Greetings!

I am delighted to let you know that my essay, "The Flip Side of Coming Out," has been selected as a finalist in the Truth In Words Contest.

In order to win this contest, I need your help.

I would be extremely grateful to you if you could first please LIKE this page: https://www.facebook.com/notesandwords

and then

LIKE my essay:…

As I read Facebook and blogs, I see an almost competitive pride in being super-busy. We list the items we have to get accomplished by the end of the day and compare our stress levels with one another. "To Do" lists and clever planners can be as pretty and decorative as you want, but if your day is jam-packed with activity, it may be time to re-evaluate. 

READ MORE...

            You've finally found a reading "pal," a person you trust who answers all the burning questions you have about your manuscript, a person who has also published a little or a lot, who takes the kind of consideration with your manuscript that it needs to be "polished." You've given her your…

Hi, Shewrites members! I feel I am coming up for air after months of concentrating on everyone else's writing but my own.

The award of a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative grant to bring writing workshops into a series of non-profit organizations has been a dream come true. When I created Writing Circles for Healing, my intention was to encourage and guide people who do not think of themselves as writers but have a story to tell. I knew I wanted to bring self-reflective…

It’s date night, and you want to plan something special.  A dinner and a movie are overdone, right?  Not necessarily.

We all have to eat, that’s a fact.  Some of us eat three times a day while others snack and graze all day long.  Have you ever tried to get something done, and you’re making good headway, but then…

http://www.ginster-plantagenet.blogspot.de/2012/06/i-need-feminism-women-are-heroes.html

the strangest thing happens when you are out and it’s 97 degrees out, like you wind up doing karaoke and giving up $20 bucks easily to adopt a flamingo from the zoo.  this was after i tried making a brochure for my parents.  they’d nixed it while i was talking to them and eating cheese dip.  i did this after running for six miles with no water and i was hoping this would balance it out.

gretchen, my friend that i’d met from long ago came out and actually took afflec up on their ad to…

the strangest thing happens when you are out and it’s 97 degrees out, like you wind up doing karaoke and giving up $20 bucks easily to adopt a flamingo from the zoo.  this was after i tried making a brochure for my parents.  they’d nixed it while i was talking to them and eating cheese dip.  i did this after running for six miles with no water and i was hoping this would balance it out.

gretchen, my friend that i’d met from long ago came out and actually took afflec up on their ad to…

Don't let the skirt fool you . . .

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Girls raised on a ranch, doing 'ranch stuff' alongside the men, are often mistaken for yet another of those men.

Until someone gets close enough…

There is a rooster that lives on a farm that is situated through the woods behind our house. This rooster is one noisy S.O.B.

I hear him all the livelong day, from the crack of dawn (if I’m awake at the crack of dawn) until the sun goes down.  As we move more into spring weather here in NC, he gets more…

Seeking personal accounts of actions or experiences of serving LGBT military members and their families on 20 September 2011, date of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) repeal. Did you take part in a celebration, make a point of coming out to those you work with, do a small yet significant or symbolic action (like update your DD 93 and change ‘friend’ to ‘spouse’) that marked the change from forced in the closest to finally able to be yourself and true about those who are your family? What is…

We made our way into Miami jumping off 395 east and then seeing the coast blocked by a heavy metal guard rail but then obscured by big orange birds of paradises, blue and purple bromeliads, and dark pink and red bougainvillea trellises as we passed the exit for the light for Ocean Boulevard and then to the north state road, A1A.  He wanted to go to a youth hostel which wasn’t far away from here so we stopped for directions once at a gas station out of our league full of new BMW’s and…

One day I want to write a story that runs backwards. I’ll start with the protagonists in a mire of disaster, and then tick back through time, unpicking their mistakes, until they are blithe and bonny.

Read more...…

The house is still.  The only noise I hear is the hum of the refrigerator.  I’m basking in the quiet and trying to make it last as long as I can.  Because…today is the last day of school.  A day I’ve been dreading more than a gynecological visit or a root canal.

...Continue

We hear a lot about passive and active characters, but what does this mean? And why is character passivity such a problem?

http://nailyournovel.wordpress.com/2011/05/22/time-to-get-passive-aggressive-get-your-main-character-out-of-the-back-seat/#comments

Read more...

http://t.co/FMXuvGR

It’s often a struggle to bring a character alive the first time they appear in a book. Here’s one of the things I do

I once made Alan Titchmarsh the Prime Minister of Canada.

I hope he’d be amused to know that, and let me make it clear that it was only in the privacy of my study and the pages I was writing.

Read more...…