Tag: writing

Expensive (disposable?) electronics

by Karen, posted in quest for the best, Work from Home, writing
The two most recent offenders

I had a Compaq Presario Desktop computer for more than 15 years, and it never stopped working. Well, except for that one time, when it caught a virus, but it recovered and never failed me again. Its only shortcoming? It was (a phenomenon with which so many of us who are aging are intimately familiar) getting slow, or slower, to be more precise (you know, in comparison to the younger–I mean newer–models).

In our household we’ve had 4 laptops (all different brands) live and die in under 4 years. What’s up with that?? Two of them have been repaired (for a few hundred dollars total) but the trust is now gone, you know what I mean? Like when your car doesn’t start for the first time…it’s hard to rely on it fully after that. You’re always on edge, waiting for it to let you down again.

Do any of you writers and bloggers out there have a computer (either a desktop or a laptop) that: 

  1. has everything you need on it to do everything you want to do
  2. didn’t cost you your first-born child
  3. is reliable and
  4. that you love? or at least like most of the time?

If yes, then please, for the love of God, tell me the name of it!

Cardinal rule

by Karen, posted in books, no fear, writing

I have a cardinal rule with books that stretches all the way back to my college years and here it is:

I never write in a book.

It feels like defacement to me to write in or on a book. I went through four years of college and two years of nursing school (not to mention countless hours of continuing education courses over the years) and never once highlighted so much as a word, penciled in so much as a line, in a textbook (or any other book, for that matter),

Perhaps you can imagine the emotional distress I’m feeling every day as I write in my book, my own book. The book that I wrote.

I’ve concluded that the best way to proceed (if I’m ever going to finish it) is to make the corrections directly on the pages of the proof copy.

It is the most reckless act in which I have engaged in years.

Okay, so that’s not really true, but you get the idea. ..I’m living on the edge here, people!

🙂

Another book to read

by Karen, posted in books, Date night, Marriage, relationships, writing

The Secret Lives of Wives: Women Share What It Really Takes to Stay MarriedThe Secret Lives of Wives: Women Share What It Really Takes to Stay Married by Iris Krasnow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I thought this book rocked. I was especially happy to find it when I did: at the end of my writing “How to Stay Married in Midlife” and launched the “Sharpen Your Knives” blog (http://sharpenyourknives.wordpress.com/), and not before or during that process. The book includes stories from women who have been married for a long time, and includes their strategies for having been able to stay married. Hint: some are sort of kinky. Iris sprinkles in anecdotes from her own marriage, about which I am not sure how I feel. It might have been okay if she had confined her marriage story to one chapter. Instead, she randomly sort of randomly puts in her two cents where maybe it isn’t needed. In some of the stories, the women retain their anonymity, in some they just let it all hang out. You get to hear from women who are in their 70’s and (yep) are still married. It’s really a quite hopeful, “You can do it!!” sort of a book. Definitely worth reading.

View all my reviews

Finishing my (first) book

by Karen, posted in books, education, my one word, no fear, writing

My One Word (aka New Year’s Resolution) for 2011 was to finish my book.

Instead, I wrote a second one.

What’s that about? Well, what I told myself at the time was that I was following a strategy that Stephen King advocated in On Writing, where you put your “finished” manuscript into a drawer and basically ignore it for a few months.

My gut tells me that it was really about procrastination.

So there I was, in December of 2011, and I had only reached Chapter 2 (of 50+) chapters in my book since I’ve been editing the typos and such out of it. My husband, once again, took pity on me. He suggested that I get a room with a view to work on my edits, freer from housework, mail, mommy (and wife!) roles, and other distractions, since this had been so effective (I’m ashamed to admit this) almost one year ago, when I was getting the printed out copy ready to become a proof copy.

And so I did. I got about one-third of the way through the proof that day. I set a goal to reach page 100, which I accomplished. I estimate the book is a little over 300 pages at this point (since I neglected to add them in the proof copy, I don’t know for sure!) so that’s not a bad day’s work.

The good news is that the manuscript for the second book is much less of a mess than was/is the first. I figured out that I needed to put in the chapter breaks and blank pages as I go, because they do not magically appear at the end when you finish, as I had previously thought. I also know how to paginate the darn thing, which I didn’t know for manuscript #1.

Maybe it was really all part of the writing process?

Here’s hopin’.

Stocking stuffers for the kids

by Karen, posted in Holidays, tweens

Just in case the edict “Write what you know” is true, I thought that just maybe it’s cousin, “Buy what you know,” may also be true. In this post, I’ll do both; it will be in relation to teens and tweens stocking stuffers. Okay, so my teen is recently promoted to “twenty-something”, but I still have a good solid history of stuffing that particular stocking for all of the years intervening from tween to twenty.

Here’s what’s worked for me in years gone by, in no particular order:

  1. Nail polish and remover; maybe a little manicure implement set (girls).
  2. Their favorite candy.
  3. Their favorite gum.
  4. iTunes gift cards: you can get the $10 ones in a multi-pack and split them up, maybe save some for upcoming birthdays.
  5. A game for their favorite handheld device (can you say Nintendo 3DS?).
  6. Boys: Beef Jerky; but make sure it’s the right flavor (P.S. Good luck with that!); in my house it’s Black Pepper. I think. Oh, shoot!
  7. Girls: Anything from Bath and Body Works (come to think of it, this would be good for Mom, too).
  8. An ornament: maybe something themed that fits in with an activity that they were interested in this past year: cheering, sports teams, favorite movie.
  9. (Speaking of movies…): Movie passes.
  10. Gloves, socks, hats, mittens, T-shirts, underwear…rolled up to fill the toe of the stocking if you’re getting short on cash and long on empty space that needs a-fillin’.
  11. Brand new Crayolas, fun pens, colored twisty pencils, purple glue sticks that dry clear.
  12. Post it notes shaped like hearts or stars or that say “BFF” on them.
  13. SD cards for their cameras, memory sticks for their data.
  14. You can get purse-sized planners from the  Christmas Tree Shop and the Dollar Tree for (you guessed it) a buck.
  15. A new CD (Now That’s What I Call Music 40).  Anyone? Anyone?
  16. Decent ear buds for their iPods/mp3’s/any audio/video/gaming device that you don’t feel like listening to 24/7…is that wrong??
  17. A Tide Pen. You’ll just have to trust me on this one.
  18. Books: The Eat This Not That 2012, or for the tweens there’s a kids version.
  19. Cute shoe laces: Kohl’s has neon colors, zebra prints, all kids of fun in the shoe department.
  20. Moms: troll your jewelry box for your tween girls. There must be something in there that you haven’t worn in a dog’s age that could be spiffed up for your t(w)een.
  21. Vitamin Water, lemonade zero calorie flavor. I don’t know why. For the tween girl. These are good because you can usually get them for about a buck and because they take up lots of space (see #10).

Of course, some of these are pricey enough to be wrapped up as bona fide presents. Do with these suggestions as you see fit.

I hope this helps! 😀

Angels and the creative process

by Karen, posted in Angels, family, tweens, writing

Instead of writing my blog post and examiner.com article and more NaNoWriMo words yesterday afternoon (and well into the evening…), I helped my tween daughter with her project for school.

The assignment was to make a collage that showcased the following:

  1. Your career aspirations
  2. Your interests
  3. Your talents
  4. Something else that I can’t remember (*midlife disclaimer)

She had already made a good start on it. We spread out the construction paper on the extra kitchen table that we brought up from the cellar and put in the living room for Thanksgiving (yep; it’s still there taking up every bit of extra space there is in that room. Don’t care. It’s very useful for… collage projects and such).

As we went through the stack of pristine magazines (that I had been too busy to read in November) looking for images to fill up the page, we talked about what her likes, talents, aspirations are. Want to get to know your tween better? Spend three hours making a collage with them.

As an aside, maybe it will help you get to know yourself better too. I started cutting out images to make my own collage as a result of this process!

Anyway, as I staring at a page, some words caught my eye: Joy, Peace, and Noel. I started cutting them out and then remembered the angel picture I’d seen on the previous page, which reminded me of an angel message I received from Stacey (Mainely You Massage) a few weeks ago.  She said that a Christmas angel had come through for me and my daughter, and was showing her the words “Joy” and “Noel” for us. There we were, sitting at that table, looking at those words in the presence of a (print) Christmas angel.  Oh my gosh!!! 

I suddenly felt that I was exactly where I was supposed to be, doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing.

As an added bonus, all that cutting and pasting fired me up to write. I have notes all over the place containing story ideas that came to my during and after our project.

**In the collage, the Christmas Angel is toward the bottom left corner, and the words “Joy, Peace, and Noel” are toward the top right corner, just above the raccoon..

Blog in transition

by Karen, posted in writing

I’m trying out some new themes this month to celebrate the transition of my blog from kwrites.wordpress.com to just kwrites.com. Yay, me! It seemed fitting to mark the occasion with just a tiny hint of fanfare (is that wrong??).
Today’s theme is “GREYZED”. Please feel free to ‘like’ this post if you like this format, these colors, and so forth. The peachy one that I’ve been using for months now is “KOI”. The one I used prior to that, when I was just starting out was…I forget, actually. I’ll try to find out and get back to you. 🙂

Writing class

by Karen, posted in books, education, local fun, writing

I signed up for a class through the local adult ed office: Writing Memoir taught by Katherine Mayfield. There were 8 of us registered for the class, which is held on two consecutive Monday nights. When one person did not show up on the first night it made us a group of 7.

The group started just about on time, but in fairness the instructor was waiting for the missing student (but only for five minutes). She began by having us sit in a circle and we went around and (briefly) introduced ourselves to the group. Then the agenda was presented: a short talk by Katherine about what memoir is (creative non-fiction) and is not (autobiography), followed by some questions and answers.
Then we got down to writing. A prompt was given but we didn’t have to use it. We wrote for 10 minutes (Katherine gave us a one minute warning so we could finish up) and then we took turns (by volunteering) reading aloud to the group the pieces that we wrote.

This is where Katherine’s class differs from one I took a few years ago. She offered suggestions for how to structure the feedback that we providing to each other in a safe, non-threatening way (for example, referring to the writer as ‘the narrator’ instead of ‘you’). She even went so far as to say that if the writer determined that the writing produced during the exercises was too personal, (s)he did not have to share it with the group. I found this to be tremendously freeing.

I knew that I would be reading aloud what I wrote because, after all, that was one of my objectives for signing up: to see what other people thought of my writing. Still, it was a gift to know that the decision about whether to share my writing ultimately, was (just as it always is) mine.

Katherine brought a couple of resources for us to look through but I forgot about that while I was there. This book: Writing the Memoir by Judith Barrington is one of them, which I have seen before and I may even have already; I’m embarrassed to admit that I can’t remember! (Please refer to prior blog posts about clutter).So, I will be checking my bookshelves first, and if I don’t find it then I’ll check the Library’s bookshelves next.

P.S. Everyone shared their work and their nice, motivating comments with one another. It could be that 7 is a lucky number. 🙂

WordPress Post a week challenge

by Karen, posted in writing

I’ve decided I want to blog more consistently. Rather than just thinking about doing it, I’m starting right now but having a “Goldilocks” moment…

Issues:

  1. Once a day seemed like too much. I didn’t want to set my self up to fail from the outset, after all.
  2. Once a week seemed like not enough. I’m already blogging at least once a week, and even though I’m not a fan of setting the bar too high, I also am not interested in setting it too low.

Therefore, I’m modifying the challenge a bit to suit my own purposes (is that wrong?):

I will be posting on this blog thrice a week for all of 2011.

It won’t be easy, but it might be fun…well, if nothing else,  it will be challenging. For prompting (and reminders!)  I plan to make use of The DailyPost and the community of other bloggers with similar goals to help keep my on track,  including asking for (and accepting!) help when I need it and encouraging others when I can.

If you already read my blog, I hope you’ll encourage me with comments, likes, and good wishes along the way…and I am also hoping to get some new readers, so feel free to spread the word!

Karen 🙂

Blog identity crisis

by Karen, posted in Someone's gotta say it, writing

Lately I’ve been wondering if my blog needs to narrow its focus or if it should remain a collection of random writings. I’ve been going back and forth on this question for many weeks now. It occurred to me today that maybe I should ask you, dear readers, what your opinion is, if you have one.