I Too Can So Write!: 1/25/17

A brand new post is up at I Are Writer!, which covers a few more tangents/components that went into the creation of my novella, The Friendship Has Begun. Please feel free to leave a comment here about it, since Tumblr makes it nigh on impossible to leave one there.

On a lighter note, here is a very short example of why you don't need a diploma to be a grocery store bagger. Bought four items for lunch last weekend and had them bagged. Bagger then asked if I needed a handheld basket to carry my four item bag out to my car. And no, this was not a developmentally disabled worker, who has more sense than to ask something like that.

(c) 2017 BOOKS BY G.B. MILLER. All Rights Reserved.

I Too Can So Write: 1/18/17

And thus begins this blog's new purpose in the cyber world: commenting!

A brand new post is up at I Are Writer!, which goes into glorious detail about my novella, The Friendship Has Begun. Please feel free to leave a comment here about it, since Tumblr makes it nigh on impossible to leave one there.

On a lighter note, my daughter took the PSAT's a few weeks ago {I did not know it was a prep test}. Without really studying or trying, she scored an 1120 on it. Says when the real one comes around, she'll put some effort into it.

(c) 2017 BOOKS BY G.B. MILLER. All Rights Reserved.

9 1/2 Years & 6 Blogs

Usually I would start off a blog post by posting a link to I Are Writer!, my writing blog. However, we're going to save that link for later because it will be part of something new.

May 24, 2008: It was a cheerful late Spring day and I was bored of my tiny little mind. Suddenly, a suggestion was made to me via a now defunct e-mail that I should start blogging, if only to avoid being censored by those who suffer from narrowness of mind.

So I did.

For 9 1/2 years, I left my very large imprint in the Blogger world that was spread out over a total of six, count 'em, six blogs: Cedar's Mountain, Father Nature's Corner, Pictures for Smarties, Books by G.B. Miller, Flashing Georgie's Shorts and It's Always Saturday In Suburbia. I've written somewhere in the neighborhood of 1500+ Blogger posts in those 9 1/2 years, and I've only had to nuke two.

I've seen many bloggers come, stay around for a while, then gently fade away never to be heard from again. And there were others who relocated themselves to Facebook after giving up the blogging ghost.

As for me, the decision was not an easy one to make, but, sadly, it had to be made.

While I'm not completely giving up the blogging life to ride off into the mountain, I have decided to cut down on the Blogger blog portion of my blogging. It has become the proverbial 1,000lb primate in that the well has run completely, utterly and totally dry for non-writing related blogging topics. I'm finding increasingly difficult to come up with anything that even remotely meets the low end of my high standards.

As much as it pains me to say it, the Blogger end is near.

The only thing that keeps me from writing the obit {trust me, this ain't it} is that while I very much enjoy writing for my Tumblr blog {like a continuous stream of consciousness with the general topic of writing holding all the various threads together}, you can't comment directly on a Tumbler blog.

So the change to this blog starting next week will be posting a link to the latest I Are Writer! post here for content and commenting. I may add a small snippet of what's going on in my personal world from time to time as well.

Burnout is a bad thing, and not being motivated to blog is even worse. If I ever get my groove back, I will probably migrate a modified version of this to my public Facebook page.

Since I couldn't think of a decent song that wasn't a good-bye, because I certainly don't want to say good bye to the people I've grown to like, trust and respect here, I'll simply leave you with this, one of my favorite Cedar Mountain pics.

While I'm not walking off into the mountain, I'm certainly stretching my legs and thinking of Spring.

 (c) 2017 BOOKS BY G.B. MILLER. All Rights Reserved.

IWSG #16: Again!

IWSG

Wowzers! Two consecutive months in which have I graced my presence in your IWSG world!

So without further ado, I welcome one and all to the Father Nature's Corner's Version 2.017 of the IWSG blog hop, because you just know that on the 1st Wednesday of every month is when every single writer worth the computer they use to churn out fantastically high quality verbiage comes together to commiserate, to challenge and to toot their highly polished Flugelhorn to the high heavens.

Today, I will both toot my own horn and offer my two cents to the question of the month.

Tooting my own horn:

I am near the end of a very long journey that started way back in October 2015 when I decided to rewrite an earlier slushie novel. This actually came about when I was rewriting a previously self-published novella through a company we will not name and suddenly remembered that I wrote a prequel to that book two years prior.

I'd chipped away on it throughout the past fourteen months, but I accelerated the process about two months ago, and now I stand about three pages away from completion. It's funny, but it's been an extremely long time since I got this passionate about a writing project. Normally, I get passionate about a story, then when it's done, it gets put on a shelf for future use (about two years minimum between completion and publication. This time, the goal is to get this out sometime this year, perhaps as early as this summer. I'll keep everyone post on my progress in the coming weeks.

Question! Of! The! Month!

"What writing rule do you wish you'd never heard?"

I have to confess that until l started drifting around the blog world in 2008, I hadn't heard word one of these wonderful writing rules. 'Course, it does help that I also have never participated in a writer's group, took a writing workshop or took a creative writing class {that last one is still on my bucket list}. Which makes paying attention to these wonderful writing rules pretty much a non-issue.

Personally, I'm from the school of common sense, in that if it doesn't sound right to me as a reader, then I'm pretty sure it wouldn't sound right to me writing it. But that isn't to say that I haven't had my issues with butting my head against those rules when a thoughtful well-respected writer points them out to me. I've learned over the years to downsize {i.e my descriptive scenes}, downsize again {i.e. info dumps}, pump it up {character descriptions}, severely tweak it {i.e. cliches}, and the ever popular show & tell {as opposed to dog & pony}.

I still have a lot to learn about these wonderful rules, but again, common sense rules my writing kingdom. Shouldn't it rule yours?

(c) 2017 BOOKS BY G.B. MILLER. All Rights Reserved.