#IWSG: Achieving Goals

Happy Insecure Writers Support Group Day. IWSG is the brainchild of Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! Thanks, Alex, for starting this group and keeping it going. 

Thanks to this month's awesome hosts:  Raimey Gallant, Natalie Aguirre, CV Grehan, and Michelle Wallace!

Last month, I talked about goal setting. I'm happy to report I accomplished two small goals leading to one big one. I prepared my Middle Grade science fiction adventure story for my editor and sent it off to her. The second goal was contracting for the cover. Here it is:

Blurb:

Her father is gone! Taken by the Queen of Compara’s agents. Mara has to rescue him before the Queen tortures and kills him.

Instead of the kind, loving father she’s always known, he’s become demanding, critical, with impossible expectations—not just as Father but also as the only teacher in their frontier outpost. Mara would rather scoop zircan poop than listen to another boring lecture about governments on Central Planets. Give her a starship engine to take apart or, better yet, fly, and she’s happy. Now, he's gone.

Never mind, they’ve had a rocky road lately. 

Never mind, Father promised she could go off planet to Tech Institute next month when she turns fifteen, where she’ll learn to fly starships.

Never mind, she ran away because she’s furious with him because he reneged on that promise. Father is her only parent. She has to save him.

Along with her best friend, eleven-year-old Jako, and his brother 15-year-old Lukus, Mara sets off to find her father. An old spaceport mechanic and her mentor seems to know why the Queen captured Father. In fact, he seems to know her father well. But, does he tell her everything? Of course not. He dribbles out info like a mush-eating baby. Worse, he indicates he’ll be leaving then soon. And Lukus can’t wait to get off our planet. Mara’s afraid they will all leave her, and she’ll be on her own. Despite her fears, she has to rescue her father.

Optional question: Besides writing what other creative outlets do you have?

Many of my creative outlets have dropped by the wayside as writing has taken over. For years, I did needlework--counted cross-stitch, needlepoint, candlewick, embroidery, and quilting. Photography has stuck around. I use pictures to record our vacations and our family. Hubs and I both have good cameras, those that take film and digital ones. He could start a museum with his cameras. 😊

So what camera do we use the most? The one on our phones. Currently, we're on vacation on the gulf coast. Our son "ordered" us to send pictures. He's going to regret that. LOL I set up an iCloud album, invited our immediate family and have been sending pictures each day. That will teach him!

The ease with which we can take pictures makes it so handy. So, I think that's one creative outlet that won't drop away.

A while ago, I shared the contest for the next IWSG anthology! Here's the cover!

Masquerade: Oddly Suited…

Masquerade: Oddly Suited
An Insecure Writer’s Support Group Anthology
Release date – April 30, 2019
Young Adult Fiction: Romance - General/Paranormal/Contemporary
Print ISBN 9781939844644
EBook ISBN 9781939844651

Find love at the ball…

Can a fake dating game show lead to love? Will a missing key free a clock-bound prince? Can a softball pitcher and a baseball catcher work together? Is there a vampire living in Paradise, Newfoundland? What’s more important—a virtual Traveler or a virtual date to the ball? 

Ten authors explore young love in all its facets, from heartbreak to budding passion. Featuring the talents of L.G. Keltner, Jennifer Lane, C.D. Gallant-King, Elizabeth Mueller, Angela Brown, Myles Christensen, Deborah Solice, Carrie-Anne Brownian, Anstice Brown, and Chelsea Marie Ballard. 

Hand-picked by a panel of agents and authors, these ten tales will mystify and surprise even as they touch your heart. Don your mask and join the party…

Congratulations to all the winners. Happy Writing. See you next month.

Click here to find others on the Insecure Writers Support Group Blog Hop. Or go to IWSG on Facebook to see who’s blogging today.

#IWSG: Creativity

Happy Insecure Writers Support Group Day. IWSG is the brainchild of Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! Thanks, Alex, for starting this group and keeping it going. 

Thanks to this month's awesome hosts:   Ellen @ The Cynical Sailor,Ann V. Friend, JQ Rose, and Elizabeth Seckman!

Question: How has your creativity in life evolved since you began writing?

I've been writing for twenty-five years. Prior to that, I did a lot of needlework: counted cross-stitch, needlepoint, quilting, embroidery. Music has always been a part of my life. Even though I never played an instrument as a child, one of my first purchases as a new homeowner was a piano, and I took lessons. Trying to learn to play at twenty-nine was difficult, which is why I "made" my kids take piano lessons when they were young. Despite my lack of talent, I've always loved listening to music. Just not when I'm writing.

When I began seriously writing with the intention of being published, I let those other forms of creativity fall by the wayside. All my focus has been on the writing. I guess we all need a release for that creativity. Writing is mine. 

Because so many of you are participating in NaNo, my post is short. Good luck to you. Write on.

Click here to find others on the Insecure Writers Support Group Blog Hop. Or go to IWSG on Facebook to see who’s blogging today.

It Happened One Night meets Knight and Day

When elementary teacher Daria Mason left Iowa for a writers’ conference in New York City, she didn’t expect to come home with a wounded spy. Sam Jozwiak works for a shadow agency that gathers intel vital to U.S. security. From the moment he steals digital files from a Russian Mafia kingpin, Murphy’s Law takes over. No matter how he covers his tracks, the kingpin’s assassins find him. What’s worse than getting shot in the butt? Accepting help from an Iowa tourist. Thus, begins a road trip that takes Sam and Daria cross country with the assassins right behind them. 

One Red Shoe released on October 22.

Amazon http://a.co/d/8DH9M5H

Smash: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/901383

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/one-red-shoe-4

iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/one-red-shoe/id1439298014?mt=11

Meet Mimi DiFrancesca

Please help me welcome Mimi DiFrancesca, a Mid-Michigan RWA chaptermate. When I met Mimi at a chapter meeting, I couldn't get over how easy she was to talk to. Here she is to tell us about following your heart.

Hearts, Walls and Getting the Flow of Creativity Moving Again

I’m a new member of writer and author groups. By new I mean, three weeks. Not new to writing though, I’ve been writing for so long that the home made blue jean maxi skirt with fabric inserts I was wearing when I wrote my first poem has come in and out of fashion several times since then. 

My past writing has been under 1,000 words for magazine articles, poetry, marketing copywriting, essays, opinions and blog post style. Now tackling novels, I am experiencing something new; The Wall. I have three manuscripts going right now; each in suspended animation at around 22,000 words. The one I most want to dive into, a Celtic druid time travel MS, had me in an artistic tizzy. When I would pick it up to see if the muse is home, I swear I could hear elevator music. It’s annoying. The pace, the flow, the stamina required, the seven thousand gallons of coffee for novel writing is just, well, different. I needed to find some other writers to speak with about the literary walkabout I needed to embark on in the Outback of my mind. Where do I start? What should I take along? What should I leave behind? Will there be spiders? (Please, say no.) Without a clue what my first step should be in finding the commiseration I was seeking, I resorted to doing what I usually do when I’m stuck in a creative whirlpool. I did something completely unrelated and hoped like hell while I was distracted, a way would open up for me and I’d be awake enough to see when it happened.

A friend of mine calls the powers in charge of serendipitous stuff, “The Set Designer’s Of the Universe.” She says they sit up above us and move things and people and opportunities around so we either don’t crash into it or we do…on purpose. She says they laugh their asses off when we finally smack our forehead and catch on to what they’ve been up to. 

A few weeks into just doing things unrelated, I saw a post on Facebook from a local artist, Barb Hranilovich. Her work is amazing and during a food bank event planning job a few years back, I got the chance to paint ceramic plates with her one day. She worked so fast and her vision was clear and steady and within the short time we had, she made three different pieces that were astonishing in their detail. In March, I saw her Facebook post on a workshop she was teaching on the art of making little felt heart sculptures. She called it HeartFelt. I have lots of heart things around my home and heart shaped jewelry. Love them. Perfect. Love her. Love her work. I’m in. As I sat at the table in the Grove Gallery in East Lansing learning and making my own little felt heart, we women started to yak. The woman across from me told us all about a new group she helped form; the Capital City Writer’s Association. A whiplash inducing head swivel locked my eyes to hers and she told me about their first meeting (the very next Saturday) and how to join. Tunnel…light!

At the meeting, they talked about Romance Writers of America and the group leader casually mentioned that there is a local chapter that we might want to look into and by the way, romance writer’s as a genre, are the most organized author groups in the world. I heard that. I wrote it down. A few days later I went online and joined RWA and just for the heck of it, I looked up the local chapter, MMRWA. Their monthly meeting was in a few days. I saw the address of the meeting and did another whiplash double take. Not only was the meeting just a couple days away, not enough time for me to start stacking projects and excuses in front of it so I couldn’t get there, it was less than two miles from my house. What? Ok. I can follow a sign that’s lit up that big and in my face.

I went to the meeting not knowing what to expect and just “happened” to sit next to author, Diane Burton. She writes sci-fi. SCORE! I am, arguably, the biggest sci-fi fan in the Multiverse. At the end of the first meeting, she did a brief head’s up on a talk she’ll be giving at the next meeting. It will be on book jacket blurbs and elevator pitches. She gave us the home work of writing a short blurb and tag line describing the book we’re working on. My grown son was in town for a weekend visit so I tossed the homework to the family and said I was having trouble doing it. After giving a five minute synopsis of the story so far, the boy child cocked an eyebrow at me and said, “She holds the future. He holds her heart.”

WTF? Did he just do that in ten seconds? Yes. Yes, he did. We talked a bit about storylines, characters and situations I was wrestling with and as if someone poked a hole in the dam holding back the water of creativity, it just started to flood out. I am now deep in Celtic Druid Time Traveling World Changing Romantic storytelling.

Here’s where I lay out the weird parts of this story. The Facebook post for Barb’s workshop drew me in because I saw a photo of a heart she had made. The book I have been working on for several years is called The Grove. The gallery where I took the HeartFelt workshop is called The Grove Gallery. I was, literally, holding my heart, when the woman told me about the CCWA. The CCWA led me to the MMRWA and an open chair on a corner led me to a seat next to Diane who gave the home work that I took home and with an open heart, shared with my family who led me to a breakthrough in writing progress of the book.

So, to wrap this up, here’s my advice for when you hit your own wall. Look around you and pay attention to what excites your heart. Follow it wherever it takes you and while you go, pay attention. Following the heart will always lead you to exactly where you need to be to do what is next for you. Trust your heart. It’s a text message from The Set Designer’s of The Universe and in case you didn’t know this already, they always have your very best interests at heart.

Mimi DiFrancesca:  Writer, Former Columnist, Poet, Blogger, Artist, Jewelry Designer, Event Planner, Ridiculously Good Cook, Animal lover, Traveler, Photographer, Metaphysics Guide and Connoisseur of Hilarity. Lives in Mid Michigan with her Great Dane and family and is currently working on a fantasy romance, an urban fiction novel and a sci-fi romance. Writing under pseudonyms, she has published an erotica book, poetry and magazine articles. Member of the RWA, MMRWA and CCWA.

http://wordninjagirl.wordpress.com/

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