unpublished writers

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Which is not the answer to everything but it’s pretty amazing to me. Today’s blog post makes 32 posts for the month of November between this blog and the one on BlogHer. My wrists ache, my brain feels emptied, and I am going to pretend that yesterday’s posts didn’t offend anyone.

From a pure writing standpoint, the last month has been quite productive. I’ve been taking an online class with Christina Katz and by this time next week, I should have a nice body of work to start shopping about in the big bad world of print. Take a stab at the freelancing thing.

Blogging daily. Twice no less. Has been good for my brain but I am still probably leaving my best stuff all over Twitter and Facebook.

I was on fire on Facebook today and not in a friendly way but certainly in a progressive feminist writer way, which someone mistook for “leftism”. When did refusing to be suckered by the politics of class-ism and racism and sexism become a “liberal” rather than a “moral” issue?

But aside from that and the fact that I made pizza crust from scratch for the first time in eons, the day was a lazy one. Wednesdays are slug days for me. I had good intentions but my ear is still bugging me and throwing off my balance and my brother, CB, called and we talked for over an hour. He talked. I listened. I’m a good listener. Just so long as I am not sitting in front of the computer because Rob will tell you that I have the attention span of a gnat and will feed my ADD if given have an opportunity to do so.

Which is why he shouldn’t give me a Samsung Galaxy II S with gazillions of speed and ninja functions for my birthday – but he so is!!

I will now be tagged and as baggable as every over sheeple in North America.

The Top Mom Blogs contest ends at 5 P.M. PST tomorrow. I am still no shoo-in for the top five. Most of the others in the top ten are sponsored and have advertisers. I am so out of my league, but I am giving it the good fight. Cajoling FB friends and family daily and have a few people helping solicit voters from among their FB and Twitter lists. Adds up slowly. The woman in the top spot effortlessly gains a hundred or more votes a day. She’s got over twice as many votes as I do. I have no idea how one does that. I should ask The Bloggess sometime. She wins these contests all the time. But one last plea, hey? Click over and vote for my blog. I’ve never won anything and this would be beyond awesome despite it being nerve-wracking and the fact that I will never do this kind of thing again because it’s bad for my fragile sense of self.

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On Writing That Book


Writing

A couple of wonderful women I know via my traveling Twitter are going through some tough times. They are both writers. One recently suffered a Lupus related TIA and the other has sadly suffered another setback with cancer. Despite the difficulties, they write on. The latter, a NASA physicist, has a book in progress. Her latest scans show more cancer. It’s in the bone now. I, unfortunately, know what that means for her, and she made the comment in her last blog entry that it was time for her to quit procrastinating and finish her book.

Procrastination and writing are almost synonyms. I know some folks who write to the exclusion of all but breathing, but I have never been blessed with such nose-grinding attributes. However, I have been thinking. A lot. About going back to book writing full-time.

With the yoga studio closing at the end of June and my growing disaffection for cause and current event blogging making it difficult for me to muster interest in my paying gig, thoughts turned back toward the memoir and writing “that book”. Or rather, finishing it.

I am still stymied by theme. You don’t just write a book about a section of your life for no reason even if it seems like that is precisely what memoirists do. As more than one literary agent, author and indie publisher has pointed out – an author should have a point.

What’s my point?

A happy ending is not good enough.

Well, okay, it’s pretty darn good from the personal perspective but why should anyone other than my children or Rob really care about what got he and I from A to B?

More than once, it’s been observed that ours is a compelling story and that I have, on occasion, represented it well in words.

That I can write isn’t at issue, nor is the fact that people love a good happily ever after love story. What I am still searching for is an angle. The hook. What’s my hook?

Widowers, let’s face it, are hot these days. Can’t throw a stone without hitting one in film, books, or television. There is something more compelling about a man who’s lost his spouse than there is about a woman in the same predicament. Probably because  a single woman/mom is considered so dime a dozen in North America that they practically wallpaper daily life.

And men make tragic figures whereas women are just victims. Who loves a victim?

No one.

But, getting back to my pondering. I have been. I even have the makings of a plan. The universe knows I have a book.

I don’t want to look back and wonder what it would have been like had I just gone ahead and done it. Published. I don’t want to regret it from a standpoint of having run out of time. The image of poor old Ulysses S. Grant banging out his memories in the last cancer ravaged months of his life to save his family from poverty has always struck me as the saddest way to leave life, desperate and down-trodden and in despair.

I’ve spent the last four years learning to write. Well. It’s time to do something with all the free words I’ve given away in the pursuit of my voice.

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An Interview for a Writing Opportunity


I mentioned a little while back that I had an opportunity come up via my mommy blogging gig at 50 Something to write for an education oriented blog that’s getting ready to launch. Well, after emailing the contact person with my background – which is substantial if I do have to blow my own horn – I have an interview on Monday.

I don’t know much about the mother site other than it is cause/politics oriented. I checked it out a bit. Liked what I saw there. I like writing about social issues especially when they veer off into the political arena, so this is an awesome opportunity. The more I can write for people and established sites, the better for me as a writer. It’s being published – number one – as opposed to self-publishing, which is what I do here. It is job experience. I have learned a great deal about online publishing and writing standards from my previous gig with Moms Speak Up and now with SVM/50 Something Moms. Experience is experience and online publishing credits count, more with the forward thinkers than the traditional media/journalism people, but it’s only a matter of time before online will carry the same weight on a CV.

It’s exciting, and I need the ego boost to tell the truth. Wish me luck.