Well I see it is just over a year since I last wrote in this poor, neglected blog.  I haven't been living in a vacuum, however.  I've been moving forward with my study of herbalism and my little herbal products company, making lovely things and selling them at the local Farmer's Market.  And yes, doing some writing.  I have actually made some progress on my Young Adult fantasy novel, and I'm pretty excited about it.  I've been going to a local writer's group and reading excerpts from the first few chapters for critique, and getting positive feedback, yay!  The prospect of writing something so long and complicated is quite daunting, and sometimes I want to run and hide, but hey, lots of other people have done this, right?  Why not me?  Of course it is becoming very complicated; it seems like everything I set out to do becomes ridiculously complicated.  I don't know why that is.  Nothing can be just simple and straightforward.  The story alternates between the present and events that happened in or around 1930.  There is also a prologue that happens in London during the plague of 1665.  That one took a bit of research, but was really interesting to write.  I was going to do National Novel Writers Month this month, but too much herbal stuff was going on, so the writing has fallen by the wayside.  I am looking forward to winter so I can withdraw from the outside world and explore the realms of make believe.

The Golden Visions Magazine with my story, The Lych Owl's Cry, came out in October.  Here's the link to the website:

www.goldenvisionsmagazine.biz/

I also got another story published!  It is my fairytale, The Nasty Duchess.  I am quite fond of it, and I've been hoping to get it published for a long time.  It came out in Fall issue of Moon Drenched Fables, and you can read it online here.

I have written a couple of new short stories, and so far each has been rejected once.  That's ok, but I need to get them back out there.  I'm also trying to make some progress on a children's novel; I'm not sure where I'm going with it, however.  I need to do some planning, research and daydreaming.  I'm not doing NaNoWriMo this year, I'm focusing on quality rather than quantity at the moment.

In the non-fiction arena, I'm mainly writing for Associated Content, and some for Bright Hub. I hadn't written anything for AC in quite a while, and then I heard about their Featured Contributor program, so I am now a Featured Contributor in Alternative Medicine and Education.  It gives me a chance to share my knowledge about herbalism, as well as lesson plans and teaching methods gleaned from my experience as a teacher. 

I've also been doing some non-writing things, like starting an herbal products company.  This entrepreneur thing is all new to me!  But everything seems to tie together in one way or another.  The journey is the goal.

I am thrilled that one of my short stories is going to be published in a print magazine!  This is really pretty ironic.  The story was one that I entered last summer in a contest, and it didn't place.   I was pretty disappointed, because I thought it was the best thing I had yet written.  So I submitted it to one magazine, and they took several months to get back to me, and I finally got a rejection.  I just let it sit for awhile, because I didn't have the energy to look for somewhere else to submit it.  Finally after a few months, I sent it out again, and it was rejected again.  I didn't let this deter me, and I sent it out again immediately.  I guess third time's a charm, and it was accepted!  I thought it was going to be published online, but I just found out that the magazine, Golden Visions, has both an online and print version, and my story is going to appear in the print version!  It is published quarterly, and my story will appear in the October/November/December issue that comes out in October. 

I have mostly been writing articles lately, but I have a number of ideas for fiction that I am hoping to start working on.  Lesson in all of this, never give up, keep trying and eventually the story will be published!

I'm excited that one of my articles was a winner in Suite101's Earth Day "Writers Go Green" contest.  The topic was "Toxic Chemicals Found in Cord Blood of Newborns."  I wrote it because, although I knew that environmental toxins such as BPA are commonly found in the bodies of adults and children, I hadn't been aware that so many toxic chemicals are now present in the blood of newborn infants.  I find this shocking and appalling, and I wanted more people to be aware of the extent of environmental pollution we live with every day.  I was featured in Suite's blog, and it has a link to my article, which can also be accessed directly here. 

Other good news, I am now a Featured Contributor for Alternative Medicine on Associated Content!  I hadn't written for AC in many months, because I've been focusing on other writing sites and projects, but I was invited to come back and apply, and happily, I was accepted.  I am hoping to write many articles about herbalism and other aspects of alternative medicine on AC.

Lots of irons in the fire, I only wish I was more organized.

I knew it had been a while since I came in here and updated this blog, but I didn't realize it had been THAT long!  So, what do I have to show for all this time?  I just published article number 21 on Suite 101 today.  I am a bit behind my goal of 10 articles a month, but I may still reach 50 by the end of June, which is what I was originally aiming for.  I finally reached my first $10 payout at the first of March.  Everyone says don't expect to earn any money until you get 20 or 30 or 50 or 100 (depending on who is doing the talking) articles up.  It is a slow process.  They were certainly right!  I am really not doing it for money, but writing articles that I interest me, and that I hope others might be interested in, as well. 

I have cut way back on the number of articles I'm writing for Bright Hub, not necessarily by choice, but their site reorganization has changed things so drastically that it isn't the same anymore and I am only writing about 2 or 3 a month now.  That's fine, everything changes. 

What I need to do is get back to the fiction!  The fiction!!  The fiction!!!  What is stopping me?  I don't know.  It's almost as though I have writer's block, which I've never experienced before.  But I can't very well say I have writer's block if I don't actually sit down and try to write anything.  It seems there's always something taking precedent.  If it's not articles, it's something else.  I've been sending out my two finished stories and trying to get them published.  I sent one out yesterday to a non-paying market.  It just got rejected from a paying market, and it is a fairytale, so there are very few options for finding a happy home for it.  I just want it published at this point; I want people to read it, and whether I get paid for it or not is irrelevant. 

Well, then.  Here's hoping by the next update I will have something good to say for myself! 

I have been rather remiss in updating my website.  The holidays followed fast on the heels of the NaNo marathon, and I feel like I was swept along on a tide of shopping, eating, drinking, and visiting with friends and family.  Suddenly the tide receded, and left me washed up on the beach of January, 2010.  I can't believe how fast the last year flew by, but looking back, I feel that I did get quite a bit accomplished in terms of my writing.  I started writing for Associated Content in February and and Bright Hub in June, and wrote over 100 articles between the two sites.  I also entered several fiction contests, won second place in one and Editor's Pick in another, and got a story accepted to an online publication.  In December, I got accepted to write for Suite101.  So far I have published 3 articles on Suite101, and I have put a Widget on here, over on the left side, for those who would like to read them.  I am quite excited about writing for Suite101.  It was the first online writing site that I discovered back in fall 2008, and I have wanted to write there ever since, but was waiting to get some experience under my belt.  I took the plunge and applied in December, and to my delight, I was accepted right away.  I like the fact that I am free to write on any topic.  I am enthusiastic and optimistic about the coming year. 

I am happy to say I've accomplished my NaNo goal:  I arrived  at the mind-boggling number of 50,060 words last night (technically, this morning, but if I haven't gone to bed yet, it still counts as Sunday no matter how late it is.) 

That was quite an amazing experience, and I am very glad I did it.  Do I have a finished novel? No. I have 50,000 words of a rambling, disjointed story with no ending, characters who appear and disappear with no explanation, and plot elements that don't make sense.  But I don't consider this to be a bad thing.  I started out with a vague idea and a couple of scenes in my head, and I just plunged in to see what would happen.  I now have a clearer idea of what I want the novel to be, but that novel isn't written yet.  That's ok, I don't have to write that novel in 30 days, I can take as long as I need to. 

More importantly, the experience taught me some important things about writing: that I can pound out 2,000 to 3,000 words a day without too much difficulty; that planning ahead by doing character sketches and outlines is essential; that its ok to write a bad rough draft and fix it later.  I will be putting all of these lessons to good use as my writing career progresses. 

Week three of NaNo:  I am getting very tired.  I am at just over 37,000 words, well ahead of schedule.  I am hoping to cross the 50,000 word finish line before Thanksgiving.  Wow, what an adventure this has been!  The story is coming out entirely different than what I originally envisioned, which admittedly was pretty vague.  Major inconsistencies in the plot have reared their ugly heads, but I have ignored them and kept going.  Most of the writing is awful, but I have resisted the urge to revise any of it and kept going.  I will fix everything later.  Much later.  I'm not sure I will even want to look at this literary atrocity for awhile, but there are definitely some parts of it that I like a lot.   I may just save those scenes and write a whole new novel around them.  The most surprising thing about this whole experience is how easy it has been to just write recklessly and with total abandon.  I didn't think I'd be able to do it, and I didn't think it would be so much fun.

I have survived the first week of NaNo, and I am even ahead of schedule in terms of word count.  As of late last night, I had completed 17,041 words.  This experience is amazing.  I've never allowed myself to write without self-judgement or criticism before, simply letting the words flow out without worrying about sentence structure, getting the perfect word, or the fact that is just plain sounds awful.  The mantra here is: Keep going, you can fix it later!  Fix it later!  Fix it later!  I didn't have an outline or any such thing before I started, just a vague idea and a few scenes in my head.  I had no idea what was going to happen, and I have come up with quite a few surprises already, learning about my two protagonists as I go along, and meeting some new people as well.  Can't wait to see what happens next!

I'm trying to keep up with my non-fiction articles this month, as well as writing the novel.  It's hard to focus on the articles, when what I really want is to jump back into my fantasy world.  Self-discipline was never my strong suit. 

I am so excited!  My story "The Manifestation of Longing" got Editor's Pick in the Accentuate Writers Contest!  It will appear in The Elements of Life anthology that will be coming out sometime next year. 

More exciting writing news, my flash fiction piece, "The Hitchhiker" has been published in the online magazine Apollo's Lyre.  Here's the link:

apollos-lyre.tripod.com/id65.html

And National Novel Writers Month kicks off today.  I haven't started yet, but I am about to momentarily.