My First Giveaway!!!

Summer is here and the weather is lovely. Many are headed out on vacation or just out in the backyard to enjoy some sun. Why not take a book with you? Do you need a new book? Oh, silly me you always need a new book! :) At least I do. Well never fear, I am giving away a book every other day in June.


To Enter:
 - You must be a follower of this blog.
 - You must comment on the day the book you want is featured.
 - You must be a resident of the continental United States.
 - Check back often to see if you have won and to enter to win again.
WINNERS: You must email me your information (where to mail it) with in five (5) days of winning or I will give it away to someone else. So pay attention :) 


Yes my friends it really is that easy. Tell everyone you know and you can all have a chance to win books all month. For even more book earning fun jump over to my mom's blog and follow the same rules to earn books from her!! :) So exciting. She's at candamortensen.blogspot.com She will be featuring books on every even day of the calender and I will on the odds. Get it? so June 1st, come here, and June 2nd go there, all month long.

**FYI: I have not personally read all of these books, therefore I can not vouch for the content, political, religious, or otherwise. 

Play it again Jonny...

       So, I am totally that person that listens to a song over and over and over and I don't get sick of it. And my current favorite is: Rolling In The Deep by Adele. You can click HERE to see the video (which is playing right now as I write this.) Give it a listen and just try and say it's not AmAziNG!

   
   Love her voice, love the video (architecture of the shoot site included.) But beyond that it is an inspiring song for me right now. I could build a whole series around this song. Love it, Love it!!

 Well, that got me thinking. What songs inspire you? Pictures? Memories? Where do you go or what do you do that gets you over/around that massive writers block?

Busy, Busy, Bee

So the school year is wrapping up here in Utah and I'm finding that there are more and more things going on. Between school carnivals dance festivals and field day there are book club meetings, a garden to be cleaned up/started, mow the lawn, tune up the bikes etc... There are never enough hours in the day.

So when to write? How do you find the time?

I have some thoughts,

1st : Knowing Your Story:  Figuring out all those pesty plot/ character details will help provide motivation to sit, type and produce.

2nd: Built in Boundaries: We all have free time, we just don't always see it. What is essential to your daily chores? Weed out the TV/Web surfing and vege-ing if necessary and you'll find that elusive free time you are looking for.

3rd: Writing Center:  Make yourself a writing center mobile (laptop, writing bag, 3x5 cards) or a set place at home (desk, comfortable chair, maybe even a separate room).  Find what works best for you and invest in your writing goals. Providing a designated place or things help to focus your mind: it's time to write.

4th: Focused writing: Don't let yourself fall into the trap of editing everything you wrote last month each time you sit down to write. Organize your writing time so that you work on the deep stuff like plot structure, character arcs, general move the story along stuff some days and the lighter stuff like research, revising and rewriting other days.

How do you find time to write, what are your strategies?

What I'm all about

I thought that today I'd share a little bit about me, random facts I'm sure everyone is just dying (not :) ) to know. So here goes...


     I am the Proud mama of three amazing little girlie's, and the happy wife of one very creative, handy hubby.

     Lover of all things vintage. Houses, jewelry, clothes etc... beautiful.

     I LOVE the color green, in every shade, painted on walls, furniture whatever. The more green the merrier.

     I love to craft. By that I mean everything. I build furniture, paint everything that I can. I sew quilts & backyard tents. I decorate and redecorate rooms, put together scrapbooks, paint art and take photos. I love doing flowers for weddings and cakes too. But I have recently fallen in love with writing. That is my newest and most loved craft.

     I write Young Adult, paranormal mostly but some contemporary. My mom and I write together. We both brainstorm a bunch of ideas together and one of us will take the lead and write it all the way through. Along the way the other critiques, adds scenes and drops things that don't work. I love this process and I feel like I have grown so much as a writer with her help.

    So there is a small smattering of me. What are you all about? How does it affect your writing?
  

Here's to pretty pictures!

   So when I write I need visual and auditory inspiration. I look through iTunes and build play lists for each story and sometimes for a certain character. You know, 'What would________listen to?' I like to find pictures of random people to represent my characters and I find gardens, shops and houses that they would live in or walk by. Then I group it all in a folder for that manuscript or character and look through it while listening to my playlists. It really helps me get into the story and POV character's head. So here is a super small sampling of my inspiration photos.
   * FYI--- I did not take any of these beautiful photos I swap them all from random google searches.

pretty living rooms...

outdoor seating

comfy kitchen

sweet little girls room

oxford garden~ great meeting place! :)

Character

another one (love her hair cut)

the mom

the Heartthrob

I hope you enjoyed a little of my inspiration pics. How do you get into your character's head?

  

~LDStorymakers Wrap Up~

LDSTORYMAKERS CONFERENCE

WOW would be an understatement. I went to the annual conference again this year, my second time, and once again I came home blown away. The classes are amazing. If you have never gone, plan now, save all your pennies and get a sitter and you'll be so :) you did. If you have been before you know the mind blowing intense, influx of information, fun and people.

I went to a class about using social media and I thought, huh. I'm on Facebook, but I'm not on Twitter and I don't have a blog. huh. Before you shuffle off to Twitter to join my flock on there, I'm not....baby steps people. Maybe I'll be in denial about my time again at a later date but today is not the day. Yesterday I started this blog, and after a whopping-ly successful day I'm feeling pretty good about it.

Another class I went to was on pacing by Josi Killpack. How to speed your manuscript up or down and why you should. All week since that class every show and movie I watch I think about their pacing and I have to say that that last Harry Potter was a little to fast as far as the pacing went in my opinion. But hey that's just me.  I will be looking through my manuscript and adjusting like crazy for a few weeks.

There were many more classes and amazing presenters and I will have lots and lots of editing to do and I am excited to have all this information now to make my stories better from the beginning. I was so happy to meet some new people and finally meet in person some of the people I only knew from their blogs and online critique groups. Here's looking forward to working hard this year and to conference next year.

What to name the blog...

      So as I sat down to start the blog I asked my kids what to name it. My oldest said, "dinosaurs!" I smiled and told her it should be about writing. She thought for a minute and said "twilight." I asked why, her reply was "It's a book, a movie and older people like teenagers like it so its a good name." I nodded and thought about her ideas when my middle daughter said "pillows cause they are funny." Okay funny pillows...
     We talked about silly names and super duper longest names for the blog and a half hour later I still didn't have a name. I did however have an official dance, food (mac and cheese with octopus hot dogs), dinosaur (t-rex), and a whole lot of silly pillows.
     WoW, I am thoroughly organized. Oh wait!! What to name the blog?

     Welcome to Procrastination Station.  :)