A Work in Progress

I often wonder when I'm reading, or listening to music, whether or not the work was written before or after the title. It's a common thing for writers not to name their works until after the book or article or poem is finished. Because coming up with a title before everything is done, is kind of like putting the cart before the horse. And many times, once a work is finished, days or months can pass before the editor, writer, publisher or everyone, can agree on a title. Sometimes, a title is easy. Rolls off the tongue the second the last word is finished and it totally make the book complete. But, I find that this usually isn't the case. How do you narrow down 100,000 words to just one or two? Do you go by the subject matter, or a personality of a character, or an emotional theme to the book? What story can the image of these flowers create? I don't love titles. Those are tough. But, I do love writing on prompts. What's that? When a picture or sentence or sin

It's time for me to stop blogging. Because, I'm losing my mind, and doing dumb stuff. Yesterday, I added a picture of the letter U to my W word. Ummm.... yeah. That's not good. And because blogger changed their site, I'm having to relearn where all the functions are, and my formatting looks horrible at times, like the other day, when my title didn't go into the post, and there weren't any spaces between words after a period. Argggghhhh. Hopefully, you've learned a lot over this past month. I know I have. I also have a ton of blogs to visit still, which I hope to do over the course of the next month. I've also learned that I still really love to write. And I'm glad to be a part of this blogging fest. Even if, I'll always have an issue with editing my blogs ...

I had this cool essay that I thought about writing. So, what did I do? I didn’t write it. Instead, I sat on the idea for about three days. I would go back to the idea, while I was cooking, while I was doing laundry, while I was exercising and watching Murder She Wrote reruns, and by the time I sat down to write it –something I really didn’t want to do, because I wasn’t even sure how to write it—the whole thing came tumbling out in about fifteen minutes. Mind you, it was definitely not pretty. It was mashed-up, ugly and not readable. However, after I edited it about two times, things improved. And after a few more edits, it might even be printable. Why am I telling you this? 1 . Because I realized I wrote for 15 minutes and came up with seven hundred words. That’s so cool and very hard to do. If I did that every day for an hour I could have a “book” written in a month or less. In the real world, words rarely come that fast and furious. 90,000 words is usually a three-month thing a

ra I'm always forgetting correct grammar rules. I mean, always. And did I mention my punctuation is pathetic? Well, it is. There's a really cool website that I just found, and it's called "Grammar Girl." Well, actually it's really called "Quick and Dirty Tips," and I'm certain I am not italicizing and parathentizing correctly here. But, if I really want to know the right way to write, this lady has the answers. There are a bazillion tips for careers, work, lifetstyle, pets, etc. Hence the name "Quick and Dirty Tips." But, it's the grammar section that really spoke to me. This section is filled with quick tips, written in a way that will make me always remember a particular rule the next time I need to use it. Like, How to Speak English like the Irish , or How to Write Grammatically Correct Photo Captions, or Commas with Adjectives . Useful, funny and insightful ... all at the same time. Way cool! There's always a quick ti

That title seems horribly incongruous. Yet, I mean every word of it. Let me start this post by asking you a question: Can editing really be your friend? Let me ask a second question: Is editing really necessary? Well, here's another question to think about while you ponder the veracity of the first two: Does the sun rise every morning? The answer to the third question is the answer to the other two as well. Yes. You must edit. You must go back and get rid of the excess. You must face the daunting task of wiping away scores of words from your computer -- the very words that fill your heart with joy. You MUST do this because those superfluous words do nothing for the story. As in, they are only there because it sounds good. Sounding good is really not good, in the literary world. Because most of the time when you think you sound good, you sound like a prolific seal, barking up a storm over nothing. And that, my friends, is no good. Good writing comes from knowing how to ed