writing skills/profession

You Have a Friend Request


I have been on Facebook quite a bit this last week. I haven’t spent that much time there since I registered. Facebook was just a way to keep in touch with my step-daughters in the beginning. I really didn’t get the whole acquistion of “friends” thing. I mean, how can a person have 434 friends? Some of these people have to be acquaintances or simply networking connections, right?

Until about a week ago, I had about 25 friends give or take. Fewer than even my husband though in fairness to me – he is related to most of his Facebook friends. But after I discovered that a few of my fellow bloggers at 50 Something Moms were on Facebook and then started checking out their friends list…..it was all over. I went on a friend’s request frenzy. I now have 47 friends.

To be sure, I do “know” nearly all my friends. They are people I’ve met in person or via their blogs. Most of them I interact with if only virtually. Still, it’s odd. This new need of mine to reach out and connect and, um, network.

Rob had a glance at my list tonight and said,

“You won’t be able to use the “not knowing anyone” excuse to stay away from Blogher next year.”

Yeah, I know. How pathetic of an excuse was that? But I am very shy despite my online image to the contrary.

I read often via other bloggers, writers, writing bloggers, and blogging writers that using social networking is one of the keys to success. Facebook and Fuel My Blog are really my only form of social addiction, and I am not hardcore. I don’t know how to add the de*li*cious or Digg widgets to my posts. I think Twitter would force me to pay attention to my cell phone, and I am still not over being coerced into getting one in the first place by my late husband. It turned out to be little more than a GPS for my mother.

But do I aspire to be say – The Bloggess? She has like 400 and something friends. But Rob reminds me of some recent study that revealed that beyond 150 people, we become overwhelmed and shut down. This means that 350 of the friends on Bloggess’ list are taxing her mental processes to a point that could short-circuit her.

I don’t think I will ever have that problem.*

I do think that there is something to this networking thing though. In addition to my Facebook peeps, I have blogging comrades and have met writers and political pundits. I have even been allowed to blog elsewhere. Christina Katz, an author, blogger, and freelancer,** has a new book out titled, Get Known Before the Book Deal. I haven’t read it yet, so I don’t know if Facebook, or anything else for that matter, is part of the “getting known”. I think probably, yes.

So, wanna be Facebook friends? It could be mutually beneficial.

*Her fame or the mental collapse thing.

**And someone I know through her blog and on Facebook.

P.S. Please run over to 50 Something Moms today for my new piece, The Full Monty.

Best Laid Plans


Over the summer I got the bright idea to use one of those white-board calendars to plot my writing course over a three month span of time. I think I made it to week six before illness and deck construction ran me off the rails. But I haven’t abandoned the idea because it helped me complete a revision of a novella I first wrote about 12 years ago and is now sitting, waiting again for a final polish before being shipped off to the wide world of publishing.

I have so much to do despite the fact that in the last week plus I have written two pieces for 50 Something Moms, finished/submitted my flash fic election horror piece for the Apex contest, and created two Facebook groups for my writing groups while helping plan the joint anthology for next spring. 

I am not at all certain why I thought the anthology was such a great project to take on. It’s not like I don’t have a memoir to write for NaNoWriMo in November or another website to administer since I also let myself be talked into serving on the Strathcona writing groups board as the website manager.

I don’t think I was this busy when I had a job.

So, I need my calendar thingy again. Today one of my “to do’s” is the calendar. Another task on deck is getting my blogging obligations outlined and hopefully drafting a few. 

I am up to three blogs that I actively contribute to in addition to this site and not counting the website managing gig or the blog I need to create to go along with that. One would think there should be money in this somewhere, but still I toil in relative obscurity. I guess that is where everyone starts, who isn’t the child or spouse of someone famous.

Sixteen days until I disappear into memoir writing. I am kind of looking forward to writing it. Mostly looking forward to being done with it. Another widow – a 9/11 casualty – whose novel I will be reading and reviewing in December, wrote on her blog yesterday that she was uncertain how to follow the book up. Talk about her search for “happy ever after” or her journey from New York to the West Coast. It got me thinking about the focus of my memoir. I had thought to concentrate mostly on the after. After Will was diagnosed. After he went into the nursing home. After hospice. After death. After the first months of widowhood. There are so many things now that I simply can’t recall with a high degree of accuracy or that are just not share-able. Is that a word? But I am guessing most people know what I mean. Even a die-hard blogger like me doesn’t share everything. Some events are mine or mine and my late husband’s or mine and Rob. I don’t write about those.

Which brings me to the reason I need to organize the memoir’s direction beforehand. I don’t want to spend too much time wandering in the desert. I have only 30 days and hopefully I will surpass the 50,000 words. It needs to really be twice that length which means writing about 3,000 plus words a day. Not out of the realm of possibility. I can easily crank about 2,000 a day if I am focused and have an idea of where I am going.

NaNoWriMo means getting my blogging house in order. I need two pieces a month for both my other blogging obligations, and I have ideas so the thing is to draft/revise before the end of this month and get them slotted. I also need to get a bit of blogging ahead done here. I am woefully neglecting my dear readers and readers, however dear, are fickle and go where there is reading to be done.

I have what feels like a ton of urban fantasy to finish (I discovered during the month I spent at the workshopping site that I am not writing pure sci-fi but in a genre called urban fantasy – who knew?). I am pushing it back to December. One of the things they recommend doing after a NaNoWriMo is putting your manuscript aside for a month and then coming back with fresh eyes to read and revise in January. And that is what I am going to do, therefore December will be urban fantasy month for me.

In between all of this I have writing group business including: monthly meetings, board meetings, anthology preparation, and a publishing workshop. And also the daily life stuff of husband, children, house, dying father, grieving mother, yoga class, and reading.

Man, do I have reading to do. My Bloglines is so backed up it is groaning. I do apologize if I am not commenting much. I just have so much to read that I don’t often get to it all in one sitting and sometimes my mind is too empty to find words. Would a “hi, I was here” be acceptable? Somehow that seems very trite.

A few things before I leave off for today:

  • I am still interested in trading links. Leave a comment if you are too.
  • Please vote for me over at FuelMyBlog if you get the chance.
  • If we are not friends on Facebook, perhaps we should be. Let me know.
And so I am off to organize the writing machine which is me.

I am Up at 50 Something Moms!


Okay, drumroll, my first piece is up at 50 Something Moms. My new contributing gig has begun! I would be very pleased and appreciative of anyone who has time to zip over, read and leave a comment there for me.

I quite like these plural blogs. Nothing rides completely on your singular shoulders and these days of late I have felt the full weight of aloneness in keeping this site up and fresh. Still, I love creative non-fiction too much to give it up. I told Rob the other day that the coolest job in the world has to be that of a columnist. I couldn’t imagine a more fun occupation. I think it probably even beats novelist because they have public appearances and travel to contend with. However, I didn’t think there was much of a lucrative living in it.

“Dave Barry did well for himself,” Rob reminded me.

“Yes, whoring out one’s personal life via your immediate family sells. Is that what you want me to do?”

“Um, no.”

Not that I don’t over-share. I do (note to Silverstar, it was Rob who wrote about the long underwear thing – I was merely a character in that anecdote) but I think selling your family for tv sitcom consumption is probably pushing the limits of the personal narrative envelope.

But the point of this blurb is to let my dear readers know that I am contributing today and on the 17th at 50 Something Moms and I would love your support. The writers there are REAL as in PUBLISHED and ACCOMPLISHED, and I am a bit nervous and very humbled..