Tag Archives: The Muffin

Spring! Glorious Spring!

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A tiny door and Popsicles–yep, that’s spring!

 

When the yellow haze spreads across…well, everything, then I know spring has sprung in my little corner of the world. And despite all the sneezing and the knowledge that in about a week, it’ll be awful hot and muggy, I love spring!

Not as much as I love summer, but still. I’m ready to toss my much-loved boots in the closet and slide my pale toes into my comfy and much-loved sandals (and flip-flops). I can’t wait to take my books out on the deck and enjoy my afternoon siesta there under the glaring sun. I love opening doors (even when I have to chase out the occasional bird and/or wasp that flies in), flinging open windows, folding up blankets and stuffing them away. I love hanging plants and cheering on my favorite baseball team (and please, please let the Atlanta Braves be better this year) and working up a sweat on my walks.

Yep, I’m pretty crazy about spring. I’m not as crazy about spring cleaning, but even that onerous task can have its bright points when I apply the principles to my writing business. And I thought you might want to spring clean your writing business, too, so I shared all about it over at the Muffin in Spring Cleaning, Writer Style.

(And if you are a writer of a certain age, you heard the tune from Love, American Style when you read the title of that Muffin post. Such a cheesy show, and probably way politically incorrect. But yeah, I kinda loved that, too.)

After the Conference: Mind=Blown

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Friend Tracey M. Cox fan-girling over LSP. 

So I’m back from my Southern Breeze SCBWI conference and yesterday, I realized I hadn’t written my blog post for WOW!Women-on-Writing that was scheduled for today, and I had this moment. I actually considered sending a quick note saying, “Get someone else to write something because my brain is fried and I can’t think of anything, much less make sense!”

I did not even skip out on my Muffin posts when Mister Man up and died on me so I took another moment to calm down. I had a cuppa. And then, quite sensibly, I thought, I wrote about the conference. You can read “Top Tips for Writer’s Conference Attendees” and let me know if I made sense.

To be honest, some conferences are better than others. And this one will land in the top of my “Best Of…” list:

Best of keynote speakers with Linda Sue Park. If you ever have a chance to hear her, please go. You will be inspired and energized. And if you haven’t read her Newbery-award-winning novel, The Single Shard, please read it. Yes, it’s middle grade but that’s beside the point. It will expand and enrich you, no matter how old you are.

Best of intensives with Scholastic editor, Matt Ringler, and a roundtable manuscript critique workshop. Not because he raved about my manuscript (he didn’t), but because when you hear an editor respond in five minutes or so to 4 pages of a manuscript, you get a ton of great information and insight into an editor’s thought processes. And not just for your own work but for all the manuscripts in the room. So if you ever have that opportunity at a conference, please be brave and sign up for it.

Of course, your brain will be fried and you won’t make much sense for a couple of days, but I think that’s a fair trade out.

Though in my case, it might not be that noticeable…