a mental block that consistently keeps me from ever putting anything away, thus cluttering up my house. It’s an illness. A terrible, debilitating illness.

But it goes further than that, because clutter can be mental as well.

For instance, in my closet there is a huge stack of jeans taking up a good three square feet of space. None of them fit. They vary between being a size or two off to being so tiny that I would have to get liposuction and a stomach staple to ever have a chance of fitting in them again. And not only are these jeans clutter in the literal sense of taking up space and never being used, they’re clutter in the mental sense because I have to think of them every time I look at them. Every time I open my closet I see this stack of jeans and they make me miserable just for the sheer fact that I know I can’t fit into them. I know I could fit into them if I worked really hard and restricted my calories and stuck to a daily exercise regimen and completely stopped drinking anything other than water and so on and so on and so on…you see? Mental clutter.

Most people do this kind of thing to themselves to some extent, but I, my friends, am an expert. I am the Queen Clutter-Bug. May all lesser Clutter-Bugs bow before me.

Original pic via photoalbum.davison.ca

For another example, I have this habit I call “self-fulfilling failure to fulfill”. Basically, I have a mental list in my head of all the things I want to do, or need to do, and no matter how many things I am able to cross off the list I manage to add twice as many more. In this way my list is never complete, and my internal list-maker starts twitching like a drugged-up jackrabbit. It doesn’t matter if I’m working my ass off or sitting back and trying to relax, I have this never-ceasing mental clutter of half-finished to-do lists gumming up my brain.

It’s a horrifying condition for a writer because while I should be writing and working on my platform, I’m instead obsessing about a million other things. I can’t get any writing done around my husband or daughter because I’m so easily distracted by everything they say or do. I can’t get any writing done in my own bedroom because I can’t stop thinking about that basket of clothes on the floor or those damn jeans in my closet. When I do get around to writing I’m plagued by a thousand non-work-in-progress-related thoughts like whether I should be planning some blog posts in advance to give myself more time, or whether I should scrap this fan fiction stuff and just concentrate on my original work, or should I log onto Twitter and see what the other writers are doing? It’s a constant barrage of voices in my head yelling at me about everything except what I’m supposed to be writing about.

“Why aren’t you more active on Twitter? How do you expect to gain followers when you never say anything interesting?”

“Why are you focusing so much on this stupid supernatural romance stuff…it will probably just ruin your image for when the zombie horror novel is done.”

“Oh crap, did I write a blog post for tomorrow? Crap, I didn’t… Crap crap crap!”

It spirals on and on, until I have so many thoughts in my head that I can’t pick out any one particular one. And then I get very, very tired. Queen Clutter-Bug begins to slow down. She crawls into a dark spot and the other Clutter-Bugs swarm around and begin to eat her.

Original image via science.kqed.org

But there is hope! Or so I’m told. There are cures for rampant Clutter-Bug-ism, such as meditation, relaxation techniques, and – if you’re a particular kind of person – alcohol. Scour the internet and you will find a million different suggestions for calming the shouting voices in your brain, the ones that keep you from ever being calm or satisfied. There are methods, if only one chooses to seek them out.

Or if you’re like me you can find your own release; little joys that keep you from going utterly insane. How do I dispel Queen Clutter-Bug? I do things that are completely against her nature. I purposely pick something that I know is material clutter and I toss it in the trash, sighing pleasurably all the while. I snuggle up with my daughter and watch cartoons – great brain-blanking animations that somehow keep your mind from thinking about anything else. I watch B-movies with my husband – films so absurdly terrible that you can’t help but just sit and laugh the world away.

My methods may not be ideal, nor might they work at all for someone else with similar Clutter-Buginess issues. But we all must deal with our issues in our own way, and for me these things are Clutter-Bug Raid.

Which reminds me, my mile-long mental list includes spraying some Clutter-Bug Raid. Excuse me, I really must get to that ASAP.

A Blogger by Any Other Name

There is no doubt that social media is a powerful tool. Complain all you like about the kind of people who upload their every passing thought to Facebook, or those who insist on documenting every bite they eat to Instagram, but when you break past the nonsense social media is an amazing way of connecting to people from all over the world, which is a huge deal for an entrepreneur (writer).

But it doesn’t help the entrepreneur in the slightest if their only followers are family members and people they already knew from school or work. The entrepreneur needs to spread their social network, create a spiderweb of connections and interconnections.

Image via thecricketcontrast.com

In Kristen Lamb‘s Rise of the Machines she talks about the three different types of social media friends you want to know – the three different types of people who will help your platform grow.

The Connector brings more people into the fold. The Connector seems to know everyone, and through them the entrepreneur meets many new people as well.

The Maven is a treasure trove of useful information. They always seem to know where you should go or what you should do. They help the entrepreneur become a better entrepreneur.

The Salesman is the person that everyone listens to. If the Salesmen hypes up the entrepreneur’s work (book), you can be damn sure that people will buy it.

As I was reading about these three types of people, I began thinking about whether I knew any of them yet. It took a bit of thinking but I realized that, yes, I do know a few of each, though I’m not sure I know any Salesmen that know me well enough to do what they do best for me.

Then I got to thinking…do I fall into any of these categories?

I’m definitely not a Connector. At this juncture in my life I can definitely say that I know a lot of people, but that’s not exactly the same thing. I have a large family, so I know them, and some of their friends by extension. I know the people I went through school with, though I barely connect with them anymore. I met a ton of people out West while I was working there, and I even have a ton of them added to Facebook and LinkedIN, but again, I connect with very few of them. The fact is that I am actually quite shy, even after all I’ve done and at the ripe old age of 29. I’m not a Connector because I don’t like to connect. Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite fond of most of the people I’ve come to meet over the years, but I’m also the kind of person who sits in a corner at a party until she’s drunk enough to force herself to speak to someone.

I really wouldn’t call myself a Maven either. I do retain information from time to time and have been known to help people out with some well-timed advice, but this is not the norm. I neither retain every bit of information I come across, nor do I make it my mission to share this information with others. In fact, if I come across a good piece of info that I think will help me in the future, I have to record it some manner (blog, notes on my iPhone, etc) or else I will totally forget about it. No, I’m definitely not a Maven.

Salesman? No, this one is even worse than the first two. I can’t be a Salesman. For one thing, even though I blog and Tweet and update my status on Facebook, I am actually still quite shy and have trouble with this concept of trying to convince others to buy something (this is going to become a huge issue later on when I do get a book published and need to market it). For another thing, I’m not the kind of person of whom people automatically trust the opinion. I like such a wide variety of things, that it makes people wary. Someone might not take my suggestion to watch a particular horror movie, for example, because I also recommended this god-awful b-horror-movie that I happened to love. You see what I’m getting at here?

So if I’m not a Connector, not a Maven, and not a Salesman…what am I? Am I just some weirdo hanging out on all the social media outlets, not contributing anything at all to the spiderweb?

No. I contribute, just not in the ways discussed.

I’m a writer. I write about life as a writer, life as a mother, life as a wife. I write zombie horrors and supernatural romances, fantasies and fan-fictions. I write novels and short-stories. I write blog posts.

And because I am a writer I also read. I read blogs, Twitter updates, and Facebook statuses. I read fiction novels and craft books and bits of writing that fellow writers share on the internet.

Through this identity of writer-and-reader I contribute a little bit in every way. I may not be a Connector, but I will occasionally send a writer friend along to a writing group or introduce a blogger to another blog I think they’ll like. I may not be a Maven but I’ll sometimes critique a writer’s work by using the tips and tricks I managed to glean from the last craft book I read. I may not be a Salesman, but I will absolutely promote what I feel requires promoting, especially if it’s something I absolutely loved myself.

So I guess you could say that I’m a protege. I have tiny bits of all three types of people in me, fighting to be something helpful, and that’s okay. We can’t all be precisely labeled by the exact function we serve in society, but we can still contribute in a real and meaningful way.

Hi, my name is Tracey. I’m a Social Media Writer-Reader.

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 28

My blog is not what you would call a “big deal”. My readers mostly consist of close friends and family members who click on the links that I post to Facebook. I get approximately 30 views a day on average, and it’s quite rare that any of those viewers bother to comment on any of my posts. And that’s okay…I’m still just budding, after all.

But since my blog is not exactly the “next big thing” in Internet entertainment, I can’t help but get a little giddy when people actually do drop by. This week, to my surprise, I got three new blog followers, as well as a handful of Twitter followers. It was a very pleasant surprise, so I thought I’d mention it and wave, “HI!” to the newbies who are dropping in here. Love you guys! Please keep coming! I’m so lonely! 😀

Health and Body Image Goal

Hahahahaha… Over the past 28 weeks I have not dedicated myself enough to see any really decent results. If you’ve been reading, you know this. I lost maybe 1 or 2 pounds, and a (small) area or two may have toned up a bit. And over the past week I believe I have somehow managed to undo even those tiny victories. I don’t know how it happened, but without gaining any actual weight (according to the scale) I’ve somehow managed to get bigger. Half of my clothes are tight and the other half I can’t get into without breaking the seams. Even my bathing suit refused to let me into it. I feel really rotten about it, if you want to know, but you probably don’t want to know, so let’s move on, shall we?

Editing Goal

I’m still plugging away at my supernatural romance, hoping to get it finished by the end of the month. I didn’t get to look at it much this week, since I spent a good chunk of the weekend away from home for a wedding, but I’m getting there, really. I swear.

In addition, because of what I’ve been reading in craft books and some tips I’ve been stumbling across online, I’ve got lots of ideas for the revision and editing of my zombie apocalypse novel when I get to it. I feel really good about making it a better novel over all. Very exciting.

1,000,000 Word Goal

I definitely didn’t get as much writing in this week as I had originally planned (*cough*hoped), but a few words are a few words, I suppose. I managed to squeak in 4490 words, which isn’t the worst I’ve done, anyway. I’ve been finding it hard to get myself in front of a computer these days. Also, I’ve been trying to read all the craft books that I got, which is slowing me down because I’m taking my time and trying to really understand what I’m reading. On the upside, what I’ve been reading so far is giving me ideas for blog posts, so there’s a small victory. 🙂

I completely botched the 750 Words challenge as soon as I got home from out West, but things are calming down now, so I think I’m going to return to it, if only to get some ramblings out of my head each morning. What I write there probably won’t be anything worth sharing, but it will keep me writing and get my brain flowing, or so I hope. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Until next week!

Liebster Award

Yay! A blogging award! It’s been a while since I received one of these, and they’re so much fun! Grizz-Tion recently nominated me for the Liebster Award, which is given to bloggers with fewer than 200 followers as a way to recognize them and support the pursuit of new followers to their blog. The rules of the award are as follows:

1. You must thank the person who nominated you.
2. You must answer the 11 questions your nominator has left for you.
3. You must nominate 11 other bloggers.
4. You must ask 11 questions of the bloggers you nominate.

So first things first, thank you very much Grizz-Tion! I found Grizz-Tion’s blog when we both participated in L. Palmer’s Hello’s and High Fives post. I was attracted to Grizz’s excellent short story, Kyoko the Book Thief. Go see it! Go see it now!

Second things second, I must answer the questions that Grizz left behind:

1. Long hair or short hair, on people?
Depends on the person. Generally I like short hair on men and my preference is for longer hair on women, but it depends on what looks best on the person. Some guys look good with longer hair, and some women look better with shorter hair.

2. Which would you rather do: walk 10 miles or be forced to run 100 yards…both as fast as you could for that pace?
I find myself trying to imagine exactly how long 100 yards is… I would probably go with the 100 yards because as hard as it would be, and as sick as I’d probably feel afterward, it would be over a helluva lot quicker. 10 miles is a long freakin’ way to walk!

3. If you found out that your role model was actually the opposite of what you looked up to, how would you react?
Probably with tears and accusations. 😛
Honestly though, I’m not sure. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve looked at someone as a “role model”. I have people I look up to, but I have a pretty firm grasp on the idea that no one is infallible and that there is no one out there who I’m going to agree with on every aspect, so I pretty much accept that people are going to disappoint me, basically. Does that sound cynical? It sounds cynical to me.

4. Writing by hand in a crowded park, or writing all alone on a computer with no one around, and why?
Depending on my mood, I’ve preferred both, but honestly I seem to write better when there are some distractions around me. Something about silence and being alone makes it hard for me to think…maybe because I’m so used to having a dozen people milling around me at work, or having my daughter running around and my husband talking to me while I’m home. I’ve adapted an ability to write while surrounded by noise and movement, so it’s actually become harder for me to do it in a peaceful environment.

5. Desert island – only 1 book to take with you, just 1. Why did you pick that one?
I’m going to get a little saucy on this one: I choose Survive! by Les Stroud, because…duh.

6. If you were faced with 1 movie monster/bad guy/villain, which would you want to fight and why that one? (Be specific, no generic answers like zombies or vampires. I’m looking for Lestat, or the actual Wolfman.)
I had to think about this one for quite a while. There are a lot of great movie monsters and villains out there, and the thought of fighting most of them fills me with dread. In the end, I think I’m going to go with Darth Vader. Why? Well for one thing he’d probably just force-choke me and be done with it. For another, come on…Darth Vader, man.

7. What would you want the conversation to revolve around if you could sit down and talk to Jesus?
I’d want to talk about how his good intentions had spawned countless forms of ignorance, intolerance, and bigotry all over the world, and suggest to him that he really ought to come back and bitch-slap a few billion people.

8. Who should Cap’n Reynolds truly be with – Zoe, Kaylee, Inara, Saffron, or just stay alone and be bad-ass?
Inara, all the way. He should still be bad-ass and foolish, but it frustrates me to no end when those two get all SEXUAL TENSION! and *nothing happens*.

9. Les Stroud or Bear Grylls?
Neither. My vote is for the cameramen who have to put up with Grylls.

10. Personal choice for the event that will end civilization? Basically, how do you want the apocalypse to start?
You would think that my vote would be for zombies, but I’m not naive…I know that I would be one of the first poor bastards who gets eaten. Instead lets go with a giant meteor slamming into Earth. Maybe I’ll be one of the lucky ones who manages to stow away on the specially-built spaceships that takes off in hopes of establishing a colony on Mars.

11. Killing people just became legal, but only for those labelled huntable material. Which 3 celebrities would you want to be labelled as such and why?
Paris Hilton because she is quite possibly the worst role model for young kids who has ever walked the planet. Justin Bieber because omfg I’m so sick of hearing about him and his music is awful. Kristen Stewart because (despite and regardless of any opinion anyone else might have about her) I think she is quite possibly the worst actress I’ve ever seen and I can’t believe she keeps getting roles.

Third, I have to nominate more bloggers. I’m only picking five, rather than eleven, because (to be blunt) I don’t have time to go through all the blogs I follow and try to pick out 11 who have fewer than 200 followers. That said, I invite anyone who wishes to go ahead and continue on with this award as though I nominated them!

1. Lit and Scribbles with Jae

2. bellscave

3. Daniel Koeker

4. Can I Have a Breakdown After I Finish the Dishes?

5. Musings from the Writer’s Desk

Fourth, I have to submit 11 questions of my own:

1. When did you figure out what you wanted to do for a living, and did you succeed with your choices?

2. Why did you start blogging? Has that reason stayed the same or changed as you’ve blogged?

3. If you could bring one fictional character to life and have them be madly in love with you, who would you choose?

4. Be totally honest: do you really hate the sexy vampire trend, or do you secretly kinda dig it?

5. Tell me about something you’ve always wanted to do but never did, and why not?

6. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or My Little Pony?

7. Confess a guilty pleasure that you think other people won’t really understand.

8. Pick a pop culture phenomenon (a book, a movie, a video game, etc) that you absolutely hate and explain why.

9. Laid out before you are all the possible pizza ingredients in the world. What kind of pizza do you make?

10. Describe your perfect day of rest and relaxation.

11. Imagine your dream job (say, being a published author). Now imagine the most embarrassing/socially unacceptable version of your dream job (say, writing erotic literature for porno magazines). If you were offered this embarrassing version of your job and you knew that it was the only chance you were ever going to get at your dream job, would you do it?

Twitter: The Paranoia that Binds Us

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

89. Respond to a blog post by a well-known blogger

My first thought when reading this prompt was: “A well-known blogger? Do I even read well-known blogs?” Sure, I read some blogs by people who are fairly popular, even successful, but are they well-known? How do you even define well-known? The basis of comparison that I immediately think of is that if you typed their name (or blogger handle) into Google they would be the first result that shows up. So with that in mind I set out to Google a few of the bloggers who I keep tabs on. Lo and behold, my test worked for several of them. Would you look at that…I read well-known blogs.

My second thought was: “Okay, so which post should I ‘respond’ to?” So I started backtracking through the piles and piles of posts that have been piling up on my “Blogs I Follow” page. I started reading through posts I had skipped because I was busy at the time, re-reading posts that I might not have paid quite enough attention to, and in general searching for something that I felt would be interesting to respond to. This virtual rummaging-through-the-closet ended up creating a number of distractions, as such a thing is like to do, and at some point I happened to come across a mention of “The Bloggess“. It got me thinking, that as popular as this particular blogger supposedly is, I’ve never bothered to stop by her blog.

That’s how I found myself scrolling through the most recent of The Bloggess‘ posts, chuckling to myself because, contrary to how I’d been imagining her, she’s a bit of a nut. I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting – I think I was equating the word “bloggess” with the word “duchess” and imaging her as a stuck-up, better-blogger-than-thou type – but I was pleasantly surprised. Her posts are amusing, well-written, and don’t hold anything back. It was with that in mind that I finally chose a “blog post by a well-known blogger” to respond to.

The post I’ve chosen is Twitter is confusing.

My response is thus: I hear ya sis.

(Is ‘sis’ the appropriate female version of ‘bro’? Somehow it doesn’t sound right to me. Ladies, I suggest we hijack the word ‘bro’. The guys have used it long enough.)

*ahem* Anyway, I hear ya, Bloggess! Twitter is oft more confusing to me than I might admit. While I’ve never had people contact me to let me know that they aren’t going to follow me anymore, I’ve had plenty of people start following me only to never attempt to interact with me in any way, which just feels like stalking to me. That’s not to say that I assign a time-slot every day specifically to ensure that I interact with the Tweeps I follow, but I do make a habit of not bothering to follow people if I have no intention of ever interacting with them ever.

Most of my Twitter experience has consisted of signing in, looking at the “Interactions” page that shows x-number of new people are following me, and quietly rocking back and forth in a corner while muttering, “Who are you people…who ARE YOU PEOPLE?!”

Come to think of it, maybe Twitter isn’t for me. It exacerbates the paranoia.