Charlotte Rains Dixon

Friday Question

Friday is often a busy day for me.  For whatever reason, lately my entire afternoon has been taken up with appointments.  And I just about always go out to dinner with family and friends on Friday night, because, I'll be honest, by Friday I really want a glass of wine.

And, for whatever reason again, I have committed to writing a blog post every weekday, Monday through Friday.  Most days it is not a problem.  But often I get to Friday and feel rushed and end up wanting to post something short-ish but not knowing exactly what to write.

And then it occurred to me that others have solved this problem already.  Some do a Friday quote.  Others do a guest post on Fridays.  Or post a funny picture.  Or something...

So here's the deal.  I'm asking you, my wonderful readers, for ideas of something short yet useful to you, that I could post on Fridays.  A photo?  A quote? (I've got tons of those saved up in random places.) A question pertaining to writing or creativity?  A prompt? A guest post? Favorite link of the week?  An idea for a creative project?

Gee, I have more ideas for this than I thought--that's what happens when you start writing stuff down.  But I want to know what would be useful to you, so have it and comment away.  Give me a new idea or vote for one of the ones I already mentioned.

Photo by desi.Italy, used under Creative Commons 2.5 license. 

Twitter: The Art of Writing Tweets

Twitter is, of course, the social networking rage.  Seems like everyone from corporations to small businesses to solopreneurs to politicians are tweeting.  And with good reason, I some people find it addictive.

There are posts galore on how to best use Twitter to promote yourself or your business, how to not waste time on Twitter, (yeah, right), how to save the world using Twitter (I'm making that one up, but Barack Obama did use it to help get himself elected).

But what about the tweet as a creative art form?  A mini-essay?  Yes, I know that it is hard to consider writing something creative in 140 characters or less.   However, once you start using Twitter a lot you begin to mold yourself to its limitations--and find creative ways to work within them.  Ah, of such restraints are genres formed.

I've been thinking about this over the past couple days as I've found myself tweeting a lot.  I'm really a moderate tweeter.  As of this writing, I have only 800 tweets (there are people who have thousands) and about that many followers.  But the more I tweet, the more I get addicted to it into it, and the more I get into it the more I learn about the art of being succinct.

Not only that, but while being succinct, one can also express deep thoughts and tell mini-stories.  Here are my how-tos for the art of writing tweets:

1.  Cut all extraneous words.  So this:  "I went to see my mother tonight and she had what looked like a really bad meal" becomes this: "Saw mother tonight, she had bad meal."  Now I have room to describe the bad meal, or say something of related interest.

2.  Create tweets that stand alone but are part of a larger whole.  I've been experimenting with this one.  Sometimes when I get back from doing something away from the computer (gasp! It does happen upon occasion)I'll write a series of posts about my activities.  Each post links to the other, but each post stands alone and makes sense if that is all you read.

3.  Use good, active verbs.  Amazing how the rules of good writing cut across all genres.  I'm guilty of not paying enough attention to this one.

4.  Express it differently.  We don't want to hear that you just walked in the door to the coffee shop.  We want to learn what is going on in that specific coffee shop at the moment you walk in the door.  I'm probably more interested in your reaction to the painting on the wall then how much you need caffeine.  I've heard the latter a million times, the former can come only from you.

5.  Find the telling detail.  This is, of course, intimately related to #4.  What is the one detail of the coffee shop that brings the whole scene alive?  If you can do it in your creative writing, and I feel certain you can, you can do it on Twitter.  As a matter of fact, writing tweets is probably damn good practice for any kind of writing.

Which gives me an excuse to keep using it as much as I want.

Oh, What a Night

It is Thanksgiving Eve here in the states and I, like so many others, have much to be thankful for.  Health, family, a career I love, a house that isn't going into foreclosure, new energy in the country after the elections....I could go on and on.

Tonight is a night that many of us are focusing on preparing a feast for our loved ones.   I should be making pie crust and pondering the intricacies of the vegetable dishes I'm preparing. 

But I'm not.  Tonight I'm glued to Twitter, watching real-time updates of the situation in Mumbai, and alternately cringing in horror at what is going on over there and marveling that I can be so up to date on it through the power of social networking.   People on the scene are tweeting, people in other parts of Mumbai are tweeting, people are aggregating news from TVs and other sources and tweeting.  It is citizen journalism at its finest, and it is beating out any other media source for real-time news.  Set your browser here to access an amazing constant stream of tweets.

What's happening in Mumbai is shocking and horrible beyond imagining.  My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone who is affected and to all of India.

But in an odd, strange way, the reaction on Twitter tonight gives me hope.  Terrorism and evil breeds in hidden, dark places and citizen journalism shines a light on those dark places so that the rats and vermin have to scatter.  Physicists say that all matter changes just by being observed.  Social networking, at its finest, has the capacity to change matter and more by virtue of the fact that everyone is paying attention now.

Global is now truly local.  General is specific.  The universal is in the details.

Join with me in sending prayers, or positive thoughts, or good wishes for the people in Mumbai.  And let's all be grateful for what we have on this Thanksgiving Eve, okay?

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Another Way to Get Publicity

Publicity for me, that is.  Here's the deal.  Drumroll please....Wordstrumpet is now an Alltop blog!

What is Alltop, you ask?  They call themselves a "digital magazine rack" and since I am a magazine harlot as well as a Wordstrumpet, I like that description.   What this means is that they gather up a bunch of sites for your reading pleasure.  Or, as they so eloquently put it, "in other words our goal is the 'cessation of internet stagnation' by providing 'aggregation without aggravation.'" 

And since the folks at Alltop are "highly subjective and judgmental" (their words, not mine) about who they include, I am thrilled, thrilled, thrilled to be a part of it. 

How does it work?  Head on over to the writing page at Alltop and you'll see several feeds listed, including mine, down there at the bottom.  Also listed are the headlines of the five most recent posts, which you can then run your cursor over to get an instant preview to see if you want to read it.  Cool, huh?

I'm heading over to get one of their kick-ass badges to put up, but first I need to thank Frank Marafiote, who got me going on Alltop in the first place.  Thanks, Frank!

Blogger in Need

You may have noticed the appearance of the above button on my sidebar. 
In case you are wondering what it is, I will tell you.  A beautiful young woman and her husband were in a terrible plane crash earlier this month.  The crash left a third passenger on the plane dead, and Stephanie Nielson and her husband Christian in critical condition.  Stephanie, or Nie, has burns over 80% of her body.  Both she and her husband are in chemically induced comas while doctors treat their burns.  The Nielsons have four children, who are being cared for by Nie's siblings.

I don't know Nie and I wasn't even familiar with her blog before I read about the crash on The Crafty Chica, but I've been fascinated by her story since.  Her blog is full of photos and entries about her beautiful kids and her love for them and for being a Mom.  She also clearly adores her husband.  The saddest post was reading about her excitement at Christian getting his pilot's license. 

Nie's blog exemplifies one of the things that blogging does best--give us a glimpse into the heart and life and very soul of another human being.  After you have donated money, you can check out blogs by Nie or related to her recovery:

Nie Recovery  (this blog seems to encompass her personal blog, The Nienie Dialogues)
CJane  Her sister's blog, with health update

Reachel Andrew Nie Recovery

New Claim to Fame

I am pleased to announce a new claim to fame: this site has been banned in Abu Dhabi.

My husband has just returned home from working in the UAE for the better part of the last two months.  Everything there is censored--TV shows, movies (which are shown with subtitles in Arabic), and websites.  So when Steve went to check in on what I'd been doing in his absence (it was all innocent, I promise), imagine his surprise when he was denied access.

I can't even begin to imagine what I've written that would scare the UAE censors, but I guess I'll consider it a badge of honor.

A Big Damn Post on Story

One of the prerequisites to being a writer is curiosity.  Period.  You can't be bored with the world if you want to write.  And the good news is that writing not only forces you to engage with the world but the act of it is so engaging, that as a writer it is a crime to be bored.  Should you find yourself in that unfortunate state of affairs, just pick up your pen and start writing.

But the down side of curiosity is that it can lead you astray.  It can lead you to spend a hot afternoon farting around on the internet rather than attending to the work that awaits.  The up side of that, of course, is the interesting things you run across.  (You wouldn't keep doing it if there weren't interesting things out there, right?)

As a naturally curious writer, I tend also to be a complete slut for informative sites.  I have this terrible habit of signing up for every internet newsletter I stumble across.  In the moment, when I first discover the site or blog, I'm so enthralled with it I'm certain, just certain, that I'll want to read every single word of the author's production.  And then I wonder why my email inbox is so clogged with, well, crap.  I actually spent an afternoon last week deleting things from my inbox and canceling subscriptions to various newsletters (though I do notice that some didn't seem to get the memo and are still arriving in my inbox).

One of the newsletters that I stick with and always read is Early to Rise. Michael Masterson, whose newsletter it is (though others contribute) has made a fortune from copywriting and he always has good ideas and interesting points of view.  I've actually pointed to one of his posts before, in this post.

The post I want to bring to your attention today, however, is written by copywriter John Carlton, whose blog is titled John Carlton's Big Damn Blog (and now you get the title of this blog post.) His post in a recent issue of Early to Rise is an excellent mini-primer on story.  (When you click on the link, scroll down to the post titled, Bring Your Story Home to the Reader.)

Carlton gives a simple outline for a story:  set-up, plot elements, action, and punch line.  He comments in the story that it is most often the punch line that is missing in stories that he sees (and he is talking about sales copy and copy writing here, too).  Once upon a time, when I was a student editor for the Louisville Review, I often found the same thing--a story would grab me and excite me as I continued to read it, only to fall apart or just peter out at the end.

Truth be told, I'd never heard of John Carlton before.  But I thought his advice on story was so good that I investigated him further and this is when I discovered his blog.  I like his blog because he flies in the face of common wisdom and writes long, like me.  (It is thought that in this age of Twitter, nobody will read a post more than a few sentences long.  BS.  I like long posts.  Short ones make me think the author has nothing to say.)He sells some very expensive programs on copywriting which I'd love to buy, too.

So now in this blog post, I've written the set-up, the plot elements, and the actions.  All I need is the punch line.  My blog posts are often devoid of punch lines I fear, but in honor of John, here you go:

John Carlton has lots of great info about story on his blog.  Check him out.

Keyword Research for Writing

In my ongoing attempts to takeover secure a spot for myself in the writing corner of the internet, I've been researching keywords.    This fun little endeavor is part of my effort to find out what y'all want when it comes to writing and writing coaching.

(Brief, but very important aside:  Tomorrow is the LAST day to take part in the survey I posted last week.  Here's the link: Another Contest: What Are Your Writing Problems?  I had a flurry of activity when I first posted the contest, but since then nada.  Zip. Zilch.  Its depressing me, people.  I'm looking for a last minute surge in entries here, so help me out.  The prize is a free coaching session.)

Anybody who has ever done SEO (Search Engine Optimized) writing for the web is familiar with keywords.   You'll get a list of words which are usually very similar, like this:

Kitchen Sink
kitchen sink
Kitchen sinks
Porcelain kitchen sinks
porcelain kitchen sinks
stainless steel kitchen sinks
steel kitchen sink

Usually there would be 10 or more, but enough already, you get the idea.  Note the very subtle differences, for instance, kitchen is sometimes capitalized and sink is sometimes plural.  This is because some intrepid soul has been going through and trying to figure out what the top search terms are for kitchen sinks.

This is a tedious process.  I know because I spent last week doing it (in and around the ghostwriting).  The best place to go for keyword research is Wordtracker. They are pretty cool--they give you a free seven-day trial and they make it really easy to cancel if you don't want to pay them $59 a month to keep the service. 

Amazingly enough, I was not researching kitchen sink words, but writing and coaching words.  After about the 5,000th time I fed a word through I began to see some similar themes, mostly that people put really strange phrases into the search engines. 

For instance, "novel writing priest."  Does this mean anything to anyone?  I actually googled it myself to see if there was some famous novel writing priest that I hadn't heard about.  But not as far as I could tell.  However, "novel writing priest" has a KEI of 200, which is very good.  (The KEI is the number of searches compared to websites the word appears on.  You can get a word that has a ton of searches but also has a ton of websites devoted to it, and then its not a good keyword.  The KEI uses some arcane formula to figure this out.)

Besides getting me mildly upset about the state of knowledge in this country ("tips for writing fiction novels," is one of my favorites--um, last time I checked all novels were fiction) this process also makes me feel like I'm missing out on stuff that everyone else knows.  For instance, "101 very funny short stories," comes up very high.  As does "nifty stories" and "exotic short stories."  Is there some popular short story series that I've missed?

(And do not even get me started on sex stories.  I finally gave up putting anything remotely related to the word story in the search engine because it only returned 50 thousand variations on searches for sex stories.)

But the cool thing about it is that you really can start to get a sense of what kind of information people are looking for.  They seem to be desperate for info on writing feature stories, for instance.  And there is great clamoring for advice on writing outlines for plot.

So, you'll be seeing more basic articles on this blog in the near future, as I attempt to stake out my corner of the writing world. 

I promise, though, I will not write an article about a novel writing priest.  Unless someone wants to introduce me to one.  The phrase has an awfully high KEI.

And the Winners Are.....

I'd say, "Drumroll, please," but its such a cliche.

But I'm so excited because I have three winners for my Pay it Forward Blog Birthday Contest.  (And, by the way, this is my very first contest ever.  Its so much fun I may have to do it again.)

But you don't want to hear me ponder the deep profundities of blog contests.  You want to know the winners.  And so, here they are:

Jen, from Semi Charmed Wife,

Lauri, from Lauri Reflections,

Lori, from Serendipity and Rain.

(We've got a Lauri/Lori theme going here, which is pretty fun, too.)

Congratulations to all three of you and now it is your turn to pay it forward.  I'm so looking forward to working with each of you.

Pay It Forward: Birthday Celebration

In the wonderful way that synchronicity often happens, today is my blog's first birthday and I won a contest.  What do the two have to do with each other?  Well, the contest involves paying it forward.  Because I won something, it is now my duty (and pleasure) to pass on a prize as well.  And since it is my blog's birthday, it seemed fitting to combine the two.

But first, let me tell you about what I won and where I won it from.  One day I discovered Too Cute Pugs and spent quite a bit of time there because it is the diary of pugs Pearl and Daisy and full of wonderful pug photos and pug banners and all things pug.  Since I am of the firm opinion that the world would be a better place if pugs ran it, or at least if everyone on the planet owned a pug, I was entranced.

Pugmama (Okay, her name is Sue) at Too Cute Pugs was running a Pay it Forward contest and all you had to do to win this adorable tote bag that she had painted was to leave a comment.  Since I was planning to leave a comment for her anyway, this was a wonderful thing.  And guess what?  I won!

And now it is my charge to continue to pay it forward and offer prizes on my blog.  Since I have absolutely no talent for anything besides writing (well, knitting, but I never finish anything so I'm not going to offer a half-finished scarf) all of my prizes are word related. So, are you ready?  Here we go:

The first three people to leave comments on this post will receive:

1.  A one-half hour coaching session to kick-start you in your writing.   We can talk about frustrations, fears, lack of time, goals,  how to establish a regular writing practice, whatever your little heart desires. I love coaching and helping to get people back on track with their writing.

OR

2.  A manuscript critique of up to 20 pages of writing.   I also love reading and critiquing.  Fair warning: I'm not offering line editing here, but more big-picture type stuff, with thoughts on story and character and so forth.

PLEASE NOTE: Due to a pressing deadline, I will not be fulfilling these prizes until after April 15th.  But then I'm all yours, baby.

So leave those comments for me and I'll post the winners whenever I feel like it all the prizes have been claimed.

Photo from FreeFoto.com.

Excellence Award

The wonderful Jen at Semi-charmed wife passed on the Excellence Award to me.  Thanks, Jen!  Now I get to pass it on to others.  I'd choose Jen because she has a great blog but I can't because she's already gotten in.  So here are my choices (and let me just say these are a combination of old favorites and newly discovered friends):

1.  Suzanne at Thetahealingblog.

2.  Derek at Pieces of Zen.

3.  Horatiosalt at Wundurful Wurld

4.  David at Virginia Breeze.

5.  Don at My 2 cents 4 the day.

I know there are more that I'm going to kick myself for not including and since I can do up to ten, I reserve the right to award more as the spirit moves me!

Friday Addendum

A few items as we wind up the week:

First of all, be certain to check out the great guest post by Roy Burkhead today, which is part of a new series which I hope will be a regular Friday feature.

Next, it has come to my attention that I'm having link issues, and no I don't mean golf, I mean internet links.  I guess there are worse fates than having links issues, but they are a bit of a pain.  I'm pretty sure it happens when I use the Mozilla Firefox browser, which for some reason does not seem to get along very well with Typepad.  So as long as I remember to open Explorer, this problem should be dealt with.  I hope.

Finally, I found another good article about the whole memoir/hoax brouhaha this week, and you can read it here.  The article is called "Stranger than Truthiness" (truthiness being a word James Frey coined to describe the not-quite-factual events he related in his memoir).   The article is actually a post, and it appears on the New York Times blog about books called Paper Cuts, which seems worth checking back to read often  (It cracks me up that all the newspapers are embracing blogging.  Our local newspaper is full of headlines and teasers about stories that will only appear in the blogs.  However, I applaud their efforts--newspapers must do something to keep up with the internet.)

Rachel Donadio wrote the blog about this week's memoir hoaxes, and these lines caught my eye as being especially apropos:

"As any publisher will tell you, memoir sells better than fiction. But why? Here, I think, we run up against the question of sincerity and authenticity. Memoirs are seen as more authentic than novels. And we earnest Americans, raised to value hard work and plain talk, will always choose faux authenticity over real artifice. (Mark Twain understood that better than anyone before or since.)"

We are a nation that loves reality shows, too.  But why is it that we don't understand that even reality shows are scripted?  And memoirs are shaped into books that conform to the rules of story-telling, which may not coincide with the truth.  Every novelist I know will tell you that that the number one rule of writing fiction is that it be truthful, even though it is not relating real events.  What novels do is create "real artifice" (which is my new favorite phrase) in the service of telling a great story.  And, I, for one, still prefer to read a novel over a memoir.  I've been burned by too many memoirs that promise a great story and end up being a  chronological recitation of someone's boring childhood. 

The Number Two Blogging Town

Common wisdom has always been that the city I live in, Portland, Oregon is a haven for writers.  We have Powell's after all, and for those of you who are only familiar with it online, the brick-and-mortar store is, and I'm not kidding, a whole city block full of books.

Many people blame it on the rain, although in truth when you look at the yearly totals of rainfall, Portland is far down the list.  But it does rain a lot between October and March and rainy days are conducive to writing and reading. 

So it should come as no surprise that Portland is number two in the country when it comes to blogging, after Austin.   The statistics are as follows:

14% of Portland-area adults have either read or added to a blog in the last 30 days.  (Hmmmm....not sure where they got this statistic.  I don't recall them asking me.)

This equals 285,000 adults, or one in seven.

One of the fathers of the blogosphere lives down I-5 (we do not call it The 5, as they do in LA) in Corvallis.    Paul Bausch is a web developer who wrote the code for Blogger. 

Who knew?  There is a whole network of Oregon Blogs, which I am going to have to go investigate.  Meanwhile, you can read The Oregonian story on Oregon Live, here.

Whac- A-Mole Comment Feature

So, it appears I'm having an issue with my comments feature.

It reminds me of the game one finds at carnivals and fairs, which are among my favorite things on earth.  (My daughter constantly tells me I have a tragic tacky streak, and I trace it back to my love of all things Carney.  More on that in a moment.) 

The game is called Whac-a -Mole, and it consists of a bunch of fake moles popping up quickly and in random order.  Your job is to take a huge soft mallet and whack as many of them on the head as possible.

Well, my comment feature is emulating Whack a Mole.  Every time I respond to one of my lovely reader's delightful comments and finish up on the spam prevention page, all of a sudden, my blog page begins repeatedly opening.  Try as I might to whack them closed, they keep opening....and opening...and opening.  I whack at the little red x like a fiend, or a person playing Whac-a -Mole, but they open faster than I can get them closed.  It would be quite amusing if it weren't so annoying.  Not quite sure what makes them finally stop.  Once I had to shut the computer to get it to quit.  Tonight I fussed and fiddled and whacked and finally it quit.

Now here's the really sad part: every single one of those opened pages then counts as part of my stats for people who have viewed my page.  Sigh.

So, I'm hoping that others are not having this issue and if so I deeply apologize and hope that you will not let it prevent you from commenting in the future.  I'm going to contact Typepad and see what's up.  In the meantime if I don't respond to a comment right away its because the moles have got me cornered and I'm cowering beneath my desk in fear.

But the good news is that this Whac-a -Mole issue gives me the excuse to gloat about one of my claims to fame.  I don't have many.  In fact, this is probably the only one, so thank you in advance for giving me bragging rights.

Here it is:  I know Carney. 

Carney is the secret language that carnival workers talk to each other in.  So, when they see a sucker walking down the midway, they communicate that to the next carney, sort of the way crows talk about  you when you walk beneath them all sitting on the wire.  Carney is the language they use to make snotty remarks about fair-goers to each other, and so forth.

It is really just the best thing on the planet to know this language.  I used to be able to use it to tell lurid secrets about my past in front of my children, but then they caught on. 

So if anyone else know Carney, give me a shout, and I will pray that leaving a comment does not transport you to Whac-a-Mole land.

And I Should Also Mention...

That the wonderful Pablo featured me a few days ago.  Thanks, Pablo!

I'm a Featured Blog

Halloween news flash:

My wonderful friend Don Williams has featured Wordstrumpet as his site of the day. 

Don is a children's book author who lives in St. John, New Brunswick, a city which fascinates me, and looks beautiful, if a bit cold. 

Don has a great blog which you should go visit, and I'd say that even if I weren't the site of the day.  And I say that despite the fact that Don is an avid Mac user.  As I always told my children, sometimes we have friends who have unfortunate tendencies, and we have to love them in spite of that.   So we'll forgive Don for that one tiny little problem of his and keep reading his blog anyway.

Happy Halloween, everybody.  Be safe.  And remember that tomorrow is the first day of Nanowrimo!

What You Don't Know About Me

Nina, the wonderful author of Darwin's Paradox, and the blog The Alien Next Door, tagged me for a meme, on eight random facts about me.

You really sure you want to go there?

Well, alright.  If you insist.  Here goes:

1.  I am the proud mother of the largest pug in the world.  I'm not kidding.  He weighs 45 pounds.  Wait, I have to go cover his ears if you are even thinking the word obese.  He's very sensitive.  Because he knows that it's not fat, it's muscle.  He is also blind, but he prefers not to think about that, either.

2.  There are few foods I hate in the world more than beets.

3.  There are few foods I love in the world more than coconut.  Fortunately, coconut oil is full of healing properties.

4.  If I could be anything in the world other than a writer, I'd be a fashion designer.  Back in the dark ages, when my first child was but a wee little tidbit of a girl, I used to design and sell children's clothing.

5.  My great-great grandfather was killed by the Sheepeater Indians in the famous Rains Ranch Massacre, which is featured in Idaho history books.  Well, it is featured in one Idaho history book.  That makes it famous, don't you think? After his death, my great-great grandmother moved into the town of Grangeville and ran a whorehouse.

6.  Last time I counted how many cousins I have, I stopped when I got to 28.  I know a remarkable number of them fairly well.

7.  I'm a water sign.  You have to guess which one.

8.  I'm a huge fan of the Eagles.  I know, I probably shouldn't admit that, huh?  But come on, its that whole Desperado, Mystique of the Wild West thing.  You know you love them because of it, too.  And their first studio album in YEARS is coming out October 30th.

Part of this whole tagging thing is that I now get to tag other bloggers.  So, here we go:  Lisa, Becca, Susanne, Theresa, SpeedCatHollydale, and Adrienne--tag, you're now it!

Another Award!

This is the coolest thing.  Walksfarwoman, at Kissing the Dogwood has awarded me the Inspirational Blogger Award!

Walksfarwoman has a gorgeous site and you should visit and read her philosophy page after you find out who I have given these awards to.  Oh, and before I forget these awards are the inspiration of Christy Z at Writer's Reviews.   You can read about the Writer's Review Inspiration Awards on this post.

Just had to put the award button in again, because it looks so cool, and I want to bathe in its glow a bit longer.  Ahhhh.......

Okay, I'm here, really I am.  And now, of course, after thoroughly basking in my glory, it is my honor to pass the award on to five other bloggers.  This is the fun part!  And the really hard part, too.  I've met so many amazing bloggers in the last couple months, especially on Blog Catalog. 

As you will see if you read Christy's post about the award, it is really comprised of several different awards, which I can pass on at my discretion.  So, here goes:

The Creative Blogger Award goes to ShirleyTwoFeathers at Mandala Madness.  Shirley maintains not one, not two, but five, count 'em, five blogs.  I'm exhausted just thinking about it.  Mandala Madness is my fav, though, and it is full of beautiful images and good info.  Go download her Cosmic Chalice image for your desktop wallpaper.  Go, now. We'll wait for you.

Back now and ready for the next one?

An Inspirational Blogger Award to Karen Mason at Nameless Grace, because she so beautifully publishes the stories of other writers, and because she is bent on world domination through her Starfire World Syndicate network.  Oh yeah, and she also has this great blog on dogs, which I love even if she doesn't have any pictures of pugs on it.

A Thoughtful Blogger Award to Kim Darrell, who also maintains multiple blogs, including Life's Like That, and Thinking Outloud, because she spends hours doing reviews of other blogs and sometimes people don't even thank her for it.  So here's a huge thank you in the form of an award, Kim!

Another Thoughtful Blogger Award to the wonderful and amazing Renny at Renny BA's Terella, the most wonderful and amazing blog about Norway.  A friend just visited Norway and said it was much like the gorgeous country we have here in the Pacific Northwest, so maybe that is why I like to hang out at Renny's blog so much.  But it's also because he is a thoughtful and helpful blogger, who told me about the Blogging to Fame site, and also once looked up how many Jensens (because it is my mother's maiden name) there are in the Scandanavian countries!  Now that is thoughtful. 

While we are giving Renny an award, let's hop on over to the Blogging to Fame site and vote for him, shall we?

Done with the voting and ready for the last award?

Another Inspirational Blogger Award to Vienne (don't you just love that name?) at Eavesdrop Writer.   She is so cool that she already got the Creative Blogger variation of this award.  But I just had to give her another, because this is the best idea for a writing blog ever.  It's full of ideas and inspirations, all from things that Vienne has overheard.  Plus, she's been great about supporting me, doing nice things like listing me as one of her favorite blogs in a Blog Catalog discussion.  So go read her blog right now!

Be sure to go check out every single one of these blogs, because they are all worthy of your time and energy. 

Guest Post at The Golden Pencil

The thought occurs to me that in my rush to get organized to go on vacation tomorrow (I'm taking my computer as I cannot live without being connected to the internet and the blogosphere) and get all my work done, I failed to mention my guest post over at The Golden Pencil.

Duh.

The Golden Pencil is Anne Wayman's blog, which is connected to her site on writing.  She is one of my best sources for freelance writing jobs on the internet, and you can sign up for her daily emails that list the jobs.  Its a great resource, and she does it all for free.

My guest post appeared on Thursday, and it is about sending out ships--or, in other words, replying to ads and sending out queries and submissions as often as possible.  You'll have to scroll down a bit to find it now, but the thing is, Anne has other great bloggers doing guest posts also and they are all worth reading.

Thanks to Anne for allowing me a bit of time on her blog!

Another Great Blogger

One of the things I am consistently amazed about is how positive and supportive the blogosphere is.  Over and over again, I meet other bloggers who are willing to go out of their way to help each other.  The best community, as far as I am concerned, is Blog Catalog, but there are plenty of other good ones as well.

One of the awesome bloggers from Blog Catalog, Kim Darrell, runs five, count 'em, five blogs.  You can read one of them here.   But don't go there quite yet, because first you want to hop on over here and read all the nice things she said about little ole moi!

Thanks, Kim!  You're the best.