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Emma Bird and Joanna Young at Absorbing Writing: Writing Workshops In Italy are soliciting input in planning their next writing workshop. Tell us about the ingredients of your ideal writing weekend. That might be a weekend you’ve already enjoyed, one that you’ve got planned, or one that you’re hoping to take part in, some day. My ideal writing weekend is one that I’ve already spent. It actually wasn’t a weekend (but it could have been), and my time was spent editing rather than writing. I had written and revised the novel Dream or Destiny, and it was ready for the final round of editing. However, my freelance workload had increased to the point that I couldn’t seem to find time for fiction, and the manuscript had been waiting for attention for a very long time. EPIC, the Electronically Published Internet Connection held a weekend event in Las Vegas. I traveled and shared a suite with friends - a delightful husband and wife romance writing team. Billie and Herb have been happily married for more than half a century and write under the name of Barri Bryan. We decided to stay in Vegas a few extra days. After the conference, Billie and Herb spent the days having fun. I holed up in the hotel room and edited. My story and I were alone all day with no distractions. At night, I joined Billie and Herb for dinner and a show or a visit to the casino. Frankly, I’m not much of a gambler, and Las Vegas isn’t my favorite place in the world. Perhaps that contributed to the ideal writing experience. I wan’t tempted to spend all day in the casino - a few hours in the evenings were plenty. What made the experience ideal were the days totally focused on writing interspersed with good times with good friends. By the time we returned to San Antonio, Dream or Destiny was ready to submit to a publisher. Of course, when the novel was accepted by GASLight Publishing, LLC, there were several more rounds of editing. Publication has been delayed because of the publisher’s health issues, and it wasn’t released in June as anticipated. However, things are back on track now, and I hope to announce a release date soon.
This was intended to be an entry in Liz Strauss’ 25 Words of Work / Life Wisdom Writing Project but I got tied up on a project and lost track of time. I decided to post it even though it’s late. Added 7/21: Liz included my late entry. Take a look at a slide show of all the amazing entries in 25 Words of Wisdom.
For most positions, hiring managers are faced with a formidable stack of resumes. Just like editors reviewing writers’ query letters, they look for any excuse NOT to consider a resume. Often they glance at each one for only a few seconds before deciding to reject it or to put it aside for review in more depth. Your first goal, then, is for your resume to make the cut so the hiring manager takes a closer look at it. Your second goal is for you to be called for an interview after the review of your resume. Following these tips will give you a much better chance that both of those goals will be achieved.
For more information about what to include in a resume and how to gather the information, see my Information for Resume Clients. This post is an entry in An Island Life’s How-To Group Writing Contest. Note (added 7/15/08): Be sure to read the comments for some great advice from our community.
The comments have encouraged and educated my readers and me. I invite you to read the comments and add your own. You’ll find the conversation much more interesting and informative than just reading the posts. While I appreciate every comment, I prefer to respond to “John, the Philadelphia Lawyer” rather than to “Philadelphia Lawyer” or to “Susie Smith, Beauty Consultant” rather than to “Chicago Beauty.” Replying to “Best Cooking School” just doesn’t feel like I’m talking to a real person. I will reply, but I won’t address you by “name” when your “name” is a keyword phrase. As the About page says, first time commenters are moderated. Once a comment has been approved, future comments are not moderated as long as you use the same e-mail address and name. (Added 7/13/08: Also you must use the same URL; if you linked to your homepage on one comment and to a specific post on another, the second comment will be moderated.) I use moderation to try to avoid spam. Akismet has caught more than 78,000 spam comments, but several questionable comments appear in the moderation queue every day. If the comment relates in any way to the post, I approve it. If the comment is so generic that it looks like spam (”Nice post. Thanks.”), I delete it rather than mark it spam so if it’s a legimate comment, the person’s next comment will appear in moderation rather than go to spam. Of course, if it’s porn or other obvious spam, I mark it spam. I do NOT review all the comments in spam before deleting them. If you’ve left a comment and it didn’t appear, comment again or e-mail me. If you’re a real person leaving a real comment, I want to be sure your comment is posted. I hope this list is accurate, but there is lots of room for errors in gathering this information and transferring it to a post. Please let me know about any errors or omissions. Now … thanks to all commenters, especially to those who left many comments. 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If you haven’t commented before, I invite you to join the conversation. I think you’ll enjoy and benefit from your participation, and I know we’ll enjoy and benefit. My husband’s Dobermans used to curl up at his feet and put their heads in his lap. The dogs and I weren’t best buddies, but we got along until the morning I was running late for work. This was back in the days when I showed up at my interior landscape company by the time the doors opened, before I learned to trust my managers. This particular morning I was already behind schedule when I remembered I had to stop for gas. As I was backing out of the driveway, my husband, who had worked all night on a law enforcement job, pulled in beside me. I asked him to call the office to tell them I would be late. Instead, he said, “You call them, and I’ll get gas for you.” After he pulled away, I realized the house was locked and my key was in my purse … on the front seat of the car. I went into the backyard to get the spare key out of its hiding place. Dobie, the male dog, who been chained to keep him away from the female in heat, had broken the chain and was engaged in … er … amorous activities … with the female. Without thinking, I walked up to him and gave him a light kick to get his attention.
Fortunately, it took him a few seconds to … disconnect, giving me time to turn around. He came after me, knocked me down, and started biting me on the top of my head. I tried to fight him off, but my resistance led only to bites on my arms. After what seemed like forever, I thought I would surely die. I prayed, Lord, it looks like I’m about to meet You. I don’t want to be fighting when I enter Heaven. Forgive my sins and take me into Your Kingdom. Then I went limp, at peace and ready to die. As soon as I went limp, Dobie let me go. He stood and watched while I got up and walked around to the front of the house. When Jack returned, he saw me standing in the carport, covered in blood. He wanted to take me to the hospital emergency room, but I preferred my family physician, who has a minor emergency clinic. We got there before opening, but one of the staff saw us through the door and took me to the emergency room to lie down. Dr B arrived in a few minutes and gave me pain medication, but he delayed stitching the wounds until he talked to a plastic surgeon. He said my skull was exposed in an area about the size of a quarter, and he thought I need skin grafts. The plastic surgeon told him, “Stitch her up as best you can. We’ll do the grafts later because dog bites almost always lead to infection. Let’s get the infection cleared up before we graft.” The pain was so intense that I couldn’t sit up. Dr B and his nurses used pillows to raise my head enough for him to reach the wounds. He took more than 50 stitches in my head and several in my arms. As he sewed, he said, “You’re lucky he got your head. If he’d got your carotid artery, you’d be dead now.” Dr B prescribed antibiotics and told me to see him every day to clean the wounds and check for infection. Although I spent several days in bed with excruciating pain, the wounds healed with no infection and no grafts. Twenty years later, the only physical evidence of the attack are two scars on my right arm - one in the shape of a five-pointed star and the other in the shape of a crescent moon. But, as usual, the lessons remain.
But, most importantly, I learned sometimes the best thing to do is to let go. I believe that if I had kept fighting, Dobie would have continued to attack until I was dead. Our natural instinct is to fight back - and many times, we need to fight back. But if you seem to be fighting a losing battle, maybe it’s time to go limp, let your enemy think you’re dead … and live to tell the story. This post is my entry in What I Learned from Animals at Middle Zone Musings and High Callings Blogs. Photo: “© Emmanuelle Bonzami | Dreamstime.com” Technorati Tags: What I Learned From Animals, dog bites isabella mori at change therapy tagged me to share 8 random facts about myself. I’ve done several similar memes before: To keep this relevant to my blog - and to come up with something that I haven’t shared in the above posts - I’m going to share 8 facts about my work habits and attitudes.
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