Amusing side notes

Vacation has come and gone and I feel like this last week has flown by in a blur of confusion. In between working on writing projects, RL, day job, and quite a bit of sleeping, I've rediscovered my Colin Firth love. Ahh, Colin...

*ahem* where was I? Yes, side notes. Colin is not one of them....yum.

I'm over at Sky Purington's A Writer's Mind all week, stop by! I'm giving away a copy of Temptations and Treachery, she's graciously offered a $5 gift certificate to The Wild Rose Press, and you never know what else I'll give away. A evening handbag perhaps?

Trying to gather everything to send out to judges for the Hearts Thru History contest, Romance Through The Ages. Entries are du at midnight tonight, and I volunteered to be the Time Travel/Paranormal coordinator. Gotta make sure everything's good to go and all!

Also gathering covers for the RT I'm doing in July. Yes, it was expensive, but I think it's a great investment in my writing future, since the chances of me marrying dear Colin are slim. Actually none, he's already taken. Pity...

Saw the link on Un:Bound, thought it was hysterical. Seriously, #'s 4, 5, and 6 cracked my up. Course #9 is classic. :) What do you think?

By the way…your laptop is your wife.
James K. Walker, editor for Left Lion at speaker at the upcoming Writing Industries Conference shares his Top Ten Tips for writers.

1.Read your work out in public. You’ll develop a new found appreciation of tone, rhythm and punctuation. See the reaction of the audience as a kind of verbal editing. When they don’t laugh at your funny character, it’s because he isn’t funny.

2.Join a writing group and open the windows when you leave the flat. It will smell lovely and fresh when you come home and your girlfriend might finally agree to come over.

3.By the way…your laptop is your wife. That cute one that comes over when the flat smells nice is just your bit on the side. Treat her as such. Your loyalty is with your wife and a wife is for life.

4.Walk to work. This way you don’t have to waste valuable writing time joining a gym. There is no greater betrayal of the imagination, than joining a gym. Before you know it you’ll be slipping into your imagination and going over the various scenarios of your book.

5.Take a pencil and paper with you as you’ll be stopping every ten seconds to scribble these ideas down. It’s probably a good idea to invest in a pencil sharpener, finances permitting.

6.Buy a memory stick and type up everything you’ve just written when you get to work because you’ll lose the scraps of paper.

7.Get a job where you can write in peace and preferably one without too much responsibility. I strongly recommend the public sector. The perfect job is one in which you are able to do eight hours work in three, thus enabling you to write for the other five. This is the closest you’ll ever get to being a regularly paid writer. Feels great, doesn’t it.

8.Ensure you have a boss who doesn’t mind you being late. (see point 5)

9.Write a blog. It’s like having a regular mental workout and a good way to track the development of your thoughts. I don’t have a camera and so the blog is the closest thing I have to a photographic album. It’s also a great place to outlet those thoughts you know you’ll never have time to turn into stories but will eat away at you regardless. Like the one about ‘the strange man who used to crouch down every ten seconds by the side of the road to scribble something down. Nobody knew what he was writing or why he did it but…’

10.Don’t write a list of top ten writing tips when you haven’t had your novel published yet. It’s arrogant, delusional and distracts you from what matters. As does reading funny quotes by Philip Pullman on a Saturday afternoon.

What's on your agenda this week?