Category: routines

Poetry for Monday

Still struggling with the sickness. But I am trying to do the Indie Blu(e) challenge and I wanted to at least attempt to make a post.

Pad challenge Day 13

Prompt: Luck

Indie Blu(e) Publishing’s 5th Anniversary Creativity Prompt Challenge

In November of 2018, Kindra M. Austin and I took a leap of faith and launched Indie Blu(e) Publishing with the publication of our first anthology, We Will Not Be Silenced: The Lived Experience of Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault Told Powerfully Through Poetry, Prose, Essay, and Art. We Will Not Be Silenced would not […]

Indie Blu(e) Publishing’s 5th Anniversary Creativity Prompt Challenge

I have been doing this as well as the other Pad challenge. I find it a fun idea.

Pad challenge Day 7

Prompt: Big or Small

I struggled with this prompt. It was a Two for Tuesday and I am probably going to be doing another poem. I have been doing another pad challenge as well but the prompt for this one just irritated my sensibilities.

Progress

So I have this past week struggled with my daily word count goals… but I have been making forward progress.

Perhaps it will continue.

Vacation plans and trying to make it stick

So I do a daily goal.

This weekend I was easily able to make that goal and then some.

My daily goal? 250 word count and a poem. It doesn’t sound like a lot… but I don’t often make it. Between the publication process and life being what it is… I stay busy.

I had no Internet and no computer and no access to the phone where I have been. So I was just able to draw and write.

I got a new kids book written, several poems, and Serena got quite a bit of her new story for the spring fae corps Anthology done. (It’s about half way written now). I was only gone for a weekend.

Maybe I need to plan on writing retreats. Serena needs to start putting some work in on her books. Next year this is an option for me.

But being out of contact is anxiety inducing for me. This is a wonderful thing for my writing but it is not a good thing for me personally. It is something I will have to think about.

Whelp It’s Wednesday!

I normally do Wow Wednesday…but this week is going to be a crazy one for me…and I am likely to be late next week on being able to schedule my blog. I am going to be out of Internet ability next weekend.

I will try to get it up, but I cannot guarantee anything.

I have things planned for every day this week. EVERY DAY.

Monday I am taking my girl and we are going to Spirit Halloween to look around.

Tuesday there is doctor appointments. Multiple ones.

Wednesday (Today) I need to go help my sister go through her storage building – with possibility of my walking away with a new keyboard (musical type). She is needing to condense it down and wants me to take stuff I want. So I really am looking forward to spending the day with her (Even without the storage building being involved) and the adventure sounds fun.

Thursday I am supposed to be packing/ getting ready to go out of town.

Friday I am going to my friends camp and spending the weekend. It is a nice camp, but I will be out of reach. No cell signal. No internet. So Techno geek me – panics. But we promised we would go.

We will return Sunday…but it will be forever….ya know?

If I don’t have my usual posts next week – that is why. I will have the Drawtober posts regardless. I have already scheduled those through October. (I went ahead and did the art for it so I did not have to worry about things like this.)

My next volume

It was a tie in the votes… this one and Burning the Candles at both ends.

I asked my boyfriend to choose… and his response gave me what I needed to choose.

He said that Burning is a darker one and this one was lighter. So I should choose based on the poems that I was planning on putting in it.

That is not how I write…

But it got me thinking about my own writing and the upcoming volume. Ok, I have Serena’s Gathered Bones that I can put the dark stuff in. And I am planning on using this one for the November Pad challenge as well as the stuff I write until then…. I am likely to be looking for a new one at the end of November….

So I chose the one that I liked better (and the one that my daughter had voted for) since the votes were equal for the two.

Today I wrote the last poem for Echoes…

So I will be starting Uncanny Valley soon…

Wild Wednesday

Well it’s time for this again…

Help me choose what my new volume will be? I have less than 10 poems in Echoes left to write. Each of these are supposed to be Free Verse with no theme….

The writing on this new one will probably be done in November but the volume itself will not be ready for release until next year.

Tools!

Okay…I get recommended writing tools at least once a day…sometimes once an hour. Most of them are bloody expensive.

I can’t afford to pay out for quite a few of them. Oh believe me…I have paid for some, and for services…(Including some editors that I plan to recommend on another post)

This one is entirely about the programs I use.

We will start with the ones I was willing to pay for.

Canva – I pay for the premium features. The reason is because of the amount of use this opens up. I use it for marketing, poetry images, blog images, cover design, and quite a few other fun little things. This is not an expensive cost but it is a monthly cost. I pay $13 a month.

Master PDF – This was a one time cost. It has come down since I bought it. It was closer to 100 when I bought it. It’s now $70. I can use this to make the full covers, sign contracts, adjust a pdf in whatever way I need to. This is the most comprehensive editor I have found. There is a few features I would like it to have and I used to have a pdf compiler program that did those but I don’t have it currently…might look for one.

Google Drive – I pay for the largest google drive so I can have some file access and backup ability. This is not a need. It is a personal preference. I have lost files too often.

One Drive/One Note – okay those who have followed me for awhile know I had to switch my writing on my phone from Evernote to One Note. This was a difficult decision prompted by Evernote choosing to go with a forced AI…I was uncomfortable with it and tried to opt out. The response I got was …sad to say the least. So I pay for One drive to make One note usable. It costs me $8 monthly.

That is it. The paid list.

Now for the freeware.

LibreOffice – This program does everything Microsoft office does and then some. And it does not cost anything.

Sigil – Epubs are the filetype that publishing require. Libre office will export to epub. But you have to fix the file. It only requires a couple of minor fixes – but it needs done if you expect to use the created epub.

And Lastly – this one is a tool I use for Communication.

Discord – It allows me to easily transfer files to the authors and be able to announce upcoming events and such. It makes things easier for me. Fae Corps Publishing’s Discord even has channels for writing games and such to try and help the writers. There is places for feedback and general help, and prompts. All conveniently in one place.

This of course is not all my tools. But it is the main ones. and it gives you a start.