Author: Lynn

My husband and I live in beautiful Nova Scotia, Canada, and now that we are empty nesting I again began pursuing my dream of writing for children. I am privileged to have met and/or corresponded with Canadian and US authors,; among those are internationally known Canadian author Budge Wilson who wrote many MG and other books, Laura Best, Darlene Foster; US author Drew Lamm (originally from Canada); US author/novelist Sue Harrison - all whose books I've reviewed on my blog, Amazon and other sites. It's my joy to be in contact with other writers and professionals of all stages of the process. Life brings change, and for me that meant the opportunity to pursue a decades old dream - to learn to paint. I now join other painters weekly and we paint and learn together. You can check out my paintings at https://www.instagram.com/lynn.a.davidson2019

Yesterday was a palindrome!

So, what is a palindrome you ask? A palindrome is a word, or phrase or even a number that can be read the same way in either direction .. beginning to end or end to beginning.

Examples of words: level, civic, radar, kayak

Examples of phrases: famous ones are “A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!” and “Was it a rat I saw?”

Example of numbers: yesterday’s date 1102011 Do you see it? Read it both ways and you will.

These kinds of things fascinate me. It was brought to my attention again when I came across this blog today: http://gwenelle.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/palindromes-in-2011/ Gwenelle talks about interesting things on there, so you may like to read up on some of this.

I also visited Wikipedia to see what they have to say about it. Interestingly, they say January 2, 2010 (01022010) was the last one and that the next one will be November 2, 2011 (11022011) – but they completely missed January 10, 2011 (1102011)! Maybe because it is one fewer number? Dunno! You can check out the fascinating info they have here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palindrome

Do you ever give things like this any thought? What oddities interest you?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Month of Poetry (MoP)

Do you like poetry? I often prefer to write it more than read it, which seems strange, I’m sure. But then I find poetry sometimes that is a great read and all is well. 🙂

During PiBoIdMo in November, I learned of MoP — Month of Poetry. I said then that I would consider attempting the challenge which was scheduled for January. When this month arrived, if you have been keeping up with my posts, you know – I was involved with family things and being so busy that I forgot about #MoP until a few days in. Since it was still okay to sign up I joined seven days into it. Then for day two, here is my offering:

A poem a day
What was I thinking!
Rhyme, rhythm, cadence
My eyes are blinking.

My verse is too tight
There’s much I don’t know
For thirty-one days
My words have to flow
Poetically

Well … so I’m not a great poet, but that’s not the point, anyway. (fortunately for me) The inadequacies were creeping in, but once I got over myself they disappeared. The main thing is to have fun trying, writing and reading poetry, and we are learning some new styles and forms as we go along. Plus Kat (the originator and host of this challenge) has a few guest bloggers to encourage and educate us. It’s all good and I am enjoying it, and the fact that this challenge is set in Australia.

So, if you are interested in accepting the challenge to write a poem a day this month follow this link before opportunity to sign up ends. http://monthofpoetry.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/whos-in-month-of-poetry-2011/

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Did you make resolutions?

Wow! It is 2011 already! HAPPY NEW YEAR to you!

First, thank you for your support in reading my ramblings here. I appreciate you very much. 🙂

I had intended to post here for Christmas and the New Year, but I got overwhelmed with life and ‘stuff’ and couldn’t fit everything in. I was busy with all the usual things, but since this is the season I fight depression I had a bit of a struggle right around Christmas. Same as last year our two youngest daughters did not get home, and our two oldest daughters didn’t come out either but met us at my dad’s in early afternoon for our combined family dinner – only ten of us this year. It was very quiet here all morning with just my husband and our daughter’s little dog. Very unusual … the first time in all our years together that it has been just the two of us for Christmas. I missed our girls.

A sad time for us was that my aunt (Dad’s sister) was dying, and she passed away December 28, her funeral being January 1. That made for a rather rough end of 2010 and beginning of 2011 for my family. Not much unlike thirteen years ago when Mum passed away December 30, her funeral being January 2. Some years I get through the ‘anniversary’ just fine, but this year was not as easy. I think much of it was that I felt sorrow for my cousins, and it brought everything back more intensely for me.

How was the Christmas season for you? How did you celebrate the ‘holidays’?

On a lighter note … much to-do is made over New Year’s resolutions. Several years ago I gave up making them officially, but each new year I plan and hope to “do better”. This time I determined to ‘go through’ my house one room at a time to ‘fine tune’ things, and I have done one room so far. I also have business goals to achieve, writing aspirations to focus on, continued publishing of Christian newsletter Valley Sunshine and members’ correspondence to answer.

Last year I did resolve to read more, which you know by the page I set up here – My “have read” book list (Dec 1’09 – Dec 31’10) – where I kept track of my progress. Since that fun thing went quite well I set up a page for this year, too. I will finish reading the books of the Bible and add to my list as many more books as I possibly can. For some I will write reviews and I plan to interview authors as well.

All these are things that interest me that I want to do. But — I have to remember not to stress myself out when I can’t keep up. Right?

How is your reading coming along? Have you been inspired to read anything you have seen mentioned here? If so, I would love to know about it. 🙂

So, have you made any New Year’s resolutions/set any goals for 2011?

I wish for you a happy, healthy, accomplished 2011.

Thanks for reading, and .. Creative Musings! 🙂

Book reviews & author interviews

It has been almost two weeks since NaNoWriMo ended and I have not added to my story yet. It was so much writing jammed into that month that I lay my pen down and have not picked it up to continue. I do plan to do that, though, the story is still playing in my head. And the PiBiIdMo ideas are waiting to be filled out into complete stories, as well.

Although Christmas is two weeks away and I have TONS of things to do, now I am thinking about books and authors. I have MANY books to read, some older ones and now lots of newer ones (mostly YA) have been added to my waiting reading stash. But something that has been working around in my mind, besides writing book reviews of some of the books I read, is to attempt interviewing authors. I have a few authors in mind whom I would like to interview after I read their books. I think it is great promotion for them, assuming people actually come here to read our conversations. 🙂 And I do believe in helping with that promotion.

What do you think of these ideas? Would you like to read my book reviews and interviews of authors?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

NaNoWriMo 2010 is over — I WON!

Yes, NaNoWriMo is over for another year. If you have not been following my posts — this is the first NaNo challenge for me and I WON! That means that I met the challenge of writing 50,000 words in 30 days – with a few words over just to be sure – and I now have the certificate to prove it. Yay!

My ‘novel’ is not completed, though. I stopped writing in a place where there are three conflicts set up to be resolved, but I think it was a good place to stop for this challenge. Now I have the personal challenge of completing my ‘novel’ and doing a LOT of editing.

Writing my last post I was SO TIRED, and I had to laugh today when I read it over and saw the typos I made last night. And I don’t know why I didn’t say in that post’s heading that I had won in NaNo. Too tired to think it through, I guess. 🙂

Last night I also signed the pledge to verify that I had completed PiBoIdMo, and now we wait to learn who, of all of its participants, win those great prizes that Tara Lazar gathered to give out on December 3 or 4.

Talking to my husband over supper tonight I realized that I really did accomplish quite a bit of writing last month (November) — 50K words for NaNoWriMo, 30 picture book ideas for PiBoIdMo (I actually got 44), and I completed and mailed out the Autumn issue of Valley Sunshine newsletter.

No wonder I’m tired. I am ending this day early. Hopefully tomorrow I can get more accomplished in my house than I did today.

And it’s now December! Time to get my house in order to start decorating for Christmas!

So, how was your day? Have you started Christmas shopping and decorating?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Day 30: NaNoWriMo & PiBoIdMo

Tuesday, Day 30 of NaNoWriMo — I’m SO TIRED! Last night I stayed up and wrote until 4 AM. As I posted yesterday I did what I said I would do … wrote until I couldn’t stay awake to write another word. That is just what happened. (I’m glad I did this because I had several interruptions today that would added stress to completing.) So at around 4:30 AM I had just relaxed beside my husband and his alarm went off. I went to sleep and slept until my alarm went off around 8:30, then I was up and wrote until I finished NaNo. So I WON! It’s a feeling of accomplishment and relief that I actually completed it and got my ‘novel’ validated on time on the site. I did use the program that generates paragraphs and words. When I finished the challenge and posted my word total, then I generated the number of words I had recorded – which was 50265 – and submitted that to make it official. (I’m actually having trouble staying awake right now to write this post.) I have the NaNoWriMo challenge 101% completed!

Even though I completed the 50K challenge, my story is not completed. I left a major conflict unresolved and hope to continue writing to finish the story.

PiBoIdMo ended today, too. I completed with 44 ideas. It was a wonderful experience for me.

Have you pushed yourself beyond what you thought you could do?

Thanks for readings, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Day 29: NaNoWriMo & PiBoIdMo

Monday, Day 29 of NaNoWriMo is the best day for me yet! The pressure is on and I have to finish this! I spent most of today writing, thinking, writing … and writing, thinking writing some more .. but mostly writing. Just writing. whew! I wrote 5073 words today! Can you believe that? One more day of this challenge and I can write no more that will be counted. My total word count stands at 44257 which means that as much as I managed to put on paper today I have to do that and more before tomorrow at midnight. 5743 more words should do it, but to be safe in case of miscounts I will try to write 5800 more. I will not be stopping tonight until I just can’t stay awake to write another word.

A very good thing is that I found a program that will generate the number of words I need posted to the NaNo validator once I reach 50,000 words.

As for PiBoIdMo, today I came up with two cute ideas, so now have 43 to my credit. Surely something of all those will be worth turning into a picture book manuscript! The PiBo challenge ends at midnight tomorrow too, and then there will be winners announced soon after – winners who are chosen among those who finished with 30 PB ideas. I would be thrilled to win something, but I already have from one of the daily blog posts of encouragement. (Remember the bug caricature from Day 19, Nov. 20?) And, besides that, I am so much further ahead now since doing PiBoIdMo in discovering what I can do and how to brainstorm for picture book ideas. So, yes, this has been a very good experience for me.