I’ve been nominated for a Kreativ Blogger award!

KREATIV BLOGGER AWARD RULES:

• 1. Thank the person who nominated you for this award.
• 2. Copy the logo and place it on your blog.
• 3. Link to the person who nominated you for this award.
• 4. Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting.
• 5. Nominate 7 Kreativ Bloggers.
• 6. Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.
• 7. Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know they have been nominated.

Oh my goodness!

I am honoured, flattered, and quite honestly tickled pink to have been nominated for a Kreativ Blogger award by the incomparable Val Russell. I’d like to thank my parents, without whom I’d never have been born…

No. Seriously. This is quite extraordinary. I’m not sure how/if one wins these things, but who cares? Val is an amazing writer, who right now is taking a hiatus from blogging, but I’m hoping that her nomination will see her back dipping into the old inkwell.

Oh dear – seven things about myself? And they have to be interesting??? Okay, here goes nothing:

• I have free-fallen off an eight-foot oil drum (stupid drama school trust exercise)
• I have lived in four countries, own three passports and have an accent with an identity crisis
• Al Qaeda tried to kill me in Kenya and almost succeeded.
• I had planned to attend (or at least apply) to the MFA in Creative Writing at Antioch University in Los Angeles. The money was to have come from a great job I took in early 2009 – I worked like crazy and was owed $30,000 and guess how much they paid me? ZIP. There goes my tuition money… And I can’t afford to sue them! Please send donations… 🙂
• I am double-jointed and most of the bones in my body crack
• When  I was 9, I caught my left foot in a Ferris wheel at the school fete, thereby effectively ending my ballet career, and causing my dad to note that it was the school “fete worse than death”
• I will need someone else’s kidney one day – but not today.

My 7 Kreativ Blogger nominees. Drumroll please…

Meredith Resnick: Creator of The Writer’s Inner Journey. She’s smart, erudite and has some fantastic interviews and real insights into the deep, dark, soul of writers.

Rachel Resnick: No relation to Meredith (as far as I know). Blogs at Rachelville. My brilliant creative writing teacher. She’s sassy, sexy, raw, emotional and talks about all that crazy shit that goes on in writers’ lives. Hey, the woman has written two amazing books – Go West Young F*cked up Chick and Love Junkie. Rachel rocks. Plain and simple.

Tania Hershman: Blogging at Tania Writes, she and I go way back, to when she used to act in my plays in Jerusalem. She found her true fiction writing voice a few years ago and has published her first collection of short stories – The White Road. Her writing is always exciting, unpredictable and a delight to read. Plus, she’s the world’s greatest supporter of short story writers everywhere  and even created a website  – The Short Review – dedicated to the craft. Oh, and did I mention she’s a lovely person??

Debra L Schubert: I only recently discovered this gem of a novelist, and she’s incredibly generous about sharing ideas, tips, and thought-provoking insights into the writing life. Plus she blogs under the title Write on Target. You gotta love her for that alone.

Steve Berer: Yes, finally, a man! His blog Shivvetee is an extraordinary site dedicated to Jewish poetry. He’s also a good friend, a soft-spoken, gentle man whose emotions and thoughts run deep, and it’s clearly reflected in his writing and his love of Jewish texts.

Jane Boursaw: See Jane Clack is smart, sassy, funny and delicious. If you want to know anything about anything on television, then go play in Jane’s brilliant playground. She’s the writing teacher you’d have wanted in high school, because she lets you know that writing can be fun! Oh, and this is just one of her myriad writing sites.

Martha Frankel: A memoir writer – just published her first – Hats and Eyeglasses. She’s entertaining, thought-provoking and best of all is the world’s greatest cure-all for writer’s block. She’s like the ever ready bunny. Keeps on keeping on.

Freelance writing priorities meets social media

Help! I think I’m actually having a social media meltdown. Does this not happen to anyone else? I’m so busy trying to figure out how to tweet, facebook, blogg, digg, both this blog, and get going on the dry run of my website (name and address coming very very soon,) I feel like I’m drowning. Especially after seeing this lovely Youtube clip:

And, of course I’m doing Jane Boursaw’s course and we’re now onto the “Social Media” part, which I confess, aside from being under the weather with the beginnings of some kind of unpleasant bug,  I’ve been putting off doing. But now I’m working on it with gusto.

Is this the bane of a freelancer’s life? Constantly juggling so many project you don’t know which ones to work on when? Where, how, what to promote and why? Right now if I add everything up I’m currently working on:

• Two ongoing editing projects
• Three articles
• One blog
• One Website
• Three interviews to set up
• Prepping to teach a class
• Transcribing  three hours of notes from an interview
• Spending time doing the volunteer work I’m committed to
• Checking for new freelance jobs every day
• and… of course… finding time to blog, tweet, facebook etc. etc. and keep up with others in my profession who are doing the same thing.

And I’m an organised person. Truly. I have diaries, notes, papers, lists, etc. but I still get confused about what I’m working on when, what I want to work on, what I have to work on. I try to lay out my day to spend x amount of time on one thing  and y amount of time on another. But it rarely works. While it’s great to be able to chop and change when you get fed up with one thing or another, it can still be overwhelming. And I think social media puts me under even more pressure.

Now, if only I can find time to write more fiction and read my latest edition of Writer’s Digest Magazine.

Anyone else feeling the pressure?

Fear, faith and finally… some work

Apologies for falling off the radar for a couple of days. Truth be told I’ve been busy. I finally landed a copy editing gig – phew and will be starting tomorrow (it’s online and I still get to work from home). I’m plodding away at my web site, getting great help from Jane Boursaw through her course and feeling “up”….

That is until today. I’ve been distracted the last couple of days. My 12 and a half year old Golden Retriever – Bridget – whom I’ve had since she was six weeks old needs surgery! I discovered a small bump/lump on her flank the other day and took her to the vet. She has two large lipomas which are just fat deposits that older dogs get and they’ve been fine for years. I was hoping this one was more of the same. It wasn’t. The vet aspirated the lump and said it needed to be sent to the lab. It took two days for the results to come back. She has a soft tissue sarcoma and is going in to have it surgically removed tomorrow. Only once it’s removed will they know how bad it is and be able to assign it a “grade”. I hope they get the whole thing and that she’s fine, but who knows? It’s very distressing and I’ve been crying a lot this afternoon. I can’t imagine my life without her.  I have no idea how much this is going to cost and given that I have ZERO money I don’t care. That’s why God invented credit cards, right? It may take 10 years to pay it off but right now Bridget’s health is the most important.

So, I haven’t been able to focus on much else since getting this news. Her surgery is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. tomorrow. Please pray for her.

Another article, another dollar (or two, three maybe?)

LoveFest article  is up! Good thing too, because it proves I could actually read my notes and turn the scrawl into real words.

Am back working on my site now and about to undertake Jane Boursaw’s Blogging for Passion and Profit course. I think it will help with my new web site immensely. I already have the passion, let’s bring on the profit! Tentative launch for THE SITE is September 1.