I need to post more often. I meant to leave for Midsouthcon early, but (as I was fond of talking about probably too much this weekend) I have a baby daughter now, so getting out the door isn’t the most coordinated effort. But a short visit with my dad (I have new stories about my [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Archive for the 'Monday Musing' Category
The Staff of Life
My grandma used to call bread “the staff life.” Despite the fact that we lived on a farm in the Ozarks, she liked to take a few shortcuts. By the time I came along, milk, bread, and chicken came from the grocery store. Maybe store bought bread made it easier to have a few slices [...]
Read the rest of this entry »We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!
I’ve been trying to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight (responsibly and gradually) with the help of an app that helps me to log the calories that I consume. The app has one feature that annoys me: It awards me badges for any little milestone that I achieve. Congratulations Tracy! You successfully lost 10 Pounds! [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Too Many Distractions? Time to Clear the Mechanism!
As I write this, there is a home inspector crawling all over my house. I hear his footsteps in the attic. Just when I’ve gotten used to that, I hear him slither around, like an army of tiny little mice, down in my crawlspace. He’s testing the smoke detector and blasting the heat for 30 [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Opposites Attract in Fiction Too. Sometimes.
In many creation myths, the gods made both genders of human from one item, such as a tree, a stalk of bamboo, or an egg. In most of these myths, men and women are soul mates – two halves of the same personality. In other words most cultures noticed that opposites attract. The ancient Greeks [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Writers Write . . . But They Also Sell
Think back to when you were a teen ager. Was there ever something that you really wanted? Really, really wanted? How many times did you ask your parents for it? Once? Twice? Until they finally gave in? As kids, we were all probably pretty good salesmen. We were really good at convincing our parents that [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Monday Musing: Take Advantage of a Network
In high school you probably learned that Thomas Edison Invented the lightbulb. That’s not exactly true. What Edison did was perfect the light bulb and then mass market it, which is why he gets so much credit. What has this got to do with writing? I’ll get to that. But first a little background on [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Are You Treating your Writing as a Business or a Hobby?
The interesting thing about owning several businesses in addition to writing fiction is that whenever I read a business book, I always relate the lessons back to my fiction writing. This weekend at a business conference, one of the speakers that I listened to asked about whether the people in the audience were treating their [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Why You Should Release Those E-Books Into the Wild
“Listen to this,” I said to my husband as we were in the car and I was reading a magazine. “The publishing industry says that e-Books only made up 3-5% of total sales last year.” “Wow!” My husband commented. “The publishing industry must be worried.” Despite what you might think, my husband was actually listening [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Monday Musing: You Only Hurt The (Fictional) Ones you Love
Last weekend, my husband and I went to a pioneer-themed amusement park to see the Christmas lights. While we were there, we watched a blacksmith take a strip of metal and make a rose out of it. To do this, he put the metal strip into hot coals and fired up his forge until the [...]
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