Three Dorky Cheers For My NaNo Friends!!!

Some of my writing friends are participating in something called NaNo which involves writing a novel in one month—the month of November. These dedicated writers are feverishly working on their manuscripts and trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy and so with only a few days left, I thought I’d cheer them on!

Push it out,

Push it out,

Way out—

Let’s Go!

(Clap, Clap)

Check your words

Dot your i’s

Cross your t’s--

Revise, edit, delete.

Rewrite, read aloud. Repeat.

And save-

And save-

And back it up.

Antagonist and perpetrator

Protagonist and percolator

Keep it real

Keep it wry.

(Clap, Clap)

Your S

Your T

Your O-R-Y

Spells Story!

(Clap, clap)

Cheers for the writer

Getting in the groove-

Cheers for the authors

Writing to prove--

Watch the fingers flying,

The word count climbing,

Up

And Up,

They really start to rock!

Cheers for the writers--

Who never want to stop!

Rah!

Thanksgiving

Just wanted to say thank you for following my blog. I appreciate all of your visits and especially your comments. Hope your day is filled with not only delicious and tasty things, but love too.

Fun a la Fancies? 

This smart turkey knows why she's feeding him!

This looks neat in the picture, but I'm sure it's a bit messy.

I love the little description of Thanksgiving

A lot to be thankful for here--one golden turkey and two gentlemen to share it with.  

 Happy Thanksgiving.

"Lot's Of Chocolate For Me To Eat--Lot's Of Coal Makin' Lot's Of Heat--Warm Face, Warm Hands, Warm Feet--Oh Wouldn't It Be Loverly?"

"My Fair Lady is a musical based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The story concerns Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl who takes speech lessons from professor Henry Higgins, a phoneticist, in order that she may pass as a proper lady."-Wikipedia




Barbara at March House Books is a proper lady and selected me as a recipient of The Lovely Blog Award.
She has one of the cutest blogs you will ever see and if you love reading or writing children's books it is a place you'll want to visit often. So, it is with great humility that I, of The Desert Rocks, hereby accept her delightful award and pass it on to others who also deserve recognition for being ever so lovely.

The requirements of receiving the award are:
1. To thank the giver and link back to her site.
2. Provide 5 random facts that folks may not know about you.
3. Pass this award on to 5 other lovely blog sites and let them know you're awarding them.
4. Copy the award logo and paste it onto your own site.



So here we go with 5 random facts about me that you probably'd don't know.


l. I like wearing dresses or skirts rather than pants.
2.I studied French in college for four years but if I spoke to a parrot in Marseilles, I'd still need a translator.
3.I don't like crowded places.
4.I used to hike with the Sierra Club's 100 Peaks Division. I think I managed 5 peaks.
5. My family always encouraged my writing because they knew I wanted to be a singer.


Boring. Enough about me. Now I want to select five wonderful blogs that are as lovely as a pink rose dusted in glistening snow.


Author Carole Anne Carr
Book Hounds
Its Only a Book
Random Thoughts
The Blog Entourage

The Unending Story

I’m revising my manuscript and last year at this time I was--yup, you guessed it-- revising my manuscript. I think now I understand my junior high math teacher and his explanation of infinite and maybe even that English professor trying to describe eternal love. Some things last forever. The unending story. Yikes. I borrowed this ancient story idea from the oral tradition that has passed it lovingly down from generation to generation. The original is about a fisherman, but of course novelist works much better for my purposes.

Once upon a time, there was a novelist who spent his entire life struggling with his long but exciting novel. On his death bed he called his publisher and said, “Once upon a time there was a novelist who spent his entire life struggling with his long but exciting novel. On his death bed he called his publisher and said….,”

“Once upon a time, there was a novelist who spent his entire life struggling with his long but exciting novel. On his death bed he called his publisher and said, “Once upon a time there was a novelist who spent his entire life struggling with his long but exciting novel. On his death bed he called his publisher and said….,”

(You can jump to the comments section anytime. LOL)

“Once upon a time there was a novelist who spent his entire life struggling with his long but exciting novel. On his death bed he called his publisher and said, “Once upon a time there was a novelist who spent his entire life struggling with his long but exciting novel. On his death bed he called his publisher and said….”

“Once upon a time there was a novelist who spent his entire life struggling with his long but exciting novel. On his death bed he called his publisher and said, “Once upon a time there was a novelist who spent his entire life struggling with his long but exciting novel. On his death bed he called his publisher and said….”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Easy Party Recipe

Simple Entertaining Begins With Make A-Head Sandwich Wraps

Extra Large Burrito-sized Tortillas

Garden Vegetable Cream Cheese

Turkey, ham or chicken—1lb. sliced deli-style

Sweet Red Bell Pepper-chopped-about one cup.

Coleslaw (I make my own using shredded cabbage and Kraft poppy seed dressing)

Chopped red onions-1/4 cup finely chopped.

Arugula or mixed salad greens.

Wash and dry the salad greens and lay them out on a large serving platter. Set aside.

Spread cream cheese onto one of the tortillas all the way to the edge.

Put three or four slices of meat over the cheese.

Sprinkle with 1/3 of the chopped red peppers

Sprinkle with a few tablespoons of the red onion

Spread about a cup of coleslaw over the onions and peppers

Fold both sides in and wrap burrito style.

Repeat two or three more times. Makes 3 huge wraps.

Refrigerate until guests arrive, then slice into two inch thick

 spiral shapes and place on top of the salad green covered  platter. You should have about 18 portions. Serve.

If you want to jazz it up a bit add hot sauce or mustard to the coleslaw.

Leftovers make a great lunch the next day!

When Was The Last Time You Got High On Laughter?

What’s the funniest thing that

 happened to you this week?

I hope you had a chance to laugh until tears started bursting from the corners of your lashes--splashing against your glasses, hindering your sight and fogging up your vision. Inside you were shaking, quivering from your overwhelming guffawing until you had to pause to take a breath, but you continued laughing until someone finally told you to shut up. Wiping your stinging eyes, your chest heaving, you settled down slowly, taking rapid breaths while still smiling. Attempting to walk, you leaned against the furniture and crossed the room on wiggly legs that felt like Jell-O before throwing yourself on the couch to recuperate from the traumatic convulsions involved in your sudden outburst of uproarious chuckling. You were literally cracking up! Sighing, you removed your glasses and wiped them on your shirt, thinking about the embarrassing little sounds you made when something tickled more than your average funny bone. Perhaps releasing endorphins that actually acted like opiates? An experience to cherish, strange and foreign like a journey to another realm, a trip to the edge of hilarity, teetering on the edge of insanity, a memory that reminds you to lighten up and stop being so #*&@ing serious. 

A loud, awkward place you’d love to go back to, but how?   

Tell a joke, call a friend and get high on laughter today!

Whence Writing Passes Through Twittering Time

Modern writing?

You jumped on your treadmill and did a mile while watching the Home Improvement Channel.

Old-fashioned writing?

Good Morning

When you wonder about the deepest shadows that fall across the morning  meadow where tiny little creatures lurk in corners awaiting the perfect moment to dash home or to forage for breakfast, those are the quiet reflections that take you out of your personal, self-absorbed life, placing you however tentatively into the real world. Where does the bird fly when it leaves the sturdy branch outside your room and why do the cicadas decide to stop at the precise second you close your window? Stopping to take  another breath perhaps, or silently scared from the gruff noise you created by slamming the jamb, it doesn’t take them long to restart their engines and you hear them starting to crescendo as you walk out of the room for your coat. You’ve decided to take a stroll across that field to take a peek at what’s hiding across the expanse near the tree-laden path. Was that a brown hare that just zipped past, or were your eyes just adjusting to the light? Outside the sun is slowly angling and bouncing like a shimmering wave of amber rum that mellows and brightens with the ticking of time. This is a day that belongs to the frog. It belongs to the wren, the pigeon and the crow. It is a fabulous day to be a moth, a beetle and a praying mantis and soon the lizard will want to sun himself on a boulder near the road. This day is perfect for sniffing and pawing. Hopping and grazing. Burrowing and nesting. It is a perfect day for them and as luck would have it, they are welcoming you into their day.

Storytelling Details That Can Change The World

The Greek word in the legend of
 Pandora is Pithos and means large jar

Like the old game of telephone, where whispered sentences change as they are passed around the room, our ancient stories have altered through the oral traditions and yellowed pages of time. One famous story is the
old Greek mythological tale about Pandora’s Box. First of all, it wasn’t even about a box. Back in those days they used earthenware jars usually decorated with lovely motifs depicting a harvest and people dancing in their finest skimpy garments.

 Her name means “all giving” and she was considered to be the first woman on Earth. Unfortunately for Pandora she couldn’t resist temptation and she opened the famous jar where all the evils of the world had been locked up for ages. After they all came tumbling out, there was nothing she could do—the damage had been done and no amount of scooping, hosing, sweeping or pushing could get the evil back into her jar. The legend however has a crucial ending-- one that I didn’t really know about until recently. Most of the stories about Pandora end right there. She opened the “box” let out the evil and we unquestionably accept the horrible implications.The part I’m talking about is imperative for a good story. It's that detail that can change the world. If you ever relate the story of Pandora I hope you finish it with the proper ending. Stories need a good ending and this one has a remarkable ending that either I didn’t remember or no one told me. I had to do my own research and found the integral and most meaningful part of the story--the part that makes a galaxy of difference. This essential crux that separates the scary into something enlightening--something worth the retelling. 

After inadvertently allowing all the evil to flow out of her jar, the curious and beautiful young maiden looked down into the bottom to see if anything was left. One item remained, twinkling like a tiny star. That one item was...hope.  Hope gives mankind courage to battle evil. Hope is strength. I don't think I've ever seen an apocalypse story without some semblance of hope. Hope is something every writer holds in their heart. 

 We hope that someone will like what we write. As writers, I think we hope more than anything else.Will my reader laugh? Will they cry? I hope so. Some of you are hoping to sell books or get good reviews and still some of you are waiting and hoping that an agent will respond favorably and ask for your entire manuscript. Maybe you just hope you didn’t make any typos or you hope your Amazon rating goes higher and your blog visits go through the roof. You hope for a bestseller. Of course if that happens you can dance around in your skimpiest outfit too.

Meanwhile, we also hope that our families stay healthy and our friends stay happy and strong. On top of everything else, we of course hope for world peace and we hope no child goes to bed hungry. With so much to hope for, I thought I’d leave you with these great quotations about hope. 

'Hope' is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul - And sings the tune without words And never stops - at all.

- Emily Dickinson

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope or confidence.

- Helen Keller

All human wisdom is summed up in two words-wait and hope.

- Alexandre Dumas

Hell is the place where one has ceased to hope.

- A. J. Cronin

The wind was cold off the mountains and I was a naked man with enemies behind me, and nothing before me but hope.

- Louis L'Amour

I always entertain great hopes.

- Robert Frost

Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

- English proverb