Enjoy a laugh about writing

A writer died and was given the opportunity of going to heaven or hell.

She decided to check out each place first.  As the writer descended into the fiery pits, she saw row upon row of writers chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop.  As they worked, they were repeatedly whipped with thorny lashes.

“Oh my,” said the writer.  “Let me see heaven now.”

A few moments later, as she ascended into heaven, she saw rows of writers chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop.  As they worked, they, too, were whipped with thorny lashes.

“Wait a minute,” said the writer.  “This is just as bad as hell!”

“Oh no, it’s not,” replied an unseen voice.  “Here, your work gets published.”

This is part of a blog post on the Writer’s Relief website.  They stumbled across some laughs for writers from Villanova University and this was one of their favorites.

This article has been reprinted with permission of Writer’s Relief, an author submission service that has been helping creative writers make submissions since 1994.  Their work is highly recommended in the writing community, and there are TONS of freebies, publishing leads, and writer’s resources on their website.  Check it out here.

Review for Life - it’s a Trip by Rasheed Hooda

I received this book as a PDF file from Rasheed.  I was surprised to find it in my email box on September 22.  I’ve been reading his blog posts since the A to Z challenge last April and really like his voice.  Thanks so much, Rasheed, for your book of life’s adventures so far.

This book is a quick read and very interesting.  Most areas are two or three pages long.  I found it well written and filled with things Mr. Hooda has learned in his life through the people he’s met during his working life and in his travels across the US.  This man has big goals for scaling mountains and has lots of energy.  What a great thing.  He also has a positive attitude about life even when things aren’t going their best.

Rasheed has chosen the nomadic lifestyle for himself, not wanting to be a “slave to wages”.  The nomadic lifestyle isn’t for me.  This clearly won’t work for everyone, but we each have to choose our own path and the author makes that clear.  He’s having a blast sharing his travels and thoughts about life on his journey through the states.

I think you’ll find this an enjoyable book to read.  Rasheed shares his thoughts on intuition, money, mentors, family and friends, finding your right place in the world and living your dream as you touch other lives with every action you make whether you know this or not.  This book will make you think and is written in a down-to-earth fashion.  As I read the short stories, I felt as if I was sitting in the room with this author and listening to his tales.

Life is full of difficulties and Rasheed shares some of his, along with some tragic happenings, as well.  He’s trying to live by the law of attraction (like attracts like) and mindfulness.  Good for him.  We should all be aware of these things in our journey on Earth.  By focusing on positive or negative thoughts, a person will bring positive or negative things into their lives.

The book is filled with lovely quotes too.  And I love this one from the author:  “Dreams do come true.  But first, you must have a dream.  So dream on and dream big.”

You can buy Rasheed’s book from his site here:  http://rasheedhooda.com/

Or you can purchase his book at Amazon by clicking here.
 

Please leave him a review on his site, your blog, or on Amazon.

Awesome Writer’s Tool and Give Away!!

Reblogged from Jen’s Thoughts

I love writing tools, and when I find a good one, I have to share. Anyone who has followed my blog has heard me mention Grammarly. I use Grammarly for every word I write whether it’s for an email, cover letter, resume, short story, or my new novel. I have the ability to use it directly on their website or while I’m typing in Word (they offer a word plug-in).

Recently, Grammarly became available for Google Chrome as an add-on which means that it will assist you while you write emails, blog posts, and even Facebook posts.

With each error correction and suggestion, I’m able to improve my writing on a consistent basis. Grammarly also emails a report concerning your usage and where your problem areas are. Since grammar isn’t my strong suit, I’m now able to identify my mistake while writing. It helps me become more aware especially since I’m a visual learner. I traditionally suck at commas! :)

So if there is one tool I would recommend its Grammarly. And, here’s the really exciting part. I’m offering a free 3-month premium trial to a lucky winner! You can try it out for yourself and watch your writing improve.

Here’s the inside scoop about Grammarly from Wikipedia:
Grammarly carries out more than 250 grammar checks; it proofreads and detects plagiarism in the process and finally provides users with a list of possible errors for correction.

Grammarly also provides citations when it detects plagiarism. Users can click on a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” icon to let Grammarly know whether the result was helpful.

Other features include:

·                         A grammar checker that can analyze general, business, academic, technical, creative and casual writings.

·                         A contextual spell checker that determines the appropriate spelling of a word as it is used in a sentence; thus, it finds misspelled words and also identifies correctly spelled yet incorrectly used words.

·                         Grammarly Plug-in for Microsoft Office, which adds Grammarly to Microsoft Word and Outlook.

·                         An online Grammarly Handbook resource covering what the Grammarly platform does in checking grammar and syntax.

To enter you need to:

·                         Follow my blog

·                         Share this post on Facebook and Twitter

·                         Comment below WHY you would like to win and also leave the Facebook post or Twitter link that you shared

I’ll have the drawing next Tuesday, October 6th, and will announce the lucky winner!

Until Next Time…

Celebrate the Freedom to Read

So far, we still have that freedom in America.  Banned Books week is coming up and this year it runs from September 27 to October 3 2015 in the United States.  This is about the freedom to express ideas, even the unpopular ones.  Where would we, as writers, be without that?  No one should be censored because, just like the TV with its off switch, you don’t have to open a book’s cover.

Thanks to librarians, publishers, teachers, readers and a group of others that come together in support of our freedoms to make the choice of what to read, Banned Books week is brought to the publics attention every year.  If you want to get involved, you can contact the office of intellectual freedom at 1-800-545-2433 ext 4220 or by email at bbw@ala.org.

For a list of banned books click here.  Follow the links on the page for several articles and lists.

Most of the reasons books are banned is because they contain one of the following: an unconventional viewpoint, drugs, smoking, alcohol, offensive language, too much sex and nudity, rape, homosexuality, gambling, controversial political or religious views, occultism, political correctness, bullying, etc.

I think, as adults, we can make up our minds about what we want to read and what’s appropriate for our children to read.  I wouldn’t want to leave this decision to anyone else to make for me.

There are some great classics on this partial list.  How many of you have read some of these books and how did they influence you, other than being a good story?  For the life of me, I have no idea why some of these are banned.  There are so many books all over the bookshelves in stores or online today with similar scenes in them, so why pick these?

The Great Gatsby

The Catcher in the Rye

The Grapes of Wrath

To Kill a Mockingbird

The Color Purple

Ulysses

Beloved

The Lord of the Flies

1984

Lolita

Of Mice and Men

Catch 22

Animal Farm

A Farewell to Arms

As I Lay Dying

The Sun Also Rises

Invisible Man

Gone with the Wind

One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest

The Call of the Wild

A Clockwork Orange

The Lord of the Rings

Lady Chatterley’s Lover

In Cold Blood

Rabbit, Run

Sons and Lovers

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Even Harry Potter was on this list for a while and so was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.  Amazing isn’t it, the way some people try to save us from ourselves.  The best thing we can do is to read these books and help to educate those who haven’t read them.  They’re missing out on some great literature.

To read this article and for more resources, click here.

Thanks to Indy Authors

Reposting this from Jen’s blog here.

Original post from Silver Threading here.

Spread this around to help all the independent authors out there.  Writing is hard work and it takes dedication.  We want to support them as much as we can.

Amazon unveils a new way to pay Authors for Kindle Books

I found this interesting.  Maybe you will too.

The article says that authors gave Amazon great feedback about aligning payments for books read with the length of the books.  Amazon listened and starting today, July 1, 2015, Amazon will pay self-published authors by pages read when a reader borrows a book from the kindle lending library.

Self-published authors will be paid for each page read the first time by a reader, so if you have a long page-turner, you’ll make more money than an author whose book is never finished by the reader.  I’m always skeptical when a large conglomerate comes up with something new to benefit others and not themselves, but let’s see how all this works out.  Time will tell.  Maybe authors really will make more money if you have a compelling book out there to read.

If you’re unhappy with the program, you do have the option of removing your book from the kindle unlimited plan.

In a way, this is a reward for the writers who are diligent about writing the best book possible and having their books edited before placing them out there in the marketplace for sale.  This has to be a good thing.  Does anyone have opinions on this?

To read the entire article here, click here.

Could you live without your basic amenities?

How much do we all take certain things in life for granted?  I think the answer to that is most of us.  We expect the lights to come on when we flip a switch or the water to come out of a faucet when we turn it on.  But…what if this changed?

 My water meter

 

If you suddenly found yourself out of luck with the usual things like water or electricity, would you go into crisis mode and flip out, or simply adjust and deal with the situation until things are resolved? 

Right now, I’m dealing with this condition at my house.  I had to turn my water off on Saturday morning and we’ve been living with no water service in the house since then.  It’s now late Monday afternoon and I’ve yet to see the plumber show up to assess the situation.

 After the towel mop up, I used the wet and dry vac

 

To make a long story short, I discovered the carpet in the master closet was soaking wet on Saturday morning.  I grabbed towels to start soaking up what I could.  They were wet enough to wring out.  I called my husband who freaks out when things like this happen and he insisted I turn the water off at the street.  What really threw both of us off is there’s no water supply near this closet.  Our first thoughts were a ruptured pipe in the slab. 

 This is my mechanical room.  I didn't think to take a pic of the standing water.

 

Luckily, my neighbor works for the city and was home, so he came over to help me.  I couldn’t get the valve turned using a wrench.  I might mention it was 110 outside.  Both of us had sweat dripping down our noses and splattering onto the ground.  My neighbor has a handy tool just for this purpose.  He got the valve turned in two seconds.  Then he came in to look at my water heater, which he thinks is the problem.  My mechanical room had water standing in it.  He turned the main valve back on and just cut the water coming into the house until we could call a plumber.  Naturally, it was the weekend.  Of course, things this major always happen on weekends and holidays.

 Then I brought in the super duper fan from the garage and an extension cord and blew it on the carpet all weekend.

 

The last time it was a power outage in July a few years ago when it was 114 and the power to the entire city was out for five hours!  Can you imagine that?  But I think this water issue is almost worse.

With this heat, I had to break down and go to a girlfriend’s on Sunday to take a shower.  One can only use so many wet wipes.  The next stop was the dollar store for lots of bottled gallons of water.

Supposedly, hearing my desperation, the plumber is working me in somehow so I can at least get cold water into the house until he can properly fix the problem.  We’ll see if he shows up later today.  I’m not holding my breath.

In times like these, it makes you appreciate running water.  I wonder how I can use this in a future story.