Shout Outs

Day 15: Your favorite blogs

FINALLY I can take a break from talking about myself, which has been bugging me, and talk about others. Yay!

First of all, on the right, you will see links to blogs of fellow writers that I follow. Some of them I keep in touch with by other means. I follow more than are linked there, some that update infrequently so they aren't on the list right now, and I read more than I can follow.

I enjoy reading the blog of Betsy Lerner, an agent who has written a book about the writing craft called Forest for the Trees. Her snappy and blunt musings tell me that as an agent, she would put me in line and balance my calmer, weaker, passive demeanor. I printed out a quote of hers and have it taped to my 2011 office space:

"Dude, write your heart out. delete half of it. Get it into the hands of a writing workshop, class or freelance editor. Work on it more. Repeat. Send to moi and five other agents. See what happens. If you bottom out, try again. Revise. Start a new project. Revise, etc. Never give up. Self-publish. Just keep writing and developing and living. That's the most important part."

That is my new credo for 2011.

On a more dangerous note, I also follow Blogging Dangerously by an anonymous woman who writes about married S.E.X. As well as Adding Zest to Your Nest which is a Christian blog of multiple writers who provide advice, tips, suggestions, challenges, and addresses issues on Christian Married Sex.

Why?

Just because I don't talk about it, doesn't mean I don't have strong feelings about it. From those two blogs, you will get a feel for my feelings about it. I want to surround myself with like-minded people for support when I'm feeling less than frisky.

And that's enough about that. I'm not blogging anonymously here!

I also want to give a shout out to a friend who has made a basic Blog Post Inspiration Engine and needs contributors! You can see some of my blog posts linked there as well as his. If you have an idea, send him a note, maybe with your own blog post linked. He is author of The Outer Hoard and is one of my contacts in Australia! (Woohoo, I'm world-renowned! :P)

I follow several authors:

• K.M. Weiland
• Laurie Halse Anderson
• One day I want a site like Shawn Klomparens where you can find everything about my books. My Wordpress About tab is the closest I have. dailyspoonfulsofsugar.wordpress.com (and they are not daily as I had hoped)
• Or better yet, hook up with Digital Novelists like April Raines did.
  

And some inspiring blogs

• Operation NICE
• The Awe-manac
• 1000 Awesome Things (which is a book now)

Happy reading!


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Happy New Year, My Love!

Day 1: Your Current Relationship

When you think about living a new year to its fullest and cherishing moments and people because they are most important to you, you think first and foremost about your closest circle of friends and family. No one is closer than your spouse.

I am so fortunate to have someone who has been with me for almost 12 years, almost 9 years married, who still thinks I am beautiful, still puts me and our relationship first, still wants to take me out on dates, and still misses me enough to text me 3 times a day from work.

There are times during the day when something happens, maybe a cute kid saying, maybe an ironic commercial, maybe a stupid driver on the road caused a freak accident, and I just want to tell him right away. He's still my best friend.

I recently became so enraged at the kids, I was yelling and nagging and raving and making them cry, and he just grabbed me by the shoulder and shoved me out of their room. I needed that. It was not positive parenting. It was not helping anyone, except me a little to get the frustration out, but I could have done it in a healthier way. I had to go back and tell my kids that I loved them so they wouldn't have bad dreams. My husband knows my limits, and he stepped in to keep me from doing more damage. I am far from perfect.

He cooks dinner (and often breakfast and lunch), reaches for the stuff on the high shelf, fixes my car, shares my thought patterns, changes diapers (though we'd better not have to do that much longer!), washes dishes, and earns the money. Despite the ranting I sometimes do about the heinous things like leaving milk and cereal in the bowl in the sink, he's a great man. He gives massages, pops my back, and keeps me warm at night. He makes me laugh almost every day. Those are the 4 things I love most!

What makes a marriage work is good communication, compromise, and equality.

• Share your feelings,
• Use separate bathrooms at times,
• Help each other,
  
• Do things for one another and together,
  
• and Keep the spark alive, if you get my drift.

Thank each other, hug each other, kiss, find moments alone, and keep your promises.

One of the best things to do is share your dreams: your goals, your reasons to save money, to motivate you to sit at the computer instead of mopping the floor (okay that's me), and your bucket list.

This is followed by showing you love them, saying you love them, and explaining why, right at this moment you can't do what he asks because you have a naked toddler to chase down, a spill to clean up, and muffins in the oven ready to come out.

I asked him what he wants to see me change in the new year and his response was exactly as I expected: "This is one of those Does-this-make-my-butt-look-fat questions that starts fights. You are perfect as you are." And when I explained that I hadn't meant it that way, he said the other half of how I expected him to, "You have the same goals as last year, you just need to implement them this year." Yes. And I asked if that was sad, because it is sad to me, and he said, "No. You just need to focus on a plan." He's right, and I have been thinking these exact same things.

Happy New Year, My Love, and a toast to making plans!


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Friday Ficlet! Steamy, Sultry, and Getting Rave Reviews!

Stirrings That Pre-Date the Dawn

They’d had a late night. The white gown was still crumpled on the floor. A trail of silks and linens led to a hotel bed in disarray.

It wasn’t even light out. The horizon was barely a lighter shade of midnight blue to the blackness of the dewy landscape.

But they were awakened by stirrings that pre-date the dawn.

A line of golden light beamed on the floor from under a closed door. Tendrils of steam danced out, permeating the light, shining a cool gray and rising quickly into the stillness of the darkened room.

Suddenly the door opens, a fog envelops the form of two humans holding onto one another, completely immersed in each other. The fog quickly dissipates into the dark room and the couple follow it toward the bed.

In the lit bathroom, two water droplets race, zig zagging down the cloudy mirror, pooling together, moving faster, until they reach the filigreed edge.

Two drawn hearts overlap on the mirror. Two real hearts beat against one another in the morning as the sun slowly rises on love.