Journal Idea of the Day....

Each day I will post a journal idea of the day. Some days it might be a writing prompt, some days a question, some days a photo that you can share what it reminds you of. You can write one sentence, or a paragraph...or a word. Whatever you like. Ready? Let's go. =)

 Today's journal idea is a photo journal. Where does this picture take you? What does it bring to mind for you? Do you want to create something fictional? Or real? It's all up to you....

Guilty Pleasures

Ahhhh yes. We all have them. We may not all want to admit them, but somewhere ....somewhere....lurks that thing we love to do that we may be just a teeny bit embarrassed to admit. It may be watching back to back episodes of Desperate Housewives all day long in our jammies on a lazy Saturday.  Or dancing around the living room in our bra and underwear to old 80's music pretending to be Madonna (bonus points if you tape some type of pointy contraption to said bra.) Maybe it's indulging in Ben & Jerry's while taking a bubble bath by candlelight after having sent the kids off with hubby for the evening, so you have a few hours of *gasp* quiet time.

Too often we get caught up in the pressures of work, kids, grocery shopping..you know...life---to take time for these little escapes. We shouldn't. We need to make time. Whatever your guilty pleasure, sometimes...you just need them. As for me? Yeah, I've got them too.

A Good CP (and why you want one)

Those of you writing a manuscript probably already know what a CP is, but for the non-writer friends among us, it is a Critique Partner. Well, a month ago, I had absolutely no idea what a critique partner was...any more than I knew how to make crepes suzette. (And I don't even know if I spelled that correctly, so obviously I have no idea how to make them.) But, after finally finishing my manuscript for A Summer of Hope after *mumble, mumble, cough, cough*, let's just say, a rather long hiatus, I was lucky enough to stumble upon a certain writing forum. And this writing forum led me to a certain amazing writer. And I began chatting with this writer, and was dazzled by her skill and thought she was just absolutely too fun and spunky and adorable for words.

Sign up now to Get Your Pitch On!

As I'm sure most of you have heard by now, Get Your Pitch On is a fantastic opportunity for YA writers to pitch their manuscript directly to an editor without having to worry about wading through any slush pile first. How totally cool is that?? Coordinated by YAtopia and Down Under Wonderings, it's all going down October 15th.

But to give you a chance to get your pitch picture-perfect (did ya like that?), S.M. Johnston has coordinated the Get Your Pitch On workshop. The workshop starts October 1st and is comprised of 26 different blogs that will help you to hone your pitches so that you can make them as superb as possible before you toss them into the ring. 

What does this all mean to you?
You want your pitch to be fabulous, right? Right. Since the Get Your Pitch On contest will allow you to pitch just 50-75 words, that may seem a bit daunting. 50-75 words to sell your story and convince the reader that they just can't go another day without snatching your manuscript up and taking that puppy home. And that's where this workshop comes in. You'll get feedback on your pitch from one of the workshop hosts, as well as from the other workshop participants. So how do you get involved you ask? Well, how fortuitous...I was just about to tell you.

Why do you want to get your Pitch On?

Let's face it, writing queries is probably the part of this entire process that makes most of us want to scream, pull our hair out, and run to the hills slobbering like a rabid dog that's been shot. Pitching our manuscript is in some ways more difficult than writing the damn thing in the first place.

We need to sound confident, and alluring, and entice the agent that they will just die if they don't read our book! All in about 250 words.

Are you ready for some Pitch On?

I am super excited to be involved in this fantastic opportunity for YA writers!! You will NOT want to miss this one, trust me. Find out how you can workshop your pitch right here and get it seen directly by an agent without having to go through slush piles.  (Yes, you read that correctly.)  Mmmmhmmmm. 

The lovely S.M. Johnston is holding a contest called Get Your Pitch On. And starting October 1st, I will be hosting some of the pitches here on my blog, giving you a chance to get it all sparkly perfect before the actual contest begins.

Get ready for something spectacular people! Are you ready to....

 Wanna read more about it?
Well, what are you waiting for? Turn the page!

Reader Appreciation Award

So my morning starts off like any other day, you know...fingers poised over the "Send" button on my email, sweat dripping off my brow as I wait for the clock to tick down to the precise second of the designated moment....three..two...one....GO!!!

Yeah, I was trying to get in GUTGAA. 

One of the online writing competitions that I'm sure many of you are familiar with. Sadly, my trigger finger wasn't quick enough on the draw this time. However, just as I was drowning my sorrows in a deluge of peanut butter and graham crackers dipped in coffee (don't knock it til you've tried it), and seriously contemplating moving on to *ahem* stronger beverages to soothe my aching writer's soul....what to my wondering eyes should appear?

It seems I'd been nominated for the Reader Appreciation Award! You were thinking something else?

Review, Interview, and Free stuff coming soon...

What are you reading now?

I just starting "Of Love, Actors, and Acrobats" by Brie Bennett, and will have my review, along with an interview I did with the author, as well as a FREE BOOK GIVEAWAY of this title within the next few weeks. So you will definitely want to keep an eye out for that!!

 

In the Combat Zone of Discouragement

I think that as writers, (or more technically, wanna-be-PUBLISHED-writers), most of us have felt discouragement at one point or another when it came to our writing.

We may have gotten yet another rejection letter in the mail. Or simply not heard back at all. Or, we may have had so many different critiques on a piece of our writing that we got to the point that we didn't know what to change, what to keep, or whether it would be better to just scrap the whole damn thing.

We've re-written our query so many times that we might be to the point where we aren't even sure what book we are talking about. We are afraid we are losing that fire we had the first time we wrote it (even though that first one absolutely and positively sucked.)

So I finally made a Book Trailer

So I've been hearing all the hub-bub about book trailers and apparently I'm the last kid on the block to actually try my hand at it.

I did some researching, and watched a lot of sample trailers. By the way, there are some fantastic ones (and some not so fantastic ones) out there.  Some of these writers have to be paying mucho bucks to have theirs professionally done. Since I'm not in the tax bracket to be able to afford such luxuries yet...(heck...I consider buying non-Suave shampoo a luxury), I had to make my own with what I had available.

TAG, you're IT!

So, I hop over to Twitter after 1) Actually finding some time to work on my WIP and 2) Glancing at the clock on my computer screen and FREAKING because I realize I missed the 11:00 time slot to submit for the pitch polish for GUTGAA by 30 minutes since I was so engrossed in writing.

Now, mind you, I had stuck my pitch in my draft folder YESTERDAY afternoon, all prepped and ready to go. BLAH. Anyhoo, much to my surprise...when I get to Twitter, I see I had been "Tagged"!

Apparently there is a nifty version of GUTGAA tag going on. I love our fellow GUTGANNs.  We are so fun and creative. =) I was tagged by the wickedly dashing and ever charming Robbie MacNiven. You can find Sir Robbie at his blog or on twitter.

Now I get to answer the questions, and then select my three victims.

The Merry Men had NOTHING on Writers

You know that feeling when you don't even know which tab to hit on your browser because there are so many sites you feel you should be checking for important information that you need to know...well, NOW?

And how when you go to one of those sites and read some of the things on them, it just makes you feel kind of sick in the stomach because...well, you start to wonder if you're even good enough?

And then you go on sites where you see other people's writing, and you love reading it because, well, you love reading of course. But then it makes you stop again and think...Oh my God, they're ten times better than me. I look like an ass, what the hell am I doing?

ARE YOU DOING THE GUTGAA MEET AND GREET BLOG HOP?

If so, be sure to check out Deanna Barnhart's list of meet and greet bloggers to stop by and say hello to your fellow bloggers!

On Taking the Plunge to Write....

Most of us have thought about it at one time or another in our lives. We've secretly pondered plot lines, scribbled in notebooks and maybe even began typing on our computers. But then we stopped. We were afraid to do more than that. We thought about writing, we dreamed about writing...but we were afraid to actually take that leap of faith into the great unknown and actually do it.

No wonder the old Nike commercial was so spot on. It was brilliant in its simplicity. Three little words conveyed so much. JUST. DO. IT.

GUTGAA BEGINS!!

I am BEYOND excited!!! I've never taken part in anything like this.  And I am so excited to have discovered GUTGAA, or, "Gearing Up To Get An Agent".  How cool is it that they have something like this?!!

Ok, put on your imagination caps people, and just see it--A full month of awesomeness, where we blog hop and get to know fellow writers,  have the opportunity to learn from each other and those in "the biz", and *eeek* have some very cool and important people see our writing!  Can you say LOVE IT??!!! (said in that sing-song voice of course.)

***

*Drum roll please....just because it's quiet and I thought it might be fun....*

                             A gigantic thank you goes out to Deana Barnhart
                                   for organizing GUTGAA 2012 for all of us!!!!

Everyone involved in GUTGAA 2012 was asked to tell a little about ourselves and answer some Meet & Greet questions to get to know each other. (How fun, right?) Here is a bit about me...