DOTTY from Brett and Mick on Vimeo.
My husband and I are celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary today, so this post will be short and sweet.
Dotty is a short film about an old woman who is really struggling to remember how to send a text message.
I love it. I think my readers will, too!
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This is the tale of Lydia and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad night of sleep.
Last night I tossed and turned for two hours past my normal bedtime.
Normally sleep finds me easily. This time it did not.
When you’re in that situation, looking at the clock just makes it worse. It’s better to not know what time it is when you’re trying to fall asleep.
So what did my body decide to do this morning? Wake up at 6 am, as usual.
My brain is bleary. I feel like the edges of the world are blurring together. My thoughts feel the way grumpy cat looks.
Sleep is not for the weak. Everyone needs it.
Now if only I could get my brain to agree with that.
How do you handle a poor night’s sleep?
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Here is this week’s list of blog posts, short stories, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.
When Dreams Don’t Come True via AuthorIzzy. This is one of those links that works better if you don’t know what to expect when you start reading it.
The Little Red Hen Who Taught Me a Lesson via StoryRoute. This link made me wish I a) lived on a farm, and b) didn’t get itchy around so many different kinds of animals. I mean, I suppose I could write a heartwarming tale about the fruit flies that sometimes hatch in my apartment or the pigeons that fight over crusts of bread on city streets. Something tells me those creatures wouldn’t exactly make people warm and fuzzy like barnyard animals do, though. Ha!
Baby Bunnies Being Bottle Fed. I try not to let my bunny obsession completely take over this blog, but this video was too cute not to share.
Organic Offshoring: As Demand Rises, Increase In Imports Poses Safety Risks. Several of the blogs on my RSS feed are from experts who are skeptical of some of the things that happen in the alternative health community. Natural isn’t a synonym for safe. As it turns out, neither necessarily is organic.
From Foreclosure:
“Plenty of warm bodies at home. The debtor and the donor should be in there, with any luck.”
Colin looked up from the infra-red image on his laptop and grinned at Greg. The roll of the River Thames was making him queasy. If the Haywards were home, he wouldn’t have to sit in the boat and wait for them.
What have you been reading?
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I’ve been sick this week, so most of my thoughts haven’t been particularly noteworthy. (Well, unless you’re a fan of silly animal videos on Youtube….) I’m feeling better, but not quite good enough to be as creative as I normally am here. Here’s hoping that next week will be better. I really think it will be!
This video reminded me of some of the stuff I loved eating as a kid in the United States: frog legs, turtle soup, venison in any form, and chicken hearts.
What did you eat as a kid that other people might find odd?
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Several weeks ago I worked on a written interview about writing and my latest book for a friend’s blog. It included a series of questions that I was supposed to answer with gifs.
This is awesome! I thought. I can’t wait for everyone to read it.
There was one question that I wanted to take a second look at before submitting the whole thing, so I saved the file and went about my daily business.
Somehow my brain (mis)interpreted working on the interview as actually finishing it and sending it off.
So I didn’t realize that the final step hadn’t been taken for a few weeks.
Oops! How embarrassing.
The good news is that the interview is really finished now. I sent it in over the weekend, and I will share a link to it as soon as it’s published. It’s going to be wonderful to see what all of my readers think of it.
What have you misremembered recently?
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Here is this week’s list of blog posts, poems, rants, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.
Respect for Your Subjects in Street Photography via TraceTV. I really loved the message in this post.
How to Rescue a Boring Conversation via rbakercnn. There’s a lot of good information here.
The Five Paragraph Method. I once had a teacher who strongly believed in this writing style. It has always come across as a lazy, boring way to communicate ideas to me.
Fake 5 Tips for Making a Great List via AdamDreece. Hilarious.
Addy Walker, American Girl. Who else remembers this doll? This commentary on it is really interesting.
From If Vin Diesel Were Your Boyfriend:
If Vin Diesel were your boyfriend, he wouldn’t mind that you spend every Sunday alone with your friends. “You’re not just friends, you’re a family,” he’d say while you get ready for brunch.
From Teachings:
The man who died the night before is the same man I asked, “When is the last time you saw your kids?” while forgetting to change this language for a blind person. He thought it was funny, and he also thought it was funny when he told me that it’s hard to kill yourself in a hospital. I laughed too.
What have you been reading?
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I wish we could visit some of these planets. Don’t you?
I’ve enjoyed this week of light posting. Sometimes you need a break.
Suggestion Saturday will be up as normal on Saturday, and I will be back to my normal posting schedule after that. See you then!
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Happy Memorial Day to my readers from the United States! I’m keeping this post short and sweet since I generally see a dip in traffic here on holidays.
A few times a year I like to respond to some of the more unusual search terms that have lead new readers to this blog. I’ve added punctuation marks in a few cases to make them easier to understand but have otherwise left the phrases or questions exactly as they appeared in my analytics.
Can’t forgive my friend for not telling me she was dying.
Some people are very private about medical matters. While I personally wouldn’t keep something that serious a secret, I can understand why someone would want to keep that sort of thing quiet.
Sickness and death are hard to deal with. You have to face your own grief before you can look at anyone else’s.
What should we do when our brother wants us to apologize when we are innocent.
Refuse to give in.
Why would you have a problem respecting elders?
I respect everyone equally. The idea of respecting someone more simply because they’ve lived longer than I have is extremely bizarre. By that logic, small children shouldn’t be respected at all.
I wish people that ever did me wrong would come and apologize so we can reconcile.
I wish I knew why this person felt this way. I can forgive, but that doesn’t mean I’ll always also want reconciliation. Readers, what have been your experiences with this?
Forgiving your husband when he won’t stand up for what is right.
Do it from a distance. People who cave to that kind of pressure don’t change quickly. Often they won’t change at all.
Cheating without an apology.
No, I do not recommend doing that at all.
How to forgive a bi-polar person without having a relationship.
Forgiveness can take a long time, and it isn’t something that can be rushed. In fact, rushing it makes it much less likely to ever happen. Be gentle with yourself. Anyone who doesn’t understand this can go kick rocks.
How to say or send a text to some one u offended. .e.g like your sister.
Keep it short and simple. Maybe you could say something like, “Happy Memorial Day!”
What is winter solstice and what affects you.
The winter solstice marks the shortest day of the year. It happens at the end of December.
How does it affect me? Well, I’m usually okay with the cold, dark days of winter by that point. I’m definitely not a fan of the commercialism or forced cheer of December, but I don’t mind the winter solstice itself.
It’s later on in January or February that I start really feeling restless and irritable.
C.G. Ayling – photo
C.G. is a friend of mine. He’s a good guy.
I feel like I might have borrowed one picture from his blog once to use here with his permission. It wasn’t a picture of him, though, and I don’t have the authority to give other people the right to use his stuff. You’ll have to contact him directly if you want to reprint his pictures.
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Here is this week’s list of blog posts, poems, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.
Treebeard #5. No, there is nothing violent or disturbing in this link. The reason I’m not giving away any hints about it that can’s already be deduced from the title is that I think my readers will enjoy it more this way.
Mommy Issues via StephNeighbour. My friend Stephanie always has something interesting to say on this blog, but I particularly enjoyed this recent post by her about some of her biggest struggles with Mother’s Day. It really made me empathize with her. That is a sign of good writing!
Anonymous via CocoJGingerSays. This is the kind of poem that I’d love to sit down and talk about with the author.
What Was Gay? A long, but good, read about how gay culture is changing. Queer women seem to have it a (little) easier in this regard.
I Sold My Soul for a Snickers. My dad shared this link with me. I thought it was really funny.
Snoopy Peeps via LisetteBrodey. Lisette let her character, Molly Hacker, blog a while ago. The results were quite funny.
5 Scariest Things I Saw Working at a Health Food Store. Don’t read this if you have a sensitive stomach.
What have you been reading?
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How can I get my writing skills as good as yours? English isn’t my mother-tongue although I mostly write my fictions using that language and almost all of my work turns out boring and just lacks creativity. I guess I have a trouble way of framing sentences in a suitable form.
This is a great question, anon. Thanks for asking it.
I’m incredibly impressed that you’re writing fiction in a language you didn’t grow up speaking. Learning a new language is challenging. Writing can be a challenge as well. Doing both at the same time can’t be easy!
The first thing I’d recommend is to read a lot of books from the genre that you want to write about. Pay close attention to the authors you really admire. If they write amazingly realistic dialogue, for example, try to figure out what it is about their dialogue that is different from how you’d write that scene. Do they chop up their sentences into fragments? Do they use much more (or less) slang than you’d normally write? If you can figure out what they’re doing differently, you may be able to apply it to your own work.
My second suggestion is to start writing down things that you find interesting. Before I owned a cell phone, I used to carry a little notebook around with me everywhere. I’d write down story ideas, funny things other people said, or how I felt when I saw something strange or beautiful in my daily life. Some of these ideas sat in that notebook for years before they were finally used, and a few of them are still waiting!
You also need to practice quite a bit. I’ve gotten out of the habit of it lately, but I usually write something every single day. First drafts are almost never any good, but you can find parts of them that are worth exploring in the next draft. Never compare your first draft to someone else’s finished product. I’ve done that in the past, and it simply isn’t fair or reasonable.
If you have the time, I also recommend writing reviews of books in your genre. There are a lot of review sites out there looking for volunteer reviewers, but you could also simply leave reviews on Amazon.com or Goodreads.com. This has really helped me to figure out what I consider to be a good, unique story. It might also give you an idea of what topics haven’t been covered much recently in your genre. I know I love it when science fiction authors write about aliens who want to help humanity or when mystery writers have their detectives take on cases that don’t involve pretty, young women being violently murdered.
I hope my advice was helpful for you. Let me know how it goes!
Do you have a question for me? Submit it through the contact form, in the comment section, or by emailing postmaster AT on-the-other-hand DOT com.
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