Day: February 1, 2018

If You Should Stumble…

It’s National Get Up Day. No, not Roll Out of Bed and Slog into Life Day, but Get Up as in should you stumble, climb to your feet and keep trying. The day originally started for figure skaters: if you fall, get up. As their website says: We never know when our efforts to seek a goal or overcome an obstacle will encourage another to do the same.

That’s great advice for anyone. Make a mistake? Suck it up and move on. A rejection? A bad review? A nasty reader letter? Life is going to go on, and we will never succeed unless we continue to try. A terrific lesson.

 

 

Mondays with MJ: #UpbeatAuthors

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m mixing up my social media a bit in 2018. One of those changes is blogging on Monday instead of Sunday. The logic behind this move is that last year, I became of a group called Upbeat Authors, which is a “group of authors who support each other and take part in weekly, themed posts about happiness and positivity through their own social media and other outlets.”

We all need happiness and positivity.

This week’s topic is: one resolution you’re making this year you’ve never made before.

Except I don’t make resolutions. I set goals.

One of my goals this year is to self-publish a novella I wrote a couple of years ago. My critique partners and I came up with a theme for a self-published anthology, but due to life changes, that project never came to fruition. I, however, now have a novella about a werewolf baseball player.

And I’m going to self-publish it in 2018. As we used to say when I worked in TV: stay tuned!

 

Homemade Cookies

We rarely had store-bought cookies when I was growing up. Except for Oreos, of course. Mom was a full-time homemaker and there were almost always fresh-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies when we got off the school bus. My grandmothers were cookie makers, too. I still have Grandma T’s recipe for half-moon cookies. And I was traumatized because of Grandma C’s oatmeal raisin cookies–my uncle’s dog wanted my cookie; Grandma baked them for ME. He won. I have the scar on my nose to prove it.

One holiday season, Mom found a new cookie recipe in one of her magazines (Redbook? Ladies Home Journal? McCall’s?) that became a staple. When I was single, I would bake and frost dozens of these cookies for my co-workers. One year, after I’d moved to another apartment with a smaller kitchen, I learned my cookie sheets wouldn’t fit in the oven. “Bring them in. We’ll use tin snips on them so they’ll fit,” one of the guys at work told me.

Then I got married. My husband came from a family that purchased birthday cakes and cookies from the bakery. When our children were young, I tried the cookie baking thing with them, but it didn’t go over well. That was my fault. I was not a full-time homemaker. I dropped some of the balls I was trying to juggle.

Fast forward several years. A critique partner brought the most amazing ginger cookies to critique one night. I got the recipe. X-Chromo, who was in high school at the time, enjoyed helping me bake a batch. She’s not a fan of chocolate, so I looked up a recipe for molasses cookies. She was hooked. She made molasses cookies throughout her college years.

Sometimes, it’s the little traditions that mean something.

Happy National Homemade Cookie Day!

 

 

Commuting vs. Productivity

Many authors work a Day Job in addition to writing.

Sometimes I envy people who commute via mass transit because they can read. Or write. But that’s the only thing I do envy (other than not having to drive in a snow storm). I’ve heard of authors who dictate while they’re driving, but I would worry that I would get so caught up in the story I would become a menace on the road.

I feel bad for some of my writer pals who drive long distances every day. After a particularly nasty drive–which is not uncommon this time of year–they are too drained to write.

I tend to have Day Jobs that are less than two miles from my home, so I don’t commute. (I don’t walk or bike either, but I should.) This saves me a lot of time that I use for writing. I can listen to a song or two from my book sound track, depending on how many traffic lights I hit. And if I have a tiffany, I don’t have to fumble for my phone to make a note or  try to remember it until I get home, because home is only moments away.

When I started my current Day Job, my office was located in a suburb. I had a minimum fifteen to twenty minute commute each way every day. I couldn’t dash home for lunch. But I did find a way to rig my car’s cassette player to my mp3 player and listen to RWA workshops, so the commute became educational.

I’ve learned to take advantage of every moment I can.