UP UP AND AWAY

OK…

I'm going to fess up here…

And admit a huge flaw in my writing/character…

I can’t keep up!

I love to blog, and do most weekdays…

And I always work on my W.I.P.’s…

But I can’t keep up with the rest of the writing world!

Every blog I see…

All I read is: I did this, and I did that, and I sent this,

And entered that, and started this…

Yada, yada, yada.

And I admire all those people…

But I can’t keep up.

I write because I love to write…

And because the spirit moves me…

And thankfully, I’m moved every day.

But I can’t keep up!

When I see other people’s writing trail…

I respect what they’ve accomplished…

And their career path…

But I can’t keep up.

And I was beating myself up feeling like a slacker.

I finally had to self analyze and find my center…

Peer into the well from which I draw my creativity…

And understand that mine runs deep, and it’s cool and refreshing.

I’ve got to stop comparing myself to other writers…

And how prolific they are…

Quit stressing myself out…

Be thankful I’ve been given the talent to write…

And write from my heart.

That's all I can do.

Always, Em-Musing

PRIDE & PURPOSE

After writing about Harriet, my 82-year-old neighbor…

I started noticing other people in my neighborhood.

Specifically one man in particular.

He’s a short elderly man, not sure how old…

Maybe in his late 70’s?

I see him walking everyday…

Wearing a worn-out suit and tie…

And fedora hat.

(sort of like mine in my picture)

I’ve seen him at the bank…

At fast food restaurants…

Even at the library.

He’s a dapper man…

With a moustache…

Darker skin…

Maybe Italian, Greek, or Mexican…

Can’t tell for sure…

Because his hat conceals part of his face.

I wonder about him.

Widower?

Where does he live?

Does he have a family?

But something even more strikes me…

He never gives up.

I’ve seen him walk in all kinds of weather…

Rain, snow, 90 degrees…

And always he walks with pride and purpose…

To what destination I'm not sure…

But he inspires me.

Waiting for my career as published author to take off…

I’m going to use this man as a role model…

And to keep on writing…

With pride and purpose…

No matter how bad the climate of rejection is…

Because I see my destination…

And know that one day I'll get there.

Always, Em-Musing

HACK ATCHA

I know now…

That someone…

Or some electronic thing…

Is monitoring every keystroke I make…

Or obscenity I scream…

While I’m on my computer.

I know this because…

Yesterday, I was checking out someone’s blog…

By way of someone else’s blog…

But before I could comment on this new blog…

I had to register on it.

Really?

Just to leave a measly comment?

Fine! Alrighty then! You got it!

And so I registered.

But not before I muttered some choice words at my computer!

Oh, yeah, you know the words. I know you do.

I was then prompted to check my email…

To get my password…

For their approval of me (lucky me).

So, I did and–

fUYae12j0e

Is it me?

Or was this password cussing back at me?

Cripes! I’ve just been dissed by a password!

Fine! If you want to play that game, I can too…

Here a password for you :o№!!@#*L*:(*!&:€

But see what I mean?

I've been “monitored."

But that’s not all…

Ever heard of LSO’s?

Local Shared Objects a.k.a. Flash-Cookies or Super-Cookies.

Not the same as regular Cookies or Cache.

You need special software to get rid of these babies.

(check it out)

Fine!

Want to monitor me?

How about my manuscripts?

Can you fix all my mistakes?

Find holes in my plots?

Tell me if my email submissions to agents have been read?

No?

Alrighty then…

I’m going to take my laptop to my local computer geek store…

Tell them to erase all you S.O.B  LSO’s off of my hard drive…

And send you to cyber hell!

LOL! 

Always, Em-Musing

WAGON TRAIN

Hi, I’m Em…

I’m a wannabe published writer…

And I need to revisit my 12 Steps to a great manuscript…

So I don’t fall off the wagon of good writing.

  1.  Admit I am powerless over my ego and that my manuscripts sometime become unmanageable and suck.

2.  Come to know that my great and powerful mind alone cannot restore my manuscript.

  3.  Make a decision to turn my manuscript over to the care of others e.g. beta readers and critique partners.

  4.  Make a searching and fearless truthful inventory of my writing flaws.

  5.  Admit to my fellow writers and myself just exactly all the wrongs of my writing.

  6.  Be willing to hire an editor or someone other than myself to fix my manuscripts.

  7.  Humbly asked them to point out all its shortcomings.

  8.  Make a list of all characters and plots that had been harmed, and be willing to revise.

  9.  Make direct amends to such chapters except when it would injure the story.

10.  Continue to take note and admit to careless sloppy writing.

11.  Seek through prayer, meditation and sometimes tequila ways  to improve my skills.

12.  Have a spiritual awakening and a shot as the result of these Steps,and try to carry this message to other unpublished writers so that they can use these principles in all of their  writing.

Cin Cin!

Always, Em-Musing

I KNOW THE KEY!

I’ve discovered the secret to perfect editing.

All you have to do is…
Have a request from a literary agent for a partial…

Put the partial into the body of an email…

Get super excited to send it then…

VOILA!

Every mistake will glow and glare on the screen.

It doesn’t matter how many times you printed the partial…

And read the partial in different places of your house…

Even outside with iced tea.

Or printed the partial using a different font or format…

Because when you’re just about ready to hit send…

The errors…

Will become so obvious…

You’ll wonder…

If you ever knew grammar or punctuation…

Or if you could even write at all.

The other truth about sending partials…

Is that the computer imps will attack.

Uh huh! Like yesterday.

I hit a key…

And all of a sudden my gmail page…

Minimized!

Cripes! I needed a magnifying glass to read it.

Would it look like this when I sent it to the agent?

Half an hour later I found the answer on Google.

I hit the Ctrl and 0 keys and the email page reset.

Phew!

It’ll take a few hours though…

To find the key…

To reset my nerves…

Now that I’ve sent…

My partial.

Always, Em-Musing

RECYCLED

After writing about Harriet, my neighbor…

In my blog yesterday…

I couldn’t get her off of my mind…

She reminded me of someone…

Sort of.

Who did this feisty 82-year-old remind–

Wait!

I know!

She didn’t remind me of anyone living…

(Not that she reminded me of anyone dead, thank God)

But she reminded me of my protagonist…

In the very first novel I ever wrote.

Granny Mar.

Granny Mar is an 82-year-old woman…

Who fought demons all of her life and…

Moved to the Midwest to help her granddaughter…

Run the campus coffeehouse where demons…

Were running amok in the small college town.

I remember being asked by a New York “book doctor”…

Who read a partial of my manuscript several years ago…

If I thought an 82-year-old woman could actually fight demons.

Well, she didn’t have to mud wrestle them…

Or pick up a sword and duel.

Nor did she have to stalk and pounce on a demon…

Or even set traps to capture them.

All she had to do was to have enough spiritual strength…

To invoke the Holy Spirit…

To send them back to wherever the heck they came from.

“I used to be an activist when I was younger,” Harriet told me the other day.

And by all the political and environmental stickers on her car…

I believed her.

And based on how she invoked my conscience…

To take my plastic water jugs to the recycle bins…

Several miles away…

I think Harriet could fight a demon.
She could be my Granny Mar.

So, with Harriet in mind…

I think I’ll resurrect that manuscript…

And see if I can invoke some edits…

And give it life again.

Always, Em-Musing

ONE PERSON'S STEAMY TRASH . . .

I saw my neighbor, Harriet again the other day…

While I took my trash to the apartment garbage bin…

And she was watering her English flower garden…

In front of her apartment with a crock pitcher.

I stopped to talk with her.

“You sure use a lot of plastic,” she said…

Obviously seeing my four two-gallon empty water jugs.

“Yeah, guess I–”

“Why don’t you recycle?"

“Well, I uh…you see um…

Five minutes later after a lecture on the environment…

(I swear! I used to recycle all the time. And I will again. Promise!)

I told her that I wrote about her in one of my blog posts.

“Oh yeah, What did you write about?”

“About your mother’s decoupag–”

“It was my mother-in-law, Mrs. Goldberg’s decoupage waste paper basket.”

“Oh, sorry. But I–”

“So?” she asked. “Can I read your book?”

Oh, no! Quandry!

She’s eighty-two!

Is she too old to read the steamy scenes in my book?

But then, she has two children…

So obviously—yeah, ah huh.

But then again…

What if she’s beyond reading steamy?

And one day I see the paramedics outside her apartment…

And one of them asks…

“Who gave her the trashy manuscript? She went into shock reading it.”

So?

Do I…

Duck Harriet forever?

Tell her I don't know what she's talking about…

And let her think she's got Alzheimer's?

Or let Harriet read my manuscript?

Always, Em-Musing

ALPHA YOU BET

There’s so much I still need to learn…

When it comes to this business of writing…

Take for instance beta readers…

I’d never head of a beta reader before…

Until I went to RWA National Conference…

When I sat in the lounge area one evening…

And met a fellow author…

Who brought her friend/beta reader with her.

Wow! What a combo! Wish I had a friend/beta reader.

And then…

Just the other day…

I read on another author’s blog…

About  alpha readers.

Where have I been?

Never heard that term before either.

Even though I’ve had a few alpha readers…

I just never knew they had a name…

I just called them good friends.

So when I thought of all those who have read my manuscripts…

And given me feedback…

I realized I of course did have fellow writers…

Be my critique partner.

And so?

Who's next in line?

Hmm?

Ah ha!

Got it.

A B C duh Editors?

Always, Em-Musing

EM NOT

Phew!

I’m here!

And not in mental outter space!

But it’s not my fault…

That I though I was…

There are too many “things” to remember…

In every facet of our lives.

Take for instance yesterday…

I had been working on a submission.

A great and wonderful coup.

I had saved my original AOL email submission…

I had saved the email positive response and request for more…

And I had saved my email thank you.

And then yesterday…

When I went to email the "more" that was requested…

That I’ve been perfecting for the last week…

All the emails were gone!

They were not in my “inbox”

Not in “trash”

Not in any “archives” or “drafts” at all.

Hmm?

Did I dream all this?

Maybe in my desire to get published…

I hallucinated and created “Em’s World.”

And in “Em’s World” I had a request for a partial.

But in the “real world”…

I’m still sitting in my nightgown hoping.

But wait!

Hadn’t I talked with my writer friends about this?

Was my hallucination that deep?

Eeek!

No!

I wasn’t going to accept this…

There had to be another reason…

I had to concentrate and–

Oh, wait…

That’s right!

Tee hee…

Seems all this email correspondence happened…

Not in my AOL email world…

Bur rather my other email world…

Gmail.

Ya know, on second thought…

Just forget I mentioned all of this.

 :)

Always, Em-Musing

WHY "ME"

In my world…

Computers could never be hacked…

So no one could steal my identity…

And all I would ever need is…

One user name and…

One password for…

EVERYTHING!

On all…

Accounts…

Companies…

Websites…

There would only be one “me.”

The other day…

All I wanted to do was buy face cream…

But first I had to “Sign Up” now.

I didn’t want to “Sign Up” now…

I just want to buy the darn cream now!

Then I saw the prompt: “Already a member?”…

Then “Sign In” now.

Cripes!

I couldn’t remember. Was I already a member?

So I had to find my “User I.D. and Password” book…

And see if this company was in the User I.D. and Password” book.

OK, it was and there were my User I.D. and password…

A.K.A. “me.”

I then entered “me.”

Phew! I was remembered.

But then…

When I entered my credit card info…

I got this prompt

Invalid First Name For Shipping Address
Invalid Last Name For Shipping Address
Invalid Shipping Address 1
Invalid City For Shipping Address
Invalid Postal Code for Shipping Address
Invalid Ship Country

Really?

This is too much work to buy some darn face cream!

So, you know what?

I decided to just drive over to the Ulta store…

And buy the face cream the old fashioned way.

Hopefully, they won’t have a problem…

Remembering how to take money…

From “me.”

Always, Em-Musing

E-VOLVE

Got a question…

Seems humanity is getting more connected…

Via…

Cell phones…

Texting…

Email…

Twitter…

Facebook…

Skype…

And cameras that see us everywhere…

On every street corner…

In stores, elevators, public bathrooms…

Even…

Satellites in space…

That can read your license plate.

So?

What’s next?

What do we become?

When technology…

And the Internet…

Have us all connected?

Always, Em-Musing

EGG FRITTER

Yesterday…

I tried the egg timer trick…

To organize my time…

And to see how productive I can be…

On a project I'm working on that needs to get out.

I set the timer for fifteen minutes.

Cripes!

I can hardly sit still for that length of time…

Without my mind wondering.

AACCKK!

AADD…

At it’s worst!

I thought a vacation…

In a cabin far away…

With no phones…

No Internet…

No TV…

Just my W.I.P.

And me…

Would be what I need.

But I’m an expert at…

Finding mindless things to do…

Opposed to what I’m supposed to do.

So, maybe it’s a prison…

I need…

With a warden who orders me…

To sit…

Focus and…

Just do it!

But being that I'm not going to do something…

To put me in prison…

Maybe what I need today is my egg timer and…

Some Duct tape.

Always, Em-Musing

LOLLING AROUND

With tweezers aimed…

I asked myself…

What was I doing?

Well duh…

I was on the hunt…

For a black prickly hair…

On  my upper lip…

Wasn’t I?

No!

It was more  than…

An obsession with plucking.…

It was obsession with…

Procrastinating.

I have a project to get done…

I have bills to pay…

The project, while loving it…

Is daunting…

The bills, while I have the bucks…

Is boring.

And so I find myself mindlessly finding things to do…

Like picking tartar off my teeth…

Analyzing my pores in a magnifying mirror…

(no one should see themselves that close)

Searching on Google again for the lollipop song from the ‘50’s…

That I’m pretty sure I sang to my grandkids…

But for the life of me can’t remember.)

(And it’s not songs by the Chordettes or Millie Small)…

It’s another…

I think.

See what I  mean?

I'm procrastinating again.

Do you…

Procrastinate?

Yeah? 

What is it that you do to procrastinate?

Always, Em-Musing

TWO TRASHY TALES

You  never know when you’re going to run into…

Another writer…

Or in this case…

The daughter of a writer.

Harriet is eighty-two…

She’s the daughter of the writer.

I met her at the garbage bin…

The other day…

At my apartment complex.

She lives about six doors down…

I hardly see Harriet…

But her English garden is evidence…

That she gets outside often.

When we met, while dumping out our trash…

The conversation was the usual, flowers, weather, and…

Somehow I mentioned that I’m a writer.

That’s when she told me about her mother…

The writer.

Guess her mother published a few novels…

But Harriet said that before she was published…

She had gotten so many rejections letters…

And that they upset her so much…

That she took all those rejections letters…

And  decoupaged a waste paper basket with them.

OMG!

How creative!

And how emotionally pleasing.

Guess some things in this publishing business never change.

I, myself don’t keep my rejection letters…

Well, I have kept the few that have positive comments…

But the majority of them I pitch…

In the waste paper basket.

I just don’t want the negative energy around.

Have you ever done something creative…

Or funny…

With your rejections letters?

Or what do you do with rejection?

Always, Em-Musing

IS ROMANCE DEAD?

Last day…

I promise…

About writing about the RWA National Conference.

But really…

With all the prep, angst, and jubilation…

It’s not easy to let go.

And today I’m veering off my writing style.

And writing more lengthy and serious.

Sort of.

On the shuttle ride from the Detroit airport back to my car…

The driver overheard my MVRWA friend and me talking.

“So you women are romance writers?” he asked.

“Uh huh,” we said dismissing his question perhaps too quickly

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

I can’t speak for my friend…

But I was boogie tired and didn’t fee like a discussion.

“So, what is it that women really want in a man?”

Well that was a loaded question.

Being a humorist, I thought of a bunch of funny, sexy, witty comebacks.

But the man was serious. I could see years of hurt in his eyes.

I looked at my friend; we read each other’s mind, What do we say to him?

"A caring man,” we both chimed in.

“NO! he barked back. “I’m nice. I care. But women don’t want me!”

I was torn between fearing him and pitying him.

“A good man/bad boy combo,” We ad libbed.

Lord! What kind of answer was that? 

But it’s all we could come up with.

I tipped him a five like hush money. He loaded our suitcases in the trunk.

Rewind four days…

Sitting at the RWA luncheon in the humongous room at the Dolphin hotel…

Waiting to hear Nora Roberts give her keynote speech.

I looked around the room…

More than two thousand women…

Probably one of the biggest collection of romance writers ever.

Now, fast forward to this morning…

And I’m still thinking about the shuttle driver.

Suddenly, out of nowhere…

A wicked plot percolated in my brain…

Like hot bile in your stomach before you hurl…

What if…

The conversation with the driver happened before going to RWA?

And our lame answer to him only fueled his exasperation…

And he followed me and my friend to the RWA National conference…

Found us at the luncheon…

With all the other two thousand plus romance writers…

And then…

Went from one writer to another…

Begging us for the answer to his question…

“What do women want in a man?

You all write romance…

You have to know the answer.

I’m going to hold all of you writers hostage till I get one…

I don't care if it takes days, weeks, months, a year!

And then there'd be no more romance stories…

The genre would be dead!"

And so…

If you’re a writer of romance…

Or a writer…

Or a woman…

What answer would you give that man…

To keeps us writers…

And romance alive?

Always, Em-Musing

ALTERNATE: YOU IN REVERSE

Last week…

While waiting for my pitch session with a well-known NY agent…

At RWA Nationals…

I looked around the room…

That vast, poorly lit, basement area of the Dolphin.

Dozens of other women were waiting too.

I think between all the female hormones and hot flashes…

There was enough human energy…

To keep our cell phones charged for a month.

I took note of the women…

Some were giddy, chatting with others…

Some kept to themselves rehearsing…

While others were in different states of trepidation.

(me included)

I took in a deep breath to center myself…

And that’s when a vision came to me…

An alternative universe vision.

What if…

In this alternate universe…

The roles switched?

What if instead of writers waiting to pitch…

There were agents waiting to pitch authors?

In my alternate universe…

All manuscripts would be perfect…

No editing…

No revising…

No re-writes.

And in this alternate universe…

It is we authors who are sitting at the table…

With the next NY Times bestseller…

Or a Pulitzer Prize winner…

Or an Oprah nod.

And now it is we authors…

Waiting for the next round of nervous agents…

To sit in front of us and pitch.

“Don’t be nervous,” I’d say. “Just tell me your story…

Tell me why you think you'd be a great agent for me…

And how you're going to market my book."

Yes!

I can see their sweaty brows now!

I can hear their quivering voices!

I can feel their jittery nerves!

Boo hoo ha ha!

And then…

“All 9:30 appointments please line up now,” a woman announced.

EEEK!

My turn!

I tried to muster up some of my alternative universe …

As I walked to the table where the NY agent sat…

But alas…
In that vast, poorly lit basement area of the Dolphin…

My brow began to sweat…

I could feel my voice starting to quiver…

And my nerves… 

Sizzling…

Like a fish in a frying pan…

On fire!

Always, Em-Musing