writing skills/profession

Just a Homemaker


As I continue to adjust to my non-traditional career status, I don’t know whether to be amused or offended or worried by the interpretations of others.

For the last several months whenever I am asked what I do I respond with “I’m a writer” which is true enough. I write daily. I am published. I just haven’t figured out how to turn what I do into money. Often I will be questioned about my writing, but usually I am met with a puzzled look and the polite smiles reserved for the elderly, or people we think might be crazy and we are unsure of the danger they pose. Read Full Article

Getting Picked Up Again


Another of my pieces at 50 Something Moms will go into syndication the week of December 1st. I am pretty thrilled and slightly impressed with myself though goodness knows why. It’s not like anyone is paying me money and isn’t that how we are ultimately measured? 

Well, maybe not. I would like the opportunity to measure myself monetarily just a bit though where this whole writer gig thing is concerned. I keep hoping someone with the authority to say “Hey, come and write for us” will read me during one of these syndication opportunities because I haven’t any idea who to go to on my own – and believe me I would as I have no shame – or where there is a market for the kind of writer I am, at least on the Internet.

Writing is like real estate. It’s location and a bit of timing and a whole lot of salesmanship.

You can find my next syndicated piece here and my last offering here, if you haven’t caught it already. Let me know what you think!

An Update on My Writing and Life in General


I crossed the 25,000 word threshold. It is the half-way mark for NaNoWriMo but not my ultimate goal now. I am still convinced I have 79,000 words in me, and so the memoir will take me into December which means revising some of my writing plans for the end of the year. Not the worst thing which could happen to me.

I have been prolific over at 50 Something Moms. Check out this, this and this. Sadly, however, Moms Speak Up is being held hostage by a server that is refusing to renew our domain name.  Subsequently, the site is in blogosphere limbo. I am a bit choked about this because I stupidly didn’t make back ups of my work there and fear it is now basically lost forever.

No new publishing opportunities to report but I am hopeful. It’s been about six months since I revised my sci-fi short and sent it back for the requested second look at On Spec. Perhaps the length of time is a good sign? I choose to think so.

I am past ready for my child to go back to school. She has asks daily when she will be able to back to school. Monday is still a long way off.

My mom is okay. That is simply how it is as a widow or anyone grieving a loss really. Things are okay or fine until they are not. My aunt came to stay this past week and all things financial are now in order. Auntie is a wunderkind of organization.

CB has been a bit “fussy”, but I talked with him Wednesday evening and he sounded better than he had in a while.

DNOS and Nephew2 caught the same flu we had. Nephew2 is mended but my sister has a horrible cough. I worry about her. She’s had the cough in some version or another since last spring. We went to Walmart to get Halloween costumes and rode in Dad’s old car. I drove that same car in June to take Dad to the garage downtown and didn’t really notice any smoke odor. But DNOS has been using the car on and off all summer and my eyes started watering as soon as I got inside. It was like sitting in an ashtray. Even opening the windows didn’t help. I worry about her health.

On a sad note, Shelley’s biological father has kidney cancer that has spread to the ribs and hip. He had lost one kidney years ago because of a tumor, so this cancer ridden one was it for him. As I understand it, he was not a good father. A morose alcoholic, his relationship with his children and grandchildren was distant at best.

Rob took the girls to see him Wednesday night. They were ambivalent. Rob was rocked a bit by walking the same halls he’d traveled during Shelley’s treatments.

Death continues to dog us, but I am reminded of a conversation I had with BabyD when I mentioned that Daddy would be going into town to visit with Shelley’s dad.

“God must need him, Mom.”

“And why do you think that?”

“Well, if you are old or too sick to fix that means God needs you.”

Simple universal truths. When do we get too old to remember these things?