Writing

If I had nothing else to do, I'd have this blogsite and my blogster site all spiffed up and reader ready!  If lots of people read my blogs, I'd do it anyway.  If I never had to sleep, eat, clean, (etc times 100), I could have my sci fi fiction ms all ready to commit to market.  If I could find my way out of a paper bag, I would have travelled to places of inspiration for my poetry.  If life didn't interfere with what I would like to accomplish, I'd be "all caught up."  Wait a minute....isn't life what I write about?  As insignificant as these interruptions seem to be, they seem to be snippets of life.  If I didn't have my life, I wouldn't be typing these words on this page, now, would I?
If I can find more time, I will make every effort to stay up-to-date on my blogsites while at the same time finding even more time to write.  The rest of the time, life can have at me! 

We have begun! It's Monday, September 29, and we have been given our first assignment. I am totally excited about this course and feel way down deep that a door is about to open for my writing. After all, I taught 9-12 year old kids for 38 years. It just HAS to line up! I am totally ready to go on this one and can't wait to learn, meet others with the same goals, and write, submit, write, submit, write, submit... (notice I didn't say the R-word here...wink).
Let the games begin! The torch is lit!!!!

In a short while, I will be participating in an online class around writing for educational publishers. Laura Salas is teaching it. I am very excited about this opportunity. With my mega years teaching and my love for writing, it all seems to fit perfectly! I have also created a writing blog on blogster. It's more of a memoir than an every day/week/month writing thing. Whatever the case, this new class launches on September 29th. Here's to learning another avenue of the writing journey!

My "word!" I should say, my LACK of words!!! Wait a minute...I hear something...do you hear it as well? It sounds like WHOOSH would feel! I do believe that I am experiencing an OOB! I am actually hearing TIME flying! Oops...I think that perhaps if I am OOB, then time is no longer linear. I guess I am not OOB, but very in this one. I hate that time is linear. It passes me by! Yes, I am older. Yes, I have lost two months of writing! That's even worse than getting older!!
I know, enough with the exclamation marks, awready!
I will update this blog in September. My daughter and granddaughter have been here with us in Maine from Virginia for the month of August. It's been a combination of heaven and hell. The energy is intense and they have so much of it. I don't. I have gotten really tired. The house is a wreck, and my precious rat, Macadamia, has not gotten the attention that he so deserves, although I have not neglected him, I promise. He is on my shoulder right now and kissing the back of my neck, which is grooming, which is his way of showing me affection. I love him so much. Anyway, the lack of energy and things getting tipsy topsy turvy have been the hell. My time with my recently turned five year old granddaughter wipes out any thoughts of the hell and turns the atmosphere into heaven, unless she is exhausted, and that is another story. She is extremely intuitive and comes up with observations that completely floor me. I need to write some of her stuff up to save. She's amazing. What? You question my observations due to the fact that I am her grandmother and as a result, biased? Nah. Not at all.
I will return to this blogsite soon and share my progress with my sci-fi novel for a YA audience. I am three and a half chapters into it. It went back burner when my girls got here, but I will tackle it with enthusiasm as soon as the dust settles. Actually, I am flying back with them to VA in a few days. I'll be there for three weeks. One of my promises to me was to be present (physical body as long as I can and then spirit after I leave this physical body behind) at life changing events for my granddaughter. Well, she is starting Kindergarten this fall. Now, THAT is life changing! Her mommy will be a basket-case, so there are actually two life changing events that are pending; my Nadia starting Kindergarten, and my Cindy needing to be able to "let go," just a tad! Wish us all luck! Until next time...

My last entry wasn't writing related, so I feel the need to add another post. I have begun the actual writing of a YA/sci-fi novel. It's been niggling around the corners of my brain (no, I don't have a square head) for some time now. As part of the CWCC group, I have been offered the opportunity to have Simon Rose (I have an interview with him somewhere in these posts...he is a terrific author and person) read and give comments about the beginning of a piece that we are working on. Since we all know that if the beginning doesn't glue a publisher (or whomever may be reading it) to his or her seat, then it will find its new home in the dreaded slush pile (despite the heat here, the very mention of "slush pile" sent shivers up my back...heck, I won't even give those two words capital letters, lest they gain even more power!). I sent him two beginnings (with his permission). One of them is the beginning of the niggling one which is not titled at this juncture and the other is the beginning of a piece that I have worked on (off and on) for five or six years now. That one is titled (entitled?) "Alitu," and follows the adventures of a team of "light beings" from the planet Quad as they try and save the Earth from extinction. I was well into it when I took a Novels course from the University of Maine. The instructor, whom I totally respect as an author as well as an instructor, AND the other members of the course were right there with me as I worked on it. She (the instructor) loved it and envisioned it as a movie as well as a best seller. That gave me the needed impetus to continue working one it. Then I did a writers' retreat during the summer following the course and the group there hated it. Personally, I don't think that they "got it," but in any case, it gave me reason to stop and think things through. Then I had the first chapter critiqued by a well known children's author and she thought it was dreadful. Of course, those weren't her words, but I could tell... So, I put it on ice. I couldn't kill the characters, so the thing sits, gathering dust. The one that I am working on now is also a tad "out there," but I love science fiction, and much of it is, in fact, out there. This one is about a girl (young teen) who unexpectedly finds herself in a parallel universe. I am having a blast with it. I had a blast with Alitu as well, but I honestly don't think that its time has come. It will wait. This new one, however, is writing itself faster than I can keep up with it, so I think it's going to be one that I finish, come hell or high water. I shouldn't say "hell or high water" so carelessly, what with the weather patterns we are having (see last post). So, Simon will read both beginnings, and I am TOTALLY anxious to see what he thinks. He's too kind to tell me that they both suck, but I will know, just by the way he puts his words together. And who knows, he may like at least one of them! I'll let you know!!!!!

Here in the Northeast, and yes, that includes Maine, there is a heat wave going on that is so uncomfortable that I can't seem to get out of my own way. We don't have central AC and never ever thought that we'd even consider such a thing. With the changes in intensity of the seasons, we may have to bite the bullet, as it were. Add to that, the thoughts of the upcoming winter, which will also be intense, I am sure, thoughts of the price of oil to heat the house is a staggering mind bender. That brings to mind the idea of wood heat. We are sixty years old! Who wants to cut, split, stack and keep wood burning 24/7 during the long winter months!?!?!?! I mean, we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. So here I am, chewing away on all of that while I stick to the furniture, "bark" at the animals for stirring up the fur that they are shedding like gangbusters, and feeling powerless and helpless. Move to where? Tornadoes. Where else? Coastal flooding. Oh come on now...six months of darkness? I don't think so! Way out there? Earthquakes. Down there? Hurricanes. I guess I'll stay put. Where are those tissues, anyway!

June has found it's wonderfully green way into my world.  I adore early spring!  I started school when I was five years old.  I graduated from high school and went on to college the very next fall.  I graduated from college and went straight into teaching.  I taught for thirty-eight years.  Last June, I retired.  Having thought through all of that, I figured that I have not experienced early spring in its entirety since I was four years old!  Now that is amazing and I am aware of it every time I go outside, which is every day, unless it's pouring rain.  I feel truly blessed!  I AM truly blessed!  Now, to take a look at my writing endeavors.  In a word, OUCH!  This past year has been alarmingly difficult for me on many levels.  I have been sick a lot of the winter.  I over-extended myself in terms of what I dreamed I might accomplish versus what I actually did accomplish.  I joined Suzanne Lieurance's Children's Writers and Coaching Club, which is the variable that kept me writing this winter.  She is great.  The club members come and go and new ones come on, and there I am, hanging on by a prepositional phrase!  I love her voice and she not only knows what she is talking about, but is totally supportive and encouraging.  It was Divine Intervention that nudged me in her direction.  Other than that, I partipated in Robert Lee Brewer's Poem of the Day (PAD) challenge.  I did it!  I wrote thirty...yes thirty!...poems and submitted them to that blogsite.  The thing that kept me going was around the fact that he gave us a prompt each day.  Somehow that made it so much more doable.  I saved some of them to my iMac's word processing program and some of them are in a notebook.  One of my goals is to get them in a booklet for my family to read.  I also need to edit them.  His invitation was to just get them in there and edit later.  Well, I got them in there!  During the winter months, I researched jellies (jellyfish) and became fascinated by the Box Jelly...nasty critter, if ever there was one!  I contacted two marine scientists and asked if I could interview them for an article.  Then I sent out a letter to Highlights explaining my intent and was totally shot down.  I have yet to do the interviews.  I wrote two stories for the Highlights contest and just got the rejection letters.  Hey, I thought that the stories were kinda cool!  I did put a lot of myself into them.  After all, it was a contest and I wanted to win.  Then I wrote six poems and submitted them to a contest that was run by my own state and not one of them was found to be worthy.  Gee, I was on a roll, don't you think?  Owie.  I can tell you this...no matter how many times I have been told that rejection is part of the business and not to let it get me down, guess what...it hurts anyway!  My writing is part of who and what I AM.  It's part of my soul.  Who can turn away someone who has poured her soul into her work, I ask you!  I am still waiting on three other bits.  One is a children's book (words only) that I sent in to a contest; another includes five or six poems that I sent into the Writer's Digest contest (last time I did that, not one of them got chosen, and there were 100 honorable mentions...talk about ouch); and the third includes two poems that I sent in to an anthology written for and by Baby Boomers, which of course, I am.  The way things have gone so far, I guess I won't hold my breath!  I won't give up, though.  My real desire is to get a novel for YA (or Tweens, or Middle Readers) out.  I have two of them going.  One of them is on ice.  I couldn't kill my MC.  It's sci-fi...my favorite genre.  I started it about five, maybe six years ago.  During it's development, I took a novels course from the University of Maine.  The group that I worked with, including the instructor, LOVED it!  Then I took it to a Writers' Retreat and the group there just didn't get it and shot it down, flames trailing!  I then had a chapter critiqued by a published children's author and she just did not like it at all.  I put it in a box and there it sits.  This summer, I began a new one.  It's sci-fi, again, but a whole different aspect.  I think I like it.  I got it started, but haven't worked on it for two months.  I need to get back into it.  A TREMENDOUS amount of time is spent on emails, checking things out, trying to keep things updated (MySpace, Facebook and my Blog).  Now, I am spending many hours each day outside, working on a piece of land on our thirteen acres on the river.  It used to be a farm and it hasn't been dealt with for many many years.  I am clearing and sifting, etc.  It's not a job for the feint of heart, but my heart is in it.  In fact, a novel has been inching its way into my head as I work.  Real people lived here and have long since died, leaving bits of their energy behind.  I have been researching the land's history and can get back as far as the early 1880's!  Now, THAT'S COOL!  I have written this up on a website that I heard about...Zoho Writer.  I will find out in a "few" how it works.  The idea of having an online word processing program is enticing to me, because I can write anywhere there's a computer and an internet hook-up!  Now, THAT'S COOL as well!!  So, I am going to save it and try to send it to my blog.

Technorati Tags     zoho,poetry,sci-fi,writer,rejection,contests,CWCC

Poet Robert Lee Brewer offered people a challenge for the month of April...
Poem-A-Day Challenge
It was to compose and post a poem for each day in April.  Robert creates the topic and the participants craft a poem around it.  The poem can be in any form.  One writes it in the comments section of the blog in rough draft form.  The idea is to get one in there.  The rewrites will take place in May. I love to write poetry, so I decided to give it a go.  Being true to myself, (argh), I let time lapse.  I found myself scrambling around mid-month to keep the promise to myself true...I would do this.  It's April 23 at this point, and I have gotten eleven or twelve posted so far.  All of the topics so far have been really fun to run with, with the exception of one.  It was to take notes of what I had done for a day and write a poem around it.  I just couldn't make that one work.  All of the others have worked for me.  I have a concern that because my postings are so late, perhaps they will never be read.  Of course, I started with Day 1 and have worked forward, trying to play catch up with myself and the others.  Perhaps I should do the reverse and go with the prompt of the day, get it posted, and then work in reverse.  Hm-m-m...
Whatever the case, I am wondering about being able to get my poems on my livejournal site.  The only thing is...that would be so many entries....I will have to think this one through.  In the meantime, my poet muse is working overtime and although smiling, wondering if I will ever learn....

I am totally thrilled to have gotten "air time" with Canada's prolific and successful author, Simon Rose.  He has written several fantasy/sci fi novels for our younger audience and I can tell you from having read his work myself, it is no wonder that he is successful.  His work is exemplary.  He has included the web addresses for both his website and blogsite at the end of the interview.  Also, it's important to note that Simon presents a teleclass every month for members of the Children's Writers' Coaching Club. You can find out more about that here:

http://www.writingforchildrencenter.com

Before I post the interview, I would like to thank Simon for the time that he took to do this.  I totally appreciate it! 

1.    What is one bit of advice that you would give to beginning writers?

Writing is in some ways the easy part. It can be a very long process 
not only to write a book, but also to get it published. A book is a 
marathon measured in years rather than weeks or months. Don’t be 
afraid to revise and revise over and over again. Most authors go 
through many revisions before their work reaches its final format. 
Remember too that your book will never be to everyone’s taste, so 
don’t be discouraged. A firm belief in your own success is often 
what’s necessary. After all, if you don’t believe in your book, how 
can you expect other people to? Read as much as you can and write as 
often as you can. Keep an ideas file, even if it’s only a name, 
title, sentence or an entire outline for a novel. You never know when 
you might get another piece of the puzzle, perhaps years later. You 
also mustn’t forget the marketing. You may produce the greatest book 
ever written. However, no one else is going to see it if your book 
doesn’t become known to potential readers. Be visible as an author. 
Do as many readings, signings and personal appearances as you can. 
Get your name out there and hopefully the rest will follow. 
Especially for newly published authors, books don’t sell themselves 
and need a lot of help.

 2.    Where or how do you get your creative ideas for your stories?

Anywhere and everywhere. Out walking the dog, in the car, something 
in a conversation, a newspaper story, a billboard, an item on the 
evening news, TV, movies, books of all kinds, song lyrics, historical 
events, ancient mysteries, long lost civilizations, the supernatural, 
ghost stories, the paranormal or something completely out of the 
blue. I often find myself wondering 'what if?' Sometimes the 
challenge is to stop having ideas. Some may never be used, but I try 
to record as many as I can. I never know when they might fit in with 
a story I’m writing. Even ideas that don’t seem to work right away 
may have a use in the future.

I became immersed in science fiction as a boy. The original Star Trek 
series springs readily to mind, along with many other influences. I 
read a lot of science fiction novels and collections of short 
stories, as well C S Lewis, Tolkien and other fantasy writers. I also 
read a tremendous number of comic books as a child. Pure escapism 
perhaps, but comic books were great for the imagination. I leapt 
headfirst into those tales of superheroes in what was probably the 
golden age of comic books in the 1960’s. The stories took me across 
the universe, into strange dimensions, into the land of the Norse 
gods or had me swinging from the New York rooftops. At high school, I 
studied a great deal of history and have retained my interest in the 
subject up to the present day.

 3.    How did you decide which publisher to send your work to?

There are lots on resources on line and elsewhere with regards to 
publishers, but a good thing to do is to research which houses are 
publishing the same type of material that you are writing. If you are 
writing fantasy for ten year olds, see who is doing that and then 
check their website to see if they are accepting submissions, 
Similarly, if you are writing teen fiction, see who is doing that and 
again be sure to check out their sumbisssion policies. There also 
publishers who only deal with non fiction, prefer to specialize in 
regional issues, those who only do picture books or who do picture 
books, but don't accept stories about animals and so on. It can be a 
long process, but is well worth it.

 4.    Do you think that all writers, beginners as well as well-known should have an agent?

I have spoken to writers who have had wonderful agents for years and 
think very highly of them. However, I have also had conversations 
with writers who have seen no benefit whatsoever from having an 
agent, despite having been associated with an agency for some time. 
There is good and bad in everything, I guess, and as useful as a good 
agent can be, there are also doubtless many mediocre ones and a lot 
of bad ones ones out there too.

5.    What are your feelings about self-publishing, POD's and/or e-books?

Self publishing can be good or bad and I have seen numerous examples 
of both. Some books are extremely well done, while others appear to 
be very much the work of an amateur and do little to enhance the 
reputation of authors in general. Self publishing often seems to look 
like a great option, but of course does entail a lot more work once 
the book is printed, provided you want it to sell in good quantities, 
particularly in terms of distribution. I'm not as familiar with the 
pros and cons of POD. E books are here to stay and time will tell how 
popular they become, but I have no problem with my novels appearing 
as e books on i pods, for example.

6.    Can you give us some ideas about how to self-promote our book for sales, in addition to what our publishers may be
       able to do for us?

A lot of this depends on what your publisher is actually prepared to 
do for you, although you shouldn't expect them to look after 
everything for you. Some put a lot of money and effort into marketing 
and promotion, while others do very little at all. However, no matter 
what the size of their operation, they are usually dealing with other 
authors and can't devote all their time and energy to you. 
Consequently, all authors have to be prepared to do as much as they 
can to promote their own work and this is almost a completely 
separate interview topic. Get a website or blog or both, even before 
our first book is published, forge a good relationship with your 
local bookstores in order to secure book signing events, look into 
ways to talk about your work at festivals, other events and 
especially schools and libraries. You may produce the greatest book 
ever written. However, no one else is going to see it if your book 
doesn’t become known to potential readers.

 7.    How do we go about getting "traffic" to come to our blogs and/or websites?

Promote your site as much as possible on business cards, bookmarks, a 
vehicle, t shirts, in short anything you can think of. Make sure all 
possible keywords are included in the text of all the pages on your 
site to increase your visibility with search engines and get your 
site's coordinates linked from as many places as possible.

8.    Are you currently working on a novel?  If so, could you give us a brief glimpse?

Yes and it will be published in spring 2009. It is within the science 
fiction and fantasy genre and a fast paced, exciting adventure, 
concerning ancient civilizations, mysterious artifacts and shadowy 
secret societies. A short synopsis will appear later in the spring on 
my website at www.simon-rose.com and on my blog at http://simon-rose.blogspot.com/

I have been toying with web 2.0 tools via an online class.  Blogsites have been a focus for over a week and there are some good ones out there.  I am the only one who is not presently in a classroom, although I am still an educator.  Most of the participants have used edublog.  Those sites look really cool.  They don't have to pay extra for bells and whistles.  I have been tempted.... however, I have over a year's worth of entries in this blogsite and hate to just abandon it.  So, I am currently on the proverbial horns of a dilemma.  "Do I Stay or Do I Go?"
Simon Rose and I have completed our online interview.  I will be copying and pasting here, in a separate posting.  I am in VA visiting my daughter and granddaughter so am at a bit of an inconvenience bc I am having trouble with the Wi-Fi and my machine.  It keeps dropping off.  I'll send this and hope it connects...
Until next time....

Well, it's nearly the end... of March, that is...I heard back from Simon Rose and am totally pumped that he has agreed to do the interview with me.  He has had at least two weeks of working in schools, so I told him not to worry/hurry.  It will be fun when it happens.
I have been writing articles for Suzanne Lieurance for the CWCClub and she has been working on getting us an online presence.  That's a wait and see.  Another wait and see is a response from Highlights Magazine around my jellies (jellyfish) article.  Other wait and sees:  Writers Digest Contest/poetry, Silver Boomer Anthology submission/poem, Highlights Magazine fiction contest,  six write-for-hire "probes," ABC Books contest/PB, and one that I am about to send in to Chrysalis Readers called "Bluebirds," which I feel is my best work to date.  It's about an Alzheimer's situation basically between a mom and her daughter.  It struck close to home, and I wrote it from the heart.  Actually, everything that I try and write is from the heart, especially my poems, but Bluebirds felt right.  It made my husband's eyes tear up and that's a statement in itself.  So you see, I AM writing.  The project that I really want to "have at," is my sci-fi YA novel.  It's present time.  The sci-fi part is around parallel universes.  My MC accidently passes through a "membrane" that has just connected her universe to another.  The thing that I have taken from multi-universe or parallel universes theories is this: the thing that makes another universe different from the one that you are in is "a single pivotal event."  For example, it has been explained, if a cosmic beam passed through Hitler's mother's womb, and prevented her from being able to reproduce, Hitler would never have been born.  This is taken from someone else's work (Machio Kaku...awesome cosmologist) and paraphrased by me.  The single pivotal event in the universe that my MC encounters is the fact that she was never born.  That alone may be my "antagonist."  We'll see.  I have started writing it, but still need to piece together some bits and pieces of up and down; twists and turns.  I am also toying with the idea that she may not get back at the end, bc I'd love to do a series.  If my brain doesn't come up with enough for a series, then I'll end it with her getting back.  I can't upset my readers, you know.  :-)
Until next time...I'll keep the pens, notebooks and keypad warm!

Here it is, March 1st.  We are right now getting several MORE feet of snow here in the Western Mountains of Maine.  We are talking "Cabin Fever!"  Yes, it is making me feel far less "guilty" about spending more time writing.  However, getting fresh air is essential, and it just seems to either storm in spite of my protests, or the air is so cold that ones breath freezes on contact with it.  Perhaps the latter is a bit of a stretch, but it has been very cold.  Yesterday the temp was 20 degrees below zero.  Now, that really makes one want to go outside and romp, does it not?  Argh. 
I am a member of Suzanne Lieurance's Childrens Writers Coaching Club (CWCC).  It is probably the most useful endeavor that I have done for myself since I started writing this lifetime.  My dreams are still just that.  I have yet to be able to call myself a published author.  I hope to change all of that with help from Suzanne, the club members, and the speakers.  I have been in love with the science fiction genre for many years.  I started a YA sci-fi novel about six years ago.  I worked on it and worked and revised and revised.  I did a summer writers' camp with a serious focus on poetry (which I totally love to write), flash fiction, and fiction.  Science fiction was not in anyone else's repertoire and I was a fish out of water.  They just didn't get it.  I would like to think that they didn't get it because of the genre rather than as a result of my unpolished writing, (she said with a shrug).  I continued to work on it.  Just this past summer, I put it on ice.  I absolutely cannot kill my MC.  In the meantime, I have begun a new one.  In February, Suzanne introduced us to Simon Rose.  He is a published sci-fi  author for YA who lives in Canada.  Check out his website.  Just google his name and you'll find it.  Anyway, he has agreed to do an online interview with me which I will be posting to this blogsite, as well as my myspace site!  Eventually, I will have my own website, but will wait until I am published.  I am totally excited about this interview with him.  He is amazing and I can't wait to learn from him.
Another thing that I really need to do is take advantage of more of the livejournal features.  I will work on that soon.
I will "see" you again as soon as the interview with Simon has taken place.

It's now February 15th.  This winter has been dreadful.  We have more snow and ice than I can believe!  Ah-h-h-h, thoughts of spring...let me dream.  I have been working on a My Space account which includes a blog.  It also has a ton of other options.  I also need a website of my own for both my writing and my healing endeavors.  I guess that would be two websites.  ;-)  What good is any of it, however, if nobody visits?  I can write and create and even invite, but this is a lot of work and if it doesn't end up providing me with an avenue in which to connect with other like-minded people, then what is all the fuss about, anyway!? 
I will continue here because it's a nice safe place for me to come to and just "whatever" with words.  Maybe one day, it will provide me with that avenue to connect with others.  Who knows.....

Good Grief.  Here it is, February of 2008!  My Word!  Or should that should be "My Lack of Words?"   I HAVE been writing...just not here.  At this point, I am not sure about all of the cool features that I have access to using LiveJournal.  I do not know how to make this site available for others to read.  I am certain that I am the only one who visits.  It has kind of gotten to be "so what's the point," what with all of the other writing that I am trying to do.  Argh.
I am a member of Suzanne Lieurance's Childrens Writing and Coaching Club.  It's a great group of people and Suzanne is very knowledgeable and patient.  We get an assignment once a week that helps us better learn the ins and outs of the industry.  Then we discuss our work once a week in a Critiquing session.  There's a lot more going on there, but that is the main focus for me at this point.  I sent five or six poems to Writer's Digest for their December contest and five or six different poems to a contest sponsored by The Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, also in December.  Highlights Magazine for kids ran a contest in January for a short fictional piece about what life would be like in the future.  I sent two entries in for that.  I am working on a sci-fi novel for older readers about a girl who inadvertently finds herself in a parallel universe.  It's fun writing it, but it's taking a lot of reading, thinking and planning to make it scientifically plausible.  I love the work that Dr. Michio Kaku has done in that field.  I bought four of his books and use those for my research, as well as the Internet.  I have re-written a couple of folktales to send in to Spider Magazine.  I am still not secure around cover letters, queries etc, but do realize that if I can't get a publisher/editor to read through those, then "so what" if my first couple of paragraphs in my piece "hooks" them or not.  It's HIGHLY competitive "out there," and even though I feel that I have what it takes to get published, that doesn't matter.  What matters is the moment when the rubber meets the road.  It's pretty daunting and discouraging, but I am being nudged to write.  Since I can't seem to get away from wanting/needing to do that, I will continue.
Muses, stay with me! 

I feel as though I need to add a new posting.  I have committed myself to once a month unless I have activity.  Activity doesn't seem to be taking place, so here's my April entry.  Yes, it's April.  In Maine there are several inches of snow on the ground and it would seem that spring as I envision it, will never happen.  It's also cold and blustery.  Never mind, though.  As the old phrase goes, "This, too, shall pass."  If anyone else should ever read this, I would like to post a question:
I have seen some great "stuff" on My Space.  Now, as a teacher, that site has gotten a bad rap, and perhaps rightfully so.  However, it seems that it could potentially be a site to "strut your stuff" if you should have any to strut.  Since I am using this avenue  for my writing, I'd like to try something else for my healing practice.  I'm not getting traffic here and may not there, but "nothing ventured, nothing gained."  Right?  Does anyone have any ideas, advice, etc. re: My Space?  That's all for April....(perhaps?)