Goal of Writing

In order to write, you need to have a goal. I'm not talking about word count goal, or anything like that. I mean a long-term goal. Why are you writing? Answer that question, and you will figure out what your goal is. If you don't aim toward your goal, you will get sidetracked and complicate the simple things.



Today's unusual word and definition: logorrhea log-uh-RI-uh, n an excessive flow of words, prolixity

A Note to Self

A fellow blogger/writer posted this link on her blog http://www.givesmehope.com/ I was wondering if there was any good left in the world after seeing all of the bad things in the news.

The True Life Accounts of Z.M. Dreamer

True Story: Being the seeker in hide & seek is not fun when while you are hiding your eyes and counting, the hiders actually leave the premises to go play ball a mile away.

True Story: If you jump from a 10 foot ledge into a coal pile and let your knees bend and give out under the force of the jump, 2 black eyes will appear.

True Story: No matter what my dad says, I was never lost in a heating duct.

True Story: If your mama tells you not to leave toys in the car while shopping because they could get stolen, listen to her because it does happen.

True Story: Doing flip flops on the A-frame roof of the garage when you are 6 years old is NOT safe, no matter what your older brother tells you.

True Story: Placing explosives in a drilled water well inside a well house WILL forcibly blow the roof off of the well house and make it land 50 feet away, not to mention the whoop of the explosives will make your ears ring for a week.

True Story: Nobody really knows how old my dad except me and a few other people because the mining industry wouldn't hire 40-year-olds years ago. There is truth in discrimination.

True Story: My mama couldn't think of a name for me when I was born, so since I was the last child of 13, she picked the last name from the baby book. Living in the 80's with the name of Zita was pretty rough. However, I recently found out that my birthday is officially Saint Zita's Day. Imagine that!

True Story: When you are 5 years old, never trust your older brothers. When they dare you to go to the altar when the preacher is calling out for sinners and say they will follow you up, they are lying, IN A CHURCH! You WILL be preached at very loudly and your mama will have an embarrassing look on her face for a long time and you will never forget it and your brothers will deny the dare completely.

True Story: Real outhouses may look cool from a distance, but they aren't at all cool when you actually have to use one.

True Story: Riding in the bucket of an en-loader (like a bulldozer with a bucket instead of a blade), is actually pretty cool! Until your dad, who is driving it, tells you to hang on and tries to dump you out.

More to come later.....

Searching for a Book

I am searching for a book. I do not know the title or author of it. It is a small children's book. The age range is probably 4-6 and it was a picture book with words. The story is set in the dark with several different animals. Throughout the book, one animal at a time is introduced, following the animal before it. I do remember the cat went sneaky, sneaky, sneaky.

I am thinking it has the word night, moon, or something to that effect in the title. I have searched for hours through B&N and Amazon and haven't been able to find it.






If anyone has any idea of the name of this book, I would greatly appreciate it.

I Am a Writer After All!

Over the past year or so, I've forgotten how to write. Well, not really forgotten, I just got lost a little bit. I used to write whatever came from my imagination, no matter what it was, as long as it laid out the story. My way of writing changed because I researched the art of writing. I read posts, blogs, how-to websites, and all of that good stuff. It actually made me doubt my writing. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of great information out there and most of it helped me, but it also made me a different writer. Now, every time I write a sentence, all of that information constantly buzzes through my mind and I doubt everything that I write. I keep thinking that I need more details, or I shouldn't use that word but another synonym of the word. I even got to the point that I thought I couldn't write at all. I was confused.

I know that I am not grammatically correct at times. I can't come up with great synonyms like others can, and I don't know these huge-long words. But, I know simple words. Everyone knows simple words, so I don't understand what the problem would be if I never used a thesaurus while writing. If my readers can understand what I mean, then why would I have to change the way I write, as long it worked and the story captured them?

This morning, with the help of a blog by Jeff King and a blog by Billy Coffey, I realized that I am a writer. I just have to bring the writer in me back out and throw away the negative me.

Conquering Another Challenge

I realize that I am always stressing over my writing. I question everything that I write. Sometimes I write a sentence, and then re-read it thinking it needed to be changed. So, I change it, and then change it, and then change it….and it goes on like that until I have many versions of the same sentence. No wonder it’s taking me forever to get through this ms.

I know that I’m supposed to write a rough draft first and then go over it all again, but I just can’t seem to do that. I know that the first sentence below would have worked, but I changed it over and over because I thought that I could make it better. I want to be a better writer! I guess that is why I do these things. But, from this day forward, I will do a rough draft and revise later.

1. The space under the shrub would have been a great hiding place, if only the ground wasn't frozen. He would endure it as long as they were still out there looking for him.

2. His body protested the frozen ground under the shrub. He had to stay put as long as they were still out there.

3. Since they were still out there, his body would have to suffer the frozen ground under the shrub.

4. His hiding place on the cold ground under the bush would have to suffice, since they were still out there.

5. The bush was the best hiding place he could find. The only problem was that he had to lay on the frozen ground in order to stay hidden.

I ended up going with the last sentence. All I wanted to convey was that this guy had to hide on the frozen ground under a bush. It actually took me rewriting the sentence more than five times to get there. I didn't post all of them because I didn't want people to think I was nuts.

I have faith and I will conquer my issue.

Some Interesting Hashtags

Over the past couple of days, two hashtags on Twitter have attracted my attention. The first one is #storystarters. There have been a couple of tweets on this hashtag that I really wanted to know how the rest of the story would end. The application that I use with Twitter is TweetDeck. I have several columns that I keep on there at all times and #storystarters has inherited its own column.

The second hashtag is #thingsishouldnotseeinaquery. @colleenlindsay posted some great stuff through this hashtag that I will try not to do. I follow @colleenlindsay, not only because she is a literary agent, but because she tells it how it is and she does make me chuckle. When I started tweeting through TweetDeck, I made a column labeled 'Favs'. This column has a few choice tweeters (including @colleenlindsay) who grabbed my attention with their inspiring tweets.

The hashtags that I posted above were placed at the end of sentences. Searching for these hashtags requires no period at the end of them.

It's Friday night and the weekend is just starting, so have a great weekend!