Camping in Nano Land again

At Splash, Springfield

Garden Pirates

painting Desert Sunrise

Writing has been difficult for me.  Once upon a time it took me ten years to finish a novel, so the fact that I'm in another low energy slump isn't surprising.  I love telling stories to kids, and exploring them in my own mind, but the translating to a finished novel is WORK.

NaNoWriMo with its rigid timeline, helped me publish four novels but the last three Novembers have each been interrupted by the death of a parent or my spouse's parent, and writing ceased.

Recently I gave myself permission to doodle in paint.  Its something I never do, because I know I can paint well, not the best but far from the worst, but I chose other activities to make my life work and my dedicating 20 or more hours per painting was over.  Finally, I went to a painting party, a three hour limit, and a lot of that time spent visiting. I only went because my book club was all going, but I loved it.  Lately I've been dreaming of compositions for more complex paintings, but Ive also been doing half hour paintings with my five year old granddaughter.

I decided, after several failed attempts on the same novel, that perhaps my writing needed similar permission to just be, casual, wandering, short stints at the keyboard.  Camp Nano allows that flexibility and instead of a word count, I chose to aim for half an hour a day in July, writing mostly inspired by the objects I've carried with me through my life, in a jumble I've titled, "self-storage."

It's a simple, fun goal and still I've had to forgive myself some skip days. And it's working.

So I'm playing at writing, Playing at painting, and playing with Grandkids.

Tumbling class

I'm still dealing with my health, and no diagnosis, plus now high blood pressure, but Life is still good.

I hope you, too, are getting away from the news and making time for the activities that refresh you. If you have, I'd love to hear about it.

Being an Iron Writer

B Street Pier, Crescent City, CA

 Recently, I have been sick and sad and not writing, but a writer I met at the South Coast Writer's Conference a couple years ago, has started something he calls the Iron Writer's Challenge on facebook.  It seems like it will work for me. The idea is that we are each responsible for setting our own goals in four different areas, and then asking for what we need to help us get to where we want to be.  Its a long path, but we divide where we are going.

 We are supposed to encourage each other in these four areas;
1. Writing,
2. Health,
3. Relationships
 and
4. Finances

 I still most want to finish my Pompeii/Portland blended time tale so that is being broken down into steps, but I also need to find out why I'm aging prematurely and losing the ability to do some pretty basic movements. My family and friends and co-worker area is my strength, so I'm not changing that up, just celebrating. Financially, ugh!!!

So anyway, less facebook time, more talking to Dr.s and more research.  If you are interested in joining us, and can't find the closed group on facebook, let me know. Dixie Dawn Miller Goode

Talking to book clubs about my book

I like to think of myself as a writer. Ever since I was a child that is one of the happier labels I have applied to myself.  When I was a child, a preschooler, I was a talker.  My Dad said I had been "vaccinated with a record needle and never stopped talking since."  Yet, as I started school, and learned that the other kids didn't like my non stop talking, and the fact that as an only child until just before I started school had created a child with no idea how to play well with others. I got slapped down hard, and rejected many times and it wasn't until the end of high school that I started to make friends and realize that I could both talk and listen.

So in school my best friends were the characters in books, and I have always considered myself an introvert.  It goes well with being the person who observes and records instead of interacting.  I curled up with my notebook, or hunched over a desk, and rarely made eye contact or had to speak.

Oddly enough though, when my brother was born with Down's syndrome and I learned to work with him, I also learned to be a teacher, and to work in front of large groups of children.  But that was separate.  I could talk to a class, and I could write - but I was too introverted to talk about my books out loud, so on-line I talked, in person I listened.  But Marketing books means you have to believe in them, AND you have to be their loudest, most vocal word of mouth advocate.  If I believed someone would love my story, nothing would happen until I would open my mouth and tell them why they would love my book.

Double Time On The Oregon Trail

So I wrote Duffy Barkley is Not a Dog, and very few people read it, even though I loved it, and the ones who did read it were positive.  Then I wrote Double Time on the Oregon Trail, and I started talking about it to 5th grade students who were studying the Oregon Trail, and then to a 5th grade teacher, who passed it to a School District Director of Curriculum who authorized the Instructional Media Center to order a class set of 38 copies. Then another 5th grade teacher convinced her book club to read it and asked me to come to their meeting and talk about it.  I was scared, but brought my handwritten draft, and some research, and some old storied I wrote in 5th grade myself and talked, and they listened and asked questions and it was fun.

 This year I am in a book club myself, and we read The Invention of Wings and ate dinner at one members house, and then read The Orphan Train and ate dinner at another members house, and it was my turn to be hostess, and I never invite people into my old house, decorated in Early American Yard Sale.  But I'm a good cook, so I said I can do it, and we chose my first book, Duffy Barkley and I cooked and they came over.

My old, chilly, very Green living room

 But what did I learn?  I learned you can't point out where the glasses and the garbage can are, and serve the food, and sit down and present about how you wrote a book, or ask the questions you want your readers to answer about what worked and where they loved, or hated my book.  Going into classes as an author presenter has been fun and satisfying.  Presenting in someone else's home as an author at their book club, I was focused and had planned ahead what to tell them and which questions to ask. In my home I kept wandering out of the conversation, and still missed a lot of what they said about my book

Duffy Barkley is Not a Dog

 So, when you want to market your book to book clubs, it is a good idea.  You do get a group of people willing to spend time and money on your book, but if you find yourself thinking about hosting the book club, find a partner, and focus for that evening, on being a speaker, speaking passionately about a book you really believe in.

 Amazon's Dixie Dawn Miller Goode Page - You can view it at:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004458ES2

Twitter link: http://twitter.com/#!/pandorasecho

Twitter # 2;  http://twitter.com/#!/DuffyBarkley  

Author Blog:  http://duffybarkley.blogspot.com/

Blog # 2:      http://echo-echosvoice.blogspot.com/

Book Genre:  Fantasy/Young Adult/children's picture books

A late welcome to 2015

I looked at this blog with the guilty realization that I did NaNoWriMo and then was exhausted by writing and stopped dead in the water.  I have been teaching full time, and being a Grandma to 8 month old Daisy, and giving a lot of rides to her parents who have two jobs and their own apartment but no car yet.  Don't mistake me, getting to see my son's family every day is not a chore or a curs.  It is a delight and a blessing, but it does take time I might have been writing - OR NOT.

Sometimes I think the creative mind needs to switch off at time and spend those down periods gathering info and letting ideas simmer on the back burner for awhile.

recently that creative side has become bored by inactivity and is stretching and begging to get moving again.  I just read a study that said kids need to spend time bored before they really ever turn on the creative thinking.  I believe that and I think it is true for all of us.  It is why the school's use of scripted lessons which fill every minute concerns me.  

Do you ever want to do something that terrifies you? Well, I love to have strangers read my books and post reviews, but it is scary to have friends do the same. So for February my book club (which just read Orphan Train and The Invention of Wings) is going to not only read my book, but come to my house to eat dinner and discuss it. Those who know me know I don't do the hostess thing. Unless you feel like family you don't come in the door usually. It's a old house decorated in Early American Yard sale and painted in Crayonbox colors to hide the termite damage. But I already invited them and who would have guessed they'd agree? YIKES! http://www.amazon.com/Duffy-Barkley-Tales-Uhr…/…/ref=sr_1_3…

 As always in winter here, it has been gloomy and rainy interspersed with brilliant sunrises and blue sky and green grass.  I haul the firewood every now and then but it is often not even cold enough to need to heat the house.

If you have been feeling low energy and possibly guilty about it, remember to be kind to yourself.  It is OK to let yourself sit plugged in to the chatter and appear like nothing is getting done for awhile.