A: Anniversary

Blogging from A to Z : A

Even though I've thought of, and discarded, several themes for the A to Z challenge, the one post that I never had any doubts about was the first one.

It's one year ago today that I started blogging. I spent weeks following other blogs before finally jumping in so I'll never know why I picked April Fool's day to start, but I did so today is my anniversary :-)

In the past year I've finished another three first drafts, experimented with flash fiction, let other people read my work and written 118 posts.

More important than all that though, I've made friends. People I care about . People who I visit and who visit me. I've continued discussions over email, received support when I've needed it – sometimes from the most unexpected sources – and hopefully, offered support of my own.

What I'm trying to say is thank you. Thank you for making this blogging lark so much fun :-)

Things other people are doing

Today was supposed to be the day I answered some of those questions I got tagged with, but I've got a few bits and pieces that I wanted to pass on, so you'll have to wait until next week to find out what my favourite colour is :-)

Hands up if you're doing the A -Z challenge? Now, keep your hand up if you haven't got all your posts together yet. Well, if you need a hand with the letter P on 17^th April, Madeleine Maddocks of Scribble and Edit is running the Plotting Blogfest. (It's open to pantsers too!). So if you've got any tips or hints to share, and a post shaped hole on that day, go here for details and sign up.

If your brain is already overloaded trying to get those posts ready for next month, L. Diane Wolfe from Spunk on a Stick is running the Sad Songs Blogfest on Friday 30^th March. We all have those songs that move us, or threaten to break our heart. Here's where you can sign up to share them with everyone else!

Finally, Unicorn Bell is running 'A Picture Paints 1000 Words'. Go here to sign up, and between 26-28 March post a story of 1000 words or less inspired by one of the ten pictures shown. There are prizes for this one, too!

One more thing before I sneak off to bed with my dragon-tattooed girl, a blogging friend of mine, Kayeleen Hamblin, from Kayeleen's Creation Corner announced today that her husband Greg has left the writing closet and is joining us all in the light. He has a brand new blog, so if you have a couple of minutes, it would be great if you could drop by The Gregwriter and say hello :-)  

Introducing ...

Before I start today's post I must give a quick shout out to my friend Mark Koopmans over at Aloha! He's running 'Got Green?' a blogfest in honour of St Patrick's Day. Sign ups began today but you have until the 16th to join in, before sharing your memories, dreams, or complete fiction about the Emerald Isle on the 17th, the day itself. Full details are here.

The results for the poll I ran a few weeks back are as follows:

Keep Musical Stories – 8 (18%)

Reduce to two songs – 5 (11%)

The 'synopsis' idea – 30  (68%)

I don't visit Fridays – 1     (2%)

Therefore, I'm very pleased (and more than a little nervous) to announce that Musical Stories has been replaced by Musical Impressions. Thank you to Golden Eagle at The Eagle's Aerial Perspective for the name. As soon as she suggested it I knew it was perfect.

Here is how it's going to work. I'd love it if you could email me a pitch, outline, synopsis, blurb, or whatever you prefer for one of your stories. This can be something you're working on, something that's finished or even something you just made up ten minutes ago. Every Friday, I'll take one (in the order they arrive) and select a song that I think matches your plot, theme or mood. They may not be 'exact matches', just something I think your work reminds me of.

You'll have a choice as to whether you would like your work critiqued or not, and whether you would like to remain anonymous, just let me know in the email.

Put Musical Impressions as the title of the email, then your outline either as the body, or an attachment. I'd like it if you can keep it to under 500 words but if you really can't, I'm not going to chuck it out :-)

I'm going to run this for the three Fridays left in March and decide what to do from there (in other words, if it's really really hard, I might have to think of something else!).

I hope this is clear, if not feel free to drop me an email or a comment. Also, this is an idea in progress so if you have any suggestions feel free to voice them. And someone, please send me something or I'm going to feel really silly!

The Evil Genius Blogfest

The Golden Eagle over at The Eagle's Aerial Perspective is having her second blog birthday today, and to celebrate she's holding The Evil Genius Blogfest. The rules are simple: create a story,or non-fiction piece, in any format about an evil genius. It can be an already existing person from history or literature or you could, as I have done, create your own.

At 450 words, my entry is a little bit longer than The Golden Eagle's suggested limit of 400, but I hope you'll forgive me. Also, please bear with me. Humour is not something I usually tackle!
                                         

Handsome hero crept round the corner, punching First Anonymous Bad Guy in the face. Second Anonymous Bad Guy was no problem either. Handsome Hero back-kicked him without even turning round.

Handsome Hero made his way to the pool area, not even caring that he still had his shoes on. Rules were made to be broken. There she was, Plucky Heroine, bound to a chair, gagged . She'd held her own so far through this long adventure, but now it was time for him to rescue her from the clutches of Evil Genius.

He ran over to her, breaking another poolside rule, and began to work at the knots holding her captive.

“Mmmph,” she said.

“Sorry sweetheart?” He was still concentrating on the task at hand.

“MMMPH,” she said again, more urgently this time.

He looked up. There stood Evil Genius, a gun in his hand.

“I knew you'd come. This time Handsome Hero, it really is the end for you. I don't know how you escaped the ski lift of death, the roller-coaster of doom, or the runaway-driverless-subway-car of destruction, but no matter. You won't get away this time.”

From the corner of his eye Handsome Hero saw something move. Turning his head to look, he realised that the pool wasn't empty. There were several sharks swimming in it. Sharks? Really? Even as he'd stuffed the Shark repellent in his pocket this morning he hadn't thought he would need it. Sharks were so last decade. On the other hand, it would make this all a lot easier. He would be forced into the pool, then whilst Evil Genius was recounting every last step of his incredibly long and detailed plan to take over the world to poor, helpless Plucky Heroine, He, Handsome Hero, would despatch the sharks, silently climb out of the pool behind his nemesis and knock him unconscious. He sighed. It was a shame he had to get his hair wet.

“Stand on the edge of the pool,” ordered Evil Genius.

“I suppose you think you're going to make me jump in. No way that's happening.” Handsome Hero was pleased that he'd finally got some use out of the reverse psychology degree he'd taken all those years ago.

Evil Genius grinned an evil grin.

“Know why they call me Evil Genius?” He asked.

“No, why?”

Evil Genius raised his gun and shot Handsome Hero in the head. He watched as his enemy's lifeless body toppled into the pool.

“Because I learn from my mistakes.”

Plucky Heroine watched as Evil Genius walked away. She wondered how hard it would be to change her name to Evil Badass Sidechick.

Insecure Writer's Support Group 4

 I can't believe that this month's meeting of The Insecure Writer's Group is here already. You know you're getting old when time flies, whether you're having fun or not! If I haven't read your post yet, I'll catch up with you this week.

For Christmas, as part of a lovely blogfest, (a sort of creative 'Secret Santa'), I wrote a story for someone. I tailored this story specifically to her and her blog. Most people taking part in the SantaFest didn't know who their gifts were from. My recipient did, as she was the organiser, delivering all the gifts, so there was no way for her not to know who had sent hers to her. I didn't have a problem with that. Although the story was a simple little thing, I was pleased with it, and it was a nice way of thanking her for her friendship.

A few days later my friend posted the story on her blog. I was really flattered, as I'm pretty sure that meant she liked it. She didn't say who had written it, but offered me a chance to 'out' myself in the comments. I couldn't do it. Nobody said anything mean about the story, the comments were good ones, but I just couldn't bring myself to admit that I was the writer. I thought after I had sent my first draft to another blogger before Christmas for a critique, that I was over this. It seems, however, that I have progressed only as far as letting one person see my work. I know every little helps, but I really need to get over this ridiculous fear of letting people see what I write, or I'm never going to get anywhere.

Did any of you have this problem in the beginning? What's the best way to get over it? I don't know what the problem is, it isn't even that I'm worried about criticism. The environment I'm in right now, us, is such that I know any criticism would be useful and kindly worded. Any advice would be gratefully received!

Deja Vu Blogfest

This week's Musical Stories will be posted tonight, but today you get an extra post. This is my contribution to the Deja Vu blogfest. Click here for details.

I chose this post because I've decided that I might start entering competitions next year. This is my reminder of what not to do. Yes, this post is absolutely true. It's the story of my one and only entry to a writing comptetion :-)

First posted May 4 2011

How not to win a writing competition

20 easy steps to guarantee failure

1. Find out about a competition ten days before the closing date and convince yourself that you can produce something of a high enough standard to enter, even though you rarely write short stories because you have trouble with the 'short' part.

2. Spend the next five days writing your story, even though you're not one hundred percent sure that you've managed to interpret one of the required elements correctly. Edit and re-edit until you've made it as tight as you possibly can.

3. Congratulate yourself on being 1000 words below the required maximum word length.

4. Re-read the rules and discover that you're 1500 words over the maximum word length.

5. Spend four days trying to reduce the word-count without destroying the original story.

6. Read the finished story immediately because you don't have time to let it sit like you'd planned.
Realise that you now have something so flat that it reads like an example on a 'how not to write' blog.

7. Read it to your beloved partner, even though he has a history of sending you back to the drawing board, because you need another opinion and he's the only one around.

8. Listen to, and agree with, his suggestions which involve you going back to the drawing board.

9. Struggle with writing a new opening. Write a rubbish one for now just so you can continue. Realise 1000 words into your new effort that you're boring yourself. Screw up latest effort and throw it across the room.

10. Go to bed.

11. Wake up the day before the competition deadline determined to get this right. Spend the day making some progress, realise that you're going to be working late into the night.

12. Spend the evening watching DVDs with your daughters because they came home a day early after being away for a week and they want to spend time with you. Go to bed late.

13. Set your alarm clock for 9am. Dream that your competition entry should have been posted instead of submitted online so that when your alarm goes off you think you've missed the deadline. Go back to sleep.

14. Jump out of bed in a panic at 10.30am, realise that you have no time to finish your rewrite.

15. Have a quick read through of your original entry. Decide that it would sound better in present tense. Rewrite and do a quick spell check. Realise you have 15 minutes to deadline, so submit story without even a read through.

16. Be too ashamed to even read it back once it's been submitted as you know there are formatting errors, and probably a ton of typos and it's too late to do anything about it.

17. Resolve never ever to submit anything to a competition again that you are not proud of, and thank the writing deity of your choice that no-one, except the judges, will ever know what you did.

18. Hope that the judges of a competition for a TV station will never judge any other writing competitions and be glad that you don't have an unusual name that would stick in a judge's mind.

19. Make a note to check the competition website on June 1st to read the three that did actually make the short-list.

20. Go and work on your novel.

Contests and blogfests and corn, oh my!

The family trip to the art college on Saturday was a huge success. Practically from the moment she walked in, Diva was sure this was where she wanted to be next year. Each new thing she learned about the studies involved only strengthened her resolve. She's already working on extra pieces for her portfolio to show her diversity. Fingers crossed that she's accepted. They accept 200 students a year and last year had 420 applicants so it isn't a foregone conclusion, but at least she knows what she's working towards. I wish we could say the same for poor Blue. The school she has set her heart on accepts about 20 students from the UK and have over 500 applicants. So far, we haven't found any other viable schools that offer the International Baccalaureate rather than A' levels, but we keep searching! Send us positive thoughts if you would :-)

I have some interesting things to tell you about today, so let's start with some contests:

Medeia Sharif is offering a book of your choice from the Book Depository. This is an international contest which closes on 31st December. Click here to enter.

Joanne at Whole Latte Life is offering a $20 ebook gift card for her lucky winner, but this one closes tomorrow so be sure to click here today to enter!

Here's a nice one. Heather at My Demon Spirits is holding a competition for the best short holiday story (it doesn't have to be Christmas related). The closing date for entries to be posted on your blog is 19th December and she's offering three prizes including a $25 Amazon gift card. Go here for all the details.

Now for some blogfests:

A nice easy one to start. Katie Mills at Creepy Query Girl is co-hosting the Deja Vu blogfest, along with Nicole Ducleroir, Lydia Kang and DL Hammons. Click on one of the links to sign up, and repost one of your old posts on 16th December. Easy, and a good chance to remind us of something you might be particularly proud of :-)

The Wrap It Up blogfest is being organised by David Powers King, J. A. Bennett and Leigh Covington. Sign up before 16th December, then write something in less than 300 words for somebody, (real or imaginary), and post it on your blog before the closing date. There are prizes for this one. Click on one of the links for full details.

Finally, if all this Christmas joy is just too much for you, here's a bloghop especially for you. Grumpy Bulldog is offering his very own Bah Humbug Blahg fest. Hit the link to sign up before 15th December then, on that day, simply answer the question: What are the 12 things I hate most about the holiday season?

Before I go, I promised you corn. Enjoy :-)

Paying It Forward

If you're looking for this week's Musical Stories, they'll be up later. For now, I wanted to take part in the Pay It Forward Blogfest that Alex Cavanaugh, and Matt from the Quintessentially Questionable Query Experiment have devised. The idea is that we each choose three blogs to introduce you to, blogs that we love, and if you don't already know them, feel free to check them out.

Once you've done that, Click on Matt or Alex's list above for a full list of blogs taking part if you fancy finding plenty more great new blogs.

If you're taking part in this, then you'll know how hard it is to pick just three. I've finally managed, and I hope you love them.

Linda G at Visiting Reality is funny and smart and has plenty of sass. Also, every week on hump day there are camels. How can you resist?

Michael Offutt from SLC Kismet is a man with opinions, which he's more than happy to share. I don't always agree with him, but he often makes me think. Plus, he has excellent taste in TV programmes :-)

Roland Yeomans of Writing in the Crosshairs writes the most beautiful prose, and has a wonderful imagination. On top of that, he's kind and supportive and will reach out a helping hand to anyone in the blogosphere who needs it.

So there you go, three out of hundreds. Please go and say hello if you get the chance.