writing
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When Life Hands You a Patch of No’s, It Might Be Time to Dig for Seeds
My inbox is a pumpkin patch of rejection letters—big, bright, and way too plentiful. There’s the usual “we’ve chosen to move forward with other candidates,” the vaguely painful “we were impressed but decided to go in another direction,” and, of course, this soul-crushing one that hit me in the gut that came right out and said, “there were other candidates who were much better than you…” While I want to wallow in my own pity party for a solid minute, I can’t help but think of all the others—especially the breadwinners out there, the ones who are out there every day looking for work, for stability, for a way to…
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Mining The Best Memories
There’s a time and place for Stephen King, no doubt… but in a world full of incessant darkness, this is not the time. Her world is already dark; she is blind. The nursing home does provide her with audiobooks, which she listens to regularly. “What are you listening to?” I asked. “Stephen King,” she replied. After finding the activities director, and sitting down together, we selected some new alternative authors to add to her listening portfolio — she perked up when I mentioned Joyce Meyer, and when I told her about Jan Karon’s books, similar to the small town we grew up in. She said she would like that. As…
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Being Grateful Gives Us Something To Do
I think our greatest challenge as mothers is to teach our kids to be grateful for every little thing. This is the one lesson I think I I missed in the baby years, the toddler years, the school years… gratitude holds the key to a stress-free life, forcing our mind to see opportunities that didn’t exist before – and to help us get along with others. I also see it as a way to help us become leaders, with a vision to see how a problem can be solved, and to turn the hopeless minds of others so that they can take actions that are productive and lead us somewhere. Being grateful…
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We Just KILLED One of Your Stories
I think my eyes registered the memory the words before my mind did — because as my eyes widened with excitement, my body soon followed, as my mind played catch-up trying to string the words together with memories… “We’re killing your story…” The first thing, I think I thought was Nancy Drew… no, that’s not it… ahhh, yes, Journalism 400, in college, when you wrote for the Lantern… when you thought you’d be a newspaper reporter covering the Gulf War. OK — wait, you’re doing what? You’re killing a story — and all I have to do is submit it and I still get paid? Because you want me to jump…
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My Latest Writing Job is Not Being a Ghost!
I can rarely share my work — because I am usually writing for someone else… but this new job is anything but ghost work. I have had a regular online writing job, for several years now, that lets me add my name, and now I have another one — I’ll be writing for Lifewire, and here’s my first article… And, I just wanted to share, that I watched a wonderful movie with William Holden and Maggie McNamara, Once in a Blue Moon… sweet… I have underestimated William Holden…
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Robots Have No Hearts: And That Could Be a Very Dangerous Thing
One of the biggest fears that pops up when people think about the impending influx of robots, machine learning, automated intelligence (AI) is — will I still have a job? After ghostwriting about these issues for more than a year now, I know that’s not the issue we should be wringing our hands over when it comes to AI. Technology and automation have, historically, increased jobs, rather than decreased them. A case in point is the ATM machine — its advent actually increased the number of live human tellers. (By the way, I will be sneaking in a few links to some of the articles I have ghostwritten on this topic…
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Part II: In the Digital Age: How To Collect Research to Write A Paper
When did we lose the art of notecards? Remember orderly placing them all out on the living room floor, and trying to piece together a coherent story that would get us a passing grade. Cut and Paste on the computer THANKFULLY replaced that archaic system — but, we lost big time! Stick with me — I know these pictures look scary — but they’re really not. It’s scarier to not try this when facing a deadline! In Part II of How to Collect Research to Write A Paper, I’ll show you how to write this paper. When the mind is busy trying to create order out of chaos, it is…
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In the Digital Age: How To Collect Research to Write A Paper — Fast
This is a fool-proof method for researching term papers — even if you’ve waited till the last minute to start. Yes, I’m talking about your kids and their homework — but I use this method to write every document I write for my clients. Somewhere along the way, I’ve discovered that by using this process, that there is a sweet place you arrive at when writing the article sort of takes over and has a life of its own. Reaching this place of “euphoria” when writing will get rid of any writer’s block, and will actually motivate you to get out of bed to get started. More importantly — you…
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Solid, Like a Rock
When I interviewed this sweet lady, there was no sign of quivering, shaking of panic. Yet, she was recalling years she spent living on the streets with her toddler sons — one time even pregnant. Read her story here. And this woman, acted as if she had never done as much as she has done, to help women and families. See what I mean here.
