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Yearly Archives: 2015
Photographs – A self-portrait.
I love taking photos. When I travel, I always take too many photographs. It is one of the reasons I love digital. I no longer have to ration my photos to the 24 on the roll of film. I can take as many as I want and decide later.
Conversely, I hate having my picture taken. I am okay with random, I do not know they are happening shots, but I despise posing for photos. Selfies are not in my future. I have tried much to my amusement to take a selfie but I always look like I ate something nasty – you know that look. My kids always bemoaned the fact that I do not like getting my photo taken when they were younger and had to bring in family photos because 99% of the time I was on the other side of the camera so the pickings were slim.
So this weekend took a bit of a hilarious turn when a writing friend and I made a concentrated effort to get some professional photos taken. As an author, you need a public presence, which translates into having to have your photos taken so there are pictures to put on the webpage, FB, Twitter etc. For self-publishing, it is necessary. There is no publicity team taking care of such things. Personally, I thought it would be neat to pick a photo at random of someone you wanted to look like. Alas, that just is not the way to go. No Milli Vanilli’s allowed. Sigh…
After dozens of poses and background changes and quite a few laughs, we ended up with a total seven pictures that were acceptable and amongst those were fun shots. I think the total count we started with was around 48 pictures. The term to remember is acceptable. We don’t love them but at the same time, we don’t hate them. Thankfully, the photographer was a good sport. We were probably one of the stranger appointments she had.
They are not the worst I have taken but not the best either. That’s my opinion. I guess it comes down to what my friend said to paraphrase her, “It never looks like the real you.” I guess that is why I like random shots. Even if they are not perfect, I always feel like the facial expression is real – not forced. My smile always feels frozen when posing for a photograph.
It is similar to the reaction that occurs when you record your voice. You have in your mind what you think you sound like until you hear your recorded voice played out load. I use to dictate on a Dictaphone back in the early nineties and it took a while to get comfortable hearing my voice played back as I checked what I had recorded. I suppose getting you photos taken is the same. If you do it often, enough you get accustomed to it. I get my photos taken so rarely that it is uncomfortable whenever I have it done. Now I’m in no hurry to get to the comfortable stage.
I do have to say that going with a friend was a lot less painful than going alone. A friend will laugh with you during the process and not at you. In addition, there is the added support of knowing they are feeling the same way.
For chuckles – mostly my own – I have included some of the finalists below. The final cut was three for me and eventually one will become my ‘new’ photo presence.
Wine not Whine
I am not a wine connoisseur but I know what I like. Wine is a drink that you either love or detest. Everyone has different taste when it comes to wine and an opinion as to what is best. My advice is drink what you like but do not be afraid to try new ones too. I prefer sweet fruity white wines that I can sip on while sitting with friends. For meals, I like something a little crisper with some sweetness. I am always open to trying new wines especially if they are white in variety.
Social Media Presence
One of the more difficult things about being an indie writer is self-promoting. It requires one to maintain a visible presence in social media – website, blog, Facebook, Twitter and the list goes on. Learning how to use all of these effectively is a challenge as they all change frequently. As a self-publisher hiring someone to administer is not an option.
In a perfect world an email would go out as updates occur in social media listing the changes with a “How to Guide”. Unfortunately, that rarely happens so we are often left floundering our way around the new changes. So today I am spending my time maneuvering around WordPress & Facebook doing some updates and reorganize some pages. Nothing major but it’s a time-consuming task when one is searching for functions and tweaking and hoping you don’t do an “oops” in the interim.
Hopefully, I don’t break anything. 🙂
A Chill is in the Air – Tastes of Fall
Fall is almost upon us and as much as I like the warmth of summer, I really enjoy a crisp sunny fall day. This morning when I looked out the kitchen window at the thermometer it was a cool 10 degrees Celsius in the shade. A little chilly but very invigorating.
Which brings to mind scrumptious comfort foods. I like quick and simple. A couple of my favourites are below.
HAMBURGER SOUP
1 ½lb ground beef or chicken/pork mixture
1 med onion
1 28 oz. can of tomatoes
2 cup water
3 cans French onion soup (I use water and add 3 Tbsp of tomato paste)
1 can tomato
1 bay leaf
4 carrots
Parsley
3 sticks celery chopped
½ tsp thyme
8 Tbsp barley
pepper to taste
Brown the meat and onions. Drain well. Combine all ingredients in a large pot. Simmer covered at least 2 hours or all day. Serves 10. Freezes well.
HOME STYLE BEEF STEW with dumplings
2 lbs stew beef cubed
4 cups water
2 onions
1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
½ cup ketchup
1 tsp salt
1 tsp basil
2 cup sliced carrots
3 cup potatoes or half white potatoes and turnip
1 cup frozen peas
1 bay leaf (remove before adding peas)
flour or corn starch to thicken
Brown the meat. Add water, onions, Worcestershire, ketchup, salt and basil. Simmer covered for 1 ½ hours. Add carrots & potatoes/turnip. Cook for 15-20 minutes until tender. Add peas and cook another 5 minutes. Thicken with flour or corn starch.
I add the dumplings after I add the peas.
Dumplings (Dough Boys)
1 cup flour
2 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ cup milk
Mix flour, salt and baking soda. Stir in milk. Drop over hot stew. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Don’t peak. Approximately 6 dumplings.
And for dessert a delicious apple crisp made with fall apples.
APPLE CRISP
1/3 cup flour
2/3 cup oats (rolled quick oats)
1 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup butter softened (margarine doesn’t taste the same)
6 apples (Cortland or Gravenstien)
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Cut apples into slices and place on bottom of lightly greased casserole dish (I use butter). Sprinkle with lemon juice and cinnamon. Mix flour, brown sugar, oats and butter until crumbly and spread over top. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.
Bon appetite!
Writing Challenges – Frame of Mind
In my day job, I spend a good portion of my day writing. It’s a challenge at times to switch hats from legalese and technical writing to non-fiction. Part of the challenge is that I am familiar with writing about what I know. Whether it be an opinion piece stepped in research, advice or a guide on how to perform some function. It’s tethered in the here and now and grounded in known facts.
When I switch to my night job of writing non-fiction the framework in which I write changes drastically. I sometimes struggle with those new parameters because they are so different. The purpose and form have changed and the expectation is vastly disparate.
There is so much to learn and assimilate. A lot of the terminology is new and there are acronyms being used that I don’t recognize. As well as familiarizing myself with style guides that I haven’t opened in a few decades. Then, I learned to my horror that two spaces is no longer the standard after a period. I missed the memo on that one, so much so that I have to search and replace to remove them.
When I sit down to write sometimes the story flows onto the page and then I struggle with the structure and form. Other times the structure flows, but the story lags behind. Regardless of the struggle, I just have to write and forget about whether it is right or wrong and get the story down on the page. The writing and form doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to be. So I write.
Help is Out There – Writing Resources
I am always looking for new resources to assist me. There are some great ones out there and several I have tapped into via Facebook. The Writer’s Circle is one of my favourites. They have interesting posts and great links to other material.
One recent post lead me to the The Write at Home blog which has a great Resource Library for grammar, idioms, punctuation etc. Another favourite of mine on Facebook is author Jami Gold. Jami has a great website http://jamigold.com/blog/. There is a wealth of information on her site covering everything from worksheets to publishing.
Another fantastic resource is K.M. Weiland’s website http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com. There is an awesome story structure database that contains different genres pulled from books and movies – something for everyone. If that isn’t enough, there are great downloads and a series of podcasts (300+) on various topics to tempt you.
All you have to do is a quick search on the internet and there is information at your fingertips. It’s not like the old days when you had to trek down to the local library and search the card catalogue looking for reference materials. Those days are long gone and now you can search those catalogues from the comfort of your own home to see if there is anything of interest. You can then reserve your book online and go pick it up or if you luck out, download it as an eBook.
The key is to find what speaks to you and ignore the rest. Also, don’t get lost in the net. There is so much information out there that you can spend more time researching and reading about writing than actually writing.
Procrastination vs. Choices
I’ve not been as fruitful as I would like to have been the last few months. All of my good intentions out the window. Life has a way of getting away from us and sometimes we let it happen.
A post on Facebook by a fellow writer the other day caught me out and stuck with me.
“there’s really no such thing as procrastination, just choices…it’s all down to choices I make. Sometimes every hour or every minute.”
She is right. It comes down to choices. Looking back over the last few months, I’m not happy with the choices I’ve made. I let myself get into a slump and didn’t drag myself out of it until now. Regardless of what was going on around me, I got in a rut and now it’s time to get out of it.
Life only passes you by if you let it and I did. I got lazy over the summer thinking I’ll do it tomorrow but ‘something’ always came up – choices and I didn’t make the best ones.
Well it’s time to get my groove back. Part of that is to get myself a writing coach. It is time to get someone to mentor me and motivate me in my writing. I’m so use to ‘deadlines’ in my day job that I let the lack in my writing get the best of me.
I’m at a point in my writing where I need helpful feedback. Am I on the right track? Where am I weak? What needs improvement? What’s good? What’s bad? What can I do better?
All questions swirling around in my head. I need guidance. It’s scary reaching out to someone – asking for help. Letting them analyze what I have written. I know it needs improvement and a lot of work to become a finished product that is as flawless as it can be. It’s still hard to take that next step even knowing it needs work. I guess I had to find someone that I think I can trust with my work. Someone who I believe will have my best interests at heart while being honest but no cruel.
I feel like the child who passes a scribbled picture to their parent with bated anticipation of their comments. As the parent looks down at the picture, thinking to himself or herself it looks like…then looking to their child and commenting on what they do see – the beautiful colors hoping for a clue to bring the scribbles together. “See mommy I made your dress blue. Do you like it?” With that clue the scribbles form into something more.
That’s where I am at. Presenting my scribbles with anticipation hoping that they show what I want and that they form the story I was hoping to convey and not just scribbles on a page.
Stutters, Stops and Starts
The last few months have been stutters, stops and starts where my writing is concerned. It’s been frustrating. I’d think I was moving forward only take two steps back. The story was floundering and getting into the flow was a struggle.
I’m back. The words are coming to me and the story is evolving. It is going in the direction I want to go. The scenes are coming together and the plot is where I want it to be.
Through a friend I came across some really helpful learning resources that have helped me refocus and find my way. I learn from all the resources I review, some more than others. These broke things down for me in way that I had not seen before and cleared some of my confusion. I’d gotten stuck in the do’s and don’ts. Mired in structures that we not working for me and turning everything into a maze. I’m finding my way out of that maze slowly.
Still a lot of work to do but the end is closer. I’m past the midpoint now and the end seems achievable.
Attended a Book Launch Party on Facebook
A member of my writing group had a book launch party on Facebook for herself and fellow authors for a series they wrote called Not My 1st Rodeo – Donna Alward, Sarah M. Anderson, and Jenna Bayley-Burke. It’s a great series and is available as an anthology. All three books are different but have two things in common: second chances and an online dating site: http://notmy1strodeo.com The site is live and contains the dating profiles for our intriguing heroes and heroines as well as a synopsis of each book.
This series is special to me. While attending the RWA conference in San Antonio, Texas last summer as a very green newbie, a friend and fellow author, L.O. Tools (http://lotooleauthor.com/author/lotooleauthor/) meet some very interesting folks that were attending an agricultural conference a few days before ours started. I was a little late meeting my friend in the lobby and joined her conversation with a fellow attending the agricultural conference. He was a hoot. Some how dating as a mature person came up and a hilarious discussion ensued. More so when he revealed there were sites dedicated to ranchers etc.
Later that night we ran into Donna Alward, a talented and multi-published author who is a member of our local writers group and told her our tale. She immediately starting spinning ideas and got together Jenna Bayley-Burke and hilarity ensued. It was amazing to see the creative process unfold. They took their ideas, made a pitch to their publishing company and a series was born.
So, this past week the anthology was launched. For a few hours on Facebook, we meet authors, exchanged some silly posts, had some giggles and just general fun. I really enjoyed it.
I was going to close this off with, “I hope” but am changing it too, “When I have my Facebook launch party for my first book I wanted everyone to have as much fun as I did at Donna’s.”
Thank you Donna for a great time. I always learn something new.
Deanne Ouest, Author 