I am tired!

I have had enough ‘family’ and ‘people’ this past week to last me a lifetime, and I shudder at the thought that in just a few weeks, the ‘family’ stuff starts all over again with Christmas – and it’ll only be worse, because Christmas is a big deal to family.

I am such a hermit.

I really try hard to keep things in perspective though As frustrating as the holidays can be, as much as I dread all the get-togethers, the phone calls, the well wishes, the dinners, the, the, the…well, sometimes you have to stop and really take a deep breath and remind yourself about the ‘Reason for the Season’ and the deeper meaning of Christmas, and focus on what is truly important.

The presents.

I love getting presents. Toys. I like toys. Of course, I’m a bit more grown up now than when I was a kid, so that means only one thing….

…my toys are a bit more expensive now.

What’s that old saying, “The only difference between the men and the boys is the size of their shoes and the price of their toys.”

This is most definitely not true.

Men also wear a larger pant and shirt size too.

Ah, but that’s not entirely true either. I’ve dated the boys most of my life, and now, I’ve found me a real man. There is a difference, believe me. Huge difference, in so many ways. (Mr. Michy should thank me for the reference to the word HUGE in the same train of thought were penis size was insinuated.)

What do you buy a man who has everything? Literally, if he wants it, he buys it, and so there is nothing he desires that he doesn’t already have.

I’m really stumped on this one.

I know what I’m getting Gregg though. It’s perfect. He’s going to love it.

And by love it, I don’t mean I’m getting him a sex doll. That’s the wrong use of that verb.

Okay – so here’s a couple of things I want to just kind of get out of the way. First, I’m going to offer my book, The Path: A Series on Redemption & Sensual Awakening, for sale one last time before Christmas. If you order between now and December 10th, I can guarantee delivery before Christmas.

If you would like a signed and inscribed copy of this book to give as a gift to yourself or your friends, USE THIS LINK to order it at a special price of only $10. It will come straight from my hands, signed by yours truly, with an inscription to whomever you want it inscribed to. If you are buying for yourself, or for a friend, just fill in the additional comments section on PayPal with the name you want on the inscription. If you can’t get that link to work, go directly to PayPal, using THIS LINK.

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The United States Copyright Office has a wealth of information about copyright laws and procedures, but the question still remains about whether or not you should register a copyright when you create something tangible that qualifies for a copyright.

To determine this, let’s first look at what the US Copyright Office says a copyright actually is: “Copyright is a form of protection grounded in the U.S. Constitution and granted by law for original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Copyright covers both published and unpublished works.” (retrieved November 26, 2006 from: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#protect)

Now, there are two main types of copyrights: registered and non-registered. Let’s look at the differences between the two.

A non-registered copyright is automatically granted to the author or creator of any original work the instant that work is put in tangible form. In other words, as soon as you have created the work, in a tangible form (such as an article, novel, manuscript, picture, etc).If you created an original work, you automatically hold a copyright on the work.

In fact, the work doesn’t even have to be complete in order to be protected under a non-registered copyright. For example, if you are writing an article and you have five paragraphs written, but the article will be ten paragraphs long, as soon as you finish each word, each paragraph, that part of the article is protected already under a non-registered copyright. Same with a novel, manuscript, or other type of unfinished work. Photographs are copyrighted the minute the photo is snapped, and therefore on the film, and then any print or copy of it is also copyright protected under a non-registered copyright.

Now, ideas cannot be copyrighted, either registered or non-registered. For example, if you have a concept for a novel, the outline for the novel is not copyright protected. The idea for the plot or storyline is not copyrighted. For articles, the idea of an article topic cannot be copyrighted. For photography, the scene or the set up idea of how to take the photo, how to pose a subject, etc cannot be copyrighted. Only the work itself is able to have an automatic non-registered copyright protection.

So if a non-registered copyright is automatically granted to any tangible work created like this, why bother with registering a copyright?

According to the US Copyright Office, “Registration is recommended for a number of reasons. Many choose to register their works because they wish to have the facts of their copyright on the public record and have a certificate of registration. Registered works may be eligible for statutory damages and attorney’s fees in successful litigation. Finally, if registration occurs within 5 years of publication, it is considered prima facie evidence in a court of law.” (Retrieved November 26, 2006 from: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#protect)

So essentially, registering a copyright with the US Copyright Office provides a public record of the actual work, making it known to the public that you created it. Additionally, copyright registration allows you to seek statutory damages in court should someone steal your work and claim it as their own. It should be understand that actual damages can be award with or without copyright registration, but registration is required for statutory damages. Copyright registration also protects against importation internationally of copyrighted works.

Copyright registration current costs about $45 for everything except periodicals and serials. This is a one time fee that secures a copyright registration on the work submitted, exactly as it is submitted.

Only you can decide if registering a copyright is worth the expense and time to do so. Personally, I don’t register a copyright on any of my articles, but I do on all of my books and manuscripts. For poetry, I typically compile my poetry into a volume of sorts, and register the copyright for the entire volume, which does indeed protect my poetry from being stolen and used without permission, but doesn’t individually copyright each poem.

Be careful of agencies like this one: http://www.gocopyright.com/ that offer to register your copyright for you. Technically, these sites are not scam sites, in that they actually do provide a service, but they charge you a fee to do something that you can very easily do yourself. To register a copyright, you simply need to fill out the form and return it with your $45 fee. There is no need to pay anyone else additional fees to do this for you.

The choice to register the copyright or not is up to you. If you plan to send your work to a large group of people, such as via the internet, to agents or publishers, or posting excerpts online for others to review or read, you might want to consider securing a copyright registration prior to doing so. Most agents and publishers are reputable, if you do your homework, and you don’t really need to register your work for copyright protection before sending to them. In fact, should your manuscript be picked up for publishing, chances are the publisher will foot the bill for the copyright registration as part of the publishing process. It’s definitely worth asking when a publishing contract offer is made whether it will include registration or not.

In the end, it’s really all a matter of what you intend to do with the work you have created and how much exposure you believe that work will gain. Copyrighting articles for internet use is probably not cost effective, and the standard automatic non-registered copyright should be enough. Of course, the converse side of this is that you also have a larger burden of proof if someone steals your works in order to prove you were the original author if you do not register a copyright on your articles. For larger or longer works that may receive more exposure or will be found in print, registering copyright protection makes perfect sense.

Keep in mind that you should if you are a writer read the terms and conditions of blog sites you may post at carefully. Several blog sites have you waiving your copyright and assigning it to the blog site as soon as you have posted the item. Sites that do this, please be careful not to post any poetry, articles, or other things you may be using elsewhere, because you may actually find you don’t have the legal right to do that if the item is also posted on a blog post of a site that asks you to assign copyright to the site. Be very careful with your copyrights of your tangible writings, because it is very easy to discover you have inadvertently assigned your copyright to someone else, making it impossible for you to use that piece elsewhere.

One last word about copyright protection… if you use a pen name, or a pseudonym, you need to know that the use of this fictitious name does actually affect your copyright. When you register your copyright with the US Copyright Office, you have two choices if you have used a pen name to write the works.

1) You can register the copyright under your real name. The example the US Copyright Office gives is: example: “Judith Barton whose pseudonym is Madeline Elster” Doing this will reveal your real identity should anyone search through the copyright records.

2) You can register the copyright under your pen name, as though it were your real name. This is used by people who don’t want the real identity revealed in the records of the copyright office.

According to the US Copyright Office, using a penname changes the copyright term as follows: “If the author is not identified in the records of the Copyright Office, the term of copyright is 95 years from publication of the work, or 120 years from its creation, whichever term expires first. If the author’s identity is later revealed in the records of the Copyright Office, the copyright term then becomes the author’s life plus 70 years.”

It is rare for most smaller articles or web content to have to fight a copyright infringement in court. Most of the time, the person who plagiarized or stole the work knows it is stolen and will usually remove the references to your work or the stolen work from publication immediately when they are caught and asked to do so. Most copyright infringement cases involve longer works, screenplays, or novels where someone has received considerable monetary payments from the work, and someone else is claiming the work was not theirs to begin with.

Copyright infringement does happen. Some courts have upheld verdicts based on the creation date of the document on the computer, but that’s no guarantee. Truth is, the best you can do when your copyright has been infringed upon is simply ask the person who stole the works to stop using it. If it’s posted online, and they do not comply, find out who hosts their site and ask the host to remove under the US Copyright Law. Most of the time, this is enough for smaller works posted on the internet.

As for the poor man’s copyright…it’s a common belief that you can create a ‘poor man’s copyright’ by sealing and mailing your hard copy of your writing to yourself. Some judges may accept this as proof of date of creation and some may not, but the point here is, it still doesn’t allow you to seek certain statutory damages in court if the copyright is not registered and is instead a poor man’s copyright.

Your best bet is to determine how profitable you expect the tangible item you created to be in the future. Some authors actually compile all of their articles into one document and will register the document at the end of each year. Again, this provides no registration of the articles individually, but it does secure you as the original author of the work. This is especially important in the internet age when a lot things are copied and pasted on the internet. However, copyright registering everything you write at $45.00 per registration is probably not feasible for article and web writers.

Michelle L. Devon is a freelance writer and editor, providing services through her company, Accentuate Services, where we help you ACCENTUATE your writing. For more information, hints and tips for writers, links to paying writer’s jobs, or for a free quote for services, please visit her company’s website at http://www.accentuateservices.com

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It is likely that your company already has many rules and regulations that are in effect for its employees. Whether or not it’s acceptable to smoke in the building, where and when employees are allowed to eat lunch, and even as simple as what time the employee should report to work each day, there are many rules that most of the employees already know.

There may also be many other rules and regulations your company has that perhaps the employees are not as familiar with, and this means that each time an issue arises, the owner, the human resources director, or a manager has to figure out what these rules are as you go along.

On top of all the above, there may be laws at the federal, state, and local level with which your company is required to be in compliance, and perhaps you or your employees aren’t even aware of them. An employee handbook that is researched and properly formatted and written will help prevent future legal problems from arising, because someone in the company simply wasn’t aware of a regulation that had never been communicated to them. With an employee handbook available, you now have an effective means of providing that communication, and protecting yourself, your company, and your employees from future problems.

Owners, managers, department heads, and human resources staff spend a large percentage of their time dealing with employee relations and relaying applicable rules and regulations to the staff. When there are no clear, written policies on employee and company benefits, rules, and regulations, the people in charge are left having to answer questions and do a ‘learn as you go’ type of management system. This can result in uneven and sometimes unfair application of the rules and regulations throughout the organization, not to mention a loss of time and resources that must be expended to develop these regulations as the issues arise.

An employee handbook can keep you from having to ‘reinvent the wheel’ every time an issue, question, or dispute arises. While it may take a little bit of time to properly develop and implement an employee handbook, once the solid foundation is created, the handbook provides a means of reference for both the employer and the employee to consult when these issues do occur.

When employees have documentation to which they can refer that answers most of their basic questions pertaining to their work environment, they do not have to turn to other staff or management to answer these questions for them. The answers are already spelled out in the employee handbook in a clear and concise manner.

If an employee’s child becomes ill, he or she may want to know what family medical leave is available to them. Perhaps an employee’s spouse has to travel out of state for some reason and the employee wants to go along. He or she would need to know what the vacation time policy is and whether he or she is eligible to take the time off to make the trip. Sometimes, it can be a simple question like, “Do employees get to take breaks during the day?” or a question as complex as, “My supervisor said he would not promote me because I am a woman, and he wants a man in that position. Isn’t that discrimination?”

When an employee does ask a supervisor or human resources person for more information, the supervisor or HR staff can either refer the employee to the handbook, or find the answer quickly and easily in the handbook themselves. Smaller issues like what time the work day starts, where the break rooms are located, and what the company policy is on personal telephone calls during work hours can be addressed almost completely through an employee handbook.

Other issues, such as discrimination and legality cannot be fully addressed in an employee handbook. For those larger issues, though, an employee handbook can communicate the company policy on those issues and provide information on where employees should turn should they require additional action on an issue.

When a company’s employees have a well written, properly formatted, and thoroughly developed employee handbook, that handbook provides them with a first point of contact for answering their questions, and then gives them the necessary steps to take should the handbook not address those issues in depth. Because of this, managers, owners, human resources staff, and department heads will save much time in referring to a well written handbook that addresses common, specific issues, and as we all know, time is money.

So, what does an employee handbook do for your company?

• Provides written documentation of the rules and regulations
• Saves time, resources, and money
• Provide communication between management and staff
• Potentially provides legal protection
• Spells out privileges and responsibilities for staff and company

As you can see, there are many benefits for having an effective employee handbook, but the bottom line is that an employee handbook saves time and money, and in business, your ultimate goal is to be as effective and profitable as possible.

Michelle L Devon is a freelance writer and editor, providing services through her company, Accentuate Services. Prior to this, Ms. Devon worked in corporate management and executive non profit management, where she learned a lot about the need of employee handbooks and policy and procedures manuals. Ms. Devon has written, edited and formatted many employee handbooks and policy and procedures guides for small to mid sized businesses. To receive a free quote on the writing or updating of your employee handbook or policy and procedures guide, please visit Ms. Devon’s company website at http://www.accentuateservices.com.

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What constitutes good poetry differs from person to person, and what one reader might enjoy, another will not. Judging a good poem is very subjective. Basically, this means there is no way to truly determine what ‘good’ poetry is, but there is a way to tell if poetry is ‘bad.’Poetry, more than any other type of writing, is usually very personal or emotional. Because of this, readers will like poetry with which they can feel a personal or emotional connection and probably won’t like poetry with which they cannot connect. Just because someone can’t relate to the emotion of a poem doesn’t mean the poem is bad, and just because some can relate to a poem doesn’t necessarily mean it is good. Like I said, it’s very subjective.

The first thing you most know about poetry is that there is no set of ‘rules’ for poetry. While there are some guidelines for certain types of poetry, such as a haiku (which is written in seventeen-syllable verse form, arranged in three lines of five, seven and five syllables), most poetry tends to be free verse. Some of it rhymes and some of it doesn’t, and that’s okay!

When writing poetry, avoid using all caps or toggling between upper and lower case. This does nothing to appeal to the reader and actually detracts from the visual imagery your words are supposed to convey.

Using phrases such as “Undying love” or “I love you more than words can say” are cliché, and honestly, unoriginal. We’ve heard these tired lines over and over. Plus, there’s nothing worse than reading “I love you more than words can say…” but then to go on and read three pages of a poem where words are saying how much love is there. If words can’t express love, then why write the poem in the first place?

Avoid over and under use of punctuation. I have seen a lot of poems that have no punctuation at all, which makes it difficult to read and pause while reading. I’ve also seen poetry that has an over-abundance of punctuation, which causes the poetry to be choppy and hard to read it with any type of flow.

Don’t misspell words. Edit your poetry, proof it, read it out loud like your reader would read it, not like you think you have written it. Poor spelling or misuse of words will detract from the emotion of your poetry.

When writing poetry, esoteric poetry is great, as long as the reader can get a sense of what you mean or can connect and find a meaning all their own. A poem that makes no sense and leaves the reader wondering, “What was that about?” is truly not good poetry. The reader doesn’t have to understand it from your point of view, but they need to be able to feel something or understand it from their point of view.

Fresh imagery, visual imagery, or emotive conveyance – you want your reader to see something they have never seen when reading other poetry. You want your reader to be able to visualize your poem, in full living color – see it, feel it, or even for the moment to live it, and you want to do it in a way that others have not done it many times before. Poetry that fails to do this is simply not good poetry.

Take a look at how the poem looks on the page. Are there some lines that linger out longer than others? Does it look choppy or have a weird flow to the lines of the poem? In fiction or non fiction writing, how the words appear on the page is pretty much standard, but in poetry, how the lines flow, the ’shape’ of the poem is sometimes as important as the poem itself.

Think about how the words flow, the meter and rhythm of the cadence. Does it have a beat, a pulse, a pattern? It’s not required, but when you read it, does it flow well? Read your poem out loud and see if your voice rises and falls naturally with a good ebb and flow.

Good poetry does not have to rhyme, however, if you do rhyme your words, don’t stretch too far to try to make them rhyme. For example, if one would have to change the standard pronunciation of a word in order to make it rhyme, this is not good poetry – with the exception of humor poetry, which sometimes forces rhyming as part of the very humor of the poem itself.

Use the proper words and meanings. Just because a word sounds interesting or rhymes with another word, that doesn’t mean it’s okay to use it if the meaning of the word doesn’t fit with what is being said. After all, poetry is more about the meaning than about the reading of it – a word may sound good, but if the poem makes no sense, who cares? Get yourself a good synonym finder online or a good thesaurus and look up interesting or even archaic words that mean what you want to say, but never throw a word in there just because it sounds good if the meaning is skewed. Again, humor poetry is an exception, and sometimes using words intentionally incorrectly might be the point of the poem if it is meant to be humorous. I adore ‘play on words’ poetry.

Human beings like twists. We don’t always want to know what is going to happen next. Poetry is a story in verse form, and it should have a ‘plot’ of some sort that we can see. Use irony, metaphors, analogies – tell us a story, and let us be sucked into it. Make your poem a condensed short story and give us a good ending to our short word journey.

Okay, after all I’ve said, this one will seem to contradict – emotion isn’t enough! I know, I have said over and over to be emotive and make us feel something, but truth is, your raw emotion is not something with which I can connect. Write your poem based in and infused in your emotion, but do it in such a way that I can feel that emotion too.

Oscar Wilde once said, “All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.”

Emotion is good, but poetry needs words to convey the emotion, and you should choose the words and the meter and style that fits the emotion you want to convey to the reader of your poem.

Emotion isn’t only sorrow or love or grief… happiness and elation are emotions too. Humor is a great way to convey emotions to the readers of your poetry. When you are stuck on a poem, try taking a break and write about an opposite emotion instead – be silly, be funny, and the person who reads your poem can have an emotional connection to that too. Good poetry doesn’t have to be esoteric and morose.

In the end, good poetry is the poem that makes you feel something… it will make you think, respond emotionally, laugh, cry, get angry – but FEEL something. If a poem fails to evoke emotion in a reader, then it is a bad poem. If a poem cannot be understood or the reader cannot connect to it in some way, then it is a bad poem.

And lastly, don’t write poetry just for yourself. Some of the best poems ever written were written by the poet for someone else. Learn to write for you as well as for other people who will read your poetry. Spark emotion in them, make them laugh, smile, cry or scream – and if you do, that is how you know you have written a good poem.

Michelle L Devon is an award winning and published poet as well as a professional freelance editor. You can see a sample of her poetry prowess by picking up a copy of the book, In a Perfect World, a Series on Lost Love and Redemption, sold nationwide in fine book stores or from online retailers such as Amazon.com. For more information about Ms. Devon’s writing, you can visit her author’s site at http://www.MichelleLDevon.com

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Ladies and gentlemen, my day job is that of an editor, and it’s difficult for me to read for pleasure anymore without pointing out obvious errors in writing. Don’t get me wrong, in casual writing, I make plenty or typos and grammatical errors myself, but in professional writing, it is important to pay attention to the details.

When perusing the internet, there is one particular grammatical error that bugs me when I see it that is consistently used improperly. The use of the apostrophe in writing should be reserved for missing letters (contractions) and possessives only. It is not used to denote plurals.

In order to help combat this increasingly common punctuation error, this article will provide a very brief explanation about how to use apostrophes in your writing when you are dealing with non possessive words, acronyms and dates.

CD and DVD are two very commonly used acronyms that are often misused when writing their plural versions, so I will use them as my examples, but these grammar and punctuation rules pertain to any word or acronym. One sure fired way when using initials like this is to spell the words out and ask yourself if you would then put an apostrophe on the spelled out words or not.

You see, while we use CD and DVD as ‘words’ they are actually acronyms standing for ‘compact disc’ and ‘digital video disc’. Do you know how many times I have seen, “I bought some CD’s today.”

So you bought some compact disc’s today? No you bought compact discs.

The only time you would type this as CD’s or DVD’s is if you were using the possessive form of the word, meaning something belonged to the CD or DVD. While it’s not a common use for these types of acronyms, one example might be:

“That is the CD’s case.”

Otherwise, when using the plural form of the words, meaning more than one CD or more than one DVD, you would type this as CDs and DVDs.

Lastly, let’s look at dates.

Contractions are words in which something is missing, usually two words merged into on contracted version of the word.

Cannot = Can’t – the apostrophe is for the missing N

Do not = Don’t – the apostrophe is for the missing O

The same rule applies for dates. The apostrophe is for the missing numbers, not between the number and the letter ’s’.

For example:

1800 = the 1800s

1999 is shortened to ‘99

And we lived in the decade of the ’80s – NOT the 80’s.

If you want your writing to be professional, it is important to pay attention to these little details that will separate your writing from all the other grammatically incorrect ramblings that bounce around on the internet.

Michelle L Devon is a professional writer and a professional freelance editor, providing editing and writing services through her company, Accentuate Services For more information and additional hints and tips about writing and grammar, please visit her free writer’s forum at www.writersforum.info

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For most things, this is very clear. If it belongs to someone, possessive, then an apostrophe S is required at the end of the word or name.

Examples: That is the dog’s dish. That belongs to Sally’s aunt.

If it is a contraction, and two words are pushed together with some letters missing, then an apostrophe replaces the missing letters.

Examples:

Do not = Don’t

Could not = Couldn’t

But then there are the oddball exceptions to this rule, where no one really knows why things are done this way, we just have to learn that they are.

Examples: Will not = Won’t (shrug)

Yet, most people get this right most of the time. The one that seems to cause the most problems is its versus it’s.

Because the apostrophe contraction for it’s means IT IS, the possessive form of this word does not include a contraction. Presumably, this was done in order to alleviate confusion between the two words, but in actuality, most people get it wrong, because it is an exception to the possessive rule above.

IT’S is a contraction that stands for IT IS. Anytime you want to use IT IS, you can replace it with IT’S.

ITS is the possessive form of the word IT, meaning that IT owns or possesses something.

Example: The building was destroyed in the fire, almost completely. It’s not easy to understand why its door frames were still standing.

The first instance of IT’S stands for IT IS, but the second instance of ITS refers to the door frames belonging to the building. IT is the building, and ITS is used to denote possession of the door frames. Silly example, I know, but it makes its point. Ah, there’s another instance or ITS used in the possessive.

I will be writing more in the future about other confusing possessives, such as how to use the apostrophe when words end in S and SS, and more about possessives versus plurals, but for now, remember:

A contraction means a letter or several letters have been removed, and the apostrophe takes the place of the missing letters.

A possessive ends with an apostrophe S and indicates ownership or belonging to or possession of something.

Michelle L Devon is a freelance editor, providing editing, proofreading, ghostwriting, formatting, authoring, critiques, and rewriting services through her company, Accentuate Services. For more information, or to request a quote for her services, you can visit her site at http://www.accentuateservices.com

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Don’t know if that’s true or not, but I do know that I wrote a humorous and what I hope was informative blog post about:

Killer semicolons, and the transforming emoticons who love them.

Check it out!

Love and stuff,
Michy

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Please help me.

If anyone can read this message, I am being held hostage by two men named Brent and Bradey.

They refuse to let me go until they make me sit and listen to this story that has a working title of Twin Trinity – they won’t let me sleep… they keep jabbering away in my ear, and at 3:00 last night, they threatened me that if I didn’t start writing right away, terrible things were going to happen.

I have fallen in love with this book – and I have fallen in love with both the lead characters. When this one is put to bed, I’m going to mourn the loss of Bradey and Brent. In the meantime, it’s a damned shame you can’t make love to a book.

I mean, well, I guess you could, but the paper cuts would probably hurt a bit.

To be a good writer, I think you do have to feel your characters like this – THAT is what makes good writing, when the writer truly feels it, when the story grabs the writer and takes off on its own.

Perhaps that’s why I could never writer horror.

I would literally scare myself to death.

I remember one night, I was writing in one of my manuscripts, a book with the working title The Missing File, and there was this stalking incident in the book, and the more I wrote, the more paranoid I became. I had to get up and check the front and back doors to make sure they were locked. Every sound made me jump, and I ended up with this weird, panicky feeling – sitting on the couch, rocking back and forth.

Of course, it didn’t help any that about 10 minutes after I sat on the couch, the electricity went off in the house.

I flipped. I wouldn’t even go outside to see if it was the breaker box, because, what if someone was out there and had flipped the breakers on purpose, just to get me to come outside alone?

I’m telling you – I was totally tripping that night.

Ended up being a neighborhood outtage – a big chunk of the city was without power that night, but I was still freaking out.

I love writing.

I love getting lost in the story, feeling the characters breathing down my neck, feeling their pain, writing it, creating it, and then making it all better. I love choosing who lives and who dies. I love deciding if someone is going to fall in love or if they are going to have their heart broken.

Not only that, but I decide what they wear, how they look, what they eat for breakfast, and I even can decide when they go to the bathroom.

Maybe it’s a bit of a goddess complex I have, to literally, or maybe literarily, control an entire life – world – universe… and I CREATE FATE!

Perhaps it’s because so much of my own life I have been out of control – things I couldn’t change but wanted to, happy endings that eluded me, broken hearts that didn’t heal, dreams unfulfilled…. and my writing, my writing let me change all that. I could, through my writing, right what was wrong, fix what was broken, and exact justice and sometimes even revenge on those who had misunderstood and abused me, used me, hurt me.

And now – living a dream, seeing dreams fulfilled, heart mended, happy, content, peaceful, and sharing all that with some amazing people in my life, I have come full circle – I have experienced to the fullest both ends of the spectrum, and not only am I better person for having experienced it all – I am a better writer.

I’ve been asked by some if I believe that a 17, 19, 20, 24 (insert young age here) year old can writer a best selling novel.

Sure, I believe it.

But I also believe that if you follow that writer through 10 years of life, 20 years of living – you will see that writing grow and mature, become better, deeper, and more real and realistic.

Life = good writing – Period.

I guess I’d better run now – Brent is standing over my shoulder whispering in my ear, and Bradey is dancing in front of me saying, “Write it, write it…”

I’m compelled to listen… I compelled to oblige.

33,000 words and counting.

Love and stuff,
Michy

Quotes for Writing – All My NaNo Adventure Friends Enjoy! “There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” –Walter Wellesley Smith

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” –E.L. Doctorow
“Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn’t wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say.” –Sharon O’Brien

“Easy reading is damn hard writing.” –Nathaniel Hawthorne

“If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad.” –Lord Byron

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