Work in Progress Wednesday #22

Let me first start by saying I love WIP Wednesdays. I love the way it keeps me accountable. I love the comments I get on my WIP Wednesday posts and the encouragement they contain. And I love all the people who have joined in on the WIP Wednesday madness.

I wouldn't keep doing WIP Wednesdays for 22 weeks if I didn't love it.

However, this week I am NOT going to talk about my WIP stuff.

One because my parent's visited over the weekend and I don't have a whole lot to report.

Two because I am currently between works in progress, having finished my last round of revisions and being currently in the query stage.

And finally, Three, because I just read a post over at Cindy R. Wilson's blog that really hit home for me. She wrote:

"In seeking publication, in striving for those nibbles and bites, it’s easy to get tunnel vision. It’s hard sometimes to enjoy writing for the sake of writing when it’s all about rules and getting better and finding that perfect agent or publisher."

While focusing on goals is the best way I know to achieve them, I think it is also important to breath every so often and just enjoy the view. So that's what I'm doing today, or more specifically I am enjoying an awesome award I recently received.



This award was passed along by Michelle McLean whom I have known via the blogging world for over a year now! Thanks, Michelle!

Now for the blog award rules (which according to rule #5 I am required to post here):

1. Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.

2. Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received The Award.

3. Each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on his/her blog, and link to This Post, which explains The Award.

4. Each Blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit this post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List. That way, we’ll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives This Prestigious Honor!

5. Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog.

The 5 people I'm passing this award on to are:

1. Cindy R. Wilson - Since she inspired this post, it seems appropriate to pass this award along to her.

2. Jessica Nelson of BookingIt

3. Annie of Annie Writes About Writing

4. Jody Hedlund of On The Path

5. Jennifer Shirk of Me, My Muse, and I

I highly recommend all of these blogs and they are part of my daily blog required reading, among many others and I wish that I could give this to all the bloggers I follow - they are all wonderful!

This past week I was also tagged by Jennifer, who I listed above at number 5. The rules for that are as follows:


1. Link to the person or persons who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random and/or revealing things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog
6. Let the tagger know when your post entry is up on your site.

I am totally going to cheat on this one though and just tag all the people I've already listed to pass the award along to, and I'm also only listing five things about myself. That's because I'm a rebel... and a sort of lazy one at that.

So, five things.

1. Next week is my 20 week ultrasound when I found out whether I am having a baby boy or girl. I am one of those people who definitely want to know, so I am looking forward to finding out.

2. I am dreading potty training my 2 year old son. So far I have bought the potty, and some potty training books, and I am thinking of buying a doll that drinks and wets to use as a working example as well, but I keep pushing back the actual training day. Any tips or words of encouragement would be greatly appreciated.

3. In college as part of my theatre classes I took stage combat. Learning how to throw fake punches (or take a fake punch) and pretend fight with a sword was the most fun I've ever had earning a grade.

4. I have a serious problem with run-on sentences in my own writing. Where other people would put a period I put a comma, sometimes several commas, until suddenly what should be five sentences is just one rather breathless and very long one. If you read this blog often, that is probably not news to you.

5. I have horribly awful year-round seasonal allergies that cause my nose to run a lot. Even though I take pills to help it, I still always have tissues on hand. They are in my pockets, they are in my purse, they are tucked into everyplace I can put one, because if my nose starts to drip and I don't have one - I really really really hate to use my sleeve.

That's it from me for this week - hope everyone else has a great WIP Wednesday!

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If you want to participate in WIP Wednesday, simply post your own WIP Wednesday entry on your blog and leave a link to it in the comments below. Or if you don't have a blog, feel free to report your progress directly into the comments box.

For more detailed information concerning what all this nonsense is about please consult the original Work in Progress Wednesday posting.

Feel free to also make use of the lovely little WIP Wednesday logo as well!

Memes, Awards, and Lots of Linkage!!!

Lots to talk about today, so I'm just going to dive in and get started.

First off, this past Monday Robin of My Two Blessings gave this lovely blog award to moi!

Thank you Robin! The rule is to pass this along to 5 other blogs that are either new or new to me.

Lately, I've been exploring the blogosphere and in some ways it is a daunting task, much like looking at the stars, when you realize the sheer number of blogs out there, it can start to make you feel very very small. At the same time though, there are also so many wonderful blogs hosted by funny, brilliant, and intriguing people - that I also feel lucky to be able to discover them.

So with no further ado here are five blogs that I have recently become quite attached to:

1. Annie Writes About Writing Not only is this blog new to me, but it is new to Annie as well, she just started it back at the beginning of February. What I love about Annie's blog is her sense of enthusiasm and excitement about the writing process.

2. Crimogenic - Isn't that just an awesome name for a blog? I just like the way it looks on the page. Also, I like the blog itself. I stumbled upon it a few weeks ago when I saw a link to it in the sidebar of new blog chainer Kat's blog with a posting that reviewed The Time Traveler's Wife. Since I had just recently read this book myself and it was fresh in my mind I was interested to hear another persons take on it. I thought her observations were dead on and became a fan of her blog.

3. Help! I Need a Publisher! (and maybe an agent...?) This blog is written by Nicola Morgan an award winning author who lives in Scotland. Not only is this blog full of great writing advice, but it also has some really hysterically funny stories like this one about doing a reading in a coffee shop for a bunch of schoolchildren. If this story does not make you laugh out loud, then there is probably something seriously wrong with you.

4. Old Picture of The Day - This blog is as simple and straightforward as it's title - each day an old picture is posted. For me this blog is under the inspiration category, and some of these intriguing pictures have already sent story ideas swirling through my brain. Check out this police woman from the 20's, daughter of a sharecropper, or dig through and find one of your favorites!

5. Thursday Night Smackdown - Finally, besides blogs dedicated to writing and reading I always love a good cooking blog, preferably with lots of mouthwatering pictures that allow me to live vicariously. TNS easily fulfills the picture requirement, but also delivers lots of laughs full of tart commentary and funny captions. A recent post featured a recipe for bacon toffee. Yes, I know, it sounds so good you want to lick the words on your computer screen. Don't do it, it'll just leave an ugly smear... not that I know for experience... I'm just saying.

Okay, so the award part of this post is over and now we are moving onto the blog meme part in conjunction with a blog posting from Elana at Mindless Musings today.

Here's the deal she listed 7 things about herself and challenged her readers to find one thing they have in common with her list and use that as the first of their seven and then add six more. If you're reading this and have something in common with one of my seven feel free to join the chain by posting your own entry using one of mine as your number 1 and make sure to leave a link in the comments.

For my number one I am going to use Elana's number 6:

6. I have severe addictions to the following: Oreos, bacon, dying my hair, watching reality TV, driving too fast, laughing too loud, sleeping in on the weekend, facebook, blogging, reading, stamping, salt, writing, downloading songs from iTunes and making copious numbers of (unlabeled) CDs, and eating out. It's a good thing I don't smoke or drink.

To make this my own number one though I need to make a few small changes...

1. I have severe addictions to the following: The filling in Oreos but not the blechy supposedly chocolate cookies attached to it, bacon, no longer dying my hair (I went through all the colors while in college), watching reality TV, driving too fast, laughing, sleeping in on the weekend, facebook, blogging, reading, stamping my feet when I don't get my way, writing, listening to free streaming music on Imeem, and making meals at home that taste better than ones we could get while going out. It's a good thing I don't smoke.

2. I have four sisters and no brothers. I am the second oldest and will be thirty in exactly two weeks, while my youngest sister, the "baby", just turned 21 last month. So far we have gone in order getting married. My oldest sister, Ann, got married in 2002, I got married in 2005, and my next sister in line, Amanda, is getting married this September. That leaves the last two, Nicole and Bridget, to continue the tradition.

3. I've had around thirty different jobs from the time I was sixteen to the present. The longest I ever worked one job was my first one at a Boston Market - I was there for almost two years.

Other jobs that I've held include: telemarketing, restaurant hostess and waitress at many different places including Bob Evans, Melting Pot, and Olive Garden, Niagara Falls tour guide which included getting a special license to drive the gigantic van around, Gap employee, factory line worker (for a week), data entry, administrative assistant, receptionist, janitor (my friend Jenny and I did this nights during our Sophomore year to save up money to be able to move into an apartment and out of the dorms the next year. The highlight was a car dealership and the task of cleaning the mechanic's bathroom. It was every bit as bad as you might imagine... no, actually, probably more.), day camp counselor, and grocery store cashier.

There are more, but I can't think of them all now. Currently, I have a freelance transcription job.

4. My worst fear when I was pregnant with my son was that I might have to have a C-section. The idea of being cut open while I was awake seemed like something out of a horror film. And, of course, I ended up having an emergency c-section. It was less horrible than I thought it would be mostly due to 2 factors: My wonderful husband who held my hand through it all and the lovely anesthesiologist who whispered to me right before they began cutting that he had given me some morphine. Oooh, Doctor, you know just the words a girl wants to hear.

5. I am a terrible dancer. I know this because as part of my theatre class schedule as an undergrad, I had to take a dance class every semester. First jazz, then ballet, then tap, and finally more jazz. I sucked pretty equally at all of them, except for tap, which I sucked just a little bit extra in.

The teachers of all those classes used a similar refrain of: "You'll need to know or be able to do blah blah blah when you're at a dance audition." Well, by my junior year when I was taking tap, I was pretty sick of hearing this since I already knew damn well that there would be no dance auditions in my future.

So, when I explained to my teacher that while I knew and could do the steps of a specific dance correctly, just not (unfortunately) at the speed of the music it was supposed to be done to, she gave me the old, "Well, what would you do if you were at a dance audition."

I think I laughed, and then I made the mistake of telling the truth. "I will never BE at a dance audition." Yes, I distinctly remembering emphasizing the be.

My teacher did not like that. I think she said something like, "Fine." And then she took off her taps, flung them into a corner of the studio and announced that class was over even though we still had ten minutes left.

The rest of my classmates looked at me in horror as we filed into the changing room. "Kate, what did you do?" I honestly didn't know. I just told the truth. I wasn't saying that it was her fault, or that she had failed me as a teacher, but rather with the stressed BE, I was trying to convey that this was just something at the core of who I am. I am a person who cannot dance.

6. I have never had a cavity, and I never had my wisdom teeth taken out. For these reasons I am one of the few people who does not mind going to the dentist.

7. Wow. This last one is really straining my brain. You'd think it wouldn't be that hard to think up seven things about yourself, but then you sit down to do it and suddenly you are realizing that you are the worlds' most uninteresting person.

How about this? I am a Pisces. It's a water sign as in wishy-washy. And it's a fish, which when cooked is flaky. Sadly, there are times when this sign sums me up perfectly.

Whooooo! Done.

Okay, now it's your turn to play along. If you're reading this consider yourself tagged - now go!

I Love Your Blog

As you can see directly to the right I have recently been awarded with the highly coveted I Love your Blog award from the fabulous Debora Dennis aka The Saucy Scribe. As the age-old tradition dictates this is not an award for Scrooges, but one that is paid forward to other worthy blogs. However, before I pass the torch, or more accurately -the jpeg image, I want to take a moment to thank everyone who made my receiving this reward a reality.

Thank you to the Academy, the Foreign Press, my mom, husband, baby, Debora Dennis, and finally Blogger for making it all possible. I would like to specifically not thank Wordpress whose site was so difficult to figure out that it almost scared me away from blogging forever.

And now the five blogs that I want to pass this great honor along to:

1. Rebecca Claire's Weblog - A blog from a fabulous photographer in the Knoxville area. She posts some of her beautiful photographs here, and recently had a series of posts with some excellent wedding tips.

2. Thinking Outside the Box Office - I met Faith in film school and think it's really cool that she's chosen to share some of her film insights with a movie review blog. Her most recent post was a 2008 winter preview.

For my last three I wanted to highlight some of my fellow blog chainers who I do not link to as often, but whose blogs are well worth reading not just during the chains, but at all times.

3. Mindless Musings - A great mix of writing and life related posts here.

4. Michelle McLean's Writer Ramblings - Another blog with a great mix of all things concerning reading, writing, and life.

5. H.L. Dyer's Weblog - Yes, another writer from the chain gang - and she just recently celebrated her one year blogging anniversary! If that is not reason for an I <3 your blog award, then I don't know what is.

Well, I think that sums it up and I also think it is clear by this point that I have a clear bias towards people who either A.) Use alliteration in the name of their blog or B.) Refer to their blog as a weblog. Okay number two doesn't fit into A or B - but you have to admit - it is a damn clever blog title.

Hope everyone enjoys receiving this award as much as I did, and passes it along to worthy recipients as well!