#TheEnd

Gosh, itching to insert Napolean Dynomite meme, what does that mean to you? A frightening thought for writers or beyond.

For this, the first week in July of 2018, The Insecure Writer’s Group posted on the glorious day of Tuesday, the 3rd…I, however, am posting on the enigmatic, as the enigma I am, day of Friday the 6th which means in seven more days Friday the 13th, and Jason, shall arrive… & precisely 6 days after, as in the 6th, turns into Thursday the 19th of July where a very cool writerly opportunity shall be hitting the #twitter #feeds. Yes, #BigBrother will also be holding eviction that night.

But, #Writers #Authors #Wordsmithy #Friends this could be an #AmazeBalls #Opportunity for #pitching that #manuscript! (2 #agents, NOT out the door, into the fire or even against your siblings head…) Just make sure it’s ready & varnished to a high-level spit-shined gleam that would make your Nana proud. Your elbow should be aching if, in all honesty, you’re ready. Joke, I do not.

Click here for more information. Thank you Insecure Writers Support Group!

Will I attend said event, “Oh’ hell no.” Not this year…I have attended #PitMad, a quarterly event, once before & my claim to fame came in a full #MS request, but alas, I sucked and rightly ’twas my 1st completed work lacking due diligence as an understudy should devote and fell full frontal. I’ve learned to suck-up said suckiness with a smile and thankfully my teeth still intact. All I’d genuinely accomplished, at that point, was proving to myself I could pen those magical two words #TheEnd and since then I’ve done so three more times, each with a little more flair than the last.

Pleased to meet you…

* hope you guess my name *

I bet you’re curious how my FebYo’WriMo group went?

Fantastically awry and disgustingly amaze in one single nutshell of immense Mr. Peanut proportions. What else would you expect of me? The group continues as a safe haven for writers who seek to post something, anything without the judgment of, let me see…the world.

I’m going to give myself that one. We don’t beat ourselves in the face with frying pans anymore, remember?

Let me check w/ Insecure Writer’s Group Question of the month…oops looks like FebYo’ary is still up so I’m going rogue. Afterall, I’m writing this post almost a week in advance. Shocker! I’m thinking we may need to develop a Tortured Souls team…who loves the punishment! cue cymbals…

So…if you’re thinking about creating an epic group of social media fame on Facebook take it from the monarch of leaden feet, there are a few things you might like to know. 

#1 There are no invitations.

When you click add members, it lists the followers of your page whether they’d like to chill and drink a cappuccino with you on the coldest day of FebYo’ary without any freaking shoes or smear your endearing puss into the inkwells of self-loathing and despair. #sorry?

#2 Prepare to make apologies if you don’t follow #1!

I am used to making a quasi-triumphant backward mess of my great intentions, you, my good friend may not. Accidentally adding your peers to a list when you assume, yes, this applies here, (ass of u & me} they are in agreement is not a pleasant form of dog poo-poo in the face.

#3 Seek the advice of those who’ve gone before you.

Ummmm, croaking frogs, resembling a writer-this one, filled with crazy possibility and a bubble of vomit refusing to be swallowed. I didn’t ask anyone. I trustfully flung my body backward and am now wearing a full-body-cast of those who love me anyway.

#4 Wear 2018 Olympic verified knee-pads.

If the cues of #1 & #2 don’t slow the thrum of excitement in this fantastic idea you’ve developed…invest in yourself. Yes, you are worth it, and, at least, your aging knee-caps will be forever thankful when you go ‘a groveling.’

#5 Keep to the basics??

FB is a peculiar place. I believe the idea grand, and stupendously (adverbs were created to be abused), perplexing.

I’ve three profiles, the first produced in the fantastical errors of moi while developing my online presence as an author. Fresh from my first writer’s conference in a hasty fashion and void of other clues. 

The second, a correction of the first. 

The third to help promote my life work #SendSunshine (that social media, Instagram/Etsy, recently helped be discovered & showcased here…. rawartists.org/sendsunshine  If unable to attend event PLEASE purchase a ticket & support #IndieArtists like you and me.)

So….let’s transgress, a habit I diverge most often.

Identity #1 should be my personal page where, instead, I invited everyone my location suggested, their bathroom toilets and those who wished to never look at my precious-mug again. Every follower is organic, because, people, these beautiful organisms of never-ending judgments are waiting for spilled waste. I refuse to post a daily transcribe of why my laundry gets folded in starched unwrinkled triangles or the successes of my non-blemished straight A children, what a horrible standard, facebook fame? But, if I want to see any updates on relatives, this is where I’ll find it and their latest school pictures?? Sad, don’t you think? 

ID #2 the real deal…the single identity I should have started in the beginning, but believed I needed a page and couldn’t create without #1. 

Quit? Nose-dive off the moon? Beserkers NO! When you’re in this deep, you keep going. Don’t you?

Here I hang with my other insecure writer friends, as desperate to be seen as me. And some TRUE writing kings & queens, whom, in the most recent month, I may have lovingly splattered a dab of piddle on their bared shin. My trees. The ones I aspire and apologize for my continued ignorance of how this social media nightmare, namely FB, works.

Confession-I recently absconded the title “Aspiring Novelist” from another fantastic novelist of soon to be acclaimed fame. Love you Steph! And in this month of heralded flubs a re-discovered best friend.

Find the silver lining in all things you are passionate. I’m not afraid of transparency, I’m scared shitless of not taking the opportunity for fabulous to be found.

Write On! ❤ Jess

 

PS-If you are serious, really serious about developing the craft of writing and don’t already know everything (because, seriously, it’s highly possible you really-don’t) … These are the names you need to investigate, know, breathe, and to whom I apologize for my faux pas must humbly. I am a sincere doll of fumbling fabulosity, right?

Larry Brooks

Kristen Lamb

Cait Reynolds

Raidon Pheonix

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just call me #Guinea – #Pig if your NaNoWriMo’ing

…my mascot is throwing down to Janet Jackson’s, “Nasty”…

There is a new heart-breaker in my world and her name is Cait Reynolds. She is an mucho-fab-lady and liaison. While I hold her in high esteem, I am afraid I still dive head-first at break-neck speeds into the #ultra #newbie category of hip and happening #AmWriting kind of peeples, deemed guinea pig and proud to wear the badge. Through her careful, non-shaming coaching and “F yeah” attitude she has taken this top-grade A #panster and shown her the light of what being a #planner is all about, or at least a fledgling dot in the outlining a novel hemisphere.

& this being the reason it is sooo important

Writing, something, isn’t the issue, but focus, laser vision, a definitive instruction sheet instead of the over-active brain stem instability I am most known for and I don’t think I am alone. Hey, but I don’t mind being on the island, believe you me. The great thing, like most manuals, is you don’t even have to follow the darn thing to a T, but use the pre-work as a guideline…(when completed it cleans up into a tight synopsis, boo ya’)

No more getting bogged down in the 30,000 word quagmire.

Here in lies the real work, for me, I whined and whimpered a bit, but my hissy-fit was a lonely dramatization for one. I doodled and assigned actors in my leading roles, classic procrastination. I was tasked with the challenge of saying NO to inking chapter 1 until I’d written the “story before the story” (see caitreynolds.com) and how my main characters interacted with each other.

If I wanted to be a part of N.A.N.O. , and she’s so stealth I’d no idea I’d be attending, I needed to honor my story-line with a sense of understanding or I’d be doing myself and my fresh “twinkle in the eye” a horrible dis-service.

W.A.N.A. International offers a variety of educational, fun and affordable classes for everyone with a slew of talented instructors.

And the great news is…I completed my challenge. Not until the final hours, because why would I ever do anything without a flair for the over-dramatic, and not without concern I’d have to start my attempt at outlining again, but I did it! 

I get to begin the real chapter 1, my golden cherry, tomorrow with a gazillion other “I think I can” writers of the world.

We will see how this new guinea progresses in the most magical month of November, but freak out I won’t. I did that already, gosh. 

In my short, 321,562 word, but whose counting? tenure I have found an incredibly fabulous group of writers, non-condescending, albeit at times cricket-like, among the W.A.N.A. nation

and their esteemed super-warrior founder/queen Kristen Lamb, who in turn led me to Cait, not because Cait needed my kind of vanilla, but because Kristen cared enough. These two are, in my mind, the greatest love affair or ice cream combination of all time. 

Now I beg all my #IWSG friends not to get in a Lizzy-kind of-tizzy over such a statement, as both groups offer support in ways I am honored to be affiliated with and writers need writers who care, remembering how the streets were paved back in their “I think I want to be a writer” days. 

November 1 question – Win or not, do you usually finish your NaNo project? Have any of them gone on to be published?

Well, I can dream, right? 

Write On! ❤ Jess

 

 

 

 

Procrastination, self-sabotage & the fear of using words clearly…

1st let me blame my current paradigm on #Starbucks.

(Yeah, not my name or what I said, but strangely, “this time”, my coffee…)

In my current situation, I find myself with a stomach ache. A self-induced need to vomit due to a class I am taking tomorrow. A one-on-one plotting adventure with a writing coach I admire “too” much and as I try to prepare I find myself with the urge to post here.

Hey ya!

What am I to take from this?

I have hand-scrawled papers strewn about my 10′ long dining room table. My office and desk have become a tangled maze where I can no longer sit comfortably or house the twenty devices I power while writing. I am unable to find the digital files I would like to reference or which apparatus I used while working endless hours on the questions I am sure will be asked.

A mess, a hot, freaking homeless looking disaster would describe me in perfect detail.

Why do I choke? When this is everything I have been working for?

Somehow, someway trying to place an order through the drive-thru has made me doubt my ability to speak perfect English. I live in the PNW, Pacific Northwest. We don’t have accents unless we are expats from across the country or continents, in which I am not. I have left any valley-girl tendencies back in the eighties, like, totally.

I have, over the years, wheedled my order to the barest of necessities. (the stress involved in a more complicated drink, NOT worth the effort) Americano. Bam. Phlewy. Simple. I need to determine two things, my preferred size and if I’d like my drink iced. There are no bells or whistles. So how does my coffee turn into a Trenta, stirred, non-fat, caramel mocha, extra hot, hold the whip, with drizzle and added cream? ?? ??? 

Aliens? Gremlins have invaded my left frontal brain lobe? No longer do I speak words, but wheeze instead, and the baristas are forced to make the order up?

There are no cars behind me in line. I am alone. There is only 1 drink on the reader board. And if that was my drink, God forbid, I should state my preferences in the wrong order, but it is not. I am 100% positive I am unilingual, sad, I know, and the only words to come out of my mouth were, “May I please,” being polite and all, “have a grande Americano.” Inferring I’d like it hot since the words “iced” were not used.

The whole ordeal defies any form of logic and makes me doubt EVERYTHING. ,

This will be me.

Because, how? if I am unable to relay a ridiculous coffee order through a drive-thru voice box in clear detail will I ever be able to define the projects I am working on? And storylines are a tad more complicated than ordering a cup of “Joe” or are they?

Write On! ❤ Jess

P.S…wish this girl luck, I have the feeling this is my key to unlocking the magical golden door to the kingdom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

these things I do

Welcome to Thursday, June 8th, 2017 the day AFTER June 7th, 2017, the 1st Wednesday of the month and the official day of IWSG.

( Déjà vu…I feel as though I’ve been here before, many times, many, many times. 😦 )

It’s a very real possibility my membership has been dissolved, being tardy for the party and all.

Which is exactly why I am the perfect member for The Insecure Writers Support Group.

#Happy #June #Baby

That’s right, so let’s get up and dive in!

(The inspiration is more for me than anyone else, yikes.)

Over on my blog jessicaedouard.com, the one covered in cobwebs and filled with chirping crickets, because I’m a happenstance, infrequent visitor to a blog plastered with my name.

#WTHJ (What the Heck, Jessica) #GYST (Get your s___together, stuff people, lol) But don’t I make a cute #Kenny?