Artistry With Words

Happy Monday to you all!

I hope you all had a great weekend.   I was busy starting our little mealworm enterprise, and taking the first steps toward building a rabbit hutch.  On weekends I like to do anything but writing, although my mind does not shut down.  I’m thinking of topics to write even while I’m stapling wire to wood.  Such is the life of a writer.

Thanks to those of you who weighed in on how often this blog should appear.  I think I’ll compromise and post it twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Obviously this is Monday, but since I didn’t post a blog on Friday I thought I’d better toss this one out so you didn’t forget me.  The next installment will be on Thursday and then I’ll try to be consistent from that point.

Let’s get started, shall we?

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“If you dream of something worth doing and then simply go to work on it and don’t think anything of personalities, or emotional conflicts, or of money, or of family distractions; it is amazing how quickly you get through those 5,000 steps.”

Edwin Land
I don’t know what the “5,000 steps” means, but I love the quote, and let me tell you why.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY

I have been thinking about this for the past few days.  I’m an observer.  I watch what other people are doing, and I listen when other writers speak, and there has been a great amount of complaining of late about distractions.  Some writers are distracted because their score has dropped on HubPages.  Some writers are distracted because their views are down and they don’t know what is wrong.  Some are distracted by online theft, and some are distracted by the daily stuff like family, work, errands, chores, etc.

Well….I would hope that all those distractions are not taking you away from the one thing you must do as a writer…..WRITE!

Let me use HubPages as an example for a moment, and I’m sure I’ll annoy a few people with what I have to say, but oh well.  I currently have twelve articles on HubPages which have a little “c” marked next to them, meaning that they have been copied and/or plagiarized.  I haven’t done anything about that, much to the confusion and chagrin of some of my writing friends.  They can’t understand why I’m not incensed about it all, but they don’t see writing through my perspective.

I can’t stop online copying.  To think I can is ridiculous.  As soon as I file a form stopping one, another two-hundred copiers pop up.  It’s like that carnival game where you bop those little men on the head and another one immediately pops up somewhere else.  I can’t win that game, and I can’t stop all the online copying.

And I don’t care.  I am a writer.  My main goal is to write books and become a well-known novelist.  It is not to make $500 per month on HubPages.  If I let plagiarism distract me from my goal, to become an excellent writer, then the plagiarists have won.

TIP OF THE DAY

Concentrate on being the best writer you can be.  Everything else is window-dressing.

SITE OF THE DAY

Follow this link and you can read the thoughts of Janet Reid, a literary agent. There are pearls of wisdom in each blog post, and they give you insights into the mind of an agent.

OFFER OF THE DAY

I’ll keep offering and hopefully you’ll take me up on it.  You are invited to do a guest blog here any old time you want. Just contact me at holland1145@yahoo.com and let me know you are interested.  As long as your posting is about writing then I’ll be happy with whatever you come up with.

BOOK PASSAGE OF THE DAY

I thought I’d give you a snippet from my new novel, “Shadows Kill.” I hope you like it.

My sleep was restless that night.  I was being chased in a dream, but I couldn’t see the face of my pursuer.  He was darkness upon darkness, a shadow man, barely visible each time I turned to look at him.  I raced through the woods, my heart exploding in my chest, my breath raspy and strained, sweat pouring from my brow.  I knew there was no point in running, that being caught was inevitable, and finally I tripped over a tree root and fell hard to the ground.  Turning over, I saw the shadow man standing over me, and his shadow formed a smile, dark teeth in a dark mouth.

“It won’t be that easy, Eli,” he said.  “Now is not the time.”

ARTICLE TIP OF THE DAY

What’s happening six months from now? That’s what an article writer should be thinking to get maximum exposure for their article.  Six months from now will be Valentine’s Day….set up a calendar and write your articles six months in advance.  You will thank me for it.  I promise.

HAVE A GREAT WEEK

I’ll have more for you on Thursday, including some new contests for you to consider.  Now, enough of this….get out there and dazzle the world with your words.

Bill

“Helping writers to spread their wings and fly.”