And the Winners Are

Aack! It's not Sunday. I'm late! A person should not put the end of her giveaway contest on the same day she has a deadline for her current work in progress and on a day when she has to sit with her mother!! I made those mistakes and then the kids came out and picked blackberries. Now, you have to help the grandkids pick blackberries. Life's too short to pass up those kind of fun times. 

At any rate, the hours yesterday slid away from me. I missed my deadline for the book submission by a couple of hours, but I figured my editor wouldn't notice until the sun came up this morning. I burned a bunch of midnight oil and probably slept through trying to edit the last three chapters, but I read through them - I think. Thank goodness, Mom slept well last night, but then this morning we had all the Monday chores. Baths and hair fixing and laundry. She's feeling rotten now and is lying down. 

So now that I've made a few thousand excuses (not quite, but I probably could keep going if you want to hear them!), I picked the numbers by Random.org. Each of the e-mails and comment entries that came in to my Small Town Girl Celebration contest are numbered and put in a special folder. Then after I get the random number from a random number generator, I find the saved entry and send out an e-mail to the winners. Those e-mails have already gone out, so if you didn't get one, maybe next time! Drum roll please. 

Dorothy B is the 1st prize winner. As soon as I hear from her and find out where to send those two dozen roses and one of my books, she'll get her prize. Pam K is the 2nd prize winner. She gets her choice of one of my books plus 3 grab bag titles from my Christian fiction collection. And Brandy B from Texas can't say she never wins anymore. She wins the wind chimes and her choice of one of my books. Then I nearly always pick an extra winner "just because." This time I picked Theresa H. Her e-mail so touched my heart when she told me about her son sending her flowers for her anniversary after her husband died and then how she lost him too after already losing another son. I shared her story on one of the flower story blogs. 

I have a few more flower stories to share and still plan to let you enjoy those with me. But today I'm just going to share one. This story touched my heart too. Well, to be honest, a lot of your flower stories had me blinking away tears or smiling. I thank you so much for sharing slices of your lives with me. I do so appreciate all of you and the fun we can have with stories.

The story today comes from Judy. 

"After my husband passed away from a brain tumor I told God that I would never marry again.  We had just celebrated our 8 year anniversary two days before he died.  I could never live through caring for and watching another husband die.  Bob was only 44 when he passed away.

Little did I know that God had other plans for me.  When John, my adult Sunday school teacher, asked me if I would like to see a movie with him, I told him that I would go under one condition that we'd only be friends.  I wanted a big brother type person and nothing else.  He quickly agreed.  A couple of days after we saw a movie I came home to find a bouquet of flowers in a beautiful vase sitting on my front porch.  The card was signed, from your big Brother! 

John and I have been married 9 1/2 years!  (Never second guess God!)"

What a blessing all your stories have been to me! Stay tuned for at least one more post of flower stories in the next week or so. And thank you for your patience with me. I really didn't intend to be late with the winners. Thanks to all of you who entered. It made the contest fun and made me the biggest winner of all because I got to read all your stories. And for those of you who didn't win this time - maybe next time. I'll be having another celebration for Christmas at Harmony Hill, my Shaker Christmas novella due out in September. Oh, and if you live near me here in Kentucky, I'm having a Hometown Booklaunch this Sunday, July 21, at 2:30 p.m. at the Anderson County Public Library in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. Come on down. I'm planning door prizes along with talking about my books! 

Deadlines, Dandelions and Stories

http://www.rofotos.com/nature/flower/000008grape-hyacinths-muscari/

My deadline is staring me in the face. My book in progress needs to be off to the editor before Monday.  I suppose if publishing houses didn't set deadlines for writers, we might play with our stories and words forever and never get them out there for readers. So deadlines are good. 

Even before I had deadlines from editors, I set deadlines for myself. Except I didn't call them deadlines. I called them goals. The good news about the current deadline is I finally found those very necessary words, "the end." The bad news is they hid from me for so long I don't have as much time for editing as I'd like. But I'm scrubbing and polishing my story as fast at I can. 

The truth is, life intrudes on the best laid plans at times. But sometimes when that happens you get a surprise bouquet!

 So I've taken a break from trying to whip my book into shape before Monday to share a few more flower stories. I've loved reading your surprise bouquet stories. So many wonderful ones that I couldn't share them all. Many of you have left great comments on here with fun stories too. Thank you all so much. You make my contests so much fun. 

By far the most mentioned bouquets were those clutched in children's hands. Dandelions from the yard. Roses from a neighbor's yard. Broken heads of flowers picked without stems. But with love in every bouquet like this story from Lois.

"When my daughter was about 4 years old (now she is 40) she gave me a bunch of dandelions in a fruit jar for Mothers' Day and she was sooo very proud. They were the best flowers I have ever received." 

Pure love from a child to her mother. Love was in this bouquet Beth received from her daughter too.

"My 17 year old daughter surprised me this spring by picking a tiny bouquet of grape hyacinths and putting them in a small blue vase. Just for no reason." 

When I contacted Beth for permission to share the word image of her surprise bouquet, she added this about her daughter, Becca. "Just a proud Mama note I would like to share, Becca graduated this past Friday. She received 7 awards for her academics. The English, Latin, Science awards as well as valedictorian. What makes this remarkable - Becca is dyslexic and couldn’t read until 4^th grade. This is what God can do with hard work and desire. Now you can’t get her to put books down." 

Don't you love proud Mamas and happy stories? 

The last story tonight (maybe a couple more flower stories Sunday) we hear from the other side of the bouquets. Mary Ann says, "I remember picking bouquets of purple and white violets and of daffodils for my family when I was little. That always felt incredibly special to me." Then she added, "Oh wait! Think on, my wonderful eight-year-old son occasionally brings me the decapitated heads of daffodils and grape hyacinths and roses from our garden now, as Lovely Bouquets. :D"

Flowers do have a way of making us happy!

The deadline for my book is not the only one approaching. A deadline is coming for my Small Town Girl Celebration Giveaway too. Only three more days to enter. Deadline for entries is midnight EST Saturday. So if you haven't thrown your name in the hat for the roses and books or entered the "never win" contest for the wind chimes, you'd better do it quick. Send me an e-mail or leave a comment here with a way to contact you should you be the winner. Oh, and if you are one of those "never win" people, be sure to tell me that too.

Thanks for reading. Now back to work polishing and trimming and... Monday's coming!

 

 

And So We Look for the End

I'm still searching for those elusive words "the end" with my deadline zooming toward me. Well, actually my original deadline is seven days gone, but where one deadline is missed, another takes its place soon after. So since most of my words need to be on the trail of those two sneaky little words that keep hiding from me, I went back in time here on One Writer's Journal and pulled out a post from long ago about looking up some "end" quotes to inspire me in a previous hunt for the end of a story. Here it is with a few updating tweaks. 

When I went out hunting quotes about "the end," what I found wasn't exactly what I had in mind. This first one from Oscar Wilde must be talking about romance, but we can twist it around a little to make it fit writers. "When a love comes to an end, weaklings cry, efficient ones instantly find another love, and the wise already have one in reserve." 

When that story that has a writer totally in its grip ends, the weak writer might cry as she has to let her story go out to perhaps face rejections. Ah, but the efficient one will find a new story to take off with, and the wise writer will already be thinking up that new idea before she writes "The End."

And I always enjoy Mark Twain's wisdom. His quotes generally have that germ of truth that really gets his point across. "Man was made at the end of the week's work, when God was tired."

Here's another good one for writers. "If you want to know the end, look at the beginning." ...African Proverb

We need to have the thread of our story from the beginning to the end. I'm not one of those writers who knows the ending at the beginning, but I do hope that my endings fit my beginnings.

 
Ralph Waldo Emerson's advice here can certainly apply to writers. "To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom."  

So write the books you love. Enjoy the writing journey. Finish your moments and live your hours in your stories and in your life.

How about this last one? "To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow, the coup de grace for the painter as well as for the picture." ...Pablo Picasso

What do you think about it? Does this just fit for an artist? One thing sure just because I write the end doesn't mean I'm finished with this story. I need about two months to go back over it and make it better. But right now I'd settle for two weeks to at least begin to polish the story even though I know it will need more polish than I can apply in that short time. 

Writing a book is a long process from the day I type "Chapter 1" to the day - it has to be tomorrow - I write "the end." In between the two, I've come up with over 100,000 words. But the important thing is - have I written the story and let my characters come to life and find the perfect ending? The story is one more return to Rosey Corner for Love Comes Home.

Thanks for reading. Especially those of you who have been reading Small Town Girl. Remember, one more week to enter my Small Town Girl giveaway. Drawing next Sunday.

Creeks, Cliffs and Wildflowers

Lots to do! Deadline zooming toward me for my work in progress and the words are coming slow. Chores need doing! New floor going down in the kitchen and bathroom and new room. New floors going down need everything moved off them! Not enough hours in the day.

Sometimes it's hard getting everything done since I have to spend so many hours sitting with Mom and trying to convince her she is home and doesn't need to head out the door to that home that is just beyond her view in her mixed up thoughts. That home she wants is long gone but so much more real in her mind these days than the home where she's been living for the last thirty years.

All this to say that sometimes a person just has to ignore all the have-to-dos and take some time for want-to-dos. So come go to the creek with me.

That's what I did Friday morning. I gave myself the gift of a couple of hours and forgot about the deadlines and chores. It's wildflower season at my creek and I feel cheated if I don't get a chance to admire the wildflowers there every year. So I said the chores can wait. The words might come easier after a little brain rest time. And I went walking. I didn't let Oscar go. He's still recuperating from his broken leg and surgery, but I didn't totally miss out on dog companionship on my hike. The short-legged little neighbor dog went with me. His name's Peanut Butter, but I nicknamed him P.B.

And I saw the wildflowers and heard the creek running. I spotted a Jack-in-the-pulpit, one of my favorites. I got a great picture of some shooting stars. I saw larkspur and buttercups. I took pictures of wood poppies and bent head trilliums, another of my favorites.

The creek was full from the recent rains with the water singing over the rocks. I got my feet wet and practiced my balance on the rocks. And then I climbed back up the steep hill, came home and headed to Mom's. It's good to give yourself a gift now and again. Especially in the spring when nature has given us the gift of beauty.  

What are some of your want-to-dos that make you happy when you give yourself that gift of time? Reading? Time with the grandkids? A favorite movie? Writing in a journal?

Deadline - Three Days and Counting

A goal is a dream with a deadline. ~Napoleon Hill

Persistence is the word I always tell aspiring writers they need to be sure is in their arsenal of writing tools. It's good to have a gift for words. It's even better to have the imagination to come up with unique and exciting story ideas. Enthusiasm for any project is a necessity. But if you want to succeed at writing, you have to be persistent. Persevere. Keep on keeping on when the enthusiasm flags, when the words desert you, when the imagination dries up like a shallow pond in a drought. Persistence is the stream of creativity, the thing that wears away the rock of doubt in your writing ability. 

Persistence is how books get written. One word after another. One sentence after another. One chapter after another. Having a deadline makes persistence a necessity. Deadlines mean you can't put off writing until you're feeling more creative, until life is less hectic, until summer vacation is over. I have a deadline in three days. I've scheduled something on two of those days. I'll have to go to the nursing facility to be with my mother part of the time on all of those days. Mother is not doing well so there will be no way I can work while I'm sitting with her. But I intend to meet this deadline. I think I can. I hope I can.

I read the new story over. It isn't perfect, but I think the story is there. It was hard writing all the way through. Some books are. Some books are easier. For the books that are hard, it's good to have a deadline. Something to keep your fingers on the keyboard when you feel drained of words and ideas. 

For years I worked without deadlines. That's because I wrote without having contracts. I wrote the book and then hoped an editor somewhere would like it. Less pressure. More freedom. Less success. I like having a deadline. It keeps me motivated. It keeps me pushing to get the stories written. But even when I didn't have contracted deadlines, I set goals for myself. Those dream deadlines.

July 1 is an exciting date for more reasons than my deadline. It's the release date for The Gifted. I hope to get a newsletter out on that date. Another deadline to meet. Bought a couple of prizes for my Celebration Giveaway. Come back Sunday for details.


Thanks for reading! Oh, and one of those scheduled days is a book fair in  Horse Cave, Kentucky. I hope to be there - unless Mom is worse. If you're in the area, come out and check out the writers and books.

In a Pickle

" In a pickle” – To be in a pickle is to find oneself in a difficult position. It seems that in 1611, Shakespeare was the first to use the actual phrase “in a pickle” in The Tempest, although the references to “ill pickles” and “this pickle” can be traced back to the 1500s or even earlier. Some of the info I read said the word pickle first referred to the spices or concoctions that did the pickling instead of to the vegetables such as cucumbers that were pickled. 


So now you know more than you probably ever wanted to know about the origin of "in a pickle." But I enjoy finding out why we say the things we do. Plus when you're a writer of historical fiction, you need to make sure you don't use a phrase that wasn't in common usage at the time of your story. Used to be the answers were harder to find, but now the internet pops up dozens of answers to the origin of "in a pickle." Today your problem is knowing which internet site or information to believe. That can put you in a pickle.


I'm thinking about pickles because I made some pickles last weekend. Well, I finished up making the pickles. These are 21 day pickles. It never fails that when I first put my cucumbers in the brine to begin the 3 week process that the end time comes when I'm extra busy and don't have time for pickles. That's the way it was this weekend with my granddaughters visiting and then me having to go stay with Mom after they went home. So these pickles are 22 or maybe 23 day pickles. But they taste fine. I just boiled the vinegar pickling solution to pour over them a couple of extra times.


Pickles aren't the only thing I think I'll have plenty of time for when I set out to make them. Books can be that way too. I'm in a give-my-storytelling-brain-a-break time right now. But I'm going to have to jump into research and writing again very soon. First I'll have to work through the galleys of Words Spoken True and I'll be sure to have editorial fixes for The Gifted. Then I'll be looking forward to that deadline for my next story that is months away, but the older I get the more I realize how fast those months spin by. 

I am not a writer who can push out a story in a few weeks. I know writer friends who are able to do that. They can write a book over a long weekend or in a couple of weeks. My brain doesn't seem to work that way. I have to let my creative well fill and sometimes the story seeps in very slow. Of course my friends have been letting their story seep into their minds before they begin the actual writing process. But I have to dip my story out of the well and then let the story water seep back in. Very rarely do the scenes rush in at least until the last few chapters. 

So generally - because I have an obviously inflated opinion of how quickly that well will fill - I end up in a pickle and find myself wanting to add a few more months to my deadline.  

This last deadline was a rough one since I've been having to sit with Mom and don't have that alone time my creative thinking needs. My sister was sympathizing with me and said, "That sounds like work." And writing is work, but it's work I love doing even when I get myself in a deadline pickle.


Have you ever gotten yourself in a pickle? Thanks for reading.

Problems, Procrastination, Patience, Persistence

Today was the day I had agreed to have my Shaker 5 novel finished. The Gifted was one of those stubborn books that got a little long winded and simply did not want to end. The characters must have been having too much fun and didn't want me to quit on their story. At times in July and June, I felt like this was the summer I was missing. At least it was summer in my book. So I got to enjoy the nice weather with my characters. 

But I did finish it. I even managed to get some editing done. Would have liked to have passed through it once more to do a little more word weeding, but I did weed out some of the worst bits of overwriting. And I'll get a chance to do more. 

It could have been that I might not have been in this deadline crunch if I hadn't done some procrastinating to get started on it back last November. On Sunday I was privileged to go visit the Connections Bookstore in Trinity World Outreach Center in Louisville. That's me and my friend, Betty Owens in the photo with my books set up for the readers in her church to check out. But in between my time in the bookstore, I went to their church service. Guess what the preacher focused his message on. You got it - procrastination. Sometimes the Lord just sets you down where you need to be. 

But these last few weeks I haven't been procrastinating. I've been working with great persistence. And I was determined to get my book sent in to my editor before the end of her work day. I was sitting with Mom today as I have most days this summer, but she knew I had to work and she was napping a lot. I was reading and cutting words and reading and fixing awkward phrasing as fast as I could. Then with the end in sight, a storm blew up. A major thunderstorm. The lights flickered. The lights went out. Oh well, that was okay. My laptop battery was charged up. I kept working. My laptop battery began to lose power. The electric power didn't come back on in the house. My laptop battery died. My sister shows up at Mom's. I rush home. We have electricity. Yay! Jubilation premature. We're in internet doghouse - a state those of us who depend on satellite access with limited download allowances suffer on a regular basis. At our house, we usually suffer it when the grandson has been playing video games. Not this time. Husband must have downloaded something. Paid my get out of the doghouse fee and finally got to hit the send button. Persistence and patience defeated problems. 

My problems today were not big problems - just minor obstacles in the way of what I wanted to get done. But sometimes we have major obstacles and boulders of troubles or discouragement that get in our way. So here's a quote for those times. 


"Defeat may test you; it need not stop you. If at first you don't succeed, try another way. For every obstacle there is a solution. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. The greatest mistake is giving up.""  (Author unknown)

May you find a solution to your every obstacle. Thanks for reading.

Hitting the Send Key

I just sent off my new Shaker book to my agent and my editor before my deadline tomorrow, July 1. It's a good thing I had a deadline on this one or I'd probably still be dragging my feet and trying to figure out what happened next in the story. I had to really push myself to get Lacey's story told and say a few prayers for inspiration.

The truth is I feel that way on nearly every book I write. There comes a place in the middle where things just bog down and I find myself in the doldrums. I've always liked that word - doldrums. Doesn't it just look and sound like what it is? But on the other hand, I don't like finding myself in the doldrums when I'm writing. That's when you have to start puffing at the sails, praying up some wind or dipping your oars in the water to push your boat (story) to a better place on the sea of storytelling.

I did huff and puff and pray and row through the doldrums to get my story told and I'm hoping I got it told in an entertaining way. But with Mr. Deadline almost ready to knock on my door, I didn't have quite as much time to work it over as I usually like to have. I wanted to read it over one more time before I hit that send button, but then again I always want to read over whatever I'm working on one more time. I want to catch every mistake, change every awkward bit of phrasing, make it perfect. And I can't. I'm not perfect. I will never be perfect. There will always be one more word that I could change to bring the action more to life or that will smooth the writing. Always. I have to be satisfied with making my writing as near to perfect as I can. And face the facts that while smooth writing is certainly good, the story is more important. Tell a great story and the writing can be fixed. So of course I want to do both. Tell a great story and make my writing smooth at the same time. It's good to have goals.

I've always set myself goals even when I wasn't fortunate enough to have Mr. Deadline marching toward my door. In those days I had to set my own deadlines with hope that an editor somewhere might eventually like my story. But I did have my own deadlines that I usually missed by a few months because I always thought I'd have more writing time than I ever actually did. Still it was good to have those self-imposed deadlines so that I could stay focused on finishing and moving forward with my writing. You can talk about writing and think you want to write more than anything in the world but until you put your fingers on the keyboard or pick up a pen or pencil, no writing gets done. So thinking about when I wanted to have a project finished helped me stay motivated to dig those words out of my head.

And so I've hit the send key on a new book. That's a lot different than it used to be when I typed everything and then carried it to a copy shop to make a copy. I was the pits at doing carbons. Not a good enough typist for that. Word processors have made my fingers even lazier, but now I just have to be a good proofreader. So then after I paid the what to me was an exorbitant amount per page for copying my manuscript, I bundled it all up and took it to the post office. Now I hit a send key and off it goes. Sometimes that's almost scary easy. You just know that somewhere in that manuscript there's a glaring mistake you forgot to change but the send key has been hit. You can't call it back. You just have to sit back and wait. A nervous time for a writer like me.

At least I can hear the good things readers are saying about The Seeker, and having The Seeker out on the market is proof that I did it before. Maybe the magic will happen again with this new book I just sent in.

My first book launch is Friday night hosted by Corinth Parable Bookstore in Frankfort, KY. If you're in the area, come by and say hello and tell me what you like to read. Thanks for reading and I really appreciate those of you who follow this blog and your encouraging comments.