My littlest woman writer

Maia can make most of the ABCs but she doesn't really understand, yet, how to spell things.  She knows that letters make words which make stories, though.  And she can't wait until she figures that bit out.

That hasn't stopped her, though, from being a writer.  This morning, she wrote her first book.  It's about five pages with two illustrations (one a cat, the last a dog).  She had me staple the pages of her "textbook" together for her and then explained to me what each page said.

I don't really understand her explanation, though there was something in there about taking a test and then about cooking dinner with the puppy at the end of the book.

She's very proud of herself.  She should be.  A woman writer when she's still in the under five crowd.  Virginia Woolf would be so proud.

This weekend, Andrew has "drill" so he's supposed to work. But he's still feeling terrible. He's in charge of getting together the breakfast we've been feeding the folks who have drill, though, and we went & bought it all yesterday. So this morning it was either me getting up at the crack of dawn and taking it to the workplace or him. When Andrew got up at 6, then, Sean got woken up. He wanted his dad. And he's been up since then.

I don't fancy waking up at 6 am on my last "free" Saturday, but we're up. Sean's watching Peter Pan & Maia is still asleep & I am here, reading news headlines & drinking coffee. I'm gonna be tired later. :)

Anyway. I'm having fun on Facebook lately. When I first did it last year, it was totally because students kept asking me for a contact there. And I didn't really use it much. I played the "Heroes" app for a while, and then I actually unchecked my membership for several months. But I've expanded it to include real friends (not just students) and I've also posted my Women Writers website there (if you're on Facebook, go "fan" us if you haven't already.) Spending too much time there, really. But I've always been prone to procrastinating on the Internet.

So now, I'm off to see if I've been poked.

Today will be spent...

...working on the Women Writers January issue. Lots of work to do there. I need to email a bunch of people and get to editing the stuff I do have. I think it may go a little later than my initial plan but with such a loose schedule for the next few months, I think I can get it done anyway. I will actually have free time! Yay!

Andrew's home sick today. Poor thing. He's kind of a wimp when it comes to tummy ailments, and is back in bed after trying to get up. I have the baby monitor on to hear him in case of an urgent need. I hope he just sleeps. :)

Yesterday, while the kiddos & daddy were watching TV, I worked on some scrapbooking. I love doing that and I'm about a year behind on pictures. But it really makes me feel a little crazy all the digital photos I have on my hard drive. I need to find a quick & easy way to back those up. I would be devestated if I lost all of those. I'm thinking an external hard drive would be a good idea.

Here's one of the "spreads" I did yesterday:

For What It's Worth

Those who know me or have been around the blog for long enough in the olden days before it became very mommy & sort of boring to anyone who doesn't know me :) know that I am a pretty staunch third wave feminist. This means that I believe in the principles of feminism: equality. (that's one principle. I know. The only one that really matters.) And one of the ways I put my money where my mouth is (or rather, Andrew's money, but he's a feminist too so who is counting?) is my website Women Writers. Sometimes it's a pain in the neck. It's a full time, 40 hour a week job that I took on, by my lonesome with a little help from a couple of faithful friends and I don't "gets no money for" it. The most I get is a free book now and then, (which is awesome, by the way, and I'm not really complaining).

Well, yesterday, I got two emails about the site. Very different emails, but both of them with a touch of "feminist agenda" to them. One from a woman with a problem with some graphics on one of my sites (very specific, and I won't post details, but let me tell you it required some thinking and some trust) and another from a woman trying to explain in her college class that textbooks written in 1997 do not contain "contemporary" feminism. Well DUH to the second one. To the first one, I wrote a letter attempting to fix the problem and to the second I haven't yet written back.

But it's soooo cool to get the "thank you for your work" emails. They fall few and far between but when they come, it makes all that work and all that complaining about that work just fade away. Someone appreciates the effort. Someone is inspired to do something themselves. It's "passed forward" in a way.

That's all it takes. On days when it's hard, when the monkeys are climbing the chandeliers and the husband is off playing soccer and my banana bread has been smooshed into the newly mopped floor instead of eaten by Monkey #2 and I still don't have a grown up job (fingers still crossed) and there are a half a ton of papers to grade and I have an awful cold and it's cold outside...

The one or two emails that say thanks "just do it" for me. So thanks for listening. Now back to my regularly scheduled weekend.

With Great Power comes Great Responsibility....

I know. That's a pretentious title. :)

I have been doing my Women Writers academic journal/webzine for ten years. It started off as a summer project and now is basically a full time job for which I am paid in the occasional good book. I complain about it sometimes and rarely have the time to devote to it that it deserves. I've looked for grants in the past, and maybe I need to see if I can find something again. BUT. That's not the point of this entry. It sometimes feels like a huge burden and responsibility, but it's also really cool. Sometimes, I have been the first place a budding author sees their work "in print" and sometimes we're the first book review, too. So it's exciting!

I get review copies of books. An awful lot of them are icky, and I read a few pages and go looking for something else. But recently I got one that I quite liked. The cover art was awesome & I liked the premise. So I started reading it and I really, really, really like it. I'm going to write a real review of it on the website, but I have to say that this is my greatest compliment: I wish I had written it. It's the kind of book I long to write.

Perhaps if I get the new "grown up job" I'll have time to do my own writing instead of merely grading other people's writing all the time and I can finally write my own "paranormal romance" that has a few little (awesome) pages done. Here's hoping.

Surprise!

This morning, while I was tappity tapping away on my website (women writers) getting the new issue ready, I found out that my domain name registration had expired!! AUGH! This is how people snatch up these kinds of things. You have a domain for ten years and then forget to pay the renewal fee and a porn site is suddenly parked on your cool domain. Luckily, I had been working hard with the site all day and realized what was up, and renewed ASAP and now I have it for another 9 years. Whoopee! :) Take that adult industry squatters who were probably chomping to get after my domain!!! But the trouble was that the service that used to do it did not have an easy way to update contact information, and all my contact info was ridiculously old. Luckily, I had an old, still accessible email address that I never use, so I did not have to go through the pain of faxing stuff to them. Whew!

So. But the weird thing is on my laptop, I can get my site. And other people can get it. But the computer I'm on now keeps loading the "renew your domain" splash page. It has something to do with DNS renewal and stuff I don't understand, that the tech support guy explained to me when I called. I don't get it. If I whack it with a rock or stick, maybe that will fix it. Kim Smash! Kim Angry! Arrrrr!

Anyways. My website is so cool right now... the voodoo issue. It's gonna be awesome and I am so glad I thought of doing this special topic.

Yesterday, I spent most of the day holed up with the "vampire teen" book's finale (called Breaking Dawn). I thought it was very well done, very good, very gripping. I am kind of sad it's over and wish she'd write more stuff. I really liked the lack of too much information on the "eros" elements of vampire lore. Other vamp books I've read go into TMI for sure, and the fact that the author, Stephanie Meyer, is conservative was actually a plus for me. I want story, not barely disguised "adult materials" pretending to be a mystery/horror story.

Now to go upstairs and eat lunch. Ack! I can't believe it's 2 already!

Independent Lil Old Me

This weekend, I'll be attending the first annual Shreveport Author Author book festival. They were excited to get someone who does web publishing-- most of what they have are the "old fashioned" sort of bookish type. :) I'll be on the main floor, though, with a killer slide presentation of my Women Writers website (since they don't have Internet access, this is the best way to show it off). My URL will also be on the little book bags they hand out to people, which is cool. I'm also planning to print up a small, bound version of a selection of poetry, fiction, and scholarship the website has had over the years.

Why, you ask, is this cool? Well, Jewell Parker Rhodes, who wrote the bestseller Voodoo Dreams will be there. Also, some third wave feminist authors are supposed to be there, and we're supposed to meet for coffee beforehand, but I just heard that they are cancelling. (Which is a bummer, but not the end of the world).

And the whole point of this is twofold. To get to know people who are into literary stuff here in Shreveport, and to possibly get myself and my work noticed by people who can help me with my goal of trying to get Women Writers published as an anthology/collection of works in a real, bound book. I know the web is cool and all, but it would be neat. A lot of the academic types would find that more impressive, and it could be good for my career. (I'm not saying WILL be good because it's weird the way these things work.)

So anyway. I don't think there are any readers of my blog in the area, but if you are coming to town this weekend, come see me! I'm trying to get a babysitter so we can attend the ball on Saturday, but my fairy godmother babysitters are all busy so far.