Dogsled Dreams - Terry Lynn Johnson

Last night I finished reading my friend's novel called Dogsled Dreams by Terry Lynn Johnson. I will be the first to admit that I usually don't read YA novels but I am glad I did with this one.

This is Terry's debut novel about a young twelve year old girl named Rebecca. She has a dream of wanting to become a famous musher. Throughout the novel she struggles through training her beloved dogs all the way to battling blizzards on the trail.

It is certainly a great book for both children and adults a like to read.

I highly recommend reading this book. I felt as though I was brought back to my child hood days with the excitement and adventure Rebecca was having. Now I have put on my bucket list to give dogsledding a try.

I CHALLENGE you

It is Script Frenzy month here and I thought it would be fun to share some famous movie scripts.

My challenge (and it's an easy one) is for you to choose one of the four scripts below and read it while watching the movie itself. (Beware that there may be some changes done in the movie that were not included in the script)

See if you can notice what makes a scene important, why they kept that dialogue, and what was done differently to better the movie.

Try to choose one of the movies you have not seen before. It helps to see the difference between the vision of the writer and what the director has done with the piece.

1. Casablanca
2. Toy Story 3
3. Knocked Up
4. Inception

For television scripts I will give you two links for you to try to find some episodes to read:

• Simply Scripts
• Script-o-Rama

Let me know what you think about the different style of writing, how the script and the movie/t.v show compares etc.

Have fun!

Blogging: Why is it so difficult?

I apologize for not posting anything for the past few weeks.

To be honest, I had no idea what to write. Can you believe that? A writer who doesn't know what to write! I know shocking right, but we all get some sort of block at least once in our life right?

I have learned something quite interesting which I am sure many of you have experienced before. Blogging is much more difficult than it looks. I personally try to write a post at least once a week and find it difficult to come up with topics that help you, my readers as well as being interesting. I seriously do not know how some bloggers are able to write 3-5 posts a week and keep it interesting.

If you're reading this, you might be a blogger like myself. How do you do it?

How are you able to find and write creative posts as much as you do?

Inspirational Writer - David Seidler

David Seidler you might have heard of him before. If you click on his name you will find an article about how this man, at the age of 73, won his first ever Oscar for writing The King's Speech.

Reading the article alone is inspiration in itself, especially when you read his life story.

My favourite quote from the article is, "Too many of the young writers haven't lived any kind of a life but film school and watching TV and movies," he says. "They're very good at their craft, but they don't have much life experience to back it up. I came at it the other way."

As a young writer I agree with that statement. I'm a movie hog. Most of my free time is spent watching one movie or another, but it does not give me near the amount of experience to write something as marvelous as the King Speech. (If you have not seen the movie, I urge you to see it. It's a simple story line but the message of over coming your biggest obstacles, makes it worth while to watch along with Colin Firth's amazing acting abilities)

What I found to be quite motivating in this article, is in the writing community it does not matter how old you are. Some industries once you become a certain age, you're basically done. Not in this case. You could write your heart out and become successful at the age of twenty five or eighty five. It does not matter what so ever. I just love the writing community!

For You:

Have you seen The King's Speech? If so what did you think of it?

Do you believe age a factor in the writing community?

Ever Wrote a Song?

FAWM is turning out to be a great challenge that I am going through for this month. To be honest I actually thought I was going to fail miserably and have cheap poppish songs that are only good for baby's to listen to. I am so glad I proved myself wrong.

I like to share with others anything that I can share and for this week I decided I shall share one of my songs that I wrote. Today in my community, there is an anti bullying campaign going on where many people have bought and are wearing their anti bullying pink shirts.

I can only speak for myself, but I personally know what it feels like to be bullied. I thought that it would seem fit to share a song I wrote about bullying with you all based on a story I saw on the news along with a bit of my own personal feelings.

It is called Someone Someday, sung by the lovely Leslie Hudson.

If you haven't guessed yet I wanted to ask you all if you ever wrote a song? why or why not?

Inspiration for the day

Have you heard Born This Way by Lady Gaga yet? If not click here to hear the song and click here to read the lyrics.

Now love it or hate it, when I first heard this song and read the lyrics I had tears in my eyes. Why? Well it greatly inspired me. We live in a world where we are constantly comparing ourselves and I just love how this song (through my interpretation) basically says it's okay to be who you are because you were born and destined to be who you are.

Lately I have been having the winter blues that has affected my abilities to work on my writing. I have been having self doubts and I even reach the point where I did not want to write anymore. This song came right when I needed it to and has made me think "hey, I was born to be a writer I was born to shine" which has inspired me greatly (I have been writing non stop since this song came out)

It's funny in a way how one little song can inspire one being so much. So I wonder about all of you out there reading this. What/who inspires you?

FAWM

Today is official second day of February which means it is the official second day of FAWM.

What is FAWM? I hear you ask?

February Album Writing Month is what the abbreviation stands for. It's a month (okay the shortest month of the year) long challenge where participants write an album worth of songs in 28 days. FAWM considers 14 songs an album worth, so if you do the math about a song every two days.

Sounds easy enough right? Haha nope. If you listen to some of the people who have already completed many songs and have recorded them for us all to hear, I am blown away by the amount of talent out there. However I will not let other people's great talents compared to my somewhat lacking talent get in the way of this challenge I am facing.

If you would like to check out FAWM click here

Have you ever wrote a song? If not I challenge you to try it, just once and let me know what you come up with.

Your Writing Space

Have you ever walked into Staples or some other office supply store and just go ga-ga over all the office materials available at your finger tips?

Okay perhaps that is just me and believe me when I say my family and friends try to keep me away from those stores.

I was thinking about office supplies the last few days and wondered what other people's work spaces looked like. I thought I would share a picture of my work space. I couldn't get everything into the picture. Excuse the mess and for those who want to ask about the posters, they are of John Cena (I have been a wrestling fan for 20 years).

I like the location of my "office" but the functionality of it has been driving me insane. No matter how I rearrange things, I just cannot find the right je ne sais quoi about my office space.

What does your writing space look like? (you're more than welcome to send pictures and I'll add them to this post mindy299 AT gmail DOT com)

What would you like to do differently to your writing space to make it better?

Personally I wish I could find a set up that would work for me. I have changed this area about five times and am still not satisfied. I will just have to keep trying right?

Until next time, have a great week. Can't wait to see those pictures!!!

Do You Really Learn From Reading?

As a writer, I am constantly told to read. Read this. Read that. You will learn so much as a writer if you read, read and read some more.

But do we? Do we really learn from reading so much?

For me personally I don't learn anything from reading. Then again I don't like to read. Yes I am serious. I have to force myself to read any sort of novel with great dismay. Oh and don't get me started on why. Okay get me started.

Reason being? Simply because I am picky. I want something to grab me by the neck and hold on tight until I read the final word. So far I have yet to find a book that intrigues me in that way. My favourite book Intensity by Dean Koontz almost did that for me. Almost.

So how do I learn about honing my writing craft if I don't read much?

Those who know me, know I am a movie junkie. Those are my books that I read and it shows in my writing. I tend to find dialogue easier to write than description. I could and have tried before to write an entire story with nothing but dialogue. (It's a great prompt to try if you need to work on your dialogue).

Question for you: Do you learn anything from reading?

Be Inspired!

Hello to you all out there!

It is FINALLY 2011 and I personally could not be happier to begin a new year with a clean slate.

By the way Happy New Year to you all. How were your holidays?

My holidays went by way too fast but I am trying to get back into my usual routines before I go back to work next Monday.

The beginning of the year brings on the beginning of new things (like trying to accomplish that New Years Resolution). I don't know about you, but I personally find this time of year to be the most inspiring and motivating part.

Why?

It's a new year. A refresher of everything that has happened during the past twelve months. We feel we can do anything and have the confidence to carry on through.

So why do so many people break their New Year's Resolution so quickly?

I do not know why. I am only twenty two and still am learning everything there is to know about life. All I do know is that from personal experience, I either do one out of two things; I forget about it or I lack inspiration/motivation. Usually it is both with me.

With that jibber jabber all said and done, how about this year we work together at working on our resolutions throughout the year. Lets not be like the others and break our resolution within the first two weeks. Lets travel to December 31 2011 and say "Hey! You know what? I actually accomplished my resolution this year"

I mentioned my goals earlier along with my main resolution. At the end of each month I'll write a post about what I have done in order to take a step towards accomplishing that goal and/or resolution.

If you would like to join me, PLEASE DO!, at the end of each month mention in the comments what you have done to accomplish your goal/resolution. I might sound like a broken record here but I do enjoy working with others to achieve things in life. It makes us more united.

Until next time, have a terrific week!

2011 Mission Statement

I recently read a blog post a friend of mine had wrote yesterday (Monday December 20th) which you could find here, where she wrote her own mission statement for the new year. I liked the idea and wanted to write my own 2011 Mission Statement for I could look back on and try to keep the promises I shall make to myself. So here goes it. If it interests you, give it a try. Make sure you link it in the comments below so everyone could check it out!

My name is Mindy Crump and in 2011 I would like nothing more than to be myself again. I have had some pretty rough few years, mostly in silence, and I am beginning to want the old me back. Now I know I cannot possibly have the complete old me, but bits and pieces would suffice.

I would like to grow more comfortable with myself. I promise I will try to not back down from a challenge no matter how embarassing or frightening it might be (as long as it's safe of course). When things are not going well I promise to write about it, even if all I want to do is stay in bed. Critism is not my friend. I do not handle it too well. I promise in 2011 I shall work my tail off at defending myself a little bit more. It's about time I get some backbone.

Most importantly, I promise never to give up on myself or on others. I just want to be happy.

On a side note being published in 2011 would be a great thing too.

Holidays & Goals

Hello everyone!

Hopefully you are all doing well during this December.

Around this time, I begin to think about what I have accomplished throughout this year and begin to think about what I would like to accomplish in the New Year. Lately I have become quite anal about this and have created quite a few lists and charts.

I have three main goals next year to work on which include:

1. Opening my own Web Design Business - In 2011 I want it to be the year I finally make this come true. I have been thinking of having a bit of a niche of creating websites for authors which would tie together both my passions; writing and designing.
2. Sell a Script - I have planned 6 months of the year all devoted to Screenwriting. I would love nothing more than to sell a script but the biggest goal before this is to definitely send queries and pitches out to production companies and/or agents.
3. Publish a Novel/Short Story - This year I took one step closer to achieving this goal of mine when I sent in my short story to a local publisher. Unfortunately it was rejected but I was told by the publisher to try sending that short story to fiction magazines. The other six months are devoted to this goal.

These might seem like big goals to try to accomplish in just one year, but after the year I just had I am starting to have faith in myself that it could be possible to achieve anything I set my sights upon.

Throughout this year I have mentioned challenging oneself over and over again. Next year will be no different as I personally have a few monthly events to try out. Perhaps you might try them out with me:

• FAWM also known as February Album Writing Month. This is where you write 14 songs in a month
• NaNoEdMo also known as National Novel Editing Month. Many people already know about this one where you edit 50 hours in a month
• NEPMo (National Epic Poetry Month) This is where you write 5,000 lines of poetry in a month which is simple enough if you write poetry as it is.
• SoFoBoMo which I just love saying over and over again. This is Solo Photo Book Month. I am very excited to give this a try. This is where you create a 31 page or more photo book with photos you take during the month
• National Blog Posting Month. Perhaps you already know about this. I am definitely going to try it out. This is where a blogger like myself, chooses any month during the year and blogs every single day during that month. Perhaps I might try it twice.

Okay so now I have been dying to ask you all what challenges are you taking on in the New Year? They don't have to pertain to just writing. I know I would like to challenge myself to get over the fear of spiders.

NaNoWriMo, Snow and December

Hello Hello all my peeps out there!

I hope you've been having a great two weeks and I hope you did not miss me too much! Though it has been six days since November and Nano has finished up I wanted to let you know that I fortunately completed this year's National Novel Writing Month! WOOT WOOT!

I am very happy about writing my 50,000 words in a month but have come to the realization that my story is not even half way done yet. So I must reach deep down inside of me for momentum and complete this really rough first draft as soon as I can.

With that I would like to apologize for no post last week. My muse decided she had enough of Hawaii and moved back in with me. We decided to celebrate and have a movie night.

On another note if you done Nanowrimo, I really would love to read any excerpts of yours. If you put it on your blog, feel free to leave a link to it and I'll make sure to give it a read and leave a comment if you like. I find it's nice to have show and tell with other writers, especially when I see how excited or even how disappointed the writer is. It is crazy how much expectations we put on ourselves. We are our own worst enemies when it comes to our own talents, but do we not have those talents for a reason?

On a completely different route, remember I told you about my pitch back in October that I did with Muse It Up Publishing? I finally received an email back from them rejecting my poor short story. That is alright though, they were gracious enough to give me feedback and told me that it would suit a magazine, which I am planning on looking into. I have always been positive that if I ever received my first rejection letter from a publisher that I would be crushed. It really was not that bad at all. It made me want to do better. That's a good thing right?

With all that said I would like to leave you all with a 5 minutes video of it snowing somewhere I do not know. It has been snowing here all day! Gotta love December/winter.

Until next time, have a great week!

NaNoWriMo Update + Excerpt

So sorry for not posting much lately...NaNoWriMo has taken over my soul

UPDATE: I am dramatically behind in my word count but I am slowly trying to catch up little by little. As suspected, I think I'm writing utter crap but I still wanted to share some of my craptacular work with you all. I apologize for any of what I call you grammar-holics. What you're about to read will probably drive you up the wall with bad grammar.

The jist of the story is, an officer is kidnapped along with the only witness by a dangerous gang. I'm tyring to have it be a suspense/thriller type of novel. I know it's vague but my story changes from time to time thanks to the constant fighting I've been having with my characters. I have seven main characters so you could probably imagine the stress they're causing me. Also I would like to mention that I like to write screenplays more than novels, so some of my action is much like how I write a screenplay. Maybe you won't notice.

Exerpt: (I have bleeped out the swear words for the under agers)

CHAPTER 1

A howl echoed through the darken woods. This time it was unlike any other. It was abnormal. Non animalistic. Human so it seemed. A female human.

It was dark. Darker than the eye could see. Darker than dark, yet a small glow lit the only patch of meadow the forest surrounded. A woman, not much older than the legal age of nineteen, stood in the middle with her dirt infested toes resting upon the softness of the grass. Her sight blurred thanks to the swollen layers of skin trapping her blue grape like eyes. Five black figures gazed towards her.

She knew who they all were; Raphael, Gatik, Wolf, and Jadon. Most importantly there was Zaccur. How could she forget the one person she thought she trusted most of all. He was the one who planned the entire ordeal. The flirting, the dinners out, the long talks, the kissing, the sex; it was his plan all along in order to get back at her.

“Why...are....why are you” she tried to stumble out of her puckered bloody lips.

“Shut the $&#* up you whore!”

Life slowed down for her. One of the black figures' arm was approaching. She closed her eyes listening to the swooshing air the arm carried with it.

She landed upon the coldness of the ground. She felt nothing. Her face numb and swollen.

Until next time. Happy Writing Everyone!

It's NaNoWriMo Time eee yah eee yah!

For some strange reason I have the "It's peanut butter jelly time" song stuck in my head. If you have no idea what I'm talking about then please click here to see the YouTube video. This video is from Family Guy.

Now just replace those words with It's Naaano Wri Mo Time and you will get the newish song stuck in my head.

So at the time of writing this post, it is Day 8 of our beloved National Novel Writing Month. How are you all doing so far?

I am behind. WAAAY behind. I need to write at least 5,000 words today in order to almost catch up. My motivation took a holiday though. This morning a note was left upon my computer stating the following:

"Dear Mindy,

For the last seven days, I have worked really hard at keeping you going. You tried, and tried some more but I am seeing you are not cooperating with me. I miss the old times we had, like when we stuck together and wrote four novels last year! Or how about the time we slid down that slide and you fell off. We couldn't stop laughing for hours! I have decided I shall give you a break for a few days as I am taking my holidays now. (You know the ones I kept stashing away on my pay check for the past 22 years).

Call me if there is an emergency, and I don't mean the times you are lonely and want me back. I will be in Hawaii. You have my cell. Have fun writing your novel without me! ALOHA!

Sincerely, Mr. Motivation"

How sad is that? He left to go to a nice warm place without me.

Do any of you have any ideas on how I could get my motivation back? I tried sending him flowers, chocolates. I sent him emails, texts and phone calls, begging him to come back. He sent me a picture of the sunset there. I need him back!

Until next time, have a great writing week everyone!

National Novel Writing Month

As of today (Wednesday October 27) there is only 4 more days left until NaNoWriMo aka National Novel Writing Month. For those who have no clue what NaNoWriMo is about I will sum it up in seven words: One heck of a crazy writing month! This is, what I believe to be, my sixth year doing this event and I still find it crazy!

The jist of this month long event is, you come up with an idea for a novel then, starting on November 1st, you write 50, 000 words by November 30th. Sounds simple right? Haha it's not. However just because it's not simple does not mean you shouldn't try it. I believe I mentioned in an earlier post this year about challenging myself more. This is certainly one challenge I look forward to each year. If you're interested in doing NaNoWrimo click here for more information. You could always leave a comment here as well, and I'll be more than willing to help out.

So, for those who already know what NaNoWriMo is all about I wanted to know what you find to be the most challenging part of this event?

Personally, for me I always find that middle week is the hardest. My sleep deprivation catches up to me at that time yet I know I cannot allow myself to sleep more than I have to or I will waste precious time on my what-I-think-is-a-fantastic-novel-being-written.

I wanted to share a YouTube video with you all, relating to NaNoWriMo. A few people wrote a song about the event and decided to make a video for it. I find the song is very catchy.
Click here to see it.

Until next time, have a fantastic week.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Update

I apologize for no post last week. I was attending the Muse Online Writer's Conference as mentioned before, with that on top of my everyday life it was one heck of a busy week.

With that said, I wanted to update you all on some good news that has happened to me during the conference.

I may or may not have mentioned that I was chosen to pitch my short story to a publisher (Muse It Up Publishing). The entire week I spent many hours working on what my pitch would contain. It is extremely hard, especially when you tend to be a bit of a perfectionist. One day, I believe it was Thursday, I worked on my pitch for 8 hours straight. I still ended that day unhappy with what I wrote. It took me until the hour before the pitch to write one that I was extremely happy with.

Anyways to keep the story short, I pitched my story online while I shook uncontrollably. It was pretty difficult to type. That last minute pitch must have been really good because I was told they liked the originality of it and the emotion that I put into the pitch describing the story. At the end of the pitch they asked me to send my short story in along with a synopsis YAY!

All week I have been doing my happy dance!

I wanted to ask all of you writers out there what was it like for you when you pitched or was interviewed by a publisher for the first time?

Do you have issues writing a pitch and/or query?

Until next time have a good week. Be kind to each other!

The Muse Online Writer's Conference

If you are a writer and haven't heard of The Muse Online Writer's Conference then you are in for a treat this week!

This is my 3rd year attending the FREE conference, yes you read right, it is free unless you register late of course.

This year is also my 2nd year of volunteering which has proven to be quite chaotic to say the least.

The conference is plenty of fun for being completely online. I have met some fantastic people for whom I have befriended and talk to quite often.

The volunteering this year has been CRAZY to say the least. I have never learned so much about spreadsheets in such a short amount of time as I have this year.

With that said, if you are a writer and have no register for this year's conference, registration for next years conference is two weeks away so be sure to register!! Make sure to check the site by clicking the link above!!

If you are already registered and are going to be an attendee or maybe even a presenter, please do me a favour and say thank you to all the moderators, transcribers, techies and of course Lea Schizas for all their hard work this year! Believe me, from experience all these volunteers are working Full Time hourse to ensure this conference runs smoothly!

If you're attending this year let me know what you're username is for I can look out for you!

Basics of Web Design

Back in July I talked about Why a writer should have a website. To reread that post you can click here.

I thought, hey why not help those who want to make their own website by giving them the basics aka HTML.

A site can be made simply in a program you already have on your computer: Notepad.

In this program you can make a basic page using HTML (HyperText Markup Language).

HTML uses tags (ie. such as

) which are simple instructions of where everything is placed and/or what that item should look like.

Now if I were to write a very, very basic page in HTML it would look like this:

PLEASE NOTE THERE ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SPACES BETWEEN BRACKETS AND TAGS! (ie. html> not html >)

<>
<>

<> This is Your Heading < /h1 >

<> This will be your paragraph of information < /p >

< /body >
< /html >

Let me describe to you what each tag does for that particular page.

<> starts your page, letting the program know you are going to use html to build a web site
<> is the beginning of your page and where your HTML will go
<> Heading 1, headings range from 1-6 (ie. <>, <>, <> etc.)
< /h1 > closes the heading tag
<> This is the paragraph tag and the < /p > closes the paragraph... information is typed in between these tags
< /body > closes the page of html codes
< /html > lets everyone and every browser know that html codes are done at this point

Now go try this. Open up Notepad and type in the above code. Save it as a html file (ie. doc.html) and then open it in your internet browser (usually by opening your browser, click on file, open and then find your doc OR press ctrl + o).

Knowing the very basics, you could now incorporate more tags onto the page to elaborate what it looks like.

You could make font bold by using the <> < /b > tags or you could make it italic by using the <> < /i > tags. How about making a list?

For an unordered list ( <>, < /ul >) the code could look like this:

<>

<> Item to be listed < /li >
<> Other item listed < /li >

< /ul >

OR and ordered list:

<>

<> Item #1 < /li >
<> Item #2 < /li >

< /ol >

There are so many tags out there that help form your page. You can make forms, you could have scrolling text, you could change the colour of your text, you could add images, videos, audio... the opportunities are endless!

If you would like to learn more about HTML w3schools is a great website to check out. Now go ahead and try the code up above. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave them here and I will be more than happy to answer them!

Until next time, Happy Web Designing!

Screwing Up Your Writing by Christina E. Rundle

I must share with you all an incredibly informative blog post I have just read.

It is called Screwing Up Your Writing Career over on Christina E. Rundle's blog for which I follow.

She gives a nice detailed list of tips for any writer who does not want to screw up his/her writing career. The tips are endless yet the first thing I done once I finished reading them all was print it out.

Thanks Christina for all the wonderful info!