National TV-Turnoff Week, April 23-29

Today is the first day of  National TV-Turn Off Week, April 23-29

I have decided to write a list of 101 things for you to do during this week of no TV, should you decide to take on the challange.

1. Go for a walk on the beach.
2. Read a book.
3. Write a book in 7 days.
4. Volunteer at the local  animal shelter.
5. Do a crossword puzzle.
6. Dress up like a pirate.
7. Buy a camera and use it.
8. Play an hours-long game of Monopoly.
9. Grow a crystal garden.
10. Catalog your book collection useing the Dewey Decimal System.
11. Plan a family budget.
12. Go on a camping trip.
13. Plant a vegetable garden.
14. Watch the stars.
15. Sew, knit, or crochet a blanket for a cause (Snuggles, Linus Foundation, etc.)
16. Raise a family of sea monkeys.
17. Answer all those unread emails.
18. Pay your bills.
19. Start a petition.
20. Take your family out to a fancy resturant.
21. Look for BigFoot.
22. Take in a foster pet.
23. Spend a few hours browsing in your local library.
24. Donate pet food to a local shelter.
25. Take a walk around the block.
26. Have a chat with your mom or dad.
27. Go fishing.
28. Organize your DVD collection.
29. Build a personal website.
30. Write a short story for a fiction magazine.
31. Volunteer at the local  soup kitchen.
32. Go sight-seeing.
33. Put the pictures into the photo albums.
34. Throw a “Just-As-You-Are” party.
35. Attempt to prove aliens are real.
36. Visit a local museum.
37. Take your family to an all you can eat buffet.
38. Invent something new.
39. Start to tackle the list of projects that has been getting longer.
40. Head to an amusment park.
41. Take a cruise.
42. Sew a new dress.
43. Get a family photo taken.
44. Take a child to the zoo.
45. Write a letter to someone you haven’t seen in a while.
46. Attend an art show.
47. Vacuum the car.
48. Refinish an old piece of furniture.
49. Write an article for a non-fiction magazine.
50. Go boating.
51. Start a blog.
52. Attend a book reading.
53. Solve a mystery: play a game of Clue.
54. Visit with someone in a nursing home.
55. Go to the circus.
56. Head to your local swamp to pick fiddleheads.
57. Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper.
58. Take a hike in the woods.
59. Visit an art gallery.
60. Open an online store (Zazzle, CafePress, etc.).
61. Take swimming lessons.
62. Quit smoking.
63. Plant a tree.
64. Cook a gourmet dinner.
65. Help your child with his/her homework.
66. Play a game of basketball.
67. Go birdwatching.
68. Wash the windows.
69. Get a makeover.
70. See a play.
71. Repaint your living room.
72. Read a story to a child.
73. Paint a masterpiece.
74. Go on a picnic.
75. Read a comic book.
76. Start a new career.
77. Organize a family reunion.
78. Study up on your family history.
79. Go on a diet.
80. Sing a song.
81. Write a poem.
82. Bake a cake.
83. Go horseback riding.
84. Set up an aquarium.
85. Write a letter to a prisoner.
86. Take up a new hobby, such as stamp collecting.
87. Spend the week looking for UFO’s.
88. Go rock climbing.
89. Dye your hair blue.
90. Wax your car.
91. Redecorate your bedroom.
92. Play video games with your child.
93. Write a business plan for your dream job.
94. Take dance lessons.
95. See a ballet.
96. Buy a box of crayons and draw.
97. Design your dream-house.
98. Make home-made ice-cream.
99. Dress-up and go to the opera.
100. Take you family out to a movie.
101. Visit a haunted house.
102. Write a list of a 101 things you can do.

Quote: “I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” —Groucho Marx 

Submission Guidelines for Moonsnails

 

Basic Submissions Guidlines:

This is a quick overview of our basic guidelines. See our fully detailed guidelines for each seperate genre on our Submission Guidelines website.

Status:
Moonsnails is currently accepting submissions

Title:

Moonsnails Magazine

Magazine Format:(projected)

Quarterly: 6″ x 9″, 96 – 132 pages per issue;
60 lb bright white paper, B&W text; 10pt glossy laminated perfect bound full color cover

Circulation:

world-wide though print on demand

Contact Info:

Wendy C. Allen, editor-in-chief, twighlightmanor@yahoo.com

Submission Format:

Send in body of email, 12pt Courier or Times New Roman or Send at attachment .RTF 12pt Courier or Times New Roman.

Payment:

copies only at this time; buys one time rights, (the right to print story in one issue; author retains copyright)

responce time: 2 – 6 months

Needs:

Short stories up to 13,000 words.

Literary Genre fiction. Cross-gen OK.

Rarely uses poetry. Poetry used only if it can be considered a full-fledged story, complete with characters and plot. Never accepts free-verse.

Genres Accepted:

Sci-fi, Fantasy, Gothic Romance, and “mild” Horror

Sub-Genres and Cross-Genres Accepted:

Action, Adventure, Alien Invasion, Alien Realms, Alternative Histories, Amateur Detective, Americana, Ancient Civilizations, Animal Stories, Biographical Fiction, Christmas, Classic Literature, Colonial America, Cryptozology, Dark Fantasy, Dragon Tales, Easter, Ethnic Fiction, Espionage, Faerie Realms, Fairy Tales, Family Sagas, Fantasy, Folklore, Frontier Sagas, Furries, Futuristic, Ghost Stories, Gothic Romance, Halloween, Hard Science Fiction, Haunted Houses, High Fantasy, High Seas Adventure, Historical, Horror, Humor, Inspirational, Kung Fu, Literary, Mad Scientist Sci-Fi, Mermaid Tales, Military, Mystery, Murder Mystery, Paranormal, Pirate Tales, Psychological Thiller/Terror, Regional: Maine, Regional: Quebec, Romance, Science Fiction, Serials, Short-Shorts, Slueths, Space Fantasy, Space Travel, Spiritual, Sword & Sorcery, Supernatural, Suspence, Thiller, Time Travel, Twilight Zone style, UFO stories, Unicorn Tales, Utopian Realms, Victorian, War, Western, Wizard Tales, Young Adult.

Things Rejected:

Rejects all stories that contain:

abortion, animal abuse, child abuse, cutting, death glorification, depression, depressive self-pity, drinking, drugs, elder abuse, erotica, expose`, gore, hatred, hunting, politics, pornography, sex, smoking, swearing, suicide, vulgar verbology, and stories about “how my teenage years were crap”.

Stories must be family friendly and rated PG-13 or less

Poetry Needs:

We focus on short stories, thus rarely use poetry.

Sometimes accepts poetry, at best it’s only 4 poems per year, IF it tells a story and has strong characters. Same as fiction needs, seeks longer “epic length” story poems akin to Robert Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamlin, Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven or Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs & Ham. Prefers long rhyming poems with strong characters and a strong story plot.

Poetry Rejects:

Same as fiction rejects, plus: Does not accept free-verse poetry, haiku, short poems, poems without characters, poems without plots, meaningless ramblings, odes to…, poems without rhythem, or any other type of poem that does not tell a complete story from beginning to end.

Cover Art:

Usually done “in-house”, but well consider submissions of full-color photography or paintings, covering any genre. Always seeks beach and ocean themed photos or paintings. Do not send originals. Email files as atactment. Files must be compatible with MSWorks, MSPaint, or MSPublisher 97, .jpg files prefered. Note that we can not accept .tif files, our email treats them as a virus and deletes them. See fiction for needs & rejects list. Buys one time rights.

Art & Inside Illustration:

Usually uses spot illustrations and copyright-free/public domain illustration, but well consider submissions of B&W, pen & ink, line art only … no pencil, no shading, no grey-scale, no color, our printer well not accept them. All illustrations must be 4″ x 6″ or smaller and camera ready. Do not send originals. Email files as atactment. Files must be compatible with MSWorks, MSPaint, or MSPublisher 97, .jpg files prefered.  Note that we can not accept .tif files, our email treats them as a virus and deletes them. See fiction for needs & rejects list.

Advice:

Best advise: buy a copy of Brian Froud’s Faeries. Use it as though it were our Submissions Guidelines. Treat it as your Writer’s Bible. Use it to create believable fantasy characters. Never go anywhere without it. If you want to write for us than consider Brian Froud your new best friend, read everything he ever wrote. Study every painting he ever did. Watch every film he ever created. Watch the 2 movies written by Brian Froud: Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.

Read the Retief series by Keith Laumer and The Hitchhicker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. We like that kind of sci-fi best.

Watch Star Trek (the original series), Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, X-Files, and Tales From the Dark Side. Let them inspire you. If your story would make for a good episode on one of them, than we want to see it!

We like to see strong characters. Character driven stories. Well written plots. We like fantasy realms, dreamscapes, and alien planets. Creativity is always welcomed. Pirates are always good, we need more pirates. Always seeking stories about Mermaids, Sirens, Dragons, Unicorns, or other creatures of the Realm of Fay. We like to see characters that Brian Froud would have created.

Let your imagination run wild.

Twighlight Manor Press Home Page

Twighlight Manor Press Home Page

testing tags

having a problem getting posts to show up… testing to see if tags are working yet

LuLu has come a long way

LuLu seems to be on many writers minds lately. It seems like everywhere I go, someone is talking about how they have published a book on LuLu. I look at these people and I say: “LuLu! You have got to be kidding! Who in their right mind would get a book published by LuLu!” I guess you can tell it’s been a very long time since I had any dealings with LuLu. I remember the old LuLu. Quite differant from the LuLu of today.

I remember LuLu when it first started, not sure when that was, but I remember searching Google for self-publishing and finding this little site that boasted to haveing printed “over 100 books”. The site was a total mess, very unprofessional, hard to navigate, and really had no info about what they did. Basicly the whole thing looked like someone had dropped a bomb on Hell. It was terrible. So terrible in fact, that I never went back.

The whole web site was based on a chat-room, and didn’t really have a home page. I remember laughing at it and saying that no one in their right mind would let such a crappy looking web site publish their book.

That was a few years ago, and their site was online, maybe a month at that point, and had a notation that it was “under construction”. I blew it off as someone’s little pipe dream and never gave it a second thought.

Well, last week I was chatting with some fellow writers and one of them was telling me how she was doing her next book with LuLu. I thought “You have got to be kidding! Is that crappy site still going!” She tells me, that yep they were and boy had they changed. So I went and checked it out, and WOW! Did they ever change! It don’t even look like the same site. I’m amazed that they have come so far in just a few short years.

Well, now I’m intreeged. This “new” LuLu has gathered my interest, and I think I’ll test it out. I’ve got a short story, I wrote a while back, but never published anywhere, yet, and I think I’ll test LuLu out with it, see what happens.

While searching for info about LuLu, I also came across this blog. I recomend it to anyone who is thinking of starting a project with LuLu, as the author has written a wounderfully detail step by step instruction of the LuLu publishing process.

I’m interested in hearing of others’ experiances with LuLu. So if you’ve ever published anything with LuLu, feel free to comment and share your thoughts, both the good and the bad. I’d like to know more about LuLu as told by the authors who’ve been published by them

~~EK

Writing Tip: Reaching 50,000 useing the 13 Step method…

I wrote this for NaNoWriMo, but it works for all your writing.

My secret to reaching 50,000

I use the 13 step method… actually it’s the 10 step method, but I like 13, so I changed it.. The 10 Step Method it’s quite a popular method used by many professional best selling writers, not sure who invented it…

anyways it helps me to write a lot of words, real fast, so I thought I’d tell you guys about it, in hopes that it’ll help someone else reach the 50,000 goal too

but here is my 13 Step version of it

Write down

Scene 1
Scene 2

etc, all the way to 13… these are your chapters, plan on having 13 of them

Think about your plot, in terms of 13 tiny stories, than write a title for each… now you have your 13 Chapter Titles

Your list should now read:

Chapter 1: “title here”
Chapter 2: “title here”

etc, all the way to Chapter 13

Now, go back to your list and add the actual scenes:

Chapter 1: The Title Here

scene 1
scene 2
scene 3
scene 4

etc, all the way to 13 scences.

do this for each chapter.

Now go back and write one scentance to describe each scene of each chapter.

Once you have completed this, you well have a complete and detailed outline to take you step by step through your story… print it up and keep it on hand when you are writing, so that you can keep your story running smoothly from one scene to the next (though you can change anything in you outline that needs changes once you start writing… it’s not a hard and fast law that you stick to the outline… the outline, just helps you to write faster, by keeping your original story idea where you can see it)

once you get going the actual writing, you plan on say, write 5 scenes a day… and you’ll find that by useing the writing a scene at a time, rather than going for word count or page count, you well write more and write faster…

I average 3,000 to 10,000 a day useing this method. yet, when I try for word count, I usually get stuck after about 500

try it and see, you’ll be amazed at how well this method works

why does it work? because you are focused on your plot, not the word count, and when you stop thinking about the words, they just start flowing out of you with out you even realizing it

thinking in chapters has helped me so much… I used to just slog along trying to write 1o pages a day… that was the goal I gave myself, 10 pages… it was murder, I kept looking down at the bottom where it said page 1 of 1, etc, and I’d stop and think:

man… I typed all that and I’m still on page 1!

than I tried for word count… and after every sentance I’d stop and check to see how many words I’d done…

“What only 7 words in that sentace! /i’ll never get done at that rate”

than one day, I’m complaining about this to my editor, and he says “get this book”… so I go and I get the book, and it’s pretty good, than I get all the books by this author (writer’s how to books) and all the books she recomended as well… ended up with like 50 books on the art of writing

and in one of them I found this 10-Step method… well me writing horror I changed it to the 13 Step method, cause I try to alway have 13 chapters… and I tried it and wow… I write so fast now! I can’t believe it!

13 works for me, cause I write horror, and I design my stories to be in 13 chapters, with 13 scenes each, cause that’s te way I’ve designed my stories to come out…

you can change it to whatever you need… say you only need 8 chapters with 5 scenes each… than that’s what would work for you…

of course, you don’t need to have the same anount of scenes per chapter either… 5 scens in chapter 1, 2 scenes in chapter 2, 12 scences in chapter 3… whatever you need to carry your story across, is what you should use

that’s what’s so great about this method, you can change it to whatever works for you and your story… there are no hard rules

it helps keep me focused on my story too…

for me, I have a BIIIIG problem, with rambling… I’ll go waaaay off topic inside the thoughts of a minor character… which in itself is not bad, but it goes off the story. Good thing about it is it gives me ideas for a spin-off story, which I write a lot of.

The outline thingy, helps me to stay on my story, I keep looking back at it, and I know where I should be, and I can stay on track easier

bad thing, is, all my spin-off need outlines, and each of them reasult in more spin offs, and I end up with too many outlines and not enough stories LOL! 

I hope this helps!

Blogs for Writers: Fourth Round of Blog Additions

Here is the next round of blogs I plan to add to the Z-List for Writers:

The Working Writers Coach

Sylvia’s Insight
Writer in the Making
Ink In My Coffee
Grow Your Writing Business
DESiGN YOUR WRiTiNG LiFE
KCWrite4u
Wealth of Words
Content Done Better
Writers in the Sky
Musings from a Writer
JM Writing and Editing Services
Renegade Writer
Mrs. Write Right, Word Therapist (aka Writer-Editor)
Practicing Writing
WritingThoughts
Engaging Pages For Working Writers
A writer’s life and times
Six Figure Writers
Write For Life
Writers and Authors
Muse Writers Peer Awards
Will Write 4 Food
National Association of Writers’ Groups
My Words, My Way
Writing for Reason
Funds for Writers
Beginner’s Guide to Freelance Writing
The Rural Writer
Paperback Writer
Creatively Self-Employed
Ye Old Inkwell
Writers in the Sky
Bleeding Ink
Editing for Everyone
Newbie’s Guide to Publishing
Irene Goodman
academia
Pub Rants
EVIL EDITOR
iUniverse
Budding Authors
NaNoWriMo
World of Words
Miss Snark
Absolute Write
101 Sites
Agent Query

Writing Exercise: What is your favorite type of weather?

A sure fire cure for writer’s block. Try it and see, this little trick works wonders for getting you thinking about the atmosphere of a story, thus setting the scene for everything eles.

You know how they say when you can’t think of anything else to say, than just talk about the weather? Well, now, that got me to thinking: Why not? Well, one thought lead to another, and here I am asking you, What is your favorite type of weather? So, I ask you, who says you can’t write a story or get an idea for a story, from writing about the weather? And thus I bring you to this week’s writing exercise. Undertake it with care, for in the wrong hands the weather can be a dangerouse thing.

To help you get started, I’ll first figure out which is mine.

This one was a hard toss up with me… took me a while of sitting here staring at the choices before I could finally decide… here’s how I came to my conclusion and how I voted:at first I was gonna pic Sunny, because it’s my fave type of weather to be out in… the warm sun on my face, the warm earth benearth my toes, birds singings in the trees, a cool breeze with soft fluffy clouds… a sunny day is pure heaven…BUT…I live in the very cold north were a sunny day is a rare a precious thing, we don’t see them often, we’ve had snow in all 12 months of the year, and right in the middle of August it’s only in the 50′s F. Here we get alot of snow… 2 years ago we had 102″ (yeah that’s 9 feet)… I like the snow, it’s a peaceful quite thing, soft and fluffy, yet cold and dealy… like a viper, laying beatiful on the ground but well kill you if it had the chance… I almost voted for Snow

…hhhmm…

than I saw Thunder Storms… brillant blazing flashes of purple lights and blue streaks that dazzle across the sky like fireworks, thrundous crackles and booms that shake the ground, wind that rips giant pines off their root stalks and throws then through your house (this happened to us dueing Hurrican Bob)… terrifing and exhilerating, I love a good thunder storm, but I didn’t vote for them either…

ahhhhh…

here we are… Twilight Zone music plays in the background… Alfred Hitchcock slowly come walking in and tells us how birds are such sweet little things… Vincent Price cackles with wicked glee as the pendulum comes swinging closer and coser threatening to rip you in half… and all the while a thick dense fog is rolling in from off the marsh… the lighthouse warns of it’s impending doom, while the Ripper stalks the streets of London under its silvery cloak… and Poe sermonizes on the fears of death and ravens… FOG… it’s the thing nightmares are made of, it send thrills and chills tingling down your spine, it gives you atmoshere and opens your eyes to fears you never knew existed…

and than there’s OOB, my home town, Fog is the weather we see each night, as the tide rolls in, bringing with it the salty mist of the night, filling the air with the smell of lobsters and seaweed… I live in a fishing village in Maine… I love the smell of the salty foggy air that floods our yard each morning…

as much as I enjoy sunny days, snowy winters, and stormy nights… it’s the fog that reaches in and touches my very soul… I voted for FOG

Second Round of Blog Additions

Here is the second round of blogs I plan to add to the Z-List for Writers:

Writing Fiction
Crime Fiction Dossier
Kathryn Cramer
WritersWrite.com
Writer’s Beware
The Fiction Writing Blog: Articles, Writing Exercises, Prompts and More….
sfsignal.com
Bowing to the Future
David Louis Edelman
Louise Marley
Among Amid While
Authors Blogs
The Writer’s Life

First Round of Blog Additions

Here is the first round of blogs I plan to add to the Z-List for Writers:

Writing White Paper
Fiction Scribe
How To Write and Blog Better
Write Now!
So You Want To Write
Rosebud
Lighthouses
Storyteller
INKSLINGER
Book Blog
Alicia’s Writing Forum
A Writers Words an Editors Eye
Suspence Thriller
The Conjurers
A Writers Eye With Jacob Malewitz
Bearing Life
52 Novels
Write and Publish Fiction
Custom Book Publishing
Library Girl
CopyBlogger
Freelance Writing Jobs
These Words
Finding the Right Words
Reading For Writers
Successful Blog(gers)
Copy Writer Underground
Angela Booth’s Writing Blog
Ink Thinker
Ask Allison
Content Done Better
The Golden Pencil
Blogs In Space
The Human Race
The Black Blog(Italian)
OLIN e-Book e-Publishing
How to Promote Your Self-Published eBook (or Print!)
Corner of Writers Block
Scribe Life
O Making Many Books
Dragons of the Pyramid Book Reviews
WriteLines
Fantasy SF Horror

Is your blog on this list? If not let me know so I can add it.

Blogs for Writers

 

I’m planning on doing an update for my Z-List for writers. I’ll be posting the new edition in the next week or so. For now I am searching the net for blogs geared for writers, blogs by writers, blogs about the writing life, blogs that give writing lessons, and other such blogs that would be of interest to novelists everywhere. While most of the blogs I have added thus far are blogs that I read, I am looking for suggestions. What I mean is: If you are a writer and you have a blog for other writers, feel free to leave a comment on this post with a link to your blog so I can check it out. If it fits the type of blog I’m looking for, I’ll add it to the next edition of The Z-List for Writers. I look forward to reading your blogs.

For those of you who don’t know what The Z-List is, here is an explaination:

Like the chain letter, the Z-List contains addresses, but it differant in that it never asks you to buy anything. You don’t even have to buy a stamp. The Z-List is the chain mail for bloggers. It gets a blog pingbacks and inbound links, and helps to send more traffic to the blog, hopefully traffic that well stay on to become regular readers.

Anyone can start a Z-List. It’s easy. Just take a list of Blogs which you enjoy reading, and put them in a post on your own blog. Some say not to add your Blog to the list, while others say to go ahead and put your Blog right on the top of the list. Well, it’s your Blog and your list so you can put links to any Blog you please in it.

With the list you leave a message, asking that the next person to read this post, copies it and pastes it into the next post they make on their own Blog. They are free to add as many Blog links to the list as they like, and they are welcome to remove any links that are already in the list, if they feel that theose Blogs are inappropiate to be linked back to their own Blog.

Most Z-Lists start out with five or ten links, but after being passed on to just ten more bloggers, that Z-List can quickly have 100 or more links in it. The advantage of this is, that for each post, that each Blog in each link, well recieve a ping-back for that post. In other words, their Blog becomes linked to your Blog and your Blog to thiers, making it a win-win situation for both your Blog and their Blog, by raising the inbound link ranking with such places a Technorati and Google, meaning that you Blog moves higher in the ranks on search engins, resulting in more people finding your Blog and giving you more readers. Great huh? Absolutely!

P.$.

I only accept family friendly blogs into my Z-Lists, so blogs that promote sex, porn, hate, racism, violence, hunting, guns, drugs, and other such acts are never added to any of my Z-Lists. If after addition to one of my Z-Lists, I later find that such posts and links have been added to the blog, the blogs link well be removed from all of my Z-Lists.

Please note, that spam posts are deleted automaticlynow, cause I got sick of scrolling through dozens of Porn and sex posts. Blogs that are about or link to sex or porn sites are automaticle scanned and deleted and I never even see them at all now, sobe sure your blog has no sex or porn on it or linked to it, before you post it, because it well never be reviewd if it does.

  

This is the Z-List for Writers as it originally appeared. As you can see, it was thrown together as I read the blogs, with no rhymn nor reason. The new edition, well be in alphabetical order.

The Z-List, EK Edition 1.0: Blogs for Writers

The Copywriting Maven
Click Here to Advertise on My Blog
EK’s Star Log, the Pink Edition
EK’s MySpace Blog
Wayfarers Journal
Calling On All Serius Bloggers To Read This And Respond
Are most writing contests even worth it anymore?
Writer’s Block
writers are horribly boring
journalcomic
Troy Worman’s Blog
Copywriter’s Crucible
Copywriting Tuneups
bizsolutionsplus 
Servant of Chaos
darrenbarefoot.com
ANITA’S OWL CREEK BRIDGE
Decadent Tranquility
Welcome to Axe’s Asylum
NaNoWriMo: I Won!
Whew!
Hawaii, My New Novelwriting : thinkmap visual thesaurus
1minute book reviews
livingthequarterlife
Naughty Heather
Mom & Much More
ninglun
lew-lew
Writing Mamas take note
what you write
the book
Blog Of The Problematique
Chasing The Starlight
Saipan Writer
a lifetime of dreaming
 antithete
Michigan::Flint Red Hot Writers Blog
1 Word 2 Words
NaNoCaiRo
The Dream Thief
Reality is Running Away

Product Review: BremanTown Musicians

As posted on Xavier’s Nest:

Copper Cockeral’s newest design is Bremen Town Musicians featuring 4 of EelKat’s pets: Thunder Puff the wild pony, Junior the Bearded Collie, Utopia the Albino Siamese Cat, and Spot the White Crested Black Polish Rooster.

Thinking Blogger Awards

I was just reading THIS POST on THIS BLOG, and thought it was such a great idea that I had to copy the post over to here, so that I could keep it for future referance… it gave me some new ideas on blog promotion, now I must go work on that.

March 2nd, 2007 by womensspace

I am a normally a conscientious objector to the “meme” or “tagged” thingy , but I kinda like the idea of the “Thinking Blogger Award,” and since Witchy-Woo tagged me, I figured, why not, just this one time. 

These are the rules:

1. If/when you get tagged, write a post with links to five blogs that make you think.

2. Also link to this post so that readers can track the meme to its origins.

3. If you want, display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ on your blog with pride – and a link to the post you wrote to pass it on.

Of course, there are far more than five blogs which make me think! Everybody who blogs and posts here makes me think!  Everybody who posts here and doesn’t have a blog makes me think! But here goes anyway.

Ballastexistenz  Reading Amanda Baggs’s writings at Ballastexistenz has been and is an ongoing experience of consciousness-raising for me.  Her posts and comments about language, coercion, medicine, psychology, her day-to-day life  as an autistic woman,  are a goldmine.  They continually challenge, provoke and inspire me.  I know Amanda is tired right now because of recent media publicity, and I hope being tagged will be a welcome and energizing diversion as opposed to a burden! 

Radical Goddess Theology  I really appreciate Athana’s thoughtful, interesting and educated writings about the dangers of male deities to all life, about saving the planet, and about the centrality and primacy of unconditional love as modeled by female deities.   I love her writings about mutuality, gifting and gift economies, matriarchy (as not an “-archy” at all), consensus decision-making,  and the importance of bringing the day of the male bully gods to an end.

Stanselen  I am really appreciating Jo, who is an anarchafeminist.  I’ve connected with a couple anarchafeminists recently online, have added them to my blogroll and vice versa, and I am loving reading them!  There’s an old Second Wave article around somewhere in which the author says something like, “Anarchy is the theory, radical feminism is the practice.”  So true!  I connect so well with these women’s writings because at their core, our views are so much the same.  I’ve got a blog post fomenting about anarchy and am looking forward to writing it, thanks, in part to reading Jo and her sister anarchafeminists.

Midwife: Sage Femme This is the beautifully-written blog of a  homebirth midwife who is lesbian mother.  She and her partner are raising their three children together.  I so appreciate Sage Femme’s compassionate, respectful, woman-honoring writings, her amazing birth stories, her counsel in the tradition of wise woman healers and mystics, and her practical, down-to-earth advice.

Amy’s Brain Today  Amy and her partner, Kya, are radical feminist lesbian separatists whose writings and photographs never fail to inspire and teach me, whether they’re writing about the oppression of women,  their land dyke oddyssey, womyn’s community, war tax resistance, woman-only space, radical feminist sexuality, radical feminist history or theory, whatever they write about, they write as thoughtful revolutionaries committed to living the dream in all of its mundane, difficult, frustrating, challenging, heady and nourishing glory.  I’m so glad you two are in the world!  You give me so much hope.

Well, I could go on like this forever.  I would have liked to include Professor Zero, Chasing Moksha, Shannon at Egotistical Whining,  Twisty, Sokari at Black Looks, Trula Mama, Womanish Words, Tiyospayenow, Uppity, Rural Womyn, Ginmar, Compartments, Ann Bartow, Heather, argh, there are way too many women who make me think!  But I have to follow instructions, so those are my five. 

Heart

This is kind of a lot like my “beloved” Z-Lists crossed with web reviews… such a great thing to do!

~~EK

The Z-List, EK Edition 2.04: The Ultimate D-List

Like the chain letter, the Z-List contains addresses, but it differant in that it never asks you to buy anything. You don’t even have to buy a stamp. The Z-List is the chain mail for bloggers. It gets a blog pingbacks and inbound links, and helps to send more traffic to the blog, hopefully traffic that well stay on to become regular readers.

Anyone can start a Z-List. It’s easy. Just take a list of Blogs which you enjoy reading, and put them in a post on your own blog. Some say not to add your Blog to the list, while others say to go ahead and put your Blog right on the top of the list. Well, it’s your Blog and your list so you can put links to any Blog you please in it.

With the list you leave a message, asking that the next person to read this post, copies it and pastes it into the next post they make on their own Blog. They are free to add as many Blog links to the list as they like, and they are welcome to remove any links that are already in the list, if they feel that theose Blogs are inappropiate to be linked back to their own Blog.

Most Z-Lists start out with five or ten links, but after being passed on to just ten more bloggers, that Z-List can quickly have 100 or more links in it. The advantage of this is, that for each post, that each Blog in each link, well recieve a ping-back for that post. In other words, their Blog becomes linked to your Blog and your Blog to thiers, making it a win-win situation for both your Blog and their Blog, by raising the inbound link ranking with such places a Technorati and Google, meaning that you Blog moves higher in the ranks on search engins, resulting in more people finding your Blog and giving you more readers. Great huh? Absolutely!

Daily Blog Tips

DaisyCake — oh yeah! crafty crap!

Dane Carlson

darrenbarefoot.com

Design Sojourn

Did You Ever Get the Feeling… Difference Make Identity

The Digital Cloud

Dinosaurs: A Creationist’s Fairy Tale

Dipping into the Blogpond

Dishpan Dribble Do You Have Issues?

DoshDosh

DotMySpot.com

Dove Pro-Age Campaign

Drew’s Marketing Minute

A droll way to look at things.

The Z-List, EK Edition 2.03: The Ultimate C-List

Like the chain letter, the Z-List contains addresses, but it differant in that it never asks you to buy anything. You don’t even have to buy a stamp. The Z-List is the chain mail for bloggers. It gets a blog pingbacks and inbound links, and helps to send more traffic to the blog, hopefully traffic that well stay on to become regular readers.

Anyone can start a Z-List. It’s easy. Just take a list of Blogs which you enjoy reading, and put them in a post on your own blog. Some say not to add your Blog to the list, while others say to go ahead and put your Blog right on the top of the list. Well, it’s your Blog and your list so you can put links to any Blog you please in it.

With the list you leave a message, asking that the next person to read this post, copies it and pastes it into the next post they make on their own Blog. They are free to add as many Blog links to the list as they like, and they are welcome to remove any links that are already in the list, if they feel that theose Blogs are inappropiate to be linked back to their own Blog.

Most Z-Lists start out with five or ten links, but after being passed on to just ten more bloggers, that Z-List can quickly have 100 or more links in it. The advantage of this is, that for each post, that each Blog in each link, well recieve a ping-back for that post. In other words, their Blog becomes linked to your Blog and your Blog to thiers, making it a win-win situation for both your Blog and their Blog, by raising the inbound link ranking with such places a Technorati and Google, meaning that you Blog moves higher in the ranks on search engins, resulting in more people finding your Blog and giving you more readers. Great huh? Absolutely!

Calico Monkey

Calling On All Serius Bloggers To Read This And Respond

Can I Make Big Money Online

The Case of The Bulletproof Harpist

Celebrating Holidays Everyday Celebrityday

Chasing The Moon……

Cherry, Plum, Peach and Damson Blossoms CKs Blog

Click Here to Advertise on My Blog

Clo’s Fascinating Things.

Coffee2go

Coleman Web – The personal Website of Anthony P. Coleman

The College Marketer

Community Guy

Composing Myself

Conspiracy Theory, UFOs, and Alternative Topics

converstations

Copywriter’s Crucible

The Copywriting Maven

Copywriting Tuneups

CrapHammer

Creating Passionate Users

Creative Confusion

Crisisblogger

Critique My Blog

Crumbling Spires

Customers Rock!

Curbside View

The Z-List, EK Edition 2.0: The Ultimate A to Z-List

Note: I am editing this post, so that it’s an a-z list…. 

Still researching Z-Lists… well, this time I searched Google for Z-Lists, and now I’m going to post the longest Z-List you well find any where!

Copy This entire  post to your blog, for inclusion in this The Ultimate Z-List!The Z-List: A great wonderful idea to help advertise blogs. Yes? Yes. I think anyone who has used the Z-List well agree with that. The principle behind the Z-List is the same as a chain letter. In a chain letter, you mail a letter to five people. One that letter is the addresses of five more people. Each person who recieves a letter, adds five new addresses, and sends those to the five addresses on the letter that they had recieved. The piont of a chain mail is to send the same letter to an ever increasing network. Useualy the letter is an advertisement for something being sold. Basicly it’s a lot of free advertiseing for a company, based on “word of mouth”.

Like the chain letter, the Z-List contains addresses, but it differant in that it never asks you to buy anything. You don’t even have to buy a stamp. The Z-List is the chain mail for bloggers. It gets a blog pingbacks and inbound links, and helps to send more traffic to the blog, hopefully traffic that well stay on to become regular readers.

Anyone can start a Z-List. It’s easy. Just take a list of Blogs which you enjoy reading, and put them in a post on your own blog. Some say not to add your Blog to the list, while others say to go ahead and put your Blog right on the top of the list. Well, it’s your Blog and your list so you can put links to any Blog you please in it.

With the list you leave a message, asking that the next person to read this post, copies it and pastes it into the next post they make on their own Blog. They are free to add as many Blog links to the list as they like, and they are welcome to remove any links that are already in the list, if they feel that theose Blogs are inappropiate to be linked back to their own Blog.

Most Z-Lists start out with five or ten links, but after being passed on to just ten more bloggers, that Z-List can quickly have 100 or more links in it. The advantage of this is, that for each post, that each Blog in each link, well recieve a ping-back for that post. In other words, their Blog becomes linked to your Blog and your Blog to thiers, making it a win-win situation for both your Blog and their Blog, by raising the inbound link ranking with such places a Technorati and Google, meaning that you Blog moves higher in the ranks on search engins, resulting in more people finding your Blog and giving you more readers. Great huh? Absolutely!

Absorbingneutrino

adsense4dummies

Adventures in Parenting Adventures in the SF Trade

Africa Unchained

aialone

The All-Grown-Up Woman

Ally’s

Anderson Daily Photo

Andrew pakpahanAngel Feathers Tickle Me

Anne 2.0

Another great blog about earning money

Anthony’s Blog

Apache

Are most writing contests even worth it anymore?

Arthur’s Hall of Viking Manliness

Aspiring Comedian

The Asylum of TerminalFrost

Altjiranga Mitjina Awesomely Amazing

Bathos

Battlestar Galactica Blog BecKaDoodles

Being Peter Kim

Billions With Zero Knowledge

bizsolutionsplus

Blogging Secret

Blogging to Fame

Blog-Op

Blogtrepreneur

BlogSire

Bob Sutton

Boise Wants Jay Mariotti

The Branding Blog

Branding & Marketing

Branding and Marketing

BrandSizzle

Broadband and Me

Bullshitobserver

The Busy Dad Buzzoodle

Calico Monkey

Calling On All Serius Bloggers To Read This And Respond

Can I Make Big Money Online

The Case of The Bulletproof Harpist

Celebrating Holidays Everyday Celebrityday

Chasing The Moon……

Cherry, Plum, Peach and Damson Blossoms CKs Blog

Click Here to Advertise on My Blog

Clo’s Fascinating Things.

Coffee2go

Coleman Web – The personal Website of Anthony P. Coleman

The College Marketer

Community Guy

Composing Myself

Conspiracy Theory, UFOs, and Alternative Topics

converstations

Copywriter’s Crucible

The Copywriting Maven

Copywriting Tuneups

CrapHammer

Creating Passionate Users

Creative Confusion

Crisisblogger

Critique My Blog

Crumbling Spires

Customers Rock!

Curbside View

Daily Blog Tips

DaisyCake — oh yeah! crafty crap!

Dane Carlson

darrenbarefoot.com

Design Sojourn

Did You Ever Get the Feeling… Difference Make Identity

The Digital Cloud

Dinosaurs: A Creationist’s Fairy Tale

Dipping into the Blogpond

Dishpan Dribble Do You Have Issues?

DoshDosh

DotMySpot.com

Dove Pro-Age Campaign

Drew’s Marketing Minute A droll way to look at things. EK’s MySpace Blog

EK’s Star Log

EK’s Star Log, the Pink Edition

ElsaElsa – The Advice Blog

The Emerging Brand

Emily Chang – eHub

The Engaging Brand

eSoup

FEAR AND LOATHING IN LONDON

Ficken Chingers

Flee the Cube

Flooring the Consumer

For Queen and Country

Frank Uncovers Excellence in Leadership Frazzled Lashawn

Frozen Puck

The Fun Hunt

Getting Rich

gDiapers

Giraffe Blog!

Golden Practices

Grasshopper Ramblings

Gritty Thoughts

Guy Fawkes

Half a Dozen Streets

Haunting Thunder

Hee-Haw Marketing

Hidoi Desu: Sayonara’s Dull Blog

Hillary Clinton’s Blog

Hits and Mythses

Hochiak! Delicious Asian Food

¡Hola! Oi! Hi!

Home with Heather

How to Earn Money Blogging

How To Earn Money Online

I didn’t understand ghosts and spirits If Ya Want to Make Money In.co.her.ent~ish

Indians in China Indigus Interactive Health

Internet Bazaar

INTRADAY TIPS Is there God indeed?

I’ve got you under my skin

Jake and Sarah

John Wagner

Jottings From Jersey

journalcomic

Journey to a new found ME!

Kinetic Ideas

kipperfrog

Knitty In Pink

Kumiko’s Cash Quest

La Bella Noire’s Ramblings

Late Developer

Learning To Be Dad

Lee Carlon’s Writing Blog

Life

The Life and Times of Apparently Crazy Lil’ Duck Duck

Logic + Emotion

MapleLeaf 2.0

Marketing Nirvana

The Making of an Internet Entrepreneur

The Meaning Of Life

memetherapy.net

Metaphysics As A Guide to Lunch

The Metaresonant Temple

Mike’s Money Making Mission

The Million Dollar Experiment

The million dollar experiment down under

Miscellaneous Adventures of an Aussie Mum

The Moment It Hit

Monetize Your Blog

Money!

The Money Spider’s Guide to Earning Money from your Web Blog

Mountain Bikes And Life The Moving (Middle) Finger Writes Multi-Cult Classics

Musings of a chick

My Journey to One Million Dollars

My Life

my little corner of my little world

My Quest to Success

The Nice Guy

Nick Rice

Nifty Chart

On Influence & Automation

One Reader at a Time

One Student Doctor’s Thoughts

One Thing

Online Money Reviews and Tips

Out in the Parking Lot

Own Your Brand!

Pablo Pabla’s Whatever

Pacifist Guerilla

The PaperBirdBlog

Peculiar Lives

Perspective

PhotoShop Sims

Pixelated Abe Poet Skinny’s Webpicks

Popcorn n Roses

Pow! Right Between The Eyes!

PRACTiCAL CHiCK

Presentation Zen

Promoting Your Site

Quest 4 Sanity

The Quest Of Nik

Quest to make money on the internet Rainyuki

Ramblings Of An Undisturbed Mind Rambling On

Random Encounters of We raving lunacy

Risk Exile An Allegorical

Ruminate this site

RyeUrn – A Blog Kegful of Wry

The Sartorialist

Savvyology Designs

Say It, Don’t Spray It

The Seaside Stitcher

Semicolon

Servant of Chaos

Shameless Complacency

Shut Up and Drink the Kool-Aid!

Shady’s Blog

ShawnAllison.com

Shivered Sky

Shotgun Marketing Blog

Skittles’ Place

Small Surfaces

Smeg’s Window

SMogger Social Media Blog

Smoldering Embers In a Mohawk Campfire

Snark Fest

Social Media on the fly

Social Misfit

Standing under the Sky

SuccessCREEations

Successful Blog

Sunshine

Tawny Taylor

Tell Ten Friends

This Writing Life

Thoughtz from da HEADoc

Time to Budget

To be Mrs. Marv…

Troy Worman’s Blog

Two Hat Marketing

Turn Your Blog Into Money Making Machine

Trapped in the Body of a Civil Servant…Help!!!

The Ugly Truth

The Ultimate “Make Money Online” Blog

Unconventional Thinking

Us Danes & Our Family

Using My Powers for Good

Velcro City Tourist Board

Viaspire

The Weird World of MerapuMan What is Brand?

When You Brake Up With Someone..

Where Worlds Collide The Wicked Bitch of the West Side With A Turn And A Twist She Gets Her Wish

The Wombat Cage

Women, Art, Life: Weaving It All Together

Woolgathering

Working at Home on the Internet

World Blog Collection

Wormbrain

Write now

Writer’s Block

writers are horribly boring

WTIT WVUA-TV Weather Blog

Yada Yada Yada The Z List

Zamphir Panflutemaster

Volume31.org My Fun House 

Life’s a Dance

The Babblings of Whimsicalnbrainpan

Opinion Minions

Acne Treatments and Information

How to get healthier

Naturopathic Medicine

Always Sleepy

PCOS Gurl’s Blog

Meditation for Enlightenment

The Gnostic World of Candy Minx

Brow of Calm

Short Story Blog

Books Love Me

Southern Expressions

Rugjeff’s Blog

The Simple Blog

Investor Market News

Gifts-For-Kids-And-Pets

Paid Mails

Consolidate Debt Loan

Earning online from MyLot

Earn at Home Tips

Some Useless Info

CASHSPEAK

April Decheine 2006 at a glance

Crazed Mama’s Work At Home Strategies

Wizened Wizard

My World

Terri Terri Quite Contrary

The Far Queue

Duct Tape Diaries

Christy’s Coffee Break

Weight Loss Diet

I-Bibliophile Library

Thoughts and Imagery From the World of Karl Moore

Hot Tatoo Dot Com

Blind Copy

SaF Investments

Stello Blog

Bob Sutton

Perspective

Ramblings from a Glass Half Full

Simplicity Mary’s Blog

Funny Business

Creative Think

The Copywriting Maven

Brain Based Biz

Experienceology

QAQNA

Shut Up and Drink the Kool-Aid!

MineThatData

Design Sojourn

aialone

Frozen Puck

Africa Unchained

Energy Blog

Movie Marketing Madness

gDiapers

Time to Budget

Soloride

Girls Swimsuits

Home Business Wiz

Working at Home on the Internet

Kristie T

Asia Inspection Community

Employment Law Colorado

Leading Questions

Steve Olson

Make It Great!

You Already Know This Stuff

HolyMama!

My Marrakesh

Gangster Sonny

Talking Story

AENDirect

Being Peter Kim

BizandBuzz

bizsolutionsplus

Blog Till You Drop!

Branding & Marketing

Business Garden

Buzz Canuck

Buzzoodle

Christine Kane

CKs Blog

Conversation Agent

converstations

CrapHammer

Customers Rock!

Diva Marketing

Dmitry Linkov

Drew’s Marketing Minute

eSoup

Flooring the Consumer

Get Shouty!

Golden Practices

Hee-Haw Marketing

Hola! Oi! Hi!

Jeremy Latham’s Blog

John Wagner

Kinetic Ideas

Logic + Emotion

Marketing Hipster

Marketing Nirvana

Mindblob

Multi-Cult Classics

Nick Rice
On Influence & Automation

OTOInsights

Pardon My French

Pow! Right Between The Eyes!

Purple Wren

Servant of Chaos

Shotgun Marketing Blog

Small Business Blogging

Tell Ten Friends

The Branding Blog

The Experience Curve

The Instigator Blog

The Marketing Minute

The Viral Garden

Two Hat Marketing

Unconventional Thinking

Viaspire

Popcorn n Roses

Current World news

Choice at Your Fingertips

Blogtrepreneur

Can I Make Big Money Online

Dosh Dosh

Internet Bazaar

Kumiko’s Cash Quest

Million Dollar Experiment heads Down Under

Quest to make money on the internet

Above Popular

Critical Fluff

Forged Euphoria

OrbitNow!

The Sartorialist

Bullshitobserver

New Millenium PR

The New PR

Carpe Factum

Work, in Plain English

turned out

Evolution…not just a theory anymore

SEO Blog

Flee the Cube

Community Guy

A Free and Decent Blog Host

Billions With Zero Knowledge

Connected Internet

darrenbarefoot.com

Deepak

MapleLeaf 2.0

Scott Burkett’s Pothole on the Infobahn

Small Surfaces

TechBuzz

Masey.com

Through the Lenses

Travel And Vacation On Blog

The Best Guides to eCommerce with Favor

Web Metrics Guru

The Future of the Web

Social Media on the fly

http://asyuu.asablo.jp/blog/

The Z-List, EK Edition 1.0: Blogs for Writers

The Copywriting Maven

Click Here to Advertise on My Blog

EK’s Star Log, the Pink Edition

EK’s MySpace Blog

Wayfarers Journal

Calling On All Serius Bloggers To Read This And Respond

Are most writing contests even worth it anymore?

Writer’s Block

writers are horribly boring

journalcomic

Troy Worman’s Blog

Copywriter’s Crucible

Copywriting Tuneups

bizsolutionsplus 

Servant of Chaos

darrenbarefoot.com

ANITA’S OWL CREEK BRIDGE

Decadent Tranquility

Welcome to Axe’s Asylum

NaNoWriMo: I Won!

Whew!

Hawaii, My New Novel

1minute book reviews

livingthequarterlife

Naughty Heather

Mom & Much More

ninglun

lew-lew

Writing Mamas take note

what you write

the book

Blog Of The Problematique

Chasing The Starlight

Saipan Writer

a lifetime of dreaming

 antithete

Michigan::Flint Red Hot Writers Blog

1 Word 2 Words

NaNoCaiRo

The Dream Thief

Reality is Running Away

Author! Author!

Backstory

Deserved Indulgence

Heather Harper

Hulles

Observations From Missy’s Window

Paperback Writer

Plot Monkeys

ProBlogger

Putting It All Together

Rachel Vincent

The Write Snark

Write Stuff

The Incurable Disease of Writing

Writer’s Edge

101 Reasons to stop writing

An Innocent A-Blog

At Home in Rome

Confessions of…
TracyPlaces
Web Worker Daily
5-web-based-entrepreneurship-experiments
Crushing Krisis
theLactivist

Arkansas Times Daily Blog

E-r-u-d-i-t-e Redneck (I must not be Erudite cause I cain’t even SPELL it)

Entertainment Fort Smith magazine

Find Yourself in Fort Smith

HotSoup

lucidpoints.com

RiverValley411

The Five Forty

Feedback Secrets Blog

Geekwhat
Hundred Dollar Business
Juice Feed

Robert Afnani’s Blog

CraveOnline.com

Diversified Stocks

TalkMatic
Gigaom
internet business daily
Tom Ferris

Motherwear Blog

Mama Knows Breast

Breastfeeding 1-2-3

TulipGirl

doulicia

MaMa C-Ta

Jen’s Musings

ChewyMom

A Little Pregnant

Making it Up

Mocha Milk

Breastfeeding Mums
Friends of Star Log
Navelgazing Midwife
Spring Widgets

Antiwar.com

FreeTalk Live

Get Ready!

Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church

Ivey
Nikole Conspiracies
Jeremiah
The Debris Files
Kindom Trees
Miss Conspiracy
LewRockwell.com
Moonage Spacedreams
LibertyConspiracy.com
Revelations
Ludwig von Mises Institute
John Bitch Society
New Hampshire Underground
Conspiracy of Care
Samurai Appliance Repair Man
Freedom Philadelphia
The Samurai Appliance Repair Forums
Freedom Fight
Tim
The Zeniod Files
Tregubov Studios
911 Blogger

Overcoming Writer’s Block With Free Writing

Free writing is sitting down and writing freely, as the name implies. You do not think about what you are going to write, you do not think about such things as spelling, neatness, punctuation, and grammar. You simply write for the sake of writing. Write about anything. If you can’t think of anything to write you can type the alphabet over and over, or write about why your computer screen starts out blue, or the neighbor walking his dog, or why you hate/love a certain topic that was just on the news.

If you should discover you have writer’s block so bad, that even your free writing ink well comes up dry, you can try this method of free writing instead. I call it “Word Association Free Writing”. It’s probably the easiest writing you well ever do. Pick a word, any word…a color perhaps? Red. Or how about a number? Thirteen. A person maybe? Your favorite singer/actor. What about a place? Old Orchard Beach Maine. A thing? A house. An animal? A white cat. A plant? A blue rose. The possibilities are endless. Look around the room, what do you see? Pick an object and write about it. Look out the window, write about something you see out there. Pick up a dictionary, open any page, and write the first word you see.

Once you have picked out the word you have chosen to write about…write it in big letters at the top of the page. Look at this word. what does it make you think of? Write it down. Remember that this is free writing. You are not writing an easy, so don’t worry about researching anything, don’t even think about spelling or punctuation. Don’t worry if you change the subject, go off topic and start writing about something else. All you want to do right now is write. Write freely, uninhibited by worries or fears or rules and regulations. Writing only for the pure and simple sake of writing. To fill up as much space on the page or pages as possible.

You may have started out writing about a feather, than somehow found yourself talking about trees, and before you know it, you’ve started lecturing your “invisible readers” about the dangers of cutting down tropical forests. I did just that once. Started out by describing a small white feather I saw laying on the ground. I just described the size and shape and color of it. Then as I kept writing I had begun to question the bird from which the feather fell, speculating on varies breeds. Some how that reminded me of trees, maybe because birds live in tress? I don’t know, but somehow I had moved on to talking about forest trees in general, than pine trees in particular, than trees being cut for lumber, and finally I had moved on to whole forests being cut down, and started lecturing in great detail all the hows and whys it should not be down. I had quite a rant going there. And it had all started as free writing about a little white feather.

You well discover that free writing, helps you to free your mind of worries and fears, such as, “Well I offend my readers?” or “Well critics hate what I am saying?” or “Well the editor reject this one too?”. You’ll discover that because you are free writing, because no one well ever see what it is you have written, that you well loosen up and let your writer’s spirit soar. You well let your writing flow free. You’ll feel like a wild stallion running across the great wild grasses, or the eagle soaring high in the clouds. Who cares if you go off topic! Who cares if you miss spell words! Who cares that you aren’t using proper grammar! Your spirit is free! You are soaring across the page. Your words are flying from your fingertips! Feel the wind as your pens glide across the page. And write, just write. Write, until you can write no more.

When you have finished writing, don’t bother to go back and read it. Just put it away, and go back to the project at hand. You’ll find that you are now able to write your story/report/whatever, with much more freedom. Your story well flow better now that you have cleared your mind of stress and fear. Now, there’s no saying that those stresses and fears won’t creep back in tomorrow, because most likely they well. And if they do, just start another session of free writing to clear you head once again.

But what do you do with all of those free writing sessions? Should I just throw them away? Goodness no! Put them all in a drawer or folder, and someday when you have a spare moment, sit down, pull one out and read it. You’ll be amazed, and maybe even a little shocked. You’ll say something along the lines of: “Did I really write this? This is good!” You may find ideas for new stories, in some cases, you well discover that, you have on your hands a saleble article, that just needs a little polishing up.

Click Here to Advertise on My Blog

Writing Exercise: Dragons

I was sent an IM message through Proboards… a spam IM that was sent to everyone who was online, I  get them a lot, but this one was a bit differant. This one asked the question:

“Do you like dragons?”

I like dragons  but they don’t realy rank in my top fave things… they are up there though, just not in the top 5 list…

top 5 list:

• Merakins (deadliest of the Salt Water Sirens – I love the so rarely mentioned, males)
• Phookas (evil shape shifters, with a taste for blood – not to be confused wit, h Pookas like Harvey)
• Sirens other than Merakins (including Merfolk, Greenwitches, Selkies, Gwayiths, etc)
• Chrystonites (blue skined creatures with an icey touch)
• Dryads (tree spirits, often bad tempered)

Guess you can tell, I’m also a HUGE fan of Bryan Froud and the darker side of the Realm of Fay aka The Faerie Realme`

Of course, you know me, I just had to turn this into yet an other writing exercise for you all to try out, and here it comes.

Dragons: Questions to answer before you write dragons into your fantasy novel

Okay, so you know to write character profiles, but what about none-humanoid characters? Do you ever write profiles for them? Profiles are great for helping you remember important data about your story.

#1. Do you use dragons in your stories? Or plan to? Why or Why not?

#2. How well do you really know your dragons? Not sure? Find out by filling out this profile form, Just copy and paste this code into the reply box, than answer each question. Print up your answers, than add the printout to your notes. Volia! Instant Dragon Profile to always have on hand when you are writing a dragon scene.

Fire: Do they breath fire?

Flight: Can they fly?

Knowledge:Do they think like humans?

Age:

Bonding: either with humans or with each other

Violence:

Size: How big do they get? How fast do they grow?

Ecology: What’s the dragon’s natural habitat?

Food: How much do they eat, and of what?

Breeding: How many eggs/young come at a time, and what’s their road to maturity like?

Culture/habits: If your dragons are human-level intelligence, do they have a culture of their own? If they’re less intelligent, what kind of complex behaviors are instinctive/learned?

I like dragons, but I have never written anything with dragons in it, but I have toyed with the idea that in ancient time there were Dragons on Crystonia, before the ice age began, and having someone discover the frozen fossils of them.

Here is what I’ve come up with thus far…

Fire – possibly, the anceint one’s before the Ice Age did, because the Ice Dragons do, well kind of… they breath an “ice fire” instead

Flight – Yes, they have big beautiful sparkly blue wings, to match their opal white scales, I love wings dragons!

Knowledge – no, never thought about that; they are just big lizards, like an alligator or kimodo dragon or dinosaur… I supose they are just as intelegent as a cat or dog and could be trained, but it has never been done… no talking/thinking/human type characteristics at all

Age – unknown… the Ice Age began centuries ago, and it is not known if these are the same dragons now crystalized or if these are desents of the original non-crystalized ones

Bonding – with their young, yes; as adults they seem to be solitary; with the Crystonites, no

Violence – they are rarely seen, which seems to indicate that they are very shy and peaceful; yet they are fierce and tempermental if you aproach their caves

Size: Big, very big, huge, dinosaur T-Rex, type big

Ecology: What’s the dragon’s natural habitat? they live in caves in the high snow capped mountains

Food How much do they eat, and of what? unknown, but they are big, so it must be alot; and as Crystonia is nearly devoid of both vegitation and large wildlife, that would explain why dragons are so rare

Breeding How many eggs/young come at a time, and what’s their road to maturity like?
lay eggs, 2-4 to a clutch; I’d say simalar to the black african eagle

Culture/habits: If your dragons are human-level intelligence, do they have a culture of their own? If they’re less intelligent, what kind of complex behaviors are instinctive/learned?
nope, does not apply, they are just big lizards, like an alligator or kimodo dragon or dinosaur… I supose they are just as intelegent as a cat or dog and could be trained, but it has never been done… no talking/thinking/human type characteristics at all

Also… anyone got any ideas on Ice or Crystal Dragons? I’m thinking that there may be a few dragons high on Mount Demontooth, now crystalized like the rest of the planet by the Crystal Plauge; I well be reading this thread to get ideas, for what the Crystonia dragons may have been like.

How do you write about your dragons?

Happy Dragon hunting!

~~EK

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