Plain Vs Plane: Fun with Words

I have to start this post with the same disclaimer I’ve used before: I am not a grammarian. I make mistakes in my writing. I am always learning, growing and (hopefully) honing my craft.

That being said, I do take the time to look up a word if I’m not sure how to use it. When reading a popular fiction blog yesterday, I came across this sentence: 

(MC) felt as if she had been transported to the highest level of the physical plain. Eyes closed, she took a deep breath and considered the possibility that she may have crossed over into the spiritual plain. Intuitively, she knew she must understand how vibration is defined differently on the spiritual plain…

I said to myself – Oh no, not again. 

Homonyms are problematic for many writers. I wrote about some of the usual suspects in these posts: 

Common Words Writers and Bloggers Misuse 

Did that Pique, Peek or Peak Your Interest? 

Regarding plain or plane, here’s a refresher:

Plain: 

Simple, normal, basic 

I’m looking for a plain white t-shirt

Obvious, clear

It was in plain view

Flat, level

He lives near the salt plains of Utah

Plane:

An airplane

A flat or level surface

A carpenter’s tool

Level of existence, consciousness (see above)

It’s confusing because the words plain and plane sound alike. In fact, they both come from the Latin word planus which means flat or clear.

I always have to pause and think when I'm using affect or effect. What about you, are there certain words that trip you up? ____________________________________________________

This post is in participation with the Group Blogging Experience, and this week’s prompt is Oh no, not again. If you want to blog with us, go to the GBE2 Facebook page and request to join the group. Everyone is welcome.

Freelance Work

A few years ago I retired from the corporate workplace. What's that you say? I look too young to be retired? Well, that's mighty kind of you, thanks.

Ahhh, flattery. It always makes my day. Where was I? Oh yeah, work. So I retired from a big job that required lots of hard work and responsibility and decided to be a freelancer - although I had no idea what that really meant. I set about researching freelance opportunities and started a fledgling writing career. I'd hack out corporate communications copy, sales brochures and annual reports all day long; mostly for companies I had relationships with from my previous jobs. Hey, it's a living. But I still didn't know how to develop a 'real' freelance writing career.

In the meantime, I started blogging. Now I'm old school (another age reference? really?!) and didn't know nuthin about no blogging. I jumped in anyway and wrote some pitiful posts. Wavering somewhere between online journaling and mindless drivel, I chugged along. I needed a place to be creative so I kept at it.

Feeling a little more confident and realizing I needed a niche, I began a blog about my pets. People started to read it. I started to like it. I'm a crazy, diehard animal lover so it fit. Then an editor at a corporate dog food blog started reading, one thing led to another, and now I blog for them. Real work as a freelancer! A few more goodies have come my way and I am eternally grateful. I plan to work harder and keep growing.

I'll finish this post with yet another age reference. If you take anything away from this post, it should be this:

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This post is in participation with the Group Blogging Experience, and this week’s topic is work. If you want to blog with us, visit the GBE2 Facebook page and request to join the group. Everyone is welcome.
 

Am I Really a Writer?

Can you call yourself a writer if you’re not writing? I know writers who claim they must write every day, it’s like oxygen to them. I am not that person. I can go for long periods of time without writing anything. Even if I need to write for financial reasons - if it’s not happening it’s just not happening.

I am in this very slump right now. I’m distracted. Other things seem more pressing. I don’t feel like writing. I wouldn’t call it writers block because I have plenty of ideas.


If I could make myself sit down and put my fingers on the keyboard I’m sure the words would come.

Words don’t fail me. If anything, I fail them.

I wrote a silly poem about writer’s block last year, primarily to get over the hump. Here it is: Overcoming Writer's Block - a Poem. But even then, I questioned the difference between writer’s block and lack of motivation. Are they the same thing? Are they different?

To me, they are different.

I’m supposed to be writing about balance and I am. Are you following? If you’re reading between the lines you’ll gather that I have none. You are correct. I’m either in a writing frenzy or a writing drought. (Maybe writing slack-off would be a more precise description but I’m scared of the word slack-off).

My hope is that this forced post makes me climb back in the saddle. My pocketbook hopes so too.

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This post is in participation with the Group Blogging Experience, and this week’s prompt is balance. If you want to blog with us, go to the GBE2 Facebook page and request to join the group. Everyone is welcome.

Testing the 'After the Jump' Function on Blogger

This is a test post. I've noticed that some of my blogger friends write their entire post on one 'page' while others write an intro and add a 'read more' link. Considering which way I should organize my blogs, I posed the question to the blogging community. 

Movie Review: Larry Crowne

Going to a matinee movie is an obvious choice when it's 100+ F outside with 100+ humidity. So the husband and I set off to see what seemed like another obvious choice—the Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts new release, Larry Crowne.

The trailers looked cute, and a lighthearted rom-com starring Hanks and Roberts promised to be a perfect way to escape the oppressive Charleston heat. The premise seemed interesting, with enough realism to give it some teeth. We were in.

The storyline: Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks) is a friendly, hardworking big-box company employee. He's unceremoniously canned because he went into the Navy after high-school instead of going to college, so now he's hit the ceiling at the company. He isn't promotable. Bye.

In financial straights and without purpose, Crowne enrolls in the local community college. There he hooks up with a cast of characters who take him under their social wing. With his new friends' help, he slowly begins to emerge from the defeat of being downsized. In his public-speaking class, Larry falls for his teacher Mercedes Tainot (Julia Roberts). Her life is as messy as Crowne's, for different reasons. Let the story unfold...

See, I told you the premise seemed interesting. Add to it the fact that Tom Hanks wrote the screenplay with the funny Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding). He also directed the film. We were sure Larry Crowne would, at the very least, be entertaining.

It's like the movie never started. Although Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts are nice to watch, it felt like nothing happened. The movie didn't go anywhere. It was bland.

I hope I'm not getting so accustomed to invisibility cloaks, blood drinking boyfriends and ancient struggles between extraterrestrial clans to enjoy a plot-and-character based flick, but I don't think that's the problem. There were cute scenes, fun cameos and a few witty exchanges. It wasn't a terrible way to pass the time but, if you came here looking for an honest opinion then I'll give it to you... the movie was boring.

Have you seen Larry Crowne? I'd love to hear your opinions. 

Larry Crowne trailer:

Smile, Modine: Flash Fiction

Modine hobbled up 4 steep steps to get on the bus. She could feel the impatience of other the passengers. Their shifting and grumbling confirmed it, she was taking too long. She tried to hustle but her blasted right knee was not cooperating. It locked up at the bus stop and hurt like hell. After much effort she reached the platform and counted out her change. Dropping the coins into the slot, she grabbed an overhead rail as the bus whined and wheezed its way onto the busy road. It sounded as feeble as Modine felt.     

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This post was written for The Writers' Post group on Facebook, and this week’s prompt is to write a flash fiction story with exactly 100 words, including the title.  If you want to connect with other bloggers and join the fun, go to The Writers' Post Facebook page and request to join the group. Everyone is welcome.

Opportunities to Make Money

Opportunities multiply as they are seized. ~Sun Tzu

And by opportunities--for the purpose of this post--I mean money. Sure, it doesn’t grow on trees like the photo suggests (wouldn’t that be convenient!?) but I sincerely believe that opportunities to make money multiply as they are seized. My experience as a freelance writer proves this point.

When I was just starting out, a potential client approached me about a project that involved writing copy for trade publications. Yeah, okay, I can do that. What's the project? 

Extracting contaminated PCBs from transformers. 

Whaaaat? I was clueless... but broke. What to do, what to do?

I was honest. I told him I didn't consider myself a technical writer of that kind but that I was a quick learner. I let him know that I was willing to give it a shot if he could make the resources (engineers) available for me to ask loads of stupid uninformed questions. We further agreed that if I didn't 'get it' in a reasonable time frame we would part ways respectfully. No harm, no foul.       

Many seasoned freelance writers will tell you to find your passions and build a niche for yourself. I agree with that advice 100%. But I am also passionate about food and shelter. I certainly didn't want (or expect) to build a niche as a Polychlorinated biphenyls writer but it paid the bills. And it lead to more writing opportunities.

You know what? It was interesting. Not interesting as in 'how does Raquel Welch still look so good at her age' interesting, but interesting. I dug in, focused, and learned a lot. I wrote about PCBs for quite a while (and if you know about PCBs, this post is really showing my age!).

So that's my advice, for what it's worth. Grow your own money tree. Go boldly forward. Seize those opportunities and they will multiply. 

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This post is in participation with the Group Blogging Experience, and this week’s topic is a picture prompt. If you want to blog with us, go to the GBE2 Facebook page and request to join the group. Everyone is welcome.

Control Over Your Writing Environment

One of the things I love about being a freelance writer is that the word free is in my occupational description. After a long career in ‘Corporate America,’ I am now free. Free to choose my own clients, projects and topics. Free to write what I want. Free to write when I want.  Free to write where I want.

Kinda.

I discovered something about myself this week. I’m not as free to write where I want as I thought I was. I need some measure of control over my writing environment.

This week I am out of my routine and out of my environment. I am with my parents, offering support as my dad undergoes a procedure. I have the technology to complete my writing assignments and stay on schedule, what I lack is the focus. Not because of my dad’s procedure or my mom’s worry but because of… noise, distractions.

To write about serious topics, I need silence. I’m not the ‘go to a coffee house and bang out a few articles’ kind of writer. I like to write in silence.

Sure, I’ve spent time in airports and coffee shops penning silly poems and jingles--but not the serious stuff. Not the real writing.

I was all geared up to sit in the hospital and catch up on my writing assignments, blog posts and maybe indulge in some fiction writing. Nope. Instead I surfed the internet, read trashy magazines and talked it up with the nurses and docs. No writing.

It’s late at night. We are back at my parent’s house and everybody is in bed. Dad is fine. It’s quiet. Now I can write.

What about you? Are you a crank-up-the-music and go kind of writer? Can you write in a bustling crowd or with kids running around the house? Can you write and watch TV at the same time?

Or do you need control over your writing environment?    
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This post is in participation with the Group Blogging Experience, and this week’s topic is control. If you want to blog with us, go to the GBE2 Facebook page and request to join the group. Everyone is welcome.

WordPress vs. Blogger: the Conclusion

I started a WordPress blog and a Blogger blog at approximately the same time. (Here is the link to my first post about this experiment, if you care to follow the plot). Along with plenty of other errors and bad judgment calls, I named both blogs the same thing. *facepalm*

Then I joined a daily blogging challenge, which seriously tested my blogging skills but also forced me to go deeper on both platforms. Yes, not one to dip my toe in the water, I plunged right in. I over-enthusiastically signed up both (same named) blogs for the A to Z Blogging Challenge. As I hacked and miss-stepped and clumsily pushed forward, I learned a lot.

Before I give my final conclusion, I’d like to make a few things clear: I am technologically challenged, I gravitate towards the intuitive and easy, I want my blog to be easy (to read and to navigate), I don’t like to read instructions, I want my blog to look good, I want to know what people find interesting,

As I said before and still believe, there are pros and cons to each. If I was king of the world, I’d combine the best of both and have a goldmine perfect blogging platform. Still, after 30+ posts on both WordPress and Blogger, I favor Blogger overall.

What about you?

New Pets Blog

Glutton for punishment or blogging addict? You decide *but don't tell me what you think*! Ha. Anyway, yes, I started a new blog. I have loads to learn about blogging. And since I'm a 'learn by doing' kind of gal, I'm doing.

I write about pets for the Yahoo! Contributor Network, Demand Studios and Examiner. Animals are one of my favorite subjects to write about. Though the blogosphere is over-saturated with pets blogs, I'm jumping in anyway. We totally have the cutest pets in the universe, so yes, they are worthy of a blog all by themselves.

Besides, I just can't help myself (see above).







Oh, the link? Here you go: Hearts in Fur Coats
I'd love to know what you think.

The Yahoo! Contributor Network Article Writing Challenge

Crazy, right?! Yep, I signed up for another challenge. This is an article writing challenge on the Yahoo! Contributor Network, as opposed to the A-Z Blogging Challenge we just finished up. 

It's simple - write one article on YCN per week starting with the letter A. You can either publish the articles display only to ensure they publish in the proper week or submit them for upfront payment, which means they'll be reviewed and published when an editor gets to it.    

Even though I'm commitment phobic and avoid rules whenever possible, this article writing challenge appeals to me because it's a once-a-week deal (see how I used the word deal instead of commitment) and the rules are loose. Really, there are no rules, more like guidelines.

So I'm in, kind of. My A article is languishing in the queue. I'm waiting to see if it flies before I write B because I'm going to write on a theme. It's taking longer than usual to process, maybe because I rarely write on this subject so the editor doesn't know me. We'll see how it goes. In the meantime, I'm a week behind on the challenge and we just started one week ago. 

What? Did you say you want to know what my never-before-written-about theme is? I'll let you know after editorial review.

Blog Design Update

Hi friends. I have not posted lately because, well, the A-Z Blogging Challenge took it out of me. You may remember that I was new to blogging when the challenge began and I jumped in with both feet. All I had time to do - regarding writing - was push out some client articles and blog. No time whatsoever for blog design.

There's so much to learn about blog design, and so many fun things to do. I've changed templates here and added a signature (see below). Not sure if I'm completely happy with it, yet. Apparently this blog will be yet another WIP. That's okay, it's fun to learn new stuff.

Tell me what you think of the new blog template and the signature. What else should I do? Seriously. I'm a baby here and could use the feedback.

That's it for now, I'm off to learn how to change up the post dividers...

A-Z Blogging Challenge: Top 10 List

The A-Z Blogging Challenge. Over 1,200 bloggers. One post per day per letter of the alphabet. Whew. I had no idea what I was getting into. And now, it's over. I did it! Every.Single.Day. (except Sundays).

As a new blogger, I really didn't know what I was getting into, but this was baptism by fire. The challenge was probably the best way to learn how to blog and get into a routine. Special thanks to Lee and the other hosts at Tossing it Out There. The challenge helped me in so many ways.

Today is the first day of the end of the challenge. I feel a bit out of sync, like I have to blog today. So I'll write my recap..

Here are the Top 10 things the A-Z Blogging Challenge taught me:

1. Bloggers are good people
2. I write better with prompts
3. Goals are necessary for me to be productive
4. Peer support is more important than I anticipated
5. I have tons to learn about the technical aspects of blogging
6. Challenges are motivational
7. Blogging is more intimate than article writing/sharing
8. The blogging community is sincerely supportive
9. Colorful, shiny badges look cool on a blog
10. Camaraderie fuels my enthusiasm

Thanks to all of you who supported this journey and cheered me on. I look forward to more interaction with you. It was a pleasure and a delight.

Q is for Quagmire

Totally appropriate for today. My Q-word is quagmire.

Q came at the right time because I feel like I'm stuck in a quagmire, figuratively speaking of course.

The Encarta Dictionary defines quagmire (noun) as 1) swamp: a soft marshy area of land that gives way when walked on and 2) an awkward, complicated, or dangerous situation from which it is difficult to escape.

The word quagmire is used more colloquially around here. Instead of using quagmire to describe an awkward, complicated or dangerous situation we use it more to mean a dilemma, a pickle, a predicament, a jam, a quandary.  

The reason I feel like I'm stuck in a quagmire is that I've been pushing out these A-Z Blogging Challenge posts the day of. No preplanning, no scheduling, no rough drafts. And things are starting to get busy. I've picked up a few new clients that expect me to produce (gasp!).

I started this challenge and I intend to finish it so I find myself in a quagmire.

Footnote: I purposely refrained from writing about Glenn Quagmire here. If I open that subject, I'm afraid I'll get in a real quagmire.

K is for Kigo

I love to write haiku, the 3-line verse that contains five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second and five syllables in the third. A form of Japanese verse, haiku usually do not rhyme-and they pop out of my mouth like a Pez Dispenser.

My haiku habit is the subject of jokes among family and friends. I always write a haiku about whatever gift I receive and include it in the thank-you card, for fun. I've published plenty of haiku on the internet as well, but recently stopped. I think my haiku are more fun to write than than they are to read.

Still, this one gets decent page views: 
 Leftover Chocolate Easter Bunny - a Haiku Trio

And some homeschooling parents picked up this haiku riddle sheet to use in lesson plans:
Can you Guess the Animals in the Haiku Zoo?

Okay, enough self promotion. What does haiku (obviously an H-word) have to do with kigo (my K-word post for the A-Z Blogging Challenge)?

As I pondered what to write today, I played around on some of my favorite research sites. Stumbling onto the word kigo, I dug a bit deeper.

According to the Literary Terms and Definitions website:

Kigo is a traditional 'season-word' in Japanese haiku. The kigo must appear within a haiku's text or be strongly implied by imagery. These words place the haiku within a specific month or season, establishing an atmosphere for the poem while maintaining brevity.

Color me excited. That's fantastic! I did not know about kigo until today.

As buds strain to bloom 
Consciousness grows to include 
Word discovery

This is why I love being a writer. Always researching and always learning. 

Happy writing! Don't forget to include a kigo in your next haiku!

J is for Just Write Something

Today has been a busy day in town as it officially marks the 150-year anniversary of the American Civil War. We live in Charleston, S.C., where the first shots were fired (Fort Sumter) so we had to get out into the fracas. Keeping up my morning ritual of writing A-Z Blogging Challenge posts took a back seat on my daily schedule, so I find myself trying to quickly bang out a J post.

Since I’m blogging by the seat of my pants (no plan, randomly choosing a topic when I sit down to write) I have no J word ready. Nope, no nuggets of gold, no pearls of wisdom here today. Just a girl sitting at a desk writing a blog post about nothing. (Hey, it worked for Seinfeld.)

So I'll...

Just write.

Just write something. 

I’ll refer you to my I post from yesterday about where ideas come from. I'm directing you there because today, this random post, is a demonstration of what I was trying to communicate yesterday. 

As I said, when faced with lack of ideas/writers block/no motivation/a missing muse, I free write. So welcome to the inside of my head. This is me free writing.  

Just writing.

Dialect: Make it Authentic

Nothing irks me more than a non-southern writer trying to capture the 'real south' through the use of nontraditional dialect. Well, that's not fair. There are some non-southern writers who write southern dialect just fine, and plenty of southern writers who massacre it, so let me just say it's irksome to read inauthentic southern dialect regardless of who writes it. (Don't get me started on movie actors that butcher southern accents...!)

I'm easily irritated by this because I'm from the south. If the dialect isn't right, it rings untrue in my ear and it's hard to feel any connection to the story or the author. I quit caring about the character too, the story no longer matters. It's especially offensive if the character speaks like a cartoon character instead of a real person. If a writers judgements and prejudices shine through, forget it. I'm out.

According to this Literary Vocabulary website:

Dialect is the language of a particular district, class or group of persons. The term dialect encompasses the sounds, spelling, grammar and diction employed by a specific people as distinguished from other persons either geographically or socially. Dialect is a major technique of characterization that reveals the social or geographic status of character. 

Dialect is different from accent. Charles Carson, managing editor of the journal American Speech defines accent as referring to how a character pronounces their words. Whereas dialect is about what words are used, how the words are pronounced and how the sentences are constructed (emphasis is mine).

 Margaret Mitchell's use of dialect in Gone with the Wind has long been a topic of discussion. Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn is a classic example of authentic dialect.
 
What are some of your favorite examples of dialect?

Sources embedded.
For more on characterization, check out this Character Chart for Fictional Characters.

Because I Have to Write about B

Day two of the A to Z Blogging Challenge and the letter for today is B. I'm writing about B today because I have to. Well, I don't have to, but I want to.

Yesterday's post was about alliteration (yes, that's what I chose to write about for the A day) so I'm going to write a few alliterative sentences with the letter B to satisfy today's requirements.

Betty bopped down the boulevard, jamming to the beat.

Break down the barriers that bind you.

Brave and honest men brought those horses here.

Okay, enough already. Somebody stop me before I scream...

Alliteration: Why I Love it

Today kicks off the Blogging A to Z challenge and I’m going to write about one of my favorite literary terms: alliteration.

As defined by the All American Glossary of Literary terms, alliteration is a pattern of sound that includes the repetition of consonant sounds. The repetition can be located at the beginning of successive words or inside the words.

I love alliteration because I listen to what I write in my head. As I write words I pronounce them silently. Maybe everybody does this? Not sure, but alliteration comes naturally to me because I like the rhythm it produces. I like the sound of alliteration.

One of my favorite examples of alliteration at the beginning of successive words is “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” (Henry David Thoreau, Walden). Fantastic!

As illustrated in the example above, alliteration is often used by poets to emphasize a point or call attention to a phrase.

We took our cat on family vacation to the beach recently (yeah, our cat) and he had the time of his life. He had so much fun that I wrote this poem from his point of view, Cool Cat on Vacation. While I am by no means a poet, this is one of my favorite poems because of the alleration and because it’s about our cat.      

Assorted alliteration in a poem appeals to me on a primal level.

 Now you give it a try...

Did that Pique, Peek or Peak your Interest?: Fun with Words

I was motivated to write this post because I used this term in one of the tabs above (Take a look and see if any of these books pique your interest under the Buy from Langley tab). Let me tell you, I never considered the pressure I was putting myself under when I decided to blog about writing. I better be darn careful not to make glaring mistakes or my credibility is shot. Yikes. Anyway, this got me thinking about common mistakes that good writers make. Using pique, peek or peak is one such mistake.

As a stand alone word most people understand the difference between pique, peek and peak. But when used in the context of: that _____ my interest, the incorrect word is often used. In fact,  I've seen seasoned writers stumble over this.

It's easy to understand why. Many people use the word peak because their intended meaning is that caught my attention at a high point. Indeed, peak is a high point but it's not the correct choice in this context.

Pique is a French word.  It is a transitive verb meaning to cause a feeling of interest, curiosity, or excitement in somebody. To stimulate, prick or provoke. To arouse a feeling as in interest or curiosity.

Peak is a mountain top, the highest point.

Peek is to look quickly.

The correct term is: that piques my interest.

Source: Encarta Dictionary: English (North American)