Diary of a Writer (a creative piece)

7:15am Turn off first alarm.

8:13am Wake up wondering what happened to the second alarm. Must have turned it off in sleep.

9:01am Wake up again with dog staring at me because he needs to go outside. Get up & take dog out. Thank god for dog or might never get out of bed. Hey--that's an anagram. Dogodogodog.

9:12am Feed dog. Nuke coffee. Check email & social media while eating granola bar.

10:01am Tear self away from computer--because it sucks brain out through eyeballs--and go sit on couch. Spend 40 minutes staring at wall letting thoughts flow freely.

10:41am Launch self off couch in fit of inspiration. Must capture brilliant idea before it flits out of head! Halfway across the room, get distracted by copious amounts of dog hair on carpet. Detour to closet for vacuum cleaner. Must take advantage of motivation to clean, as it arises rarely. Surely will remember brilliant idea for the 5 mins. it takes to vacuum rug.

DigiWriMo!

Twelve days until DigiWriMo! It's going to send me into a writing and self-publishing spree like no other.

What is it? 

Digi the Duck

DigiWriMo is short for Digital Writing Month, and it's an online, month-long event happening in November 2012. It's modeled on NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), but instead of writing a 50,000-word novel in one month, you write and self-publish 50,000 words of digital writing in one month. That could be blog posts, online articles, Tweets, Facebook status updates, Wikis, emails--whatever, so long as it's digital. They'll also have weekly writing challenges posted on the digiwrimo.com website; weekly Friday night Twitter socials; and a free, face-to-face, write-all-night event at Marylhurst University on November 17th (registration required).

Why I'm excited about DigiWriMo

1. I like to have goals with firm deadlines
2. It'll challenge me not only to produce a significant amount of writing each day but also to publish it
3. And therefore will give me more practice at sharing things that are still in draft form
4. DigiWriMo doesn't confine me to writing about just one thing, like NaNoWriMo would; I can write lots of little things on all sorts of subjects
5. @Jessifer promised me it would help me get new Twitter followers

Why I write

This weekend I attended the wondermous Wordstock literary festival, and two things happened that forced me to face an ugly truth about myself.

The first incident occurred while I was attending a panel discussion about YA literature. There were three panelists, and the one in the middle particularly caught my attention. She was young (am guessing late 20's or early 30's) and very beautiful. Beautiful in the way that Keira Knightley, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Natalie Portman are beautiful. Before her sat a hardcover copy of her traditionally-published book. She seemed completely at ease up on the stage: calm and self-assured. She was articulate and confident in her opinions. She seemed to lack any self-doubt. And I found myself really wanting to punch her in the face.

The second incident happened when I was flipping through the Wordstock program, looking at featured author bios and photos. Page after page of professional head shots of people whom I'd never heard of before. These people all had books published. They were all asked to come read from their books and/or speak on panels at this literary festival. In their photos they looked serious or happy or silly. They looked, generally, like nice, ordinary people. But I hated them. Every single one of them.

Fall 2012 VoiceCatcher is out

Three reasons to care about the new issue of VoiceCatcher, an online literary journal, that just went live today:

1. "VoiceCatcher is a nonprofit community that connects, inspires and empowers women writers and artists in the greater Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington area."
2. This is their inaugural online issue (they were a print journal previously), and it's a BEAUTIFUL issue that includes some amazing writing.
3. My creative non-fiction piece "On Voice" is in it. =*D

Here is the link, for your convenience: http://voicecatcherjournal.org/ Happy reading!

5 rejections in a week. Woo hoo! (Or something.)

Because I have a rather large backlog of work that I think is ready for publication, during my first weekend of self-employment (Sept. 29-30) I decided that I was going to devote Sundays to revising and submitting work, and that I'd submit five pieces each week. True to form (note sarcasm), I submitted five pieces the first Sunday, none last Sunday, and one piece on Monday.

The result: five rejections in the same week! Woo hoo! (Or something.)

On the one hand, it is a truth universally acknowledged that publishing writers have to weather a lot of rejection, so I suppose I could choose to count my rejections as a rite of passage into official writer-hood.

On the other hand, I'm left feeling a little empty and confused, especially since I spent so much time trying to find markets that I thought were really good matches for my pieces. What's more, I actually really like my pieces. Me, the eternal critic!

Nominated for One Lovely Blogger Award

Was checking my blog stats last week (or was it the week before?) and noticed there was traffic coming from Josh Magsam's blog, The Cognitive Turn. Followed the referring link and found out he'd nominated me for the One Lovely Blogger Award! Awww...so sweet! Many thanks to Josh for the nomination.

Now lessee...there were some rules about this thing. Ah, here they are: