I Love Life . . . and Motherhood (in its many manifestations)

I love my book. 

 I better. 

I'm its mother.

No one, not even my sweet hubby who's been so supportive of my journey, is as deeply invested in it and my characters as I am. Friends and family try to be good sports about it. There's a lot of eye rolling, but I'm used to it. I went through that with them about Harry Potter, too.

They love me me anyway.

With this R&R, I'm on the 13th edit/rewrite. I've spent so many hours in my characters' company that I know them really well. Better than some of my dearest friends--because real people don't spill all their guts.

My life changed when I had my first child, a son. Until that moment, I'd never truly realized the depth of human love. Of a mother's love. It worried me as I prepared for the birth of my second child if the love I felt for my son would be diminished, divided, with the new addition. Or if I might not be able to love the new baby as much.

Stupid woman.

The love for my son didn't lessen with the coming of my daughter, and the love I felt for my beautiful daughter was no less than what I felt for my son. I discovered an important lesson.

Love defies mathematics.

I'd been operating on the assumption that my capacity to love was a finite thing.

Wrong!

With the addition of each child, I found that my capacity to love increased. It grew so I not only had a greater ability to love all these wonderful little people I had the privilege of mothering, but that I had more love for everyone else as well.

So how does this relate to my book? My other baby?

It means it's okay to fall in love with new projects, new characters, new worlds.

*sigh*

I love being a writer.

Have a wonderful weekend. Summer is almost here. 

 Life is good.

A to Z - Networking

Earlier this month author Robison Wells (Variant) wrote a great post about marketing that also touched on networking. He said it was a rant, and it was, but I think it was a good rant. Rob's day job for many years was marketing, and he has a lot of good information in the post, so I highly recommend that you go read the whole thing. But I want to share this from the post:

"So, let’s try to hammer one thing into our heads. If get nothing else from this blog, get this:

When you see the term “social networking”, ignore the word “networking” and focus on the word “social“. Some people act like Facebook and Twitter and blogging are a chore, and if you have that attitude, then you’ll always hate social networking. But I don’t see it that way. I log into Twitter the first thing every morning to see what my FRIENDS are talking about, and so I can join the conversation. And a lot of these friends are people who I’ve never met in real life. Some are fellow authors. Some are readers. Some are just fun people who I’ve met and built a relationship with.

Yes, that took time, and in those early days when I had few Twitter followers, it wasn’t as much fun. But it’s definitely worth the investment. Now, I feel like I always have someone to talk to, or someone to hear a joke from, or someone who has something insightful to share. It’s like hanging out with your friends all the time.

It’s not a friggin’ chore. It’s a delight. It’s SOCIAL.

And if you don’t like Twitter, then blog. Build your SOCIAL network there, and interact with your commenters. Or on Facebook. Or on YouTube, or Google Plus, or Friendster, or whatever-the-heck else. It doesn’t matter which platforms you chose. Just chose something, and have a good time. Be social. Be fun. Be interesting.

You’re a writer, for crying out loud. If you can’t be fun or interesting for ten minutes a day then maybe you’re in the wrong business."

How do you feel about social networking and how it relates to marketing your books? Is it just a huge burden or are you having fun?

A to Z - Dream Launcher

I would like to acknowledge Tara Tyler who kindly awarded this to me back in March. I just figured it would too good an A to Z post to pass up.

I've always had stories going on in my head. Over two years ago, after finding out about NaNoWriMo too late to participate, I decided to do my own personal one and see if I could even write a novel length story. Thirty days and eighty thousands words later, I found I can.

And I fell in love with writing. The stories in my head are so much more satisfactory now that they are on paper and complete.

Well, kinda complete. I've never met a page I didn't want to edit.

Consider yourself tagged.

What/who helped you launch your writing dreams?

Grammar

When I was a little girl and in school, I could have sworn that my teachers presented grammar as set-in-stone rules. The way they showed me how to do something was the only way to do it. I graduated from high school and moved on to college, and no one ever said anything different.

Well, guess what? I moved into the business world and attended a training session that provided me with a "Duh!" moment.

Latin grammar never changes because Latin is a dead language. Dead? Yes. Because there's nowhere in the world where people actively speak it, so it never changes.

That doesn't work with English. English is a vibrant, ever-changing language. It's the official language in several countries, and each one manages to tweak it in their own way. For example, in 2007, the word Woot was the Merriam-Webster Dictionary word of the year. If you follow the link you'll see what it means. But do you know where it came from? We Owned the Other Team. It's a gaming term that's now being used by people who aren't gamers.

Snarky is another word I like. I heard it for the first time when I became a moderator at the Leaky Lounge. Many of the other moderators are British, and that's been mostly a British term, according to Dictionary.com. But I'm hearing it a lot now, both from people I associate with and on American television and in American books.

This is my first post in a weekly series on grammar (future posts should be shorter). From what I read in books, we writers seem to have a bit more discretion than people in the business world. For example, Jo Rowling uses comma splices all the time. What's a comma splice? It's when you use a comma to connect to standalone sentences. In business writing, it's considered poor grammar.

Ted grabbed the ball. He threw it at Bill.

Ted grabbed the ball, he threw it at Bill. (this is a comma splice.)

Grammatically correct options? You can connect the two sentences with the word "and".

Ted grabbed the ball, and he threw it at Bill.

If the sentences are closely related, you could use a semicolon.

Ted grabbed the ball; he threw it at Bill.

But Rowling's editors didn't find it necessary to edit out all her comma splices, so that implies to me that for writing books (not about grammar or for business), we may have some discretion. Who decides? My guess is your editor.

But everyone needs to know there are different styles of grammar. And the rules are different, depending upon the style you're using. When I teach classes on grammar, I suggest that my coworkers choose one style and be consistent. At work, we use the Gregg Reference Manual. This is business oriented, but it's still a good resource about grammar rules. They update every five years to keep up with trends. Click here if you'd like to see a list of other sources.

Notice in the following (hilarious) video the reference to the Chicago Manual of Style. They aren't talking fashion.

So where are your grammar strengths? How about your weaknesses? What resources do you prefer to use?

Blogging Challenge K(indness)

Something I've experienced quite a lot of in this writing journey is how very kind writers can be to each other. And helpful and supportive. I find this in my day job as well, but I know it's not always the case. I think you fellow writers rock.

Things have been crazy with the blogging challenge and my trip to Ireland, so I haven't had a chance to thank Deirdra Eden-Coppel at A Storybook World for giving me two awards: