Menu Updates; Life Updates

If you look up at the top menu, after the FtB stuff, you’ll find some handy links to help you find things you might be interested in.  Ever wanted to see a list of my speaking engagements, television and film edits, or publications?  You’re in luck.  Ever wanted to watch all my ukulele videos or see if you missed any? BAM done.  Wanted to easily navigate to my favorite posts? It’s up there.  Wondered about my résumé? Well there you go.

Screen Shot 2015-05-30 at 11.59.09 AM

Speaking & Publishing

Ukulele Videos

Best of Posts

Resume

I’m at the SSA Board Meeting, virtually, so that’s also going on.  Also… I got engaged.  Below I am proposed to on my birthday just before midnight; I propose on his birthday, just after midnight; our engagement rings.

I am proposed to just before midnight, 5/23
 
Ashley proposing
 
Rings

I also just moved into my first house I’ve ever owned — where the engagement pictures were taken — and my best friend in the world who I haven’t seen in 2 years visited me and was there too.  And that whole narcolepsy yes no maybe thing going on. All the things!

Menu Updates; Life Updates
{advertisement}

20 good posts for a new blog on writing

I have a friend who is thinking about doing a weekly blog about writing for a newspaper.  She started IMing me because she wasn’t super confident about what she should write about or how someone went about doing a blog like for real people, not for like friends.  (Her example being that she couldn’t post things like “I found a picture of poo on the interwebs”)

So I came up with a list based on a few things.  1. People like lists 2. People like hate 3. People like advice.  Copied from the IM window.

1st post has to be who you are and what you write and why
2nd could be a focus on say a particular genre and what makes it unique (she is focusing on a YA Sci Fi story)
3rd post about how to pick a topic or location that you’d be good at writing, so that’d be about research and why it’s set wherever
4th post about the difference between YA, kids and adult fiction
5th post about an author or person who gets YA literature absolutely wrong (I picked YA over SciFi because SciFi authors get torn apart fairly regularly)
6th post about if it’s possible to separate the author from their work (See Orson Scott Card)
7th post about struggling with the second act
8th post what to do when you have several different endings that could work
9th post about creating a world that is different from modern earth
10th post about something full of rage and hate — maybe how online fiction isn’t taken seriously, or you know, something angry
11th post should address different mediums and how to write for them (short story, long fiction, online, print, TV, film etc)
12th post should be about an author you loved and inspired you to get into writing with some heartwrenching bs
13th should be about whether it’s OK to include messages or to write “message fiction”
14th should be a response to reader questions, which you may have to make up
15th should be about how there’s not enough respect for minority of your choice in fiction at large
16th make fun of Mary Sues
17th 10 ways writing is like poo
18th 10 ways author-you-hate’s writing is like poo
19th a controversial opinion piece like how coming out stories are boring or how cancer made my life better stories are bullshit
20th what’s hardest about writing for you coming up with ideas, or plotting or whatever and how you get around it

Finally, a parody post where you just put in different options that another blogger could simply highlight to tell their story “How my minority status/disability/difficult childhood helped/hurt my writing career”

I will now consult her blog, should she start writing, and check things off the list if she uses them.  Maybe I’ll write a couple too…

20 good posts for a new blog on writing