Master's Daughter plays head games

I do believe that my non-paid technical editor is playing some head game on me. It's not like she does not have enough to do, that she would spend time to actually make her mother think her mother (me) is going crazy.

On the 22nd she wrote, "I haven't had a chance to download the chapters." (I had sent her the next six) "I hope the edit I sent last week wasn't too discouraging." Whow! Great way to get my attention. She sent me back my first four chapters, edited and discouraging???? Where are they?

Okay, I got this late at night, and of course, I spent two hours searching for the missing email. Not in Spam, nor in deleated, nor in read, nor in new. I had messages about Christmas presents and about her Soldier son. There was a joke or two about ear plugs and Palin, not in the same vein mind you, althought that might have been a good idea. But, nowhere is there a "discouraging" or otherwise edit from Master's Daughter.

I wrote and told her I had not received the edit and that I would not consider a critique discouraging. I am an artist. I have been critiqued for twenty years. I can handle it. I would rather find out what is wrong from her before I submit and get a form rejection letter. I can hardly trust my own judgement on this as I ALWAYS think something, mostly everything, is wrong with my work. I will never submit my book if I go totally on my own instincts. I will edit the life out of it and out of me.

So, here I sit, watching to see my mail jump from 80, in my in box. I save mail, okay, so shoot me. It is still not jumping to 81.

Oh, I just looked. She sent me that note on the 23rd. Honestly, I thought it was like four days ago. Okay, so I cannot be too irritated. She does have a life. It is just, WHAT IS WRONG, GIRL??? I have serious revision work to do and I want to get started.

Are you out Trick or Treating again??

Back in Business

By the way, the book looks better to me again. Guess, I just need to keep my hands off editing when I am exhausted. Nothing ever works right at those times. I am back editing and lucky Master's Daughter was sent the first twelve chapters last night, for her final technical edit. I am sure she will wake up and be just delighted. After all, it's mid term time in Indiana and she has a room full of sixth grader's to grade.

Wednesday's Writer's Journal

It is again time for Wednesday’s Writer’s Journal

Based on Susie Morgenstern’s book, I pick a random page (sometimes the fourth random page) and Blog on it. So, here goes:

Okay, now this is why I do not always use the first random page. My first pick is February 29th: “A day to relax – but only if it’s leap year!” I don’t know. Is it leap year??

I think someone is trying to tell me something. Pick two was February 24th, “A day to let yourself go and do whatever you like!” Perhaps all of February is a day of rest??

January 30th: “Do you want to be president? Write a campaign speech.”

Instead, and since I make the rules, I can do this, I will not write a speech, I will just list my campaign promises. I can get myself into enough trouble this way. And, honest, I did not intentionally pick this. With the election days away and the fact that I have voted already, I have reached the point where I could do a day without elections, promises, slander and campaigns.

But, here is what is important to me:

I promise, being the average Jane, that I will surround myself with the brightest people in the field, as advisors.

I promise that I will do my best to see that everyone in this country has good health care.

I will have advisers looking at the programs Franklin Delano Roosevelt implemented and to get people working, including artists and writers, and I will implement programs to give everyone a living wage.

One of my programs will be to build some of the housing that college architects have designed for the homeless, so that everyone has safe shelter.

I will see to it that no elderly person, nor anyone, has to eat corn flakes and cat food. I’m not sure anyone does that anymore, as who can afford it? But, everyone deserves decent fresh food. Everyone does.

I promise a free college education for all; and all student loans forgiven. There has to be a way. Our future rests on the education of our children. College is a necessity now and should not be that costly.

So, we have covered health, jobs, shelter, food and education. What is the important issue to you?

Why is it so suddenly awful?

I took a couple of weeks off, to go to (and photograph) a wedding and to spend days fixing the photos and duping. I thought it would be a good break from my line edit and bring me a fresh eye.

But, everything I read last night was just bad. Really bad. At this rate, I will be 110 before I give up and just submit it. I have four different beginnings and have edited the first chapters some twenty-seven times.

I am going to bed now. It is a busy week and perhaps I am reading someone else's book.

GRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Will typhoid Sheryl strike again?

I was working a job I hated, for the possibly worse lawyer boss on the face of the earth, and decided to try a career of typing up transcripts for the Court Reporters. I knew one reporter, from my secretarial job, and she needed someone to do her typing. Things were going well and I was thinking about marketing and expanding, when they came out with a computer program that did it for the Reporters. Thus, ending my job.

Then, being an artist who loves painting people, I looked at my market and decided to do Native Americans. I was really tired of painting deceased children. This is what my "paint people" marketing was bringing in. It is a depressing thing to do on a daily basis and most of the parents, I was meeting, just did not seem to be ready for it.

I had a love of the Native American culture and was raised to believe I had Native heritage. I started exhibiting at Pow Wows and marketing my work in the Western artist market and before long, I was exhibiting in National shows, being asked to do things like deceased actor Will Sampson's (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) portrait. I was also getting written up in SouthWest Art Magazine. Then, as I start selling a large original every month, the bottom drops out of the native market. Shows started closing and frankly, I was out of marketing money, having made a bad decisions, based on SouthWest Art's Magazine add salesman. Sometime I will tell you about my opinion of advertising salesmen. Another career bites the dust.

We moved to Wyoming and I begin putting together my pottery studio and man that stuff sold so fast I could not keep up. I could barely keep up with the sales of my animal drawings and had a list of commissions to keep me busy. The time came when, Casper, Wyoming being a city, at the time of around 60,000 people, I realized that I had pretty well reached my clients. I could branch out into other states but my husband's health was deteriorating. So, when I was downsized at the College, we decided to move back to Indiana.

We decided that the artist town of Nashville, Indiana was our target. It had an active community of artists and was only three hours drive from daughter and husband's relatives. We moved, we remodeled a horse barn for my studio, I joined the local art guilds and the Brown County Studio and Garden Tours 2008. Actually, I joined the tour of 2004. That year I made more in sales than I had in two years in Wyoming, and my income doubled the next year and again the next year. Had I, at last, found my niche?

Some unknown illness was beating me down and I was gradually unable to do pottery. I quit the tour to build up my health and I, are you ready, began making eight inch tall polymer clay fairies and selling them on eBay. My last one sold for $700. That was about six months before emergency heart surgery. Recovering now, I could go back to doing that but since prices on eBay have dropped well over twenty-five percent, and still going down. I do feel I have again hit an occupation just as it was falling into the great abyss.

I refuse to believe I caused these things to happen. I just seem to have a knack for getting into things at the wrong time. I stay away from the stock market because, well- I can't afford it, but also it is in enough trouble already.

Now, my final edit is over half done and I am working on some marketing, and a lot of research to do the best query I can. So, it was with some delight, that I recently read The 26th Story: George Jones Q & A . This was actually a link on Nathan Bransford - Literary Agent blog. George Jones is the President and CEO of Borders Group, Inc. And, news is not so bad.

So, I hope you excuse if I am not posting as often as I would like, but I gotta hurry before the bottom drops out. Hopefully, with the confidence of Mr. Jones, it will stay strong for us and break my streak.

Wednesday with the Writer's Journal

It is again the Aspiring Writer's Journal Amazon.com: The Aspiring Writer's Journal: Susie Morgenstern, Theresa Bronn: Books for Wednesday.

I am not following it like a journal, doing each assignment on the correct date. I tend to jump around for inspiration. Today, I landed (after only three tries) on October sixth, "Become an editor!" and critiquing a friends novel. I do not have a friend writing a novel, at least none that admit it. Master's daughter is working on Children's Picture books, but says it is slow going with all the rest that life is handing her.

As an art teacher, I know from critiquing student's work that it is always best to begin on a positive. So find something, anything that you can say that is positive. There are many sites telling you how to critique a novel, including: Writing a Critique of a Novel.

We have a little joke in our family. My mother often provides these types of jokes and once she was asked, by a fellow art student, for an opinion on the student's newest painting. Mother had a dilemma: to lie and say something wonderful about it or to tell the truth and hurt the ladies feelings. She paused for a moment, ostensibly studying this great work of art, but really thinking about what to say, and she came up with, "It sure is green."

Amazingly, this pleased the student, who went away smiling and it resolved mom's moral dilemma. It also became family code for 'ugly.' It sure does sparkle, glow, have big flowers, is bright, etc now replaced "awful ugly." There is always something positive you can say, if you look hard enough.

There are many ways to save a writer's feelings and give them information that will help them improve their work. We all started somewhere and usually that was at the beginning. I've always thought that anyone can learn to paint well enough for their own enjoyment, if they spend the time working at it. Like playing piano, it is the hours spent in practice that make the difference.

Writing Dreams

I have worked on my current book for almost three years now. Since I have vibrantly realistic dreams, I find it odd that I have not dreamed anything for my book.

I have spent hours searching for the perfect name for some of my characters. (Be patient. I will link these two paragraphs in a minute) I was reading Pollyanna and the Random Weirdness of Baby Names « Pollyanna Rainbow Sunshine and the Needles of Doom's blog on the Random Weirdness of Baby Names and came across several potentially interesting sites for name generators.

I had to try the Harry Potter name generator Rum and Monkey: The Name Generator Generator, just because I love Harry Potter. But, alas, I turned out to be Hermione. Just between you and me, I think all women turn out to be Hermione. (Personally, I think all women must turn out to be Hermione in this exercise.) I may have been like Hermione in many ways when I was ten, but I am far from her now.

(The connection with those paragraphs will happen now. Just in case you do not get it.) That night, I dreamed I was Hermione and in a huge house and it did tend to go on and on pointlessly. Much as this blog is beginning to do.

Here's the thing. I have had dreams about Nicholas Cage about six times. I have dreamt about the Harry Potter world numerous times. I have actually had several dreams that were in the range of foretelling. But, I cannot get myself to have a dream about my book. Even though it is often the last thing I do, read, and think about.

I am just thankful I did not dream about my Indie Band Name:Rum and Monkey: The Name Generator Generator Silver Alligator Strange Castle.