Writers Anonymous II

Wow! What a great conference. Pacific Northwest Writers Conference http://www.pnwa.org/

Information overload, terrific people and NONE of us want to be ANONYMOUS.

Some of the fun, besides fantastic speakers and great panels, was writers watching writers. We are often odd creatures. I thought this conference would be a tremendous opportunity to start a project called “A Field Guide to Writers: How to Spot and Identify the Elusive Writers among Us”.

I found out my observation skills are not skilled enough. Without squinting at the fine print of a name tag, I couldn’t tell what genre a writer wrote. I couldn’t even discern which ones were the agents and editors. At least not until the panel where they introduced themselves.

Guess the field guide will have to wait.

I attended a panel by Kiffer Brown. Her scary statistics included such facts as there will be two million books published this year in the English language alone. Fortunately her talk allayed the rising fear in the audience as she told us all the ways out of the anonymous ocean. Visit her information packed “Chanticleer Book Reviews” site. Thank you, Kiffer.

What I learned above all else is that writing and writers have come full circle.

We started as storytellers connecting people and place. First around campfires and now we have moved to the “Interverse”.

Forgive my hubris, but we are once again storytellers. We are the twist of the unexpected that makes you laugh, the sigh of inner discovery that connects your soul to you or another, the information, the help, the dreams, the reality. We are and always will be there for you.

Each one of us to each one of you. Gladly.

Forget anonymity. It’s overrated. Reach out to us. Tell us what you need and one of us, one of the millions of us, will make sure you get it.

~lisa

Awesomeness

Okay, I admit it. I took a perfectly reasonable adjective and turned it into an awkward word. Oh, wait, someone has already done that. Lots of people have done that. I guess I missed that semantic drift. There’s even a day of awesomeness. http://dayofawesomeness.com/. It is held every March 10^th. Next year I will hold an awesomeness party.

Today I’m sharing some pretty amazing, marvelous, fabulous, wondrous, and awesome sights and sites, news and people.

I’ll start with yesterday’s trip to Snoqualmie Falls. I was chilled to the bone in the early morning spray, but we have had prodigious rainfall this last month and the waterfall is an amazing sight.

Snoqualmie Falls is part of an abode of the original People of the Moon, the fabulous Snoqualmie tribe. I cannot compete with Arthur Ballard’s retelling of the creation myth of the falls, but here is a link. Enjoy. http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=2586.

For the next awesome, I’d like to introduce three amazing Bengals, also known as mischief makers 1, 2, & 3.

 These are, in order of appearance, Kuri, Hiyu, and Loki.

& then there is the one crazy dachshund. This is Arna.

Moving on to a discovery of yet more awesomeness. I’d like to say this is a most nascent blog and I’m only at the second post, but I have found the theme for April. http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/p/what-is-blogging-from-to-z.html

The challenge is to blog every day through April (except for Sundays) using the alphabet starting with A for the first post and ending with Z for the last post. Bloggers can sign up to participate in this event http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/p/a-to-z-challenge-sign-uplist-2014.html or, like me, they can lurk in the wings and give it a try on their own. What a great idea and there are so many great blogs participating. Like awesome.

And, finally, for all of you writers out there: this website takes you to a list of totally fantastic, incredible people. http://nestpitch.wordpress.com/. All of these people volunteer their time and expertise with creativity, fun, and awesomeness. Thanks also to http://rhiannwynnnoletblog.wordpress.com/ & http://nikvukoja.wordpress.com/ for volunteering the pitch-it-forward-pitch-clinic. Even more complete awesomeness. You can check out the pitches and the comments at http://rhiannwynnnoletblog.wordpress.com/2014/03/22/the-nestpitch-pay-it-foward-pitch-clinic-is-open/#comments. Leave your own comments and help these writers along. The window for comments closes on March 29.

Those of you with complete, polished, awesome (unpublished) manuscripts enter your 35 word pitch and watch the magic unfold. See http://nestpitch.wordpress.com/ for rules and guidelines. Hurry though, the entry window is very short and very soon.

May all your days be filled with awesomeness. Love to sparkle, dance in the rain and smile.

Next post will be how I am most certainly not a Pollyanna, and then perhaps a little more awesomeness.

-lisa & 11 uses of some variation of the word awesome,  & now that last line brings the total to 12.