Sharing is Caring: My Weekly Finds

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Barbara McDowell

Each week, the posts here will be a mash-up of interesting things I’ve found or learned from during the week.   

Writing Wisdom

Got a character holding out on you?  I faced this dilemma while working on a story revision and trying to drill down into my lead female’s psychology.  She wasn’t sharing.  I’ll be using the tip “have the characters interview each other” and others from Jami Gold’s How Do You Deal with Difficult Characters post.

Going along with my focus on revisions this week, Wait! Don’t Kill That Darling! The REAL Skinny on Self-Editing from Samuel Park posted by Anne R. Allen gives 10 great tips for revising the WIP.

In Second Epic Interview with Robin Sullivan (of Ridan Publishing), Andrew Jack uncovers interesting tidbits on e-book pricing, promotion and self-publishing.

Julie Isaac’s Top Ten eBook Articles for Authors This Week 8-11-11 points us to some interesting trends and changes in the industry. 

Social Media Magic

R. C. Lewis shares some publisher sponsored online community sites that allow for work review and developing connections with other writers in Publishers Playing the Social Media Game. 

What’s So Exciting About Google + – An Overview talks about some tips for getting started with Google + and details cool features to check out.  Mari Smith also explains how it can be used as an additional tool, but not an end-all replacement for other forms of social media.

Fun Finds

I do find merit in the power of positive thinking and just saw this July post, Living Your Intentions – The Power of Living “As If,” from Ian Lawton. Ian shares the story of how a black marker and belief in himself landed his first job and some great life lessons.

For the past year and a half, I’ve set aside Wednesday nights for work with a personal trainer.  One thing I hate that my trainer loves is squats, so Corrie Pikul’s The 90-Degree-Knee Debate: How Low Should We Go? caught my eye as a way to better understand proper technique and maybe spur me on to practicing on my own.

For Is There Really “Chocolate Philosophy,” Jenny Hansen proposes a fascinating question and method I think we all should indulge in. 🙂
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In Sixth Grade, I Wanted to Be a Go-Go Dancer

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Barbara McDowell

Welcome to Melodic Monday where I share relatable life moments linked by song.

I recently reconnected, on Facebook, with my best friend from third through sixth grade.  The day before I’d been thinking about fifth grade and the horrific Preppy Handbook phase that made me change my name to Barbi and cap the lower case letter I with hearts.  I’m so not a “Barbi.”  If I wore any plaid at the time though, it was leftover remnants from the 70s. 

Flickr image by talblesalt

Still shaking my head about that brief lapse of identity, my phone buzzed with the alert from FB and there was her message.  We’ve caught up a bit with her reminding me of our secret code society, my “spy” name Olive Oyl and us sharing what we are up to now.  We lost track of each other sometime around eighth grade, yet messaging with her flashed me back almost three decades as if we’d just chatted last week. 

I thought about some of our dreams like for our pets (we both had cats) to be with us forever.  Or to adopt kids because the video on where babies came from didn’t make natural childbirth look like much fun (ironically she is now a nurse midwife and mother of two).  Or to be go-go dancers because we loved to perform and back then our concept of the dancing was from 60s reruns with discotheques, platform boots and fringe dresses.

Okay, so I admit that maybe some of–well a lot of–the go-go moves would not have been appropriate for us to do in public let alone wearing the short minis, but our creative intent was pure.  We would grab our t-shirts from the bottom and pull them up through the neck and back down toward our belly buttons.  The result would be a Daisy Duke looking top.  Pair that with our best designer jeans and ballet or jazz shoes and we were ready to shake for hours.  You couldn’t tell us that being a dancer up on a platform like Goldie Hawn on “Laugh-In” wasn’t a viable career.     

Now go-go fun has evolved to include pasties paired with poles.  The fringe dresses of the past and even our t-shirt and jeans ensembles would make us overdressed, and the moves would be more bump-n-grind than peppy shimmies.  Yet I never fully let that dream go and in my closet you can find a pair of black and a pair of white fringed boots.  And I rock some of my best shimmies each morning as I get ready for work.

So tell me, what were some of your childhood dreams?

Do you still hold on to pieces of them today?

Are you still in touch with any of your childhood friends?

Did you want to be a go-go dancer? (We can’t be the only ones.)     

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