Random Acts of Kindness BLITZ!

"A smile. An encouraging word. A thoughtful gesture. Each day people interact with us, help, and make our day a bit brighter and full. This is especially true in the Writing Community.

Take a second to think about writers you know, like the critique partner who works with you to improve your manuscript. The writing friend who listens, supports and keeps you strong when times are tough. The author who generously offers council, advice and inspiration when asked.

So many people take the time to make us feel special, don't they? They comment on our blogs, re-tweet our posts, chat with us on forums and wish us Happy Birthday on Facebook."

Kindness ROCKS!

To commemorate the release of their book The Emotion Thesaurus, Becca and Angela at The Bookshelf Muse are hosting a TITANIC Random Act Of Kindness BLITZ.  And because I think KINDNESS is contagious, I'm participating too!

I am blitzing Joan Riordan. Joan has been the Stamford critique group leader for three years. She opens her home to our group once a month and critiques our work, even when she doesn't have anything to submit. Lately Joan has been submitting poetry to the group. For my RAOK, I will be featuring Joan's poetry on my blog all week!! I hope you will stop back this weeks and enjoy the work of this amazing poet, writer, and critique group leader (she's also a kindergarten teacher btw). Please make sure to comment so that she will know how awesome she is.

Do you know someone special that you'd like to randomly acknowledge?

Don't be shy--come join us and celebrate! Send them an email, give them a shout out, or show your appreciation in another way. Kindness makes the world go round. :)

Becca and Angela have special RAOK gifts waiting on their blog, so hop on over to The Bookshelf Muse to pick it up.

Have you ever participated in or been the recipient of a Random Act Of Kindness?  Let me know in the comments!

"The Right to Play"

Have you seen this story coming out of Phoenix? Our Lady of Sorrows forfeited the high school championship game because of the 15 year old girl who played for the other team. All I can do is shake my head on this one. At least most of the comments have been supportive of the girl, unlike other articles I've shared.

MSN Now
ESPN-HS
SF Gate
Fox News
Washington Post

This story came to my attention via Girls Play Baseball, the best resource I've found online for information about girls who play ball.

How do you write?

It is easy to think that everyone must have the same process or at least a similar process for writing. After talking to many writers, I have found that that's not necessarily true. People can experience their stories in many different ways. Here are some examples:

The Visual Writer - The visual writer sees their story in images, one moment at a time. Some can even study that image and turn it around in their head. 

The Movie Maker - The movie maker writer experiences their story in their mind the same way that other people experience life or watching movies. They can actually walk through it, seeing, hearing, touching, and smelling everything around them.

The Planer - The Planer plots an outline and fills it in. They don't see or hear their story, they craft it out of words on the page.

The Auditory Writer - The auditory writer listens to their story. They hear voices in their head talking to each other. Some auditory writers can talk back to the voices and even argue. Others can only listen. 

The Illustrator/Photographer - The illustrator draws out their story first. If they can't draw, they might also take pictures or collect photographs to help their story emerge. 

When I write I am an auditory writer and a photographer. I can only listen to my characters, not interact. They speak to each other and I capture their words. Even when I write a blog post like this one, I hear my own voice in my head molding the words together. To add visual images to my writing, I am the photographer. I find images in the real world or online to match the voices in my head or the settings where the events are taking place. 

How do you write? Do you use one of these methods or a combination. Is there anything you do that I haven't mentioned?