Writing into the end of the year

As everyone gears up to shut down over the Christmas break, I’ll be tapping away on my computer – an excellent time for those of us not of the Christian faith to catch up on being behind. Of course, I will do the de rigeuer Jewish celebration tonight of Chinese dinner and a movie with friends, but beyond that I’ll be keeping my nose to the grindstone. In fact, my latest article just went up. It’s about Jews and Yoga. Can you connect your Ohms with your Amens? Abso-bloody-lutely. Read it here. Yoga: Good for the Jews? .

I’m also excited to be revising my novel written in NaNowWriMo. It finally has a title: Word Painting. I’m very excited by the messiness of it all and the new Scrivener software (a 50% discount purchase as a result of winning NaNoWriMo), that I’m using to unsplit my split infinitives and reconnect my subject/verb agreements et al.

Here’s hoping for a wonderful 2010 for all those of you with literary dreams. Nurture them, coddle them, then get rich off of them – hopefully.

Happy Christmas to all my non-Jewish friends!

Frazzled on Friday

The work week may be drawing to a close, but my body seems to think it’s already the weekend. Off to a sluggish start today after a brilliant night last night with the child star and her b/f who came round for dinner. Lots of chatting and discussing and plotting and planning. All in all a good evening.

I submitted a completed article to my editor in NY yesterday but have some tweaks to make on the piece now after reading her feedback. Shouldn’t be too difficult, just need to rework some things but I’ll be doing that this weekend.

I’ve spent so much of this week looking for courses, competitions, figuring out which fiction mags to subscribe to etc. that I need to get back to focusing on actually doing some more fiction writing. I’m spending my weekend with Stephen King’s On Writing, which I’ve read several times but it’s a fantastic book and always inspires me when I’m feeling sluggish, and flexing my fictitious muscles with Roberta Allen’s five minute fiction prompts from her book Fast Fiction (which I’ve written about before on this blog). Can’t wait! I’ve discovered that many of my short stories come out of goodness knows where. I actually wrote about a dirt poor little African American girl in the deep South, something that has certainly not come from my personal memory banks. I’ve written about the Kalahari desert and multi-national corporations, divorced parents and talking castles in my fiction. No idea what is going on in my brain, but I’ve discovered I don’t like to think too hard about what to write, because when I do I seem to draw a blank when I say “What should I write about?” Then I go down that slippery slope of “I have nothing to say!” which of course isn’t true. So, more “leaving myself alone” this weekend to pull strange writing tricks out of my head.

In the meantime, with August 1 hovering on our doorstep, I’m hoping that the slow morass of July will soon be nothing more than a  31-day memory and the job boards will be filled with writing, editing, reporting, blogging positions just waiting for me to dive into and bolster my ever-depleting bank account. Bring on August, I say! Bring on the work!

More yoga stretching today – it’s taken almost a week for my body to recuperate from that masochistic gym class.

Wishing all writers a great weekend. Oh, I will also work this weekend on harnessing  yesterday’s BIG idea…

PS. I LOVE the TGIF picture at the top of my blog – but did you notice the typo????? Just wanted to let you know that as a writer, yes I did see it, but the picture was too cute to take down. Aesthetics over accuracy?

The pursuit of (pained) happiness

Only 3:13 p.m. but still it’s been a brilliantly productive day so far. This, despite the fact that my body is a physical wreck from yesterday’s gym class. Lots of stretching, hot showers and L-Glutamine tablets have done nothing but goad my body into laughing maniacally at the pains (literal) I have gone to in my efforts to ease my sore, brutalised muscles. Still, it’s “good” pain, right? It means I didn’t cheat in class (well, I did a bit, but I’m still in pain). So no gym class today – I need a day off, but still stretching and doing light yoga, so I believe that affords me some brownie points, no? Where those brownie points go, and why they are called brownie points is another matter entirely, and not for discussion here – unless someone wants to take it up in the comments section.

In the meantime, I have been thinking only positive thoughts and lots of good karmic energy has been coming my way. Today alone, the following occurred:

• I found a fantastic magazine to pitch my ‘Green’ story to. Will they respond?  I don’t know. But do check out E Magazine, nonetheless. It’s a great mag, promoting a great environmental cause. So whether my pitch is accepted or not, I’m happy to just know they are out there, making the world a little better one step at a time.
• A parcel sent to my brother and sister-in-law in Israel that I sent seven weeks ago with presents for their newborn twins (boy and girl – completely adorable!), went missing. I was devastated. And then today, it showed up! Hooray. They opened it “live” on Skype so I could see them receiving the presents. That can’t help but put a smile on your face. Here’s a picture of my new nephew and niece. His name is Inon and her name is Renana.

Yinon (the "y" is silent) and Renana - born June 10, 2009

• The Aussie child star and her boyfriend accepted a dinner invitation from me and will be round this week to eat and work as we put together our pitch plans to let everyone know she is indeed still alive and well and thriving.
• A pitch I made to a newspaper a couple of weeks ago was accepted today (hooray). Tight deadline, though. It’s due Friday morning (New York) time. So guess what I’ll be working on over the next two days?
• I also received another request to write an article for an online publication today – at least I have a longer deadline – two whole weeks. Hooray! And there’s also the possibility of more work with this particular outlet in the future, so that makes me VERY happy.
• I”m halfway through transcribing my notes for the August 9 deadline.
• I just came across a great web site for submitting fiction to writing contests. It’s on my blog roll too. Check em out if you want to get your fictitious voice out there! It’s called Creative Writing Contests. Straightforward and to the point, no?

So, so far a good day. Still lots to do today, but feeling good, and am on the prowl for great blogs to add to my blog roll. Let me know if you’re aware of great “writing” bloggers out there. Cheers to all!