Blog Posts
W is for Writer’s Conferences
If I had the money and the freedom, I would be a writer’s conference junkie. I barely leave the house all year long but I love a conference with like-minded writers and fabulous authors.
Going to a conference is like going back to school–but without the scheduling issues, roommate drama or meal plan. Plus I feel it is more educational.
Calvin’s Festival of Faith and Writing
The first conference I attended remains my favorite. Hosted by Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, they bring a diverse group of writers, authors and agents. This is not a Christian conference, per se. Everyone from Yann Martel, Joshilyn Jackson, Haven Kimmel, Mary Karr, Rob Bell, Donald Miller, Elizabeth Berg, Salman Rushdie and Lauren Winner have attended.
The keynote speakers are stunning, the community is engaged and the classes are top notch. Held every two years, the next conference is April 19-21, 2012. I’ll be there.
Erma Bombeck’s Writer’s Workshop
Also held every two years, this conference is in my back yard (Dayton, Ohio) and sadly, it frequently conflicts with the Calvin conference. In 2008, they were on back to back weekends and I was able to attend both.
Erma’s conference is aimed at humorists and human interest writers. As a non-funny person, I enjoyed the ribald conversations, the classes on humor formulas and laugh-until-you-hurt keynotes. The food and the community was absolutely amazing. But it looks like I have to wait another two years for the chance to attend this one.
Antioch Writer’s Workshop
I bet you didn’t know Dayton had so many stellar writer’s conferences. Antioch Writer’s Workshop is a week-long professional workshop in Yellow Springs, Ohio–north east of Dayton. They bring in some excellent writers such as Nancy Pickard and Katrina Kittle.
I have only attended the Saturday session in the past but hope to attend the full conference someday. The 2011 conference is held July 9-15th.
Midwest Writer’s Workshop
I remember hearing about this workshop back in my college Creative Writing classes. But this is the first year I’ll attend, along with my outstanding critique partner, Jeanne Estridge. Held at Ball State in Muncie, Indiana, I am having a hard time choosing just one class for each session. Manuscript critiques and agent pitch sessions are both available. The dates are July 28-30th.
Robert McKee’s Story Seminar
This seminar is on my bucket list. My friend, Jeanne, attended and shared all the notes she took but nothing can compare to taking his class in person. Most writers in Hollywood have taken his Story Seminar and have benefited from it.
John Truby’s Anatomy of Story Class
This is another one on my wish list. Truby is another master of story with a prolific amount of study options–classes, audio files, books, downloads, etc. His site is worth several days worth of browsing.
What writing conferences and workshops do you recommend?
V is for Vacations
I would rather spend money on experiences than things, which is one of the reasons we spent a lot of time planning vacations. Living in Ohio, we try to keep our vacations within driving distance. I am still hoping for a vacation out west eventually. But for now, we stay in the Midwest and South.
The Beach
A beach vacation is still on my list of things to do. Before children, we took beach vacations in Florida and Georgia. But other than Mexico, my kids have been sand free.
We have indulged in water park vacations, in the Wisconsin Dells and several hotel-based water parks. There is something about water that restores the soul.
The Family
Both of our families live in Michigan, only four hours away. For many holidays and summer vacations, we drive up to swim in Grandpa’s pool, visit Grandma’s campground and garden at my inlaw’s. The kids love to see their cousins and grandparents. I am even able to visit with my high school girlfriends.
Better yet, family will occasionally come down to visit. My cousins and their kids would often come down for a long weekend. The men would golf, the girls would read in the hammocks and the kids would entertain themselves. And then we would all go to King’s Island, about 20 minutes away.
The Tradition
For several years, we have rented a cabin in the Hocking Hills over Father’s Day weekend. We cook S’Mores, play board games, canoe and watch Muppet marathons. My daughter often makes my husband a model cabin out of popsicle sticks, toothpicks or paper as a memento.
I have started the tradition of going to Atlanta alone in November, to write with my Glitter Girls. We stay at my friend, Mary’s house and write our hearts out–participating in NaNoWriMo. We have agreed whoever gets published first buys the others dinner.
The Splurge
Last year, we splurging by taking a Carnival cruise out of Alabama down to Mexico. While we liked the food, the port visit to Cozumel, the snorkeling and the time to read; but we came to find out that we don’t like people that much. Over 2,000 people in one place is just too much. We like our solitude.
The Friends
The very best part of the cruise vacation was the drive to and from the port. On the way to Alabama, we stopped in Atlanta and stayed with our friends, the Knapps. We had such a great time–grilling out, fishing at the hatchery, playing card games and visiting.
On the way back through Atlanta, we stayed with my best friend, Laurel and her daughter, Lucie. We hung out at Stone Mountain–my favorite place, tubed down the Chattahoochee and talked books. We enjoyed the hospitality and friendship far more than the packaged deal.
The Cabin
For the near decade before we had children, we stayed at the Calico Inn in Sevierville, TN every year. We loved the hosts and beautiful log cabin inn. We have been back to the Gaitlinburg area several times with the kids. We love the mountains, the cabins, the pancake breakfasts and the hikes.
Cabin vacations mean quiet evenings, hammocks for reading, grilled food and stargazing. Camping often means the same things but with a bug-phobic daughter, I’m not sure when we will reintroduce camping.
On the Road Again
This year’s vacation is still in its planning stages. Of course, we will go to Michigan and visit the family. We are also planning a white water rafting trip in Missouri with my brother- and sister-in-law, niece and nephew. I am always ready for a trip to Atlanta. We’d like to take the kids to Washington D.C. and the Grand Canyon soon. And I have always wanted to rent a houseboat–nevermind that I haven’t a clue how to drive one.
What is your dream vacation?
U is for Unreliable
My biggest pet peeve is unreliability and inconsistency. Please, do what you say you are going to do or don’t say anything at all.
As a parent, lack of consistency is an invitation to disaster. Toddlers excel at asking the same question repeatedly, until they get the answer they want. Backing down–even once–starts an avalanche of future nagging.
Once at our annual ice cream social, a little boy was misbehaving. His mother repeatedly threatened to take him home if he continued his behavior. After another episode of holy terror, my young daughter carried over the woman’s purse, beach towel and shoes.
“Here you go,” she said, plopping them in the woman’s lap. “You said you were going to leave if he did that again.”
I wish I had that same courage sometimes.
“Never make someone your priority, when they only make you an option.”
When a friend is consistently late, the message is clearly “you are unimportant and not worth my time.” The same people are capable of arriving to doctor appointments or work on time, so the issue is not disorganization. It is prioritization.
The same can be said for canceling for the weakest of reasons. There are always exceptions to the rule but when your word is broken, repeatedly, I will no longer trust it.
A friend mentioned this well known quote to me:
When someone shows you who they are, believe them.
I’d like to think I am a person who makes promises and then keeps them. I believe my public vow to complete projects like National Novel Writing Month and the A to Z Challenge are what drives me to complete the project. I would never make a public promise and then fail to follow through.
Which is why you haven’t seen a promise from me to lose 50 lbs. I promised to help my kids eat their Easter candy–and I never break a promise.
What are your pet peeves?
T is for Taste
There are some questions that are impossible to answer.
What’s your favorite movie of all time?
Favorite song?
Best memory ever?
The options are too broad to select just one. And it depends on the mood.
I’ve never been able to come up with a good answer for “What would you want your last meal to be?” Should I ever find myself on Death Row, I would be hard pressed to create a menu. The options are too broad and varied.
But today my answer would be:
For an appetizer, I would want a fondue course–apples, celery and dark rye bread dipped in ooey gooey melted cheese. A crisp bruschetta with spicy tomatoes and heavy garlic. And a large sea salted loaf of still hot bread so you can tear out hunks to dip in a low dish of balsamic vinegar and an excellent extra virgin olive oil.
Of course, I would need a large bottle of a California Merlot. I’m not picky about the year or the brand but the temperature must be just right–a few degrees below room temperature.
The meal itself mimics the appetizers–sea salt, cheese, basil, balsamic vinegar and olive oil. All my favorites.
I’d start with a Roma tomato salad, topped with thin slices of red onion and basil and large curds of homemade Mozzarella cheese. Its dressed with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, sea salt and coarse black pepper. This is my summer time lunch–every single day, picked straight from the garden.
Next up is a grilled steak (medium rare) with goat cheese crumbles, grilled shrimp with lime and grill pineapple. I am obsessed with grilling since I couldn’t own a grill for the first decade of marriage.I’m still looking for a decent recipe for grilled pizza.
I’m also a fan of chargrilled chicken on penne pasta, with pine nuts, goat cheese and pesto. Side dishes are unnecessary.
Dessert is impossible to select just one. Creamy turtle cheesecake or tiramisu. Crisp baklava with hot honey. Steaming hot blackberry cobbler with vanilla bean ice cream. Salted caramels with chocolate drizzle. Lemonade ice box pie.
Dessert must be accompanied by a strong black coffee. No frills, no cream and dear Lord, no whipped cream with syrup drizzles. Black. Period.
What would your last meal be?
S is for Sexy
I have never been cute. Petite, blonde and perky has been the ideal of beauty presented to me since childhood. I am none of the three.
I have never been beautiful. My parents or my husband might argue the point but by a show of hands, I would be voted in that vague category of “not ugly but not beautiful.” I suppose I have good company here. There are plenty of non-beautiful people in the world.
I got dumped in high school once, when I found a handwritten Pro/Con list about whether to take me or another girl to prom. Listed in my Con category was “she’s not pretty.” Listed at the top of my Pros list was “she has a nice car.”
As a tall, frizzy headed girl with an eating disorder, you can imagine how that list defined my worth.
Lucky (or unlucky) for me, I veered towards sexy. Honestly, I don’t know I pulled that off either. But short mini-skirts, gauzy shirts and heels helped some over the look “not beautiful” fact by mudding the waters with “sexy.”
Fast forward more than twenty years. I’m still not cute. I’m not beautiful. And I am certainly not sexy. You’d think I would be used to the lack of beauty by now. But my heart still wants it.
We all want something we can’t have. Some want book smarts, others want security. We probably all want more money. But often what we want desperately is unattainable.
What do you want that you can’t have?
R is for RSS Feed
My RSS feed saves me hours a day, delivering news to me instead of requiring me to go find it. I am surprised more people don’t use a RSS feed reader. Personally, I use Google Reader but I have tried others as well.
Besides offering my own blogs on an RSS feed (look for the orange chicklet) , I thought I would share some of my favorites feeds.
An amazing up and coming Christian writer, Wendy Paine Miller writes an informative and thoughtful blog. I had the luck of being her next door neighbor for a few years. I expect big things from her very soon.
Agent Kristin Nelson reps one of my favorite authors, Jaime Ford. I have been following her agent blog for several months. I enjoy her musical tastes, her humor and her pertinent advice.
Rachelle Gardner (pictured)
Every aspiring writer should read every one of Rachelle’s blog posts–past, present and future. A wealth of information and practical advice.
I’ve been following Dawn Meehan’s blog since she sold a pack of Pokemon cards on eBay and blew up the internets. She earned a two book contract out of it and writes near daily blog posts about raising six kids as a single mother. Every post is a laugh riot.
This lovely blog offers up all sorts of clever craft and home decor projects. It compiles them from several other crafting blogs, offering a wide variety of topics.
This is my go-to recipe site. They offer some amazing and easy recipes, with drool inducing photos. Check out their archives for a little bit of everything.
All marketing professionals read and revere Seth Godin. His advice is spot on for anyone who sells anything–books, services, a product or even how to brand yourself.
Joshilyn Jackson is one of the first authors I stalked. I have since expanded my reach and I current stalk a handful of favorites. But she still writes one of the best blogs–snarky and poignant, it is nutty with whipped cream on top.
One of my recent stalkees, I have been following Jon Acuff for awhile now. His satire blog on Christians is also snarky and poignant but never mean-spirited. He is also a prolific author and I look forward to assigning more of his writings to my book club.
My critique partner and good friend, Jeanne, writes this laugh out loud funny blog on aging and the strange things that occurs in her life.
One of my new esteemed writers, Jamie is a missionary living in Costa Rica. She claims she is very bad at it but I think she is just being honest. I get excited when her RSS feed is bolded–indicating that she has a new post.
If ever you are feeling downtrodden and like you have too much to bear, I encourage you to go read my friend Chad’s blog in chronological order. He and his wife Sara started the blog when they discovered they were expecting their first child. On February 6, 2011, Sara died in a terrible car accident and baby Miranda followed her momma only a few days later.
Chad is eloquent yet honest in his grief. Do not read his posts without a box of Kleenex nearby.
If you still don’t quite understand how an RSS feed works, I have attached a clever video below.
What RSS feeds do you recommend?
Q is for Quit and Query
Novel queries are scary.
I have no problem writing them. In fact, I have written several novel queries and synopses for clients and for myself. But sending them out is another matter.
I have written four fiction novels to completion and I have never sent a query letter out for even one of them. This makes me a rarity among many fiction writers. It seems everyone finishes their first draft and then mails off a series of query letters. It frustrates me that so many authors clutter up the agent’s in-box with unpolished manuscripts. But if I am honest, I am mostly jealous of their confidence.
Querying is asking the popular boy to go steady–something I only did once in middle school to fantastic failure. It is inviting someone to tell you No. And it is believing your work is polished to the best of your ability.
The problem is that I don’t know when to quit. I am a handful of chapters away from finishing my next draft of Zone Trippers, the novel I started in November. Technically, this will be draft three, even though some chapters have been reworked 5-6 times. This will be the first draft that can be considered cohesive. But its still not safe for public consumption.
I’ll share this draft with a small selection of readers who can point out its story issues and gaps. Then I will go fix those problems, while revisiting the language. And then I will start all over again, revising, editing and tweaking. So far, on my many drawer novels, I have yet to reach a point where I feel it is work worth sending out.
I have given myself an ultimatum this year. I am attending a query class, taught by the fantastic Katrina Kittle in May. And then I am attending the Midwest Writers Workshop in July, where I have a schedule pitch session with an agent. Hopefully this is the boot in the butt I need to finish a novel to my best abilities and then QUIT so I can query.
For writers, how do you know when your work is ready for querying?
For readers, have you ever read a book and felt it wasn’t quite finished?
P is for Practice Teenager
I have two children–a 9 year old daughter and an 8 year old son. I also have a practice teenager–Shaina. I highly recommend getting one for yourself because they add spice to your life and they are cheaper than real teenagers.
All the drama, none of the tuition bills
We first met Shaina through her mom–my daughter’s kindergarten teacher and later, my son’s first grade teacher. Shaina was this cute blonde 14 year old who called us Mr. and Mrs. Amsler and politely cleaned up the kitchen after dinner. She obviously adored my children who returned the favor. It was the ideal babysitting situation.
Then like kudzu, Shaina ended up weaving into our family on a molecular level. She eagerly offered to help paint the library when we remodeled. She came over for Buffy marathons and we deconstructed the show afterward. My husband tutored her on her SATs which she passed with flying colors. We started celebrating her birthday with a party.
Shaina has a close and loving family already, so we are not replacements for something that is lacking. We are more like the cool aunt and uncle. Or as I firmly believe, we are the family you choose–instead of the one you are born into.
Having a practice teenager has given me a glimpse into what the real experience will be like.
- I’ve gotten the dreaded call that announced she was sitting in the emergency room after a car accident
- She has brought us souveniers from her trips to France and in return, I cook her French food
- I’ve argued by text, losing when she is in a particular volatile mood
- I’ve loaned her clothes and shoes, which she looked better in anyway
- We’ve experienced cultural events together like the Transiberian Orchestra concert, Wicked the musical and all the Twilight movies
- We’ve made college campus visits when she was shopping for schools and college weekend visits now that she is at Purdue (Mark’s alma mater)
- I’ve tried to teach her to sew, to make baklava and to go to bed at a reasonable time
- We’ve loaned each other books and discussed them afterward
- I encouraged her to write a vampire novel during NaNoWriMo–even though she is studying to be a doctor (liberal arts at its best!)
Technically, I am old enough to be her mother (but I shudder at the memory of the boys I dated in my late teens.) She has been my training wheels for my own children’s teenage years. And I have been the honorary family member who sends cookies to her dorm room.
Who are your chosen family members?
O is for Organized
In theory, I am organized. But the same hypothesis suggests I am a perfectionist. Ergo, I should be organized and perfect. And I am anything but.
I am, however. a control freak. Therefore, I tend to lean towards organization to declare dominion over my surroundings, activities and output.
The Truth Behind My Organization Skills
- As a family, we are early for most everything. But getting out the door is not always pretty.
- My children are trained to organize themselves. They are responsible for getting their homework done, packing their lunches and getting their handouts returned.
- I alphabetize my spice rack and organize my books by topic. Both just save time.
- I have everything written down in a calendar. And I never throw my calendars away. I have 20 years worth stacked in chronological order. Ask me when our garage door was replaced or when the neighbor got a new dog and I can find the date.
- All my photos are filed and scrapbooked and I am completely up to date. I’m not bragging–I just have a system. I print photos 4x a year, I scrapbook one long weekend a year and I have a Best of album that is widely shared (instead of subjecting everyone to ALL my kid’s scrapbooks.)
- I retain massive quantities of semi-useless information: author’s names, passwords for defunct bank accounts, Target layouts for cities we used to live in… But I can not memorize the multiplication table beyond 7s.
- I have systems. When going on long vacation, I have an itemized list of clothing choices for all four family members assigned to the proper day. I sometimes even bag and label the day’s clothing choices (with jewelry and accessories.)
- Each book I write has a “bible.” This is a three ring binder of character sketches, plot lines, diagrams and editing notes. Each book also has its own file box which holds my workshop notes and past drafts.
- I write by egg timer. I am nearly incapable of writing without a timer ticking away.
Being organized and creative is an odd talent combination. It is as common as being creative and a perfectionist. But if give the choice, I’d rather be creative than perfect or organized.
What is your best organization tip?
N is for Normal
Everyone’s normal until you get to know them.
I so wanted to be normal.
In second grade, the night before Field Day, I imagined running the races and playing the games in anonimity with the rest of the second graders. But when the day arrived, my team laughed at the funny way I ran–along with the rest of the class.
In sixth grade, I wanted to have beautiful feathered hair like every else and to be asked to dance to a Journey song. But I spent the dances, crying in the bathroom with my curly, frizzy hair.
In high school, I wanted to do all the things my classmates were doing–attending Snake Dances, going to prom, taking the Senior trip and worrying about my peg leg jeans. But instead I worked at a jewelry store after school and every weekend, I got dumped to the prom (twice) and I worried about my family’s living situation.
The more I discovered learned other people’s exteriors, the more I realized it didn’t match my interior.
My mind works in spiraling circles, the internal dialogue never stopping. I can worry about problems that would never occur to anyone else. I have more hang ups than a coat closet.
But on a good day, I can pretend to be normal.
For the most part, I have given up wishing to be normal. I actually have a sedate, normal marriage with the two sane children. But my mind still works in crazy circles. I still have baggage that would cost thousands in carry on fees. And I get tired of pretending to know the rules of the games sometimes.
But if I were normal, what would I write about?