World Hunger Fundraiser Through Christmas!!

So, those of you that saw my post on 11/11 knew this was coming. I released Black Magic and Mojitos on Smashwords for free for the first two weeks (through TG). Now comes the second phase of my end-of-year shebang - ALL proceeds through Christmas go to support Heifer International in fighting world hunger!

Heifer is a unique sustainable project that teaches people small business skills using animals so that they never go hungry again. They also require families to pass on the livestock their animal has to other families in need, so there's this great ripple effect in the impact of their programs. Visit their website to learn more.

I'm hoping to raise $500 to buy a heifer cow for a family. You can buy "shares" of an animal at much lower costs, and I've donated to this charity each year for about a decade now, but never bought a whole heifer. That'd be pretty rad, so please help me spread the word! Fun books for you + money to fight world hunger + all of us feeling good. A win-win for everyone.

You can buy Black Magic and Mojitos for 99 cents on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords. After Christmas, I'll post an update on how things went!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I spent the week in Asheville, NC (a few pics below). How was your TG? As usual, I'm SO grateful for this lovely writing community, and very excited for a rockin' holiday season! 

 

 

Did you survive Christmas?

Hello writer friends! I survived Christmas and if you're reading this, you did, too! Hooray!

I love Christmas, but it does seem to get more stressful every year. I hosted two Christmas meals for different sides of the family this year, and I found myself running around on Christmas Eve trying to find some silken tofu to make a chocolate tofu pie for my cousin who can't eat dairy... I didn't realize how early the stores were closing (has Walmart always closed at 7:45 on Christmas Eve?). My tofu search was unsuccessful, but luckily everything else turned out well.

This is what my husband got for the kids:

He's an Irish Setter. Since my husband and I both have a lot of Irish blood, we named him Murphy, a fine upstanding Irish name. We also both love the Dropkick Murphys, so his name is a double ode to Ireland.

Also, I received the Christmas Blog Award from Michael Di Gesu for my Be Jolly By Golly blog post. Thanks, Michael! Since I love Christmas, in the spirit of the season I am passing this along to all my followers who participated in the Be Jolly By Golly blogfest! Heck, even if you didn’t, but posted something awesome about Christmas and think it rocks, then I award it to you. I really loved reading everyone’s awesome holiday posts.

Also, thank you so much to everyone who commented on my Heifer post! On Thursday when I get paid, I will be making a donation of $1 for each comment I received on the post, and combined with my usual annual gift, I am going to purchase a Promise Gift Basket. This gift basket provides chickens, ducks, geese and rabbits to people in developing countries, and Heifer teaches them to use the animals to build a sustainable business. I was so excited to discover that Nate Bransford and other writers are involved with this organization that I am so passionate about! It was a great idea to do a comment charity fundraiser, and I think I will definitely make it an annual tradition!

On to writery topics, today I reviewed the Writer's Digest Top 10 writing articles of 2010. Two things from two different articles really popped out at me, so I thought I'd share. The first tip was from an article by Steven Goldsberry, an author. He said not to save the best for last - always start with your best. This seems really simple - a lot of you may be going, "well, duh." But this is actually one of the mistakes I addressed in my most recent rewrite. My best parts didn't occur until later in the book. Steven said the better you do at the beginning, the better you continue to do. So, it's not like you should write your best and then the rest can suck. But basically, start with amazing and the fire will continue to grow.

The other piece of advice was actually extremely relevant to me, right now, today. Because today I have been polishing up my novel, trying to add back in some word count after I axed twenty pages off my ending. Robert Lee Brewer, the editor of the Writer's Digest newsletters, said that writers often worry about the wrong details, like word count. He said that while some parameters apply, trying to pad to get to a certain number is often unnecessary. If a manuscript is perfect, don't pad just to get a higher number. Not that mine is perfect :~) but I realized I was trying to reach an arbitrary number when the story is complete as it is.

What great writing advice did you receive in 2010? Any exciting epiphanies or breakthroughs to share? I'd love to hear them. For my next post on New Year's Eve, I'll share my Top 10 writing experiences of 2010. TTFN!

Exhaustion, Christmas and Writerly Stuff

Oh, what a week my blog-friends. I worked from 8 am to 7 pm Monday through Thursday without taking a lunch break or anything... the good news is I made my deadline, though I was a total zombie. I actually left work at 4:50 on Friday, and it was like "Oh, daylight, and I'm leaving. Totally bizarre." I had a massive earache going on at the beginning of the week, too, so I survived on Tylenol and episodes of Weeds, which is my new favorite TV show. Not a lick of writing took place, which was a bummer.

So, this weekend I've been trying to recover. Yesterday was busy because I was running errands in town and then at the local winter festival with my son for a few hours. Today I did some major house cleaning because it had gotten completely OC, and then early this evening we dragged out all the Christmas stuff. Santa and his elves have officially laid siege on my house. It is now full of holiday goodness. However, while decorating I noticed the curious/evil gleam in Literary Kitty's eyes as she crouched by the Christmas village, quietly observing this strange ritual of the humans. Think: Jurassic Park when the velociraptors narrow their eyes as they watch their prey. Her eyes were gleaming with devious feline plans involving the torture and assassination of various Christmas ornaments and carefully wrapped gifts.

Now, I am going somewhere writerly with this, I promise. Earlier I was spritzing and vacuuming and washing dishes. Heck, I even contemplated mopping pretty seriously for about five minutes, but then decided to eat pie and write instead (it's the thought that counts, right?). I started thinking, getting ready to clean the house is like getting ready to start a writing project. Sometimes it seems too huge of a task, too overwhelming. There are a million things swirling about in my brain. So, for either task, I break it down into steps. When writing, I actually write down these steps, like a to-do list. For instance, when I was starting my most recent major edit, I did a little brainstorming about what I was going to change, and then ideas started popping and I felt overloaded. So I typed up a quick list of the new scenes I was going to write, and where I was going to work them in and how I was going to connect with or add to existing scenes.

Once I have my list, then I have to pick a place to start. For me, this isn't always a chronological progression through the story. Sometimes I'll go ahead and write those scenes that are clawing at the inside of my brain. Later I'll go back and write the connecting pieces. The important part for me is to make a decision, and then take action. I can’t let myself get overwhelmed by the whole ordeal, I just pick a room in the house/scene of the novel and go for it!

So, how do you guys go about starting projects? What keeps you from getting overwhelmed?