The Liebster Award

I'm very excited to announce that Gail Shephard has bestowed my little Vociferous blog with a Liebster Award, which is designed to honor up and coming blogs with fewer than 200 followers.  I love Gail's blog, and I'm really looking forward to getting to know her better.

A fun aspect of the award is that I get to pass it on to five other blogs that meet the same criteria, and I really enjoyed thinking about which bloggers give me the most joy each week.  I think other writers, in particular, will really love the perspective they bring, so be sure to check them out.

1. From Prose to Pulp where J.S. Schley gives amazing tips and reading picks.
2. In Which I battle Words, where Ang Helm takes you on her writing journey.
3. Victim of Writing, where Tiffany Garner shares her honest thoughts.
4. Story Gems where Marlene Cronkhite, my long time critique group partner posts samples of her writing.
5. The Ink Pond, where Tia Svardahl always keeps me motivated.

Awardees, you get to pass the award on now!  Have fun!

Transitions

The leaves here are  past peak and falling fast. Winter waits in the wings. I feel its presence in the wind as it steals glimpses from behind the curtain. As I walked past the thermostat in the house this morning, I did a double take. One degree away from turning on the heat. I greeted the obvious metaphor with a laugh. Yes, when it gets colder, we must turn on the heat. Feel free to take a moment to groan, and then join me in the next paragraph.

I feel it on a personal level. Life has grown a little stagnant, frozen. It’s pretty common at my age. It’s not that life doesn’t present plenty of challenges and opportunities to learn, but I spent more of my days reacting than acting. Time to seek positive change, to figure out how to thaw, so to speak. I’m going to start volunteering more, for example.  I sent in my application yesterday. It's just one little thing, but I'm going to add more.

In Training

This is my first post for the Insecure Writer's Support Group. I'm really loving this resource.

It is almost impossible for me to believe that it’s less than a month until the next NanoWriMo. Blogs, Twitter feeds, etc. are all starting to buzz.  The goal is to write at least 50K words of a novel in one month.  The last two years I was anxious for November 1^st. I knew what I was going to write, and though I’m something in between a pantser and a preparer, I had my outlines under way at least. I met the goal with no problems and even had days to spare.

What's in your trunk?

I am close to putting my first novel away in that proverbial trunk.  It's had a good run.  The concept has been met with enthusiasm, including plenty of requests to read more material, but despite many edits, I'm not sure it's there. Since I can't wrap my head around what "there" would be at this point, it just might be time to tuck it away.  I'm not alone.  Plenty of writers have done the same and have lived to blog about it.

I enjoyed reading these two perspectives on lessons learned from their trunked novels.

Jennifer Hubbard's Lessons From Trunk Novels

Allison Dickson, Junk in the Trunk

Feedback

An measure of interpersonal communication satisfaction I use in class asks people to rate how comfortable they are in various communication situations. One such situation is giving feedback to a friend who has asked you to read his or her writing.  Do you see where this is going?

But we'll get to that in a second.

Greatness

"It's just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . ."

Last week, I finished The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.. I know. I know. I should have read it years ago.  For some reason it never rose to the top of my to be read pile, but I was determined. Something told me I had to read this book.

This was my very short review on Goodreads: 

I am sure I should attempt to give some kind of detail here, but I've spent the last few days immersed in the most masterful use of words I think I've ever read. I have no idea how a review could possibly convey what I feel right now.

Unquestionably, this book now ranks in my top five reads of all time.  

Choose active over passive

The other day my four year old asked my husband, “What do you live for?” I heard him answer, “I never expected that question from you so soon.” Then he called out for me, “How would you answer?” I’m not sure it was truly a deep existential question from her perspective, but of course, we answered as if it were.  I provided a laundry list of beautiful things I’d experienced that morning. He talked about joy and family.

In the past few weeks, I’ve been questioning whether my time spent writing/querying/etc. is worth it. It’s a hobby, right? I even wondered about reading. Why do I love getting caught up in other people’s stories? Why spend hours living through someone else? 

The short answer is I learn from reading. Writing teaches me, too.

This morning I wrote a letter to Grace—I keep a file for each kid on my hard drive filled with life lessons and observations.  I closed the letter with this:

Try new things. Love some; hate some. Laugh a lot. Cry when you need to, and even if you just want to. Run, walk, dance, sing, read, write, watch, listen, smile, yell. Fill your life with verbs. Make them active verbs.

Ah yes, writing teaches me how to live. And living teaches me how to write.  If you need a little inspiration, here's a list of active verbs. They might come in handy for writing ... or living.

For fun, what's your favorite verb?