Follow to be Followed

Follow the female Pide Piper, Rachel Harrie's Crusade,and get your blog read, but you have to read others, too. What goes around comes around. Spread this good Karma and get some back.

The following is her instructions from her page:
1. Follow along with my site if you don’t already (I want to build my online platform too of course) :)
2. Become a Crusader by leaving a comment to this post (include your blogging name and a link to your blog)
3. Write about the Crusade on your blog and link back to this post
4. Encourage your followers to come to Rach Writes… and join up (it will help them too!)
5. Tweet about the Crusade, including a link to this post (http://bit.ly/9kMySK) and #WPBC1. Encourage re-tweets. I'm @RachaelHarrie if you want to follow me in the Twitterverse too
6. Pop it on Facebook
7. Generally, spread the word…

Happy Writing!!
Shelly

DIng Dong My Brain is Dead

That’s right, I think I’ve killed my brain. Oh, my Toto.
It took two hours to figure out how to download a picture to my personal file to save so that I could transfer the darned thing to my blog here. Schwooo! By now my forehead is glistening total girl sweat. Thank God for computer literate children! I would never have made it without my No-No-O. She’s great when it comes to computer stuff.

Once I tackled that task, I had to figure out how to actually post the pics to my blog. What an eye-crossing-brain-twisting event that was. And yes, I went through the BlogSpot Tutorial, but once again it challenged me. Maybe it’s all those hot dogs I ate with the processed cheese as a child, or perhaps all the tap water I drank. My poor brain about hyperventilated on me over this whole ordeal. It got my armpits crying, and that’s not good because you have to stop every so often and wipe at the tears tricking down to your waist. I went through half a roll of Bounty. Oh, man!

Anyway back to the task at hand here. When I finally figured out the save-the-pic-off –the-internet-thing, it was time to save the darned things to my blog page.( I think I said that in the paragraph above but got emotional.) Okay, every writer-girl wants a pretty blog page, right? I was tired of looking at my Plain-Jane-page and desperation filled me to change it(talk about a yellow- brick-road-need-to-find-the-wizard-so-I-can- get-home…such turmoil traveling through my brain). I know. I’m being dramatic…I’m a woman. We’re known for drama, okay, but this is pivotal for me.

Of course, my wonder daughter, No-No-O showed me how to get from A to Z again, and THEN she left me to myself. For two hours after that I happily sat and pasted pics into my browser for each article that I’d written. I previewed each one. They looked lovely(gloat, gloat), and I was so proud of myself.

When I finished pasting, I pressed the View Blog button. I blinked a couple of times, no pics. Oh. My. God. Where is the Good Witch when you need her? The Bad Witch has to be responsible for this mishap. Maybe it was the apple I ate earlier causing me hiccups in my thought process. She poisoned it causing my brain to malfunction.

Okay, so DUFUS here, backtracked, and I figured out that I didn’t push the PUBLISH SAVE button. Big sigh. Another big sigh. What a bunch of flying monkeys!

Half- way into the project again someone must have thrown a bucket of water onto my brain. It sizzled at first and THEN it went into shrinking mode(I’m SHRIIIIIINKING). My eyelids got heavy with sleep and whatever thoughts I had..well…flying monkeys equals chaos and who can possibly think when you have to bat those things out of the way.

So the little munchkins gathered around my soup for brains and sang “Ding Dong Her Brain is Dead….fa..la..la…la. It’s better than having your husband tell you that you have Alzheimer’s.

Today's Bad Writing

The other night at my critique group, I brought up the fact that a lot of the newly published authors’ books are full of mistakes. What I’m seeing makes my mouth drop, my brain twist, and leaves me saying to myself “they didn’t”. Oh but, they did. Oh. My. God. They really found someone to publish them or they were brave enough to publish themselves, talk about balls and guts.

Pages and pages of ‘then’s’ and ‘just’s.’. Lots of ‘as’ man. Lots of them. Newer writers are beginning their sentences with “finally” and “suddenly”. Instead of describing what their characters see, hear and feel, they are telling us they saw, heard, and felt.

Maybe the current and next generation won’t care how to spell (I mean the kids text today and teachers don’t correct spelling mistakes…not all, but too many don’t follow the old protocol) or what action verbs are. This new generation lacks love for English and the written word(not all, but too many). It amazes me how few love to read (too busy texting) and when a young person expresses their love for reading, it’s euphoric.

For the kids that love to read, how are they ever going to know any better with the smattering of stuff that’s out there. What are we teaching them? That it’s okay to be mediocre? Total ugh.

Publishing companies and self-publishers are putting first drafts of dribble-babble out on the market. I’d be embarrassed to have my babbles published as serious work, and I do a lot of babbling before I get it write. This is probably some hideous babble because no one is editing this piece, but me.

In my critique group, I get a good “YAK!” from my group queen, but newer writers are getting away with sloppy writing. Wow man! Wow! I mean, I know, I’m a novice at writing stuff, but at least I admit it, and I don’t shove it out there in the market for the world to see. Free is good, but you get what you pay for.