What was I thinking? I’ll tell you. Obviously I wasn’t thinking!

This month I signed up for 5 online classes. Five. Cinco. Waytoomany. It seemed like a good plan, my other job is always slow this time of year, bring it on!

Unfortunately almost all five classes are run by superior instructors who demand a lot of information and homework from their students. Which is a good thing! Otherwise it’s just someone throwing information at you and hoping you’re listening.

And while I whine and moan and complain about the homework, let me just say there are people out there who shouldn’t be taking an online class. The woman who wrote to the entire class and said, sorry, I’m too busy to take this class right now….. Then why did you sign up sweetie? The teacher is here to teach those who want to learn..if you don’t want to learn, keep your email to yourself….or the one who said, gee it must be nice that none of you have to work as hard as I do, that’s why I’m behind in my homework. I personally hold down a full time job and have 3 companies of my own. But my homework is in on time.

But my favorite is people who argue with the instructor, as if they know better. One of my instructors has been published 54 times. And one lady in class actually told her she didn’t want to learn part of the lesson (on enneagrams) because she found them worthless. Published 54 times vs. unpublished. Let me think…..who would I rather listen to? Pissed off the instructor royal too. I don’t blame her.

Another instructor posted that we were to post no more information until she finished going through our first lesson. So what did people do? You got it, started posting lesson two, even though she hadn’t finished going through their first lesson. WHAT IS SO HARD ABOUT THAT TO UNDERSTAND? But I’ll be darned if people didn’t start throwing nasty comments left and right, and distracting the entire list with hundreds of emails with brilliant thoughts like “I think that too.” or “Oops, so I didn’t read that.”

Get a clue people. If you’re on a class list, you’re showing upwards of 100 people what an idiot you are every time you post on top of filling our email boxes with useless junk.

ok, done ranting, back to the regularly scheduled program. =)

So, I’m learning. And I’m doing about 10 hours worth of homework a week. And this week, yes this very one, is the one two of my instructors say is going to be THE WEEK. This week will make it or break it, this week will be the hardest one.

Yikes.

So it’s time for me to don my cape and tights, suck it up and get back to my homework…one of the classes is already over, so I’m down to just four.

Sounds like a walk in the park eh?

carrie

Some months ago, I challenged myself to come up with a blog. That was the easy part. Coming up with the name of the blog – that took…ok, that was pretty easy too. Finding the graphic! now that took….

ok, so technically, I drempt (not a real word, I know I know, stick with the story here) the entire thing up in less than 15 minutes and had it ready to roll, hot off the presses in about a day – tops.

Voila, instant blog.

But lately, I’ve noticed my little corner of the world is missing something. A tagline.

I’ve read other blogs and they always have something cute, or daring or….at the very least interesting.

“Escape to the past with a romantic adventure…” is Terry Blaine’s tagline.

“Real Women. Real Life.” Vicki Taylor

“Passion and adventure worth fighting for.” C.C. Wiley

So, of course, I have to have one.

So here’s a few…

I put the ass in romance.
Asses are my specialty.
Because everyone likes a little ass.
Ass ‘n Sass
Happiness is being a smart ass.
Real Romance. Real Asses.
That’s Ms. Smart Ass to you.
Romance funny side up.
Love, laughter and snark.
Romance by the Snarkmeister
Smart Asses need love too
Smart Asses Unite!
Sex, funny side up.
Love laughter and lunacy.

Those are just a few that popped into my head….hmm…might need a little more thinking here!

carrie

So, I bought a new book.

Big deal right? Go ahead and say it, I know you want to.

But this is a special book. It’s about line editing.

What’s line editing? hellifiknow, but that’s why I bought the book! Pay attention, girlfriend.

So anywho…this book is about the correct lining up of your sentences, so you don’t end up with those dangling participles or predicates in the wrong place.

I can’t read it. Seriously, it puts me to sleep within 5 minutes.

I’m going to recommend a copy to everyone over at Insomniacs Anonymous. If you can get past page 3, you are a professional insomniac, and there is no cure.

My problem with sentences started in seventh grade, with my English teacher, Mrs. Carver. She hated my guts. The feeling was mutual. She’s explain over and over and over again about adverbs, pronouns, subjects etc. Then she’d draw line graphs on the board demonstrating why you HAD to have a predicate in your sentence, why you CAN’T dangle anything off the end, and God FORBID you should put an extra comma where it didn’t belong.

Bored. Me. To. Tears.

But now, I’m starting a writing career. I should know about these things right? I should care whether my adverb is preceded by the correct pronoun or not.

Well I don’t.

So there.

phllllbbbttt.

I’ve tried for over 2 weeks now to not only read, but understand this book. My eyes swim with the extra small spelling, words dance like mutant spots in front of my eyes, my attention jumps to important things like belly button lint and wondering if I can touch my tongue to my nose. (yes, I can)

I’ve shortened my reading time down to just one paragraph. If I can make it through, and comprehend, that one paragraph, I get to do something fun! Like read a real book!

No can do.

My next plan is to get the book on CD, slip on my headphones and zone out for the night.

Learning English through osmosis.

It’s the only way to go.

carrie

Yup, harking back to my bartending days, with a drink that was actually published in Bartender Magazine. Yes, I have been published. And one other time as well when my lovely English Comp professor took my bungee jumping story and submitted it to the ICCC newsletter.

And no, I haven’t included any of those publishing experiences on my queries. Not that desperate. Yet.

Fill a short rocks glass with ice
Add 1 shot caramel baileys
Add 1 shot butterscotch schnapps
Add a splash of milk
Garnish with a cherry

It’s short, it’s sweet, it’s oh-so-goooooooood

enjoy!

carrie

Lori Wilde’s The Sweethearts’ Knitting Club is a feel-good book. Set in a small town, it perfectly exemplifies small town life and thinking. Lori makes her characters come alive, and you’ll get sucked in to the story before you know it.

Flynn MacGregor turns down proposal after proposal by local cop, Beau Trainer. And has for ten years now. Exactly the same amount of time her ex-boyfriend Jesse Calloway has been in prison.

But now, Jesse’s out.

Flynn sees Jesse wherever she turns, and finds she hasn’t lost the feelings she had for him in the first place. Jesse makes no secret that he wants Flynn, but he also has a bit of revenge on his mind as well.

You’ll love their stories, and the little bits of small town life fit in perfectly. Knitting clubs, a place called Froggy’s, broken water mains, etc. The scene is set, the characters are perfect. Buy this one and enjoy!

carrie

So, I’m trying to learn how to be a plotter.

How’s that going you might ask? (yes, go ahead and ask now)……waiting……c’mon….spit it out.

Well, since you’ve asked, I’ll tell you.

Not worth a damn.

My first ms I wrote entirely by the seat of my pants. Made it up as I went, mostly under the influence of vodka lemonade at 3am, during an online class on how to write a novel in 30 days. I ended up hungover for 30 days, wearing carpal tunnel mitts but yes, in answer to your unasked question, I did finish a manuscript.

It was pretty horrid. The plot line wavered, the arc collapsed, but the sex (the written part anyways) was amazing. Hey, I can get some things right at 3am eh?

Everyone said, don’t fly by the seat of your pants – are you crazy?

Why, yes. I am. I thought we’d established that already.

However, I purchased a plan-your-entire-book-in-advance workbook and set out to fill it out.

Disaster. Not quite of biblical proportions, but pretty close.

I don’t know where my character lives, her street address….I don’t know her mom’s name….I don’t know what’s going to happen, until it pops out of my fingers.

But I tried. I’m still trying. I pulled out my little workbook every other day or so….delete everything I wrote before, and rewrite it all in the way it occurred to me the night before.

I’m pretty sure that’s cheating.

So, I’m kicking myself in the rear, and trying to do it right this time. If it works as advertised, I’m supposed to be able to fill in the worksheet, and then just write. The story will flow, the dialog will be witty, the plot will happen just as predicted.

snort.

I’m currently looking for an online writing class for pantsers who want to be/should be plotters but lie, cheat and steal to get out of it.

Sounds like a winner eh?

carrie

I love to read authors bios. I want to know where they live, how many pets they have, any fun information I can glean from the author’s bio. And sometimes there’s fun tidbits in there, and sometimes you can tell their mother made them write it.

Point being, and yes, I do have a point….what would *I* write in my author’s bio when I become rich, famous and well-published. Oh wait, I guess I’d better FINISH an actual manuscript first, eh?

Most author’s bios contain something like “I started writing when I was five..” “Wrote my first novel a the precocious age of…” and even the infamous “dictated my story because I wasn’t old enough to write yet.”

Well crap.

That leaves me out entirely. I started writing (seriously) last April. 2009. Oh sure, I took classes in school – you have to right? But my english teachers HATED my writing. I thought I wrote brilliant, descriptive works of art, they gave me a D. Sometimes a D+. Finally I cornered my best friend and asked to see her A-rated composition.

It was tripe. Seriously. And have you ever seen tripe? Blah. It’s white and pasty and definitely organ-meat looking. Ew.

I couldn’t believe my EYES! (not just about the tripe, get the image out of your head now ok? we’ve moved on) Her essay was horrid, weenie, tripey. (ok, now we’re really moving on) It was mush, poetry without rhyming, swirly words with no meaning.

At that moment, I lost all respect for my English teacher.

But…I learned from it. And I wrote my next essay as tripey as I could make it. I can still remember it to this day (plus my mother kept a copy of it for my younger sister to steal for her homework assignments)

A dove. A bird of peace. Flying high in a blue, sunlit sky.

Oh yeah. Barf. I don’t write like that (in case you haven’t noticed) but I waited, pranced about, probably whining for TWO WHOLE DAYS waiting for my grade. I was sure I’d flunk this one. I mean seriously, 30 some years later it still gives me the heebie-jeebies.

And you know what? I got an A. Not just an A – an A PLUS. I was shocked, horrified and other adjectives. You mean people actually LIKE this stuff? They read this? THIS is all I have to do to get an A????

yup.

Just that plain and simple. Oh yeah, I aced that class, and the other English classes. Even a creative writing class in college.

But it wasn’t until email that I realized I could write. And write funny. Sending stories to my family when I moved out to Arizona for ten months (don’t ask) would have them calling me in tears….please write more! I should specify happy tears. Hysterical laughter tears. Soon I was writing a newsletter to half the people of my hometown filled with The Adventures of Carrie and people were begging for more. To this day people still stop and ask me if the Tarantula story was true. (It is.) If I really saved that ladies life by applying a tourniquet made from the meat butchers white shirt. (I did.)

True life, well my true life anyways, is a variety of stories just waiting to be written.

And sometimes, as in the case of the Tarantula Story, waiting for enough time to pass before I find them humorous.

So what does this mean for my author’s bio?

I’m just going to have to lie.

“I’ve been writing since I was….”

So I entered a contest. Or two. Possibly three. And I have another on the horizon that’s due Jan. 15th. Going up before the editor of my dreams. But that’s another post.

Back to where we were. Contests.

I entered I Heart Presents contest in November. It’s a contest for Harlequin writers, who ..um…heart Presents – one of the line of books Harlequin produces.

And the winners were announced last Friday. Did I haunt the announcement page? Did I hit refresh to the point I almost drug my internet service provider down into the dirty?

You bet your sweet bippy I did.

Did I win?

Not a snowballs chance babe.

However…and this is a big however…I did receive an email on Wednesday at 7:38am from a Harlequin EDITOR….I was right in the middle of receiving a phone call from an employee who was too sick to work and voila…there it was…in my inbox….

*hum the jaws theme here*

totally ignoring the poor sobbing girl on the phone, I read the email. I whispered to her no problem, get rest, we’ll be fine. (I then spent another 20 min trying to cover the shift..but again…another story, another time)

the email said ….thank you, and while you did not win, we felt your writing showed promise.

my stomach dropped. splat.

they went on to say they liked my writing style and LOVED my opening…loved…they used the word loved…..they also included some helpful hints on revising and said to please, submit again…3 chapters next time.

they LOVED my writing. LOVED. I sang and danced. I bought santa cookies and passed them out to the employees at work. I bought snickers bars. I danced more. I put out a hip doing a booty jiggle. Then I put out the other.

They like me, they honestly like me (for those of you old enough, remember the Sally Fields speech? yeah..that one) and now, it’s 36 hours later…have I calmed down yet? Physically yes….after two double shifts and a single, a visit to the chiropractor and a hangover, not necessarily in that order, yes…I have. Mentally, however…the mind is still screaming SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! lol…I’m not kidding.

And instead of working hard this evening on a new book, what am I doing? Eating Gardetto’s and addressing Christmas cards.

I’ll save the panic for this weekend when I finally realize I need to write 3 chapters, polish another chapter, make 3 bracelets, a necklace and a pair of earrings and design an entire website by next Wednesday.

But for now….SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

=)

carrie

So, one day in April, shortly after my forty-seventh fortieth birthday, I decided I was going to be a romance writer. Over the years, I’ve heard tons of people (ok, mostly family…ok, mostly my mother) say I should be a writer. So, I decided that’s what I’m going to do. So I bought books. Read agents blogs and artists blogs. And bought books. Amazon loves me, this I know.

So, I wrote a book. 250+ pages of romance novel, in about 2 months. And then I started taking online classes. This is how Columbus must have felt when he sailed to the New World. Not so much wow, look at that huge land mass I’ve discovered – but HOLY SHIT!

So, in taking classes, I found out everything I did in my ms is ..well…wrong. I did head hopping, had no viable GMC, I was a pantser without a clue. I was proudly showing off my first chapter, and getting blasted back to the dirt. “What’s your heroines long term goal?” Say what? Umm..to have sex with the hero? Bzzzztttt! Wrong answer! “What’s your black moment?” Umm…when I first look in the mirror every morning? Bzzzttt!! Not only was I mistaken in how to write a novel, but I found that very few online class instructors have a sense of humor about such things as GMC’s.

So I learned. And I polished. And I turned my 250 page ms into a 17 page chapter. Huh. I have a blurb, I have a logline, I have a query – all for a book I no longer have written. Those other 223 pages? Gone with the wind. Oh, I might be able to salvage parts, but once I got technical with the story, turns out it’s weak. Flimsy. Unconflicted.

Crap.

So, with the help of instructors, classes, books and so on, I’ve now polished my first chapter. It’s beautiful. It has conflict, sexual eye contact, flowing hair.

But now, I have to move on to chapter TWO. It’s taken me technically 6 months to have a perfect chapter one…how on earth do I start chapter two? I no longer know where my story goes, who my characters are…I have to learn them all over again, re-invent their story and move on….to chapter two!

Does anyone have a chapter two class out there!???!

hellllpppp!

=)

carrie

I have been MIA. Has anyone noticed? anyone? Bueller?

Anyways, as they like to say, life gets in the way. For me, it isn’t so much life, as I don’t much have one, but work has gotten in the way. And that’s not all bad right? At least I have a job – or three or four as the case may be on any given day.

I’ve started making myself to-do lists. I find this is the only way I can remember to do everything I need to do. Old age isn’t all it’s cracked up to be eh? My current list looks like this:

Matt mat (remember to get Matt his new barmat)
Shawn ws (fix shawns website for launch next week)
Teri ws (done!)
pump (order a new well pump)
computer (buy a new computer)
purple jewelry (make a purple necklace and earrings)
Linda jewelry (fix a bracelet and make 2 more)
Lynda jewelry (fix a bracelet)
Cindy jewelry (put new clasps on old jewelry)
GMC (turn in homework for online class)
big mailbox (buy a bigger mailbox)

and so on and so forth. Now if i had a real life what would my list look like?

Cut down Christmas tree and set up in living room with sparkling lights and handmade ornaments
Make and decorate sugar cookies
Visit elderly in the hospital spreading good cheer
Do laundry (yes, EVERYONE has to do laundry)
Frolic with the cats
Watch White Christmas while wearing a Snuggly

so maybe I’m not all that unhappy at not having a real life after all. =)

see ya soon!

carrie