Laptop cat says...

Why aren't you writing?

Is it because I'm sitting on your notes?

This is my excuse for not getting much done today. What's yours?

Famous Writers and their Snacks

Some people need to write with music. Some people need candlelight. Some need snacks.

When I saw 12 Great Writers and Their Favorite Snacks I thought I'd talk about snacks today.

I need coffee when I write. I make a pot in the morning and another in the afternoon. Getting up to refill my mug is as much a part of my writing process as hitting "save" at the end of the day.

My afternoon snack is usually a handful of almonds.

But if I need something sweet, this is my go to snack. The flavor is great and lasts FOREVER.                     

What about you? Do you need snacks when you sit down to read, write, or watch TV? What are you favorite snacks??

Say that again?

The other day, I found myself texting a friend of mine to tell her about a tweet I’d received; I had no idea that texted tweet would lead to today’s blog post. And I bet if I’d read that first sentence twenty years ago, or even ten years ago, I would not have begun to understand what it meant.

I suppose I’m getting old, but lately, I tend to notice that modern conversations, especially those I have with my kids, bear little resemblance to the conversations I had with my parents when I was a teenager. It blows my mind when I think about how much our language has evolved in the past few decades.

Just off the top of my head, I compiled a list of words that are fairly common in everyday conversation these days that not long ago [maybe even as little as a year ago in some cases] would have meant nothing in the same context. How often do you use these?

Faceplant

Facepalm

Googled

Facebooked

Blog/blogging/blogged

Tebowed

Asshat

Texting

Laptop

I also made a short list of words that were definitely around in the good old days, but certainly didn’t mean the same things they mean today. How often do you use any of the following in their original context?

Cell  - to mean anything but the phone in your pocket?

Tweet – to mean something other than what you post on Twitter?

Viral – when not referring to a video on YouTube?

Web – when not talking about the Internet?

Lurker – in the even creepier sense than someone who reads posts but doesn’t comment?

Post – when not referring to a blog or a board or a chat group?

I challenge everyone to give me a sentence you’ve used recently that wouldn’t have made any sense a decade ago.

Got Writing Rituals?

I've got to say that I love the two-part series Courtney Maum did for Tin House on Super Sad True Habits of Highly Effective Writers. It's amusing and enlightening.

It also got me to thinking about my own writing rituals.

In the morning, after I've walked the dog, I go to my desk, an oversized mug of coffee in hand. I sit down to write.

Instead, I open my email.

Then I settle down to write.

But I hop on Twitter instead.

Finally I'm ready.

But then I remember I haven't checked blogs or Facebook.

Once I've done all that, I really am ready to write.

But by then my coffee is empty, so I need to get up and get a refill.

I could squander away the entire day in this cycle.
But eventually I buckle down and actually get to work.

But I usually write at the kitchen table, or maybe in the living room, or on the couch in my office, but rarely, very rarely, do I write at my desk.

Because I tend to write longhand, with purple ink in a spiral notebook.

And yet every morning I show up at my desk with the best of intentions.

Tell me KILLER FRIENDS: What are your rituals?

My next experiment

I've gone to the dark side...I suppose you could say that. After watching and listening to a lot of indie authors weigh in on the pros and cons of Amazon's KDP Select program, I decided to give it a shot with my next release.

(cover by LFD Designs for Authors)

KEN'JA is a previously released short story [12,000] words, that I decided to put up at Amazon exclusively for $0.99. Despite hearing a lot of bad press about the $0.99 price point, I didn't really feel right about charging more for such a short story. I know people do, and they get away with it, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

So here's the beginning of my experiment. The book went live on the evening of May 14th and as of this writing [24 hours later] I've sold 7 copies with ZERO promo. [No borrows yet].

I'll weigh in over time and let you know how the book is doing. I don't plan any extraordinary promo for this one, just a blog post or two and an announcement on my Yahoo group. The current rank, after one day is 29,450.

The review that caused heart palpitations

I was so excited to learn that Dear Author had reviewed Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman.

And then I read the first paragraph and I'm pretty sure my heart skipped a few beats (and not in a good way). It starts off like this:

Honestly, if someone told me a week ago that I’d be reading a book about a woman with a crappy life who survived a car wreck with only a concussion that now lets her communicate with a pet lizard and that in order to pay the astronomical medical bills pilling up to keep her comatose young niece in a speciality hospital has taken up a mobster’s offer to undertake a hit, I would have told them, “Are you shitting me?!” No, wait that’s not emphatic enough. It would probably have been more like, “Are you shitting me and are you on crack?!”

I was reading the review on my Kindle and I put the blasted thing down at this point. All I could think was, "Oh my god, she hated it. A major review site hates my book." A few moments later, when the overwhelming urge to vomit passed, I picked it back up and forced myself to read on.

The next two sentences were: But here I sit having just finished “Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman” and all I can pant is “Give me more!” And, “What happens next?!”

And all of the sudden I was excited again!  :-)  Thank you, Jayne!   You can read the whole rollicking review here.


That was the most exciting thing that happened to me this weekend. I don't think I could have taken any more, lol.

How did everyone spend Mother's Day weekend? Did anyone receive any heartwarming/interesting/to cool for school gifts?

I received some funny cards, great phone calls, and some lovely gardenia plants! Oh, and that kick-ass review. :-)

The things I do...

to avoid writing.

You'd think as a writer - someone who's been captivated by the idea of creating stories since I was ten years old [yes, that's a LONG time ago], when given a day relatively free of responsibilities, I would spend it feverishly writing.

You'd think that.

After a particularly grueling week at the day job [why did I go 'back to work' again? I forget], my brain needed some down time, so I conned my dear hubby [affectionately referred to usually as DH] into taking me to the craft store.

Here's what happened.

I started out by making myself a new pencil holder for my desk. I wooden box, some tiny sea shells and some cool fish stickers from the scrapbooking department. [Note: It's not a good idea to varnish over those paper scrapbooking stickers, then tend to curl wickedly when they dry.]

Then this happened:

This is a three-hole shadow box frame which I painted and added a bunch of the cool miniature stuff I've been storing since I used to make doll houses. I hate keeping all these neat little things tucked away in boxes in the closet, so I made myself a vignette. [Note: When affixing very tiny things using hot glue, use tweezers, as hot glue is both HOT and STICKY and not in a sexy way, and when it sticks to your fingers it hurts like HELL.]

Words written: Zero

Stress level: Zero.

What do you do when you should be writing?