Inspiring Speech by JK Rowling

This J.K. Rowling commencement speech at Harvard has been circulating for a couple days on writing and coaching blogs so I thought I would share the link with you too. You can watch the video or read the text. It is worth a look for anyone, I sent it to Sarah too. Although the message is for graduates, we can all gain some wisdom from it.

I downloaded Google Earth yesterday afternoon and started looking up some addresses of the letters my grandparents wrote and was very excited to find a few. It is a pretty exciting tool to use. This project is becoming more real with the idea of visiting these places, making their story come to life in a different way. I am working on getting the manifesting machine in working order so I could make a trip next summer. Just the thought of doing this is fun exciting and a little scary too.

I picked up my Nanowrimo novel and thought about editing it and as I read a section all I could think was this was absolute drivel and maybe not worth my time. Then last night I was looking for a writing book I have, that has a section on editing and I could not find it anywhere. Then I remembered that years ago when I took a writing class on AOL I bought a suggested editing book. So I went looking for it. i found 3 books that I want to read but the best one was this.

I sat reading it for awhile last night and its excellent. It is easy to read and the examples are really good. I now know how to take the drivel that I wrote and make it better. Perhaps the stifled dialogue scenes needs to be changed to narrative summary and some of my summaries need to be turned into scenes and so forth. It really opened my eyes to what editors do and how I can make my writing better. I love how these late night wanderings can turn up a gem.



500th Post

I have discovered that I can't count I thought my 5o0th post would be tomorrow so I am adding a addition to this post. I always forget my blogiversary since it is in November and I am doing Nanowrimo then, so I thought I would celebrate a different milestone instead. This is my 500th post since I have been on blogger and I am planning a giveaway. I will be giving away a collection of collage materials. I'll be throwing in papers, napkins ephemera, cards and more. I had planned a picture for the post tomorrow but since I am a day off you'll have to wait till then to see the actual prize. Of course I haven't collected it all together yet or I would take a quick snap right now. I'll keep things open a week all you need to do is leave a comment letting me know you want to enter.













Ok here is a picture of items I have collected as my prize, there are napkins, papers of many sizes, ephemera, ribbons yarns etc. I will probably add more to this but its a start. Its hard to take a good picture of but I think you get the idea.