Carey Burns

I had a story idea twitching in my brain while in the shower the other day so I asked the hubby to take notes for me as I dictated them (I'm a dictator!).  That was 1500 words ago and the story seems to be writing itself.  One of the main characters is a talking deer named Joel and he makes me laugh.  With any luck I'll finish the tale by the weekend so I can get it typed up and revised.  I'll have to do some hunting for a potential home for Joel.  Wish me luck! The slimming is going very well.  I'm down 5.5 pounds and I feel really, really good.  This weekend will be tough because of a birthday party on Saturday, but I will do my best to resist cake.  But we all know how much I love cake...wish me luck here too!! 

In accordance with my slimming plan, I started the Fat Smash Diet (as seen on reality TV, "Celebrity Fit Club") and after the 9 day detox, I lost 4 pounds and felt better than I had in a long, long time.  Day 10 was a bit of a fail because it was birthday treat day at work and I was the only April Baby...I only had a small spoonful of a couple "bad" things like cake.  But then a friend gave me 1/2 a loaf of raspberry rozek.  This is a Slovak pastry that I LOVE and only have once a year so yeah, that rozek is no more.  It has ceased to be.  But, I'm back on the eating well train and am about to hit the gym.  Gotta keep moving forward! In writerly news, my tale "All Fun and Games" will appear in the forthcoming anthology Made You Flinch--Again! and (as of right now) holds the first spot in the table of contents.  This gets me all sorts of excited and squealy.  I've also seen the cover for the upcoming Groanology:  Amusing Monster Mash-ups Un...

Not long ago a friend made the comment that I wasn't really a writer because I only had short stories published.  I was surprised and a little hurt and immediately thought "Well, YOU have never had anything published so THERE!"  But then I calmed down and breathed through the threatening tears and just smiled. So then I saw on a forum another writer that basically didn't consider herself a writer for this very reason.  It made me wonder "What Makes a Person a Writer" and it has been bothering me since. To me, if you put pen to paper in any attempt at poetry or fiction or nonfiction, you're a writer.  You could be an unpublished writer or a published writer, a short story writer or a novel writer.  Heck, you could even be a good writer or a bad writer.  You're still a writer no matter what format. Don't get me started on the word "author."  Seriously.

I've been working my way up to walking in the Susan G. Komen race in May and this week I'm hitting my 3 miles, 4 nights a week goal.  Wish me luck that I don't die on the treadmill, okay?  In other fitnessey news, we roller skated yesterday for 2 1/2 hours and didn't fall or die, so I think we'll be doing that more often.  I don't recall sweating o much after skating when I was little.  Of course I was a wee little peanut back then... Spent the weekend trimming down possessions and trying to make my office somewhat organized.  I'm almost done and can't wait to have everything in storage bins on shelves.  I'll be able to actually breathe easy in there. Writing-wise I've hit a slump with a submission and missed the deadline.  I'm bummed, but I really like the story and might just keep going with it and see where it takes me.  Tonight I'm going to be reading through the upcoming anthology called Chivalry is Dead from May December Public...

Time sure flies when you're busy writing.  You forget simple things like when you submitted a story and (sometimes) who you even sent it out to.  A while back I created a simple Excel spreadsheet to track all of my stories with crazy details like when I subbed, if I got a reply email, if it was accepted/rejected/held and when, what the payment per word was, how much they paid me.  You get the idea. Today I spent a few hours updating that spreadsheet and adding a few more columns and just looking at all the lovely colors (yellow means accepted and hot pink means awaiting a decision).  I'm pleased to say that out of 46 tales I've gotten the courage to submit, 20 of those were accepted and 4 are still awaiting a decision.  So I've added a few more pink lines recently.  Yesterday I submitted "Death From Above" and "Being Neighborly" to two anthologies.  I'm doubly nervous because the second one is for a follow-up anthology where the editor ...

There's something kind of cool about reading the corrections an editor sends you, especially when they're mostly punctuation corrections. It marks the final stretch before you actually get to see your story in print along with other authors. It makes me giddy and motivated to work on more and more projects to get that same feeling. Right now I've got my newest story all typed and ready for its last read-through and I'm wondering which of my other dozen or so ideas to pounce on first and its hard to focus my drive and spirit into just one thing. I don't know how other authors can juggle several projects at once and manage to finish any of them. Someday I'll learn how to juggle. Just not anytime soon.

Ack, I intended to get right into typing up a short story today but needed to finish a Valentine for the hubby. Then I needed to check my email which led to visiting the forum which led to Facebook which led to Amazon then over to Author Central then back to the forum and then a quick trip to another blogger's entry about stolen art ideas then back to Facebook and now here. Whew, how many calories could that have burned??? With only thirty minutes left of my free time, I won't get much real work done so I'm blogging to advise you not to fall into the same trap I did today. Work first, party later. Now to type like a woman posessed...or do some online shopping...