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A to Z Challenge Reflections
April is over and with it, the A to Z Challenge for bloggers. I posted one post every day, except for Sundays, and ended with 26 new blog posts.
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A to Z Challenge: Z is for Zzzz’s and Catching Some When You’re a Writer
Ideas running through your head at all hours of the day. Frantically searching for a pen and paper to write them down for fear they’ll be forgotten. Worrying you aren’t making enough progress on achieving your goals. Getting up an hour early just so you have that extra time to work on more stuff: social media, blog, book, and the list goes on.
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A to Z Challenge: Y is for Yelling at your Computer
Have you ever written 20,000 words for your new manuscript and had your computer crash before you could hit the “Save” button? Luckily, I haven’t but I’ve heard horror stories from writers who did.
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A to Z Challenge: X is for X-ing Out “Killing Your Darlings”
When I sat at my computer, staring at my manuscript for the umpteenth time, there was a part that would still hold me up every time I’d read it. It was in the first couple chapters and it slowed down the flow of the story to little more than a crawl. I had to find a way to jump my readers into the story so they’d make it past those first pages, or I’d lose them right at the start.
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A to Z Challenge: W is for Watercolor : Re-Learning and Perfecting a New Medium (Part Two)
Re-Learning and Perfecting a New Medium (Part Two)
In case you forgot, here is the the photo from Part 1 of this Watercolor series, my epic fail to success #1 illustration. Let’s first make a list of where I went wrong:
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A to Z Challenge: V is for Video (Ink & Stitches YouTube Channel)
It’s time. If you are here for writing advice but enjoy the posts about amigurumi and just don’t know how to make one, or if you just want to learn crochet anyway, today is the day where class begins!
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A to Z Challenge: U is for Understanding Our Flaws in Writing
As writers, we all have certain tendencies. There are things that we each do when we write that should be avoided, yet we are helpless to stop ourselves from doing them. These are our crutches in writing: the things we need to look out for while editing, because we know they’ll be there. They always are.
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A to Z Challenge: T is for Thesaurus
We’ve all heard of the thesaurus. We used them in school, the old Merriam-Webster ones that could have doubled as giant door stops. Now and again, we would pick one up to try and figure out what a word meant, based on other words that could be used in its place. I know I did.
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A to Z Challenge: S is for Sock Puppet
Since I began working at the library over six years ago, I have been involved in several side projects along the way. I’ve made posters for Bike to Work Day and Earth Day events; created a shadowbox fish tank with illustrations that fit over a book cart (a future post to come on this project) for Staff Development Day; and my most recent venture which had me creating a video for another Staff Day where I created sock puppets to be the actors for the story.
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A to Z Challenge: R is for Rejection
Fear of rejection. Putting yourself and your work out into the world is hard enough, now we have to get used to being rejected too? That in and of itself has caused many writers to stop the story they are working on to move on to other ventures.
Handling rejection isn’t something that comes naturally to any of us. In the business of writing, however, if you ever want to get your work published, it is something you must learn to accept graciously, deal with, and move on.
It happens. A lot for many. A little for few.
I had done extensive research before ever sending out that first query letter to gain an agent. I read the blogs that explained how Stephen King’s book, Carrie, had been rejected 30 times before finding an agent to represent it and him. Frank Herbert’s famous book, Dune, was rejected 20 times before it got to the printers. Beatrix Potter had to self-publish The Tale of Peter Rabbit in order to see her book and illustrations in print (for more, see 50 Iconic Writers…Rejected).
When I sent out those first five query letters, I had bolstered my confidence with the understanding that I was bound to get rejected (see my post on
Q is for Query Writing