What’s with all the updates?

Microsoft has been bugging me all week to update office.

What if I was happy with the old office which seems like the new office since I only updated that one last year when they strong-armed me into Word 365?

But they wouldn’t let it rest. They nagged me every time I started up the computer.
For a while I simply didn’t turn my computer off. That’ll show them.

But this backfired because the poor old machine got so bogged down with a week’s worth of my surfing and snooping and scratching out rough copies of essays that may never see the light of day, it eventually flipped out, tossed out a few PG curse words, threw up its hands, and froze. (Okay, maybe it just froze, but it seemed like it was emoting something at that point, or, maybe that was me.)

Doesn’t it seem like the big guys always win?

I was left with no choice but to give it free rein to update all my office products and now I’m looking at this UNFAMILIAR word screen and I don’t like it.

Maybe I’m becoming a curmudgeon. It just looks funny. Wrong font, too much gray, and the least they could have done was remove those stupid bird silhouettes in the upper right hand corner. Why are they there? It’s just weird.

I haven’t opened excel yet. I’m afraid of what they may have done. I have such a paper-thin grasp of excel as it is, and if they’ve gone and rearranged the whole shebang, I’m screwed.

Change is uncomfortable. I guess that’s the bottom line. Unless you’re uncomfortable already, then change can be good. #FortuneCookieLogic

I wonder how much the designers got paid to re-design office (again). I wonder if entire groups of people in suits sit around and debate fonts and the formatting for Heading 2 and the silly birds in the corner.

They probably have lunch catered.

It seems like a lot of jobs come down to rearranging the furniture. It may not be better, but it feels like we’ve done something.
​
Sometimes that’s all that matters.

Reviewing copyedits is one of my favorite parts of publishing a book.

The manuscript for my second book arrived via email yesterday with the copyedits for me to review. It makes me feel like a princess writer. Really. I get to go through the manuscript and accept or reject the changes suggested by the copyeditor.

It’s like sitting on my throne and using my scepter in judgment.

Kind of.

Not really. But I do feel pretty powerful.

When I’m Not Her came back last spring with its copyedits, I was horrified.
So much red. On every page. Wow, I am a horrible writer.

But as I got into the marks I realized that they weren’t changing my story, they were only making it clearer for the reader. Nora (my copyeditor) was making me sound so much better.

I love Nora.

I’ve never met her, but as I read her comments and corrections, I decided she was the BEST person in the world. Without Nora, my writing was crap
.
Okay, maybe that’s a stretch, but at the time all I could think was, “Thank God for Nora.”

I found myself talking to her as I worked. I feel like we are great friends. She’s been inside my mind and seem my most embarrassingly stupid mistakes. And yet she keeps going (yeah, she’s getting paid for this, but indulge me). She doesn’t give up on me or my writing. That’s my kind of friend.

And she’s brilliant. Obviously. (I like smart people.)

So when it was time for a copyeditor for Girls Weekend (my second book – I know, I know – crazy), I asked my publisher if Nora could do it again.

And today I’m sitting with the manuscript of Girls Weekend getting to know Nora all over again. And I’m in love once again. I can tell, after only one chapter, that this manuscript was a lot more work for her. Sorry, Nora.

Course one of the things I like about cleaning my house (when I actually clean it) is that my work is so necessary. The house is filthy and after I’ve scrubbed at a counter or a floor, the difference is remarkable. My work is justified and rewarding.

That’s probably how Nora felt as she edited Girls Weekend. Not that she told me. But I can tell.

​We’re great friends, me and Nora.

Monday started off great.

Joke.

Got a text from Discover that my account had been hacked.

Oh joy.

I’m still amazed that they can catch fraud that fast. When the rep asked me if I’d shopped at the two places that were suspect, I said, “No, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t places I would shop. How can you tell it wasn’t me?”

She said, “We have a very intricate system,” in a very serious and no-nonsense voice.

I wanted to ask more, but she was intent on rushing through all the security questions and closing down my account so I can spend the rest of the week reconfiguring all my autopay information at more than a gazillion sites. (Probably one of the same sites where I was hacked which means this might all happen again next Monday. Kind of like Groundhog day only it would be My-Discover-got-Hacked-Again Day.)

Since then I’ve been fixated on the fact that Discover knew instantaneously that it wasn’t me shopping at Walmart.com. They’re good. I mean, I don’t shop at Walmart.com, but it doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility, does it? I hate Walmart categorically, but sometimes I’m forced to go there because I’m a cheapskate. And I live in a teeny-tiny town that has limited shopping options. I usually try the Goodwill before I stoop to Walmart. And whenever I go in there, I keep my head down hoping no one will recognize me. But no one would know if I shopped at Walmart.com. Except my dog.

And Discover.

It’s impressive how closely they are watching me. Impressive and maybe a little creepy. This morning I tweeted “My discover card got hacked. I wish I paid as much attention to my spending as Discover does.”

Within minutes, Daisy, a rep at Discover (not sure if she’s the person I talked to yesterday, but she sounded like a Daisy) replied to my tweet.

“Hi Cara! Thanks for sharing! We take the security of your account very seriously and we are always here to help. *Daisy”

Wow. I mean, MERE MINUTES. So maybe they are watching me.

All the time.
​
I’m gonna behave better today. No crazy shopping at Walmart.com.

#nowalmart #godiscoverpolice 

I’m one in a million. As a new author, that is. At least there seem to be millions of us.

For the past ten years, I’ve been writing and writing and writing. I had no time for twitter. I barely used Facebook. Tumblr blew my mind. Every now and again Pinterest caught my eye and I lost hours.

But now my job is not only to write, but to promote my writing. Sigh.

I always thought that one day I’d be a PUBLISHED AUTHOR and then everything would be different. People would be pounding a path to my door just to interview me. I’d be driving a Porsche and paying a housekeeper with all those royalties that would just keep POURING IN.

Only none of that happened. Except the published author part.

At first, I slunk back to my laptop with my tail between my legs. I went back to writing. Writing is how I handle my life. No matter the frustration, disappointment, or annoying child, I can write my way sane again.

And here’s what I realized. It comes down to this- I want to write. And if I want to write, I need readers. (Well, not technically. I could easily write from here to eternity even if YOU didn’t want to read a word of it and never did.)

Back in my fantasy land, I assumed that my publisher would be in charge of getting these readers. And I have to credit them with making a big effort. They’ve put my words in front of plenty of new readers. Problem is, they’ve got lots of other books to promote. The Story Plant is a way-cool small press. Small presses are few and far between these days since most either went belly up or got gobbled up by the big presses in the last two decades. I’m proud to be a writer under their umbrella, but I’ve come to realize I have a big part in my (and their) success.

So, how do you get more readers? Good question.

The bookstores and internet are loaded with writers and their books. They’re everywhere. Liberally littered across the twittersphere. Blogs by the billions. Goodreads is lousy with them. And then of course, there’s Amazon. How do you get your name out there amongst all that noise?

I have no idea.

Really.

I don’t.

But I have to start somewhere, so I’ve started with twitter. I read about services who would hook me up with thousands of followers in mere weeks for more than mere dollars. That idea seemed kind of sleazy and it smacked of cheating and my guess is that all those followers couldn’t have given a flying flip about me, anyway.

One thing I did figure out is that connecting with real people on some level, as oppose to SELLING myself to them, feels better.

So I’m gathering up followers at a very slow trickle. Somedays just one at a time. I’ve discovered that there are some VERY interesting people out there. Just reading their twitter bios fascinates me. I started out looking for book bloggers and potential readers, but now I find myself following people who simply sound interesting. How do they think of these descriptions? They should all be writers! (maybe they are….)

Here’s a few of my favorites: (I included their handles just in case you want to follow them, too. That’s the beauty of twitter – there are no barriers!)

Mom/Reader/Knitter/Washer of dishes (@KyleesJournal)
The dishes part was funny to me. I don’t know why. But really, how many hours a day do I spend washing dishes? Too many. It should be in my bio, too.

My history is the same as yours. I am an amalgamation of stardust, molecules, and potential.  (@Waddell2Megan)  Very nice, kind of deep, even poetic.

Inarticulate writer. Hashbrown enthusiast. Reader. Ponderer. (@insecurejoiner)
It’s not just the funny hashbrown comment, I loved the handle, too.

I cook. Oh, and then I drink. And write. Not all at once, usually. (@TheOnlineGrill)
My kind of people, obviously.

I follow a 13-year-old aspiring chef with an intriguing handle (@ChaseNyurFace). He followed me first, and I have no idea how he ever found me, but I love his tweets and his recipes.

When someone follows me or follows me back, I try to message them to thank them for their follow. At first, I worried they’d think I was some cloying, ass-kissing desperate chick trying to gather followers (since I am), but after a while, I just thanked them and mentioned anything interesting I saw on their page. (Because YES, I do actually look at the pages of the people I follow!) It’s led to some fun exchanges and yesterday it even led to another idea for treating my son’s migraine that seemed to really help.

I’m becoming a real fan of Twitter, but it’s also a dangerous timesuck. I’ve been trying to limit my time in the twittersphere by only using it while I’m at the treadmill desk. Gasping for breath is appropriate for spewing out short messages to my new virtual friends.

So come, follow me, you never know where it might lead…

#amwriting #twitterfangirl #followme

​I’m in that deep grind of re-writing. Polishing people so they make sense and harrowing out the inconsistencies in their characters. It’s tedious.

When I come to a fork in the story – should I dig deeper or cut the whole damn paragraph? No one will know. Except me and a couple of my characters. Sigh.

Thank God for the find/replace feature. I can change the where, when, who with just the stroke of a key.

What was it like to edit back in the dark ages of the typewriter? I have to wonder if there aren’t a few books out there that could have been even better if only it wasn’t such a chore to use that back space/eraser ribbon combo.

Sometimes I feel too lazy to make a change and it would only take me a few seconds, why would a writer bother if it would mean hours (even days) of re-typing?

I think of this phase of the writing as sculpting. It’s finding the David amongst the lump of clay. Carving away what is unnecessary, sometimes with a fine-tip brush and occasionally with a chisel.

It is exciting to see what ultimately rises from the mess and chaos of editing.

I’m nearing the end of what I can do, but still loving the story and the characters I’m crafting. I will miss them when it’s time to hit the ‘send’ button.

I need to get it right because once I release them into the wilds of the publishing journey, you never know what might happen.

Speaking of which, Story Plant (my publisher) has just begun a new venture. They’re adding a Media division to turn their books into plays, musicals, and movies. If you’d like to hear all about it, check out this Indiegogo campaign video:
 
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/story-plant-media-chapter-1#/ 

#editing #amwriting #manuscriptsculpting #write

I wish I were more writerly.

In an effort to boost my twitter followers and Facebook likes, I’ve been snooping around on other author’s sites. The chick I checked out today has 36.4K (yes K!) followers on Twitter. That’s thirty-six thousand, four hundred people who have clicked “like” on her twitter page.

Crazy.

I can’t even imagine that three thousand people know who I am, let alone thirty-six thousand! And she only has one book out which is “independently published” which is usually code for self-published. I’m impressed. I wish that when I stumbled upon a writer like this, I thought – “Wow, that’s so amazing, I could do that, too.”

But I don’t.

I think,

“Who is she paying to get all those clicks?”

or

"I don't need all those followers, my followers are quality followers,"

or more so lately,

“I am such a schmuck. There’s NO WAY I will ever be successful at this.”

I have 230 followers on twitter and 371 likes on Facebook. Probably most of those are repeats, so there’s maybe 400 people AT MOST who have a remote interest in my writing. Sigh.

Most days I forget about Facebook and twitter altogether. I know as a SUCCESSFUL WRITER, that’s not a good thing. I should be OUT THERE communing with the social media circus, tossing off witty comments and clever asides. To that end I recently changed the notification settings on my phone so that I receive twitter and Facebook notifications on my home screen.

I have no idea how twitter decides which tweets warrant my notification. Sometimes I hear the twitter sound and look at the phone figuring someone has mentioned me, or followed me, or at the very least something REALLY COOL is happening. That’s generally not the case. Today I actually stopped running to check out the notification. Here’s what was so important that twitter had to interrupt my run – two people I follow had retweeted the same boring tweet. Great. Thanks.

I guess, there was so little happening in my own twittosphere, that twitter thought they’d rub it in that other people are out there retweeting and tweeting and overtweeting, unlike me. I hadn’t tweeted since yesterday because I was reading and then sleeping and then running. C’mon, already. I’m doing my best with this.

I don’t know why it bothers me. The comparison thing is so high school.

Most days it doesn’t. Most days I think, “I’m living the dream. I’m writing every day and a few of my words have actually been published.” I focus on my side of the equation and not the other side. The side where I don’t have thirty-six thousand followers.

I’m not writing for fame, fortune, or followers. My bank account will testify to that. I’m writing because I love to write. Today I’m focusing on that. I’m not tweeting or posting or even lurking on other writer’s sites feeling inadequate. I’m plopping my butt on my chair (my new exercise ball chair, so plopping is the right word!), and writing. I’m going to get back at that now.

​#amwriting #beawriter #buttinchair

Most mornings find me running down my road sometimes dragged by the current foster dog and occasionally accompanied by a friend. Our road winds up the hollow, along the creek. There's not much to look at except trees and a few houses and barns. Until now. My neighbors recently erected a small handmade sign. My daily run takes me right by it. The first few days I shouted a hearty internal “AMEN!” but the last few days its message has nagged at me, distracting me from more productive thoughts.

​“There is no convenience that does not cause discomfort.”

Today instead of sorting through the odd plot twist that my current work-in-progress took yesterday afternoon, I found myself wondering – what do they mean by that?

Are they condemning those of us who drive automobiles, shop at WalMart, love our computers, and can’t stop staring at our phones? Are they actually closet Amish people? Are they stockpiling weapons in their barn? Do they (like me) secretly suspect our microwaves are giving us all cancer? Or is it a harmless quote, meant simply as food for thought?

I spent the better part of my run contemplating my own use of modern conveniences and evaluating whether they caused me discomfort. My favorite modern convenience is, obviously, my laptop. I have to think that giving up my computer would cause much more discomfort than typing everything on my old typewriter. My hands would likely cramp up and editing would be a PITA. I’d probably just look at the gobbledeegook and think, “You figure it out,” instead of finding a functioning eraser ribbon. (Remember those?)

We heat mainly with our woodstoves, eschewing the modern convenience of the oil heat that came with the house. I’m here to tell you that there is MUCH more discomfort in hauling wood then there is in nudging up the thermostat.

I recently ordered a small dumptruck load of mulch. I could have hooked up the trailer to the car and made several trips to the hardware store for mulch, losing half the load on the drive home and then shoveling it off each time, but instead I picked up the phone. No discomfort there.

Our new-to-us tractor has proved to be my hubby’s favorite new convenience. He’s discovered it’s back saving and time saving for hauling all that mulch I ordered, moving firewood, re-grading our hillside, and hauling manure. He looks pretty happy perched up there on his seat – not discomforted at all.

Running along I tried to drudge up a convenience that did cause a discomfort. I’d have to go with cell phones. Sure, they’re great, but now we’re all available 24/7 everywhere we go. It used to be possible to disappear for hours, unreachable and undisturbed, but now there’s no excuse except, “I forgot to charge it,” which everyone knows is the equivalent of “I’m going into a tunnel.”

But maybe what the sign was getting at is that for all the ways we’ve made things easier on ourselves, we’ve added new stresses, new pressures, new discomforts. I could agree with that. The less we have, the less we have to stress about. Every time we acquire something we have to clean it, store it, care for it, fix it, and eventually get rid of it. More stuff, more discomforts. So maybe the sign is an incentive to unload a few things and a warning against accumulating more.

If you look behind the sign in the picture you can make out a small building. It’s a tiny house. I’m wondering if my neighbors are planning on leveling their old farm house and all its convenience in favor of life in a tiny house. Maybe that’s what the sign is announcing.

I’ve watch longingly as the tiny house craze grows. I want a tiny house. Sadly, my present life doesn’t fit in a tiny house. There’s no room for my three kids, multiple foster dogs, busy hubby, and obsessive canning habit. My stand-alone freezer would take up the entire living room. A tiny house would be nice, though. Not so many distractions and very little vacuuming.

I’m all about simplifying my life, reducing the discomforts. I truly am. But I doubt I could give up Ed my robotic vacuum. He’s my favorite convenience.

On the way home, I passed the sign again. It’s message is written in chalk yet the past week of rain has had no effect on it. Maybe my hippie neighbors are modern day prophets. On the way up my driveway, I consider taking my eraser with me tomorrow. I could write, “To each, his own.”

The message of the sign followed me all the way to my computer today. I looked around at all my conveniences, again considering if they were causing me any discomfort. I spy my cellphone. Certainly its accompanying bill causes me great discomfort. I switch on my desk lamp. A candle would add a nice atmosphere for writing. I flip open the lap top and wait while it does all its daily internal stretching. A typewriter wouldn’t make me wait.
​
I have one more thought – maybe, as I tend to do, I’m reading too much into it.

#amwriting #modernprophets #simplify #thinktoomuch

I’m trying to be a better tweeter (is that what you call it?). 

I’ve never been a big fan of twitter because it’s such an ADHD kind of social media. I never make it through more than a handful of tweets before I’ve followed some link to find out how to make Cranberry Glazed Meatballs and then been sidetracked by a crazy recipe on the sidebar about a cauliflower-cheese sauce that totally fools kids. By the time I get back to twitter there are “46 new tweets”! Now I’m days behind, so I slog through a few more, end up down the rabbit hole of Astros Horrible Howlers (your whole family will love these jokes!). By the time I get back to twitter there’s a message at the top that says, “While you were away…” followed by a fresh new batch of tweets. There is NO WAY anyone can keep up with twitter unless it’s her fulltime job. And even then it would be tough.

So I mostly avoid twitter because it’s impossible for me to even begin to stay on top of it. And more than that, it’s discouraging. I follow other writers who have thousands of followers and who follow nearly as many. How is that even possible? I can’t keep up with the 177 people I follow on twitter. How could I possibly follow 10K? That seems kind of insane and borders on the following for the sake of following. Mostly, it makes me wonder if anybody is even reading all those tweets. In which case, the vast majority of tweets are being sent out into the twittersphere never to be heard from again. All of this begs the question, if a person tweets and no one reads it, was it worth the agony of perfecting those 140 characters? I think not.

Assuming a writer wanted to create a large horde following her on twitter, just how does one get 10K followers, anyway? I googled, “How to get 10,000 followers on twitter.” There were lots of hits on those exact words. I guess everybody wants 10,000 followers.

I read three articles and by the end I came to the conclusion that Twitter is one big giant shell game. Everybody is out there scamming to get more followers. The trick is to get someone to follow someone and get them to follow you back and then use a service like manageflitter to unfollow these very same people, plus anyone who doesn’t already follow you back and anyone who hasn’t tweeted in the last three months. The goal being to have more people following you than you follow. Just like high school. You want to be popular but not look like you work at it.

After wasting an ENTIRE MORNING on figuring out how to get 10K followers, I was exhausted and annoyed. I could have been WRITING. Already, Twitter was wasting my time. So I’ve decided that I’ll be content with my 185 followers. These are quality people. I promise not to stack their twitter feeds with redundant links to stuff they’ve already seen ten tweets about. I’ll only write quality blather, complete with pictures (something I learned from the How to Get articles), and occasional self-promotional nonsense. Occasionally, very occasionally, so you’ll know they’re good ones, I’ll post a link.

I’m going for quality over quantity on my twitter. Yes, I realize this goes against everything that twitter stands for. I’m a rebel like that.

When I tell people I’m a writer, they sometimes say – “That would be torture – just to sit and write all day.”

For me it would be torture not to write. Then I’d have to say all the things I think. Like today, EVERYONE is irritating me. But I can’t tell them this. I can’t say, “Stop talking. You are plucking my very last nerve and right now your voice is grating on my soul.” Instead, I write it. I can even post it and no one would even know that I was talking about them. They’d think I was talking about that other person.

Which brings me to another point. All these people who say they hate writing – these very same people are crafting clever 140 character declarations and anecdotes and narrations of their lives on Twitter. Do you know how hard it is to write something clever in 140 characters? Much easier to do it in 100,000 words.

Some mornings I can’t even speak to anyone until I get to my keyboard or my journal. I have to spew out all the chaos zooming around my brain so I can think clearly and be a nice person. If I write it down, I can let it go and I won’t say things like, “SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP! Go talk to the dog instead of me! You’re ruining everything!”

My husband works from home occasionally. When he walks in my office to offer to fix me a cup of tea and I’m in the middle of writing a scene or an essay, my blood boils. That is not the socially acceptable response to a thoughtful person offering to make you tea. I freeze, trying to hold my thought and speak to him at the same time. Usually I nod and pray that he will now SHUT UP and GO AWAY. I pray this silently which is probably a good thing for my marriage.

So maybe the writing is compulsive. Or maybe it is therapy. Or possibly it’s an addiction. I believe it makes me a nicer person. I believe it keeps me sane. I believe that without it I would have no friends and my children would have run away by now. My husband is generally more tolerant. I’ve learned this because he doesn’t SHUT UP AND GO AWAY even if I slip up and actually say that. I guess we’re meant for each other.