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Dear parents, you need to control your kids. Sincerely, non-parents

Know what that feels like.

The Matt Walsh Blog's avatarThe Matt Walsh Blog

To the fan I lost yesterday:

I don’t owe you an explanation, but I thought I’d offer one anyway. I do this more for your sake than mine. You see, maybe, as you later suggested, I was in a bad mood. Maybe I could have been a bit more polite about it. Maybe I’m more sensitive to it now that I have kids. Maybe I’m just sick of hearing these comments about parents. Maybe I know that my wife has to take the twins with her when she goes grocery shopping sometimes, so she could easily be on the receiving end of your sort of bullying. Maybe I took it personally.

Whatever the case, there I was, walking down the aisles of the grocery store looking for the ingredients for a new chili recipe I wanted to try. I heard the kid screaming from a distance; the whole store heard…

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Inspiration

Well I came across the concept the other day in a book. Go figure. Sadly these days it’s a lost art. All my research is confined to the internet. Or it was until my husband broke his laptop, now we’re sharing.

Anyway, I’m writing a novel called Dandelions and the figure of Badb appeared within the working of it. Nothing new there, a lot of my characters worm their way into my books of their own accord. Anyway, for some reason she decided to appear in the form of a wolf, something, given her fey nature, I thought was inherently odd.

Idiosyncrasies aside I later found out, though said book above, that Badb has been associated from time to time with wolves. So all is not lost.

~*~

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My Post Just Disappeared

Okay, so I wrote a somewhat epic post, citing all my lovely and shiny new followers then it disappeared into the equivalent of an internet black hole. Yeah, I took Geology in High School. I quit before I failed that too, along with English and Geography. If only my Dad would have let me take Drama instead. Maybe then I would have failed with flair. Meh, girl can dream.

So on that note, I have 31 followers, all of which I’m stalking,.. er, I mean following. So don’t go anywhere. If you do, I’ll hunt you down. Maybe throw a drop bear on you. Don’t know what a drop bear is? Well, don’t go anywhere and you don’t have to find out. 😀

Criticism

So, I, like any other writer know how hard it can be to take criticism, especially when it comes to your own writing.

Recently I participated in a writing shoot out, in which the stories I wrote were not well received by some and I got a thoroughly mixed bag of scores. I’d been prepared for it though, having participated previously.

But to later be told by a fellow participant that they had the “displeasure of reading my work” was something that I found in bad taste and didn’t sit well with me at all.

Admittedly, I saw red, and I wanted to lash out. Only I didn’t. Not exactly. The first words out of my mouth were not expletives. It could have so easy been.

What I realized however was simple: This person did not know me. And in not knowing me he couldn’t judge me, or my writing, to the full extent. Telling me if I cannot fully commit to a deadline because of personal constraints, is, in a word, stupid. It was supposed to be fun, and it was up until that point.

However bad my writing may be, I’m aware of it, but at the same time, I must have some potential to have been published 6 times by three different anthologies.

I have something and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let the spark go out.

Oooohhhh! Shiny! (aka Stick-to-it-iveness)

P.T. Wyant's avatarNovel Notes

We all know it happens.  We’re set on a project and are chugging along working on it when something else pops up.  Something pretty and shiny and new and we want to drop the current project and jump on this new one.

Why?

Because the new one is exciting.  It’s different.  It promises all sorts of things.  It is full of potential.  It is a new beginning.

But sooner or later that brand spanking new idea is going to stop being fun and is going to become just as much work as your current project.

Think of your novel as a relationship – a long term relationship.  You fall in love with the idea of it, you spend time getting to know it (plotting), and you commit yourself to it, to seeing it through, “for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until ‘The End’ do us part.” 

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Bunnies

Yes, our house has just expanded by five. You see we recently acquired two rabbits, a male and a female who are completely smitten with one another and the female was rumored to be pregnant.

Turns out it wasn’t just a rumor and the kits are about 3 days old now, and we’re going as far to give the runt an extra chance to feed, without the fuss of siblings.

Resolution

Back in December, I made it my New Years Resolution to write daily and in January I cemented that goal by deciding to write a minimum of 500 words each day.

Well, despite my good intentions I dropped the ball sometime in June due to the craziness that came with readying Solstice for print. I was still writing, just not the much needed 500 words.

I am however 39k shy of my January goal of 182,500 words over the course of 2013.

Pretty cool, huh?

Blogging

Oops! 10 days since my last update, probably not a terribly good sign of blogging commitment. Unfortunately not much is new on the writing front, but it is plodding along and I have written a whopping 131,000 words since January, so I’m rather happy with myself when it comes to that.

This really says it all.

Love this 🙂

Patrick Donovan's avatarThe Ramblings of a Writing Ninja

Writing is, in and of itself, a process. It takes some sweat, a little blood, a copious amount of either booze or coffee, and a whole metric shit ton of determination. With anything, there’s gonna be some times where putting your head and slogging through the rough patches is nigh impossible. Sadly enough, that’s just what you have to do. You have to put your head down, soldier up, and carry on my wayward son.

With that in mind. Motivation helps, so I found this. It works.

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