MY OLD NEW PUBLISHED WORDS ARE FREE FOR A LIMITED TIME

For the first time in the history of the Wordsy Woman blog, I'm posting two days early to give you plenty of time to get The Midwest Writing Center's Creative Writing Primer FREE on Amazon.com from now until 11:59 p.m. on Saturday, June 29th (the days of MWC's David R. Collins 2013 Writers' Conference).

Here's my original post marking the release of the Primer a year ago:

The Midwest Writing Center and 918 Studio teamed up to publish MWC Press' first ebook. "The Creative Writing Primer" is a collaboration of essays about various aspects of creative writing, including by yours truly. I have two entries in the work: "Writing as Creative Practice" and "Techniques in Poetry."

Midwest Writing Center is a non-profit organization which is dear to my heart. Its sole mission is "fostering appreciation of the written word, supporting and educating its creators." MWC has helped me immensely as a writer from learning opportunities to helping other writers to organizing events to building my portfolio.


"The Creative Writing Primer" ebook is available in Kindle, iPad,and Nook formats for a steal at $1.99. The entire profit, which amounts to roughly $1.65 after PayPal fees, directly benefits MWC, allowing them to further their mission and provide all of their services and events for writers and readers.


Be sure to get your free copy before time runs out!
-The Wordsy Woman

CONFERENCE PREPARATIONS

Next week is the Midwest Writing Center's annual David R. Collins Writers' Conference held at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa. Because of my involvement with MWC, I am intimately involved with this high quality, high value conference offering three-day workshops on a variety of writing topics.

This year, MWC is offering an unprecedented eight total workshops and I had a very hard time choosing which I wanted to take. I know each of them will have something valuable I can immediately apply to my writing; however, at this point in my writing life, I know, deep down, that what will help my writing the most is just sitting my butt down at my computer and doing it. So, what will I do? I'm compromising.

I've signed up for one of the last workshops of the day: The Novel as a Machine of Desire. It is being led by Amy Hassinger who has written several highly acclaimed and award winning novels. Plus, she's written a history textbook. The workshop promises a study of novels from the slant of character desire with work on novels-in-progress. In my current novel, I am having extreme trouble staying true to my characters' natures while also inserting elements of surprise. I'm hoping the workshop will help.

To satisfy my writing practice need, I'm planning to work on my novel at home in the mornings until ten or so. And then to help with the conference, I'm going to volunteer my time from about 11 a.m. until my workshop starts at 3:30 p.m. I'll be filling in at the registration table when MWC's Executive Director is at his workshop, introducing instructors, and just filling in where I'm needed.

It will be like a three-day writing vacation! I'm so excited. Three days of writing, learning, and interaction with some of my favorite types of people - WORD People.

Have you had any awesome writers' conference experiences or insights on how to make the most of one? Please feel free to comment below.

Happy conferencing!
The Wordsy Woman

WHAT'S PASSED IS PAST

Lately I've been having a duel over the past versus passed duo. These two words sound the same and when my writing brain is chugging along, it sometimes forgets which of these different-meaning words is appropriate.

According to Dictionary.com, passed refers to what something has done, such as having passed a slow-moving car in the left lane driving down the interstate or having passed an academic test. In contrast, past, according to Dictionary.com, is an intangible thing or adjective. As in forget the past. However, it can get complicated. When used as a preposition when talking about physically going by or beyond something, past is appropriate, as in I was looking for the library but I drove right past.

To determine whether passed or past is appropriate, evaluate your sentence critically and determine what exactly you wanted to say. If it is something the subject of your sentence did already regarding the verb pass, use passed. If it is not referring to something your subject did, use past. In the final example in the preceding paragraph, drove is the verb and past describes the driving or could be thought of as a thing; it was past, this is here.

Do you have any other tips or tricks for easily deciding if passed or past is correct? If so, please share in the comments below.

Happy passing!
The Wordsy Woman

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BLOG!

Today (well, tomorrow to be exact) marks the one year birthday of the Wordsy Woman blog.

Maintaining a blog is an interesting endeavor. For several months, I was sure not a soul was reading it. But then the views started to creep up beyond what I thought would result from people accidentally clicking on the URL in their favorite search engines.Getting views and a few comments definitely motivated me to keep it going week after week, which can be difficult. Fortunately, there's a nearly infinite possibility of things one can say about words and that makes it much easier.

Created on Doodle Buddy for iPad

Not terribly surprising is which of my posts have been most popular: the Comma Sutra posts. Comma Sutra -Position Two is in the number one spot, followed by Position One and Position Four. My post on how I write Social Media and My New Published Words (posted one year ago tomorrow) round out the top five. Comma Sutra - Position Three comes in at sixth place.

Where my blog viewers come from never stops to amaze me either. Most of the viewers come from the United States; the rest hail from Russia, Germany, Romania, France, China, United Kingdom, Ukraine, India, and Mexico. And I don't even have family in any of those countries - so that is awesome! I did have an old friend who lived in India, but I don't know if he's still there...

For me, keeping a weekly blog up for an entire year without breaks is a great accomplishment. So I plan to celebrate. And I'm not done yet; I'm looking forward to celebrating the Wordsy Woman Blog on its second and third birthdays all the way into old age.

To the Wordsy Woman Blog! Happy Birthday.

SUMMER WORDS

August sunset on a farm in Northwest Iowa

Tuesday was my kids' last day of school and now I anticipate all of those words and phrases they will inevitably utter over this summer.

The big one will be Can I? Can I go swimming, go to my friend's house, drink this soda, go to the movies, go miniature golfing, go ice skating, go here or go there. And then the phrase that will follow will be Can you drive me there? And we can't forget Can I have money to pay for it? Because I work at home, I have to be disciplined. I like them to get out and do things and I enjoy an occasional swim or movie myself; however, if I'm not careful, I'll end up spending the summer driving all over town instead of getting my work done.

Of course, the Can I is usually preceded at some point by an I'm bored. My son tried unsuccessfully to get me to let him skip the last day of school because they wouldn't be doing anything, anyway. I refused. My reasoning? If I agreed, the I'm bored would hit much quicker. My suggestions in response to this phrase are always Clean your room or Read a book. Not appetizing to them.

Another classic summer phrase, I'm hot. Can't we turn on the air conditioner? I'm not going to be uncomfortable in my house either, but they usually start asking for the AC when the thermometer outside climbs to just 75°F. I generally need it to be at least the upper 70s in the house before I'll turn it on.

Ah, yes, summer, a time for words you almost exclusively hear in June, July, and August. What are some classic things your kids say over summer break? Share them in the comments section below.

Happy Summer Vacation!
-The Wordsy Woman