I guess most of us are wishing we could stay home and write – or stay home and goof off. It’s 2240 and I’m binge watching The Office. My dog is lying here in front of the fire. I took a test tonight and passed with 95%. I would like to sit here in complete relaxation for at least two more hours…but the alarm clock will go off at 0540. The biggest yuck factor is that I work the next 3 days. For those that work 5 days a week that sounds so…. nice, right? Nah, I work 12 hour shifts at a hospital that is a 30 minute drive from the house. I am gone from 0600 to 2000, and usually spend at least one day off after a 3-in-a-row shift block sleeping. I know very few nurses that do not do the same. Bah. I need more money somehow. Let me go stick another 500 words onto my
Author: Carolina Parakeet
Recipe bloggers
In 2006, when Ree Drummond started her Pioneer Woman blog, I was all gaga over the pics of every step, with comments and little stories thrown in. It was enchanting, and it worked well for her. She’s a bazillionaire now. For the rest of you, please stop. It is a new decade and there are a million copy-cat blogs – quite frankly, I now find it tedious looking for the recipe I am searching for. I want one recipe and one pic. I don’t want to scroll through pic after pic, and read story after story of why the brown sugar didn’t work but the toasted coconut sugar did. Stop. Just stop. The next time I google “star anise, green peas, rice”, I better get a dang recipe and not a soliloquy about your latest trip to India and a recipe down at the bottom of the page that doesn’t match what I want. Thank you. But that makes me
Dreams
I have considered myself a writer since I was very young. Yes, the dream was stifled in my teen years by the thoughtless student-teacher, but I have kept numerous journals and story starts here in my home. My children are all teenagers. I am a full-time nurse, single mother, with minimal assistance from the other party (who lives 900 miles away). I want to do so many things. So many dreams to explore. So far, I have managed to take the children on yearly beach vacations, and for the past 2 years, we have done smaller three-day weekends in the mountain range of our state. As the children get older and the support from the estranged gets smaller, I am finding it harder and harder to arrange for these trips. Yet these trips are the very thing we all look forward to – our THING. Therefore, my writing is now a public thing. This is my practice space, a way
Another writing assignment
First, let us analyze the assignment itself. For privacy, I will not actually post the actual assignment, but tell its requirements. We are required to interview an RN with MSN or higher degree with a preset list of questions. We are to take those questions and turn them into a 2-page, 500 word APA format essay. Under the “assignments” tab, we are given the rubric for the assignment. I used this same assignment instruction information for my last essay (the one I failed, remember?). Until I read the instructor’s comments in my failed paper, I used the posted assignment instructional document and the included rubric attached to that assignment. NOPE. The comment section of my failed paper informed me what the assignment requirements were, and that I should have read those in the announcements for that class, along with a sample paper that was a good representation for the assignment. So, I go the announcements page listed on my class
Just like stores all across America
My Christmas cactus has skipped Thanksgiving.
Successful day
So, I am participating in NaNoWriMo. It was actually a slow start, but the novel that has been living in my head is really starting to take off. This is the furthest a compulsive writing project has gone. Those characters in my head, how I love them! My hero, however, is still a grey smudge that hasn’t evolved yet. Who is he? I want him to be so many things: calm, steady, strong, solid, warm, fun, educated, open, chivalrous. Actually, I want him to be all of those things yet, I cannot seem to MAKE him be that. Where are his flaws? Currently, he still exists as a faceless entity in the book. Perhaps he will reveal himself when I bring him into the next chapter. He was at his wife’s funeral when the heroine arrived at his home. His wife died in childbirth, giving birth to twins. He will welcome her into his home as an employee taking care
Criticism
By golly, my ego has taken such a blast from this unseen professor who resides somewhere in this world. I have no idea from where she comes, where she goes, nor have I known any of her writings other than the assignments listed on the college website. I have never gotten such negative feedback on any of my writing – ever. I am 50/50 over this feedback. Half of it is helpful and the other half – does she smoke crack? Push on. Push on. All I could think of tonight as I was driving, was that one day, one day I will be a published author. Hopefully in multiples. And why on earth do I put so much store in what ONE person thinks? Won’t I get plenty of negative feedback in the form of publisher rejections and reader reviews? This is just my baby step.
Perfectionism
Is not a good quality to have as a long-distance learner. I am quite frustrated by the lack of live help when I require it. Therefore, it takes me two weeks to revise a two page paper – it is too hard to say all I need to say in 500 words! If I get dinged on APA format, then it takes me twice as long to make sure my APA references are spot on. If my introductory sentence is too dull, my next introductory sentence must be fantastic! Even so, the APA method is so labyrinth like in its detailed, nonsensical rules that I am sure I have made several mistakes. If I fail this revised attempt, should I stop writing? Or go back to my soul-mate, Joaquin Miller, who wrote this poem: For Those Who Fail by Joaquin Miller “All honor to him, who shall win the fight,”The world has cried for a thousand years,But to him who tries
Something I thought was neat
First off, this is about a death, so if it bothers you, don’t read. As a nurse, I see a lot of death, some peaceful, some horrifying. This is a story about a peaceful one. There was a patient that died recently, a restless soul that was not doing well due to multiple medical issues. That person’s gentle partner decided to change our care in the ICU to “comfort care”, which means we no longer attempt everything we can do to fix the problem (which can be very costly, invasive, and yes, many times cruel). Comfort care is keeping the patient clean, dry, warm, and to the best of our ability, free from pain and anxiety. This latter part is not always achievable, but we do try. This particular patient had had a rough prior week before coming our ICU, and we all did our very best to make things right. The gentle partner voiced appreciation for how considerate we
It takes me too long to write…
…and then I cram it all in in one night, and it is fabulous. Why do I work like this? Unfortunately, I only can create masterpieces like this when I am in school. The novel I am working on just sits there because it has no where to go until I finish it. Actually, my novel, as interested as I am in it. – is stuck. I love time travel romances, but the only ones that work in credibility are the paranormal type. I am not the paranormal type at all. My favorite author is Grace Livingston Hill, a Christian romance author whose works were mainly published in the 1920s and 30s. Now, how can I make this work? I want my heroine to go back into the past into post-revolutionary war America. Why? Because I want to go back into the past into post-revolutionary war America. If I were to do that, what sort of culture shock would I
