That’s Anne with an E: Who Are Your Book Idols?
I grew up watching all the Anne of the Green Gables movies.
I wanted to be Anne of Green Gables.
I kind of dressed like her.
If I’d have had access to a dory, you would’ve seen my Lady of Shalott corpse impersonation floating down the Rock River.
So can you believe I had never actually read the book?!
I know. I chastised myself.
So for this year’s To Be Read Pile Challenge I picked up the beautifully illustrated, hardcover edition my mother had purchased for me many years ago.
I can’t even find this edition on Amazon now.
It felt wonderful to get sucked back into the world of Anne Shirley, a redheaded little girl whose imagination rivals my own.
The whole book, to me, feels like it’s written in Anne’s flowery way of speaking. I was often laughing out loud. I love when she is asked to introduce herself and she says, “Won’t you call me Cordelia?” At this, everyone always questions her, for they’ve been told her name is Anne. Plain and simple, Anne Shirley.
Admitting defeat, she adds, “But if you must call me Anne, please spell it Anne with an ‘E’. It sounds so much nicer, don’t you think? I can always tell when someone spells it just A-N-N and it’s positively dreadful!”
Even the Chapter titles are fantastic.
Chapter 9: Mrs. Rachel Lynde is Properly Horrified
At its heart, the story of Anne of Green Gables is about finding one’s home. Anne starts out as an orphan, and with her imagination creates a home with family and friends she dreams of every night. Then through a fortunate accident, she finds herself in a new, real home with people who love her and push her to be her best more than any dream she could have imagined. She is definitely a perseverance expert! Some might say, “a kindred spirit.”
Who are the characters in books you loved growing up?
Why did they inspire you?
Is there a classic still on your list you’ve been meaning to read?
Love and Green Gables,
Cordelia
Jess
Redhot Women: We Met Them on Twitter
We’re Baaaaack! Marcia Richards and I are serving up another REDHOT edition of:
The Redhots!
Today, we’re introducing you to two women from the Twitterverse who we think exemplify what it means to be REDHOT!
Marcia’s guest will show you how to feng shui your home! Don’t miss it! Go say hello!
And my guest, I admit, I actually found through YouTube and then twitter stalked found her! She’s the owner of the only beauty salon and bookshop, Beauty and the Book, plus the founder and Queen of the WORLD’S largest book club!
Introducing Kathy Patrick
JW: You own the only Beauty Salon and Bookshop in the country. What has it meant to work everyday at the two things you love most? And how did your shop come about?
KP: Everyday I wake up at the crack of dawn as I can’t wait to do what I love to do, make people feel better about themselves, BEAUTY, and talk about great reads, BOOKS, thus my shop is Beauty and the Book. These two are the best marriage ever and for me it makes my life always a celebration of big love! I don’t go to work, I go to play and get paid for it! Do the thing you love and you’ll never work another day in your life but then you will never work harder. Your work will just seem like play, at least it does for me. If I was rich, I would do what I do for free. Unfortunately, I have bills just like everybody else so I have to charge.
My shop, Beauty and the Book, came about because I lost my job as a book publisher’s representative. Due to the influx of large box stores coming in to my four state territory, the independent bookstores that I called on began to close in droves. Since I was the last one hired, I was the first one fired, as my boss put it downsized. So it was my sister who suggested to me to go back to doing hair. That’s how I put myself through college. When I told her I would be bored just doing hair, she said, “Do the book thing too!” Beauty and the Book was born! It’s all in the first chapter of my book, When Life Hands You a Lemon, forget Lemonade, Make Margaritas. My book is called “The Pulpwood Queens’ Tiara Wearing, Book Sharing Guide to Life” and is the first book you are to read when you become an Official Pulpwood Queen Book Club member!
You also lead the world’s LARGEST book club! Tell us about the Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys passion for literacy and dialogue.
I have always had my nose stuck in a book so when the local book club invited me to come join their book club when I opened my shop, I jumped at the chance. You can imagine my surprise and embarrassment when after blurting out how happy I was to be FINALLY in a book club, the hostess pulled me out into the galley of her plantation home. “I’m sorry, but we didn’t invite you to join our book club but to be a guest.” This is not in my book but I wish I had put it in there as that is exactly why I started The Pulpwood Queens of East Texas Book Club “where tiaras are mandatory and reading good books is the rule!” Our book club would be inclusive not exclusive and anybody could be in our book club. Who makes up those silly rules anyhoo! So six complete strangers joined me and everybody else has been joining us ever since. We aren’t your mama’s book club and our book club is not homework.
We aren’t your mama’s book club!
If it isn’t fun, well, quite frankly Jess, I’m just not doing it! I challenge all my now 550 world wide book clubs to take on a literacy mission. For me it’s The Dolly Parton Imagination Library Project which helps children get reading ready for school. Dolly makes reading fun as each child in my county from birth to kindergarten gets a FREE book to read and enjoy. We want everybody to understand and be on the same page that reading is the best entertainment in the world and the side benefits are if you become a real reader, school just makes more sense. Reading is as important to a child as water, food, shelter and a loving home. Pull a child onto your lap and read to them. Tell me that isn’t the best way to show love to your child.
The Pulpwood Queens, like yourself, are full of extraordinary, confident, intelligent, and talented women! You ladies know how to have fun and live life large. Tell us a secret! (We know you have them!) 😉
The Pulpwood Queens are the largest “meeting and discussing” book club in the world as I crown girls Queen, they lead their own book club their own way. I give them ownership but I do ask, no wait, command as their queen to read the books I select. I am also on a mission to not only make them read, but I select books from oftentimes first time, first book authors. I also love to help those authors whose books change lives like Sam Bracken and Echo Garrett’s book “My Orange Duffel Bag”. Echo sent me the book and I was blown away. Another charity of choice is their not for profit, www.myorangeduffelbag.com as this helps teens make the right choices. It’s quite a story and one that makes the world a better place.
My secret is to make reading fun! So, I told them a story!
With your video chats for Beauty and the Book, you’ve interviewed and come to know many authors in such fantastic ways! You’ve gone vintage clothes shopping with Karen Abbott, you’ve had Lisa See cook dinner for you, and you’ve gone real estate hunting with Fannie Flagg! What author are you still wishing to meet, and what activity would you want to do together?
Today my answer is Dolly Parton as her new book released “Dream More” and she is a literacy promoting hero! And if I could just spend the day with her singing perhaps, I love to sing harmony, alto, and talk to her about an adult literacy idea I have involving music. She is my inspiration, in fact, I wrote all about her in my book too! I’d also love to meet former President Bill Clinton because after reading his books, he’s as big a reader as I am. Or Tom Wolfe, love everything that man writes, perhaps, Barbara Kingsolver. You’ve heard the term, “So many books, too little time”. I feel the same way about authors. I want to meet them all!!!
As a hairdresser, I’m sure you stay up on the latest trends, but you also focus on inner beauty with your clients. Tell us your best beauty advice! And ok, share a guilty pleasure beauty buy too!
My beauty secret is common sense, good skin care and a healthy lifestyle. But if you have to invest in one thing, invest in a smile! The hardest thing for some people to invest in, but a smile will get you more than anything money could buy. I work on zero budget. I have found that being kind, loving people and being gracious when people tell you a flat out no will get you more places than expensive anything. But don’t take no for a final answer, offer something else and if they say no, offer something else. Pretty soon, they will say yes or at least think about your passion! The secret to the fountain of youth is finding your passion. It keeps you alive, vibrant, and ready for anything. I just refuse to give up. I’ll get there eventually or die trying! My guilty pleasure is dreaming beyond your wildest dreams.
If you have to invest in one thing, invest in a smile!
“Life is not made up of atoms, but stories!” by Muriel Rukheyser
What I Learned from Zombies and Tapas…
Hey there, ROWers! Another week by and some of you are gearing up for NaNoWriMo with a vengeance! Others are creating and maintaining meal plans. And there are some of us (raises hand) who are just trying to get by each day to the best of our abilities. Well, fear not! There’s always great work being done in our learning moments. I for one, had been whining that I haven’t written anything recently on my WIP, but you know what, the time away from it made me realize where I could strengthen the plot and change some characterization in places. It was good to go away for a little bit. It’s made me miss my work, dearly, but now when I have free time I’m really excited to visit it again!
What I am excited for completing this week has been in reading. I finished reading Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer and will be helping run the Great New Books final discussion on this title today! Stop over and participate! The more the merrier!
This book is unlike anything I’ve encountered. It’s a love story set in the language of space. A perfect housewife with a hidden identity, a man with Asperger’s who only knows how to communicate with robots. Together, this couple will defy the odds and demonstrate a very real, albeit unique, kind of lasting love.
There was also some great ROW updates this week and I’m sharing my two favorites!
ROW(Models)
First up is Christina Olson who participated in the Run For Your Lives 5K race in California. The race, for those that may be unfamiliar, is your typical obstacle course run with walls to climb, puddles to cross, hills to speed down – although you’re doing this while zombies are trying to attack you! Isn’t that brilliant? I love it! Christina participated as a zombie this year and takes us through the make up process of her zombification. (complete with pictures!) She may not have gotten all her writing done, but it sure sounds like Christina gave herself a little play time that recharged her, supported others, and made her confident to tackle her goals for the next week! Sometimes we need that! Way to go, Christina! Loved your zombie post!
Next up is Tia Bach from Depression Cookies, a fabulous mother/daughter blog. After a dinner out for tapas with her husband, Tia took her dinner home and made it a writing plan! With the notion of writing small chunks of plot plans and character sketches, this pantser writer started…*gasp* outlining! And because she’s my idol organized, she also packed a NaNo bag! Curious? You’ll have to head to her post to see what’s in it! But this girl is motivated and moving forward! Way to go, Tia! You didn’t even need zombies chasing you to get your write goal in! 😉
Plus, I’m a total fan of tapas! Check out my rumchata tapioca parfait I enjoyed last weekend!
How did your week go? What were your learning lessons?
And don’t forget!
This friday, Marcia and I are interviewing our first author for The Redhots! His book has been getting lots of 5 star reviews! Tune in on October 26th to see who it is!
Until then: We’re kicking off Halloween with a fun photo contest! You could be a winner of one of 6 prizes!
From my brother’s Wicked-Themed party 2 years ago!
What you need to know to enter:
1. There are three categories you can enter one time each:
- Costume – your best ever, be it scary, cute or funny
- Outdoor decorations – your scariest or most creative
- Party room decor – you can include your Halloween tablescape, your unique pumpkin carving, and your room decorations
2. Post your pictures, up to 3 only, at our Twitter hashtag: #TheRedHots between October 19th and October 30th. The winners will be announced on Halloween!
3. For extra chances to win, you can choose to do the following:
- “Like” Marcia’s and my Facebook pages
- Tweet about the contest three times between the 19th and the 30th linking to our posts
- Subscribe to our blogs
The prizes:
- Grand prize will be an autographed print book by our indie author plus a Halloween Goody Bag.
- 5 bonus prizes of a Kindlegraphed ebook from the author
Good luck!
Writing Heroes: A Letter to Michael Perry
Once in a great while we’re given the chance to meet our heroes. As a writer who keeps a gratitude journal, I know that everyday we get to meet heroes. Our parents, our siblings, the woman who helps shuffle students safely across the crosswalk on their way to school, the gentleman who holds the door open for the mother pushing a stroller – these are all heroes we see everyday and most of us take them for granted.
But what about the ones that inspire us? The ones that remind us of the things we dreamed about as kids! Recently I attended a book reading and signing by Wisconsin author, Michael Perry. Having interviewed Perry just a few weeks ago, I know he thinks that living as a writer is no big deal. In his words, he told me:
I always say I’m a writer with a small “w”, and I figure most critics and people would agree. My family is just as interested in my writing as they are interested in my brother’s corn crop or my sister’s factory job and that’s how it oughta be. My daughters know their dad is self-employed and gone a lot, but they also know that truckers and soldiers are gone a lot more and under much tougher circumstances. I love what I do, I’m grateful to do what I do, and it may be a calling, but it’s not a HIGHER calling.
Little does he know, it’s his humble attitude that inspires me. At the reading, he was very down to earth and welcoming – the traits his writing voice creates as well. A woman sitting next to me asked, “Is he really as good and kind as his books make him seem?” I answered, “I think so.”
Meeting Michael at the Visiting Tom book reading!
A Letter to Mr. Perry:
Dear Mr. Perry,
Thank you for taking a chance on a stranger who read your books, and for agreeing to be interviewed by her.
When I was growing up in a small Wisconsin town, I thought nothing interesting ever happened in Wisconsin and I couldn’t wait to travel elsewhere. I burrowed away in my room with my mom’s old typewriter that the ‘n’ key didn’t work and wrote stories that were then acted out by puppets. I built forts out of blankets and pretended I was an orphan, running the streets, stealing food to survive and living dangerously – but that’s probably because I watched Aladdin everyday for months.
When I got to school and started writing, it was my teachers who acknowledged my skills and encouraged me to write more. This lasted, I am grateful to say, through my college years.
But when classes were over and the “real world” hit, I stopped writing for awhile. Years, even. When I started blogging, a desperate attempt to write something, anything, it was one of the scariest things I ever did. But, something wonderful happened. I found a whole community of writers and readers and people who shared my dreams and were going after their own! Over time, this little old blog became my place of respite. And with some courage, I threw myself out there to various writers whose books I’ve enjoyed and asked to interview them.
Thank you for saying yes! It is meaningful to me that you shared your story and your time with me. Each and every writer (established and new) is an inspiration and a push to go after my own writing dream. And, Mr. Perry, writer with a small ‘w,’ I intend to return the favor. Meeting a gracious and giving person such as yourself, inspires me to do the same for others. For now, I’m only able to offer that camaraderie that comes with plugging away at the writing process as any new writer knows is full of trial and error. If and when I can accomplish publication, I fully intend to be that person that says “Yes” to new writers, thank you to those that come to see me, and chat with everyone that is willing to stand in line just for an autograph.
Thank you from the small town, Wisconsin girl who thought her mom’s old typewriter was the coolest thing ever. It was a pleasure meeting you.
Best wishes,
Jess Witkins
*****
And just for fun:
It’s only one week away – the next edition of The Redhots!
Next friday, Marcia and I interviewing our first author for The Redhots! His book has been getting lots of 5 star reviews! Tune in on October 26th to see who it is!
Until then: We’re kicking off Halloween with a fun photo contest! You could be a winner of one of 6 prizes!
My “orange” inspired Halloween table! The napkins had a skeleton on them that said “I’m Starving!”
What you need to know to enter:
1. There are three categories you can enter one time each:
- Costume – your best ever, be it scary, cute or funny
- Outdoor decorations – your scariest or most creative
- Party room decor – you can include your Halloween tablescape, your unique pumpkin carving, and your room decorations
2. Post your pictures, up to 3 only, at our Twitter hashtag: #TheRedHots between October 19th and October 30th. The winners will be announced on Halloween!
3. For extra chances to win, you can choose to do the following:
- “Like” Marcia’s and my Facebook pages
- Tweet about the contest three times between the 19th and the 30th linking to our posts
- Subscribe to our blogs
The prizes:
- Grand prize will be an autographed print book by our indie author plus a Halloween Goody Bag.
- 5 bonus prizes of a Kindlegraphed ebook from the author
Excited? Inspired? Halloween plans? Heroes that inspire you? What’s on your mind?
How to Best (NOT) Prepare for the Fall Writing Season
Oh epic fail! I am totally wearing the Pants Of Shame this week, you guys. Here I talked up baby steps and plausible – adjustable goals, and I didn’t complete a one of them that I created.
So, if we’re counting, I did NOT:
- Read one chapter of Stephen King’s On Writing
- Finish reading Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer
- Journal anything – uber fail there
- Blog ahead 3 posts
The Regional Visit I’ve been preparing for at work is today, so I think once that’s behind me, I’ll get a lot more of my ROW80 goals done. Many of you have again shared this last check in that life has a way of interfering – or in my case piling up in the form of laundry and living off of take out.
So this coming week’s ROW goals for me need to be tweaked. Here’s planning on! –
- Doing my laundry and finding the two mysteriously missing pairs of jeans I used to wear often
- Grocery shopping and cooking a big ol’ batch of chili mac so I actually have some leftovers to eat
- Finish reading Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
- Spend the weekend with my boyfriend, celebrating our six year anniversary! Weekend getaway, Tony-Award Winning Production of Avenue Q! Fancy dinner!
- Spend tomorrow’s day off writing!!!
(avenueq.com)
Role Model Alert:
My ROW80 Role Models
Over the last few weeks as people have been decompressing their Round 3 achievements or opportunities, and preparing for Round 4, it seemed I was not the only one who felt they fell short of what they wanted to accomplish. I believe the phrase Gene used was “Chaos happens.”
Even our fearless founding leader, Kait, struggled with balancing the day job and the writing – though the outcome for her word count was tremendous and she deserves a medal!
So while I thought I was a big slacker niblet noob (yah, I’m owning that phrase), turns out, I wasn’t alone! Many of you, through Facebook and my blog, shared your own “chaos theories” and barriers that made round 3 not as momentous as we all would have liked. But in keeping with last week’s theme, it’s all about the learning lessons.
So I’m challenging myself to do things differently for Round 4.
The definition of stupidity is trying the same thing over and over, expecting different results.
I’ve never claimed the title Stupid. Disgustingly and annoyingly persistent perhaps, but I’ve synonymed it: Perseverance! And I’m also really good at taking liberty with parts of speech, like say turning a noun into a verb! See my talent abound!
Ok, back to ROW80! I am a people person. I am inspired by people – things they say, questions they ask, stories they share. Many of us are in ROW80 because we have a support system here where people will empathize with us through the hard times and scream and cheer with us through the good ones! Since this round is going to be a much smaller set of goals for me, I want to use my time to highlight MORE OF YOU!
Every week, I’m going to call out a Role Model of ROW80! And this week’s winners of Fame and (no) Fortune are Kait Nolan and Gene Lempp. You can read their specific ROW posts by clicking the links at the top of this post, but these will take you to their blogs as well! Kait and Gene are both honest and incredibly helpful individuals who dedicate as much time to their writing as is humanely possible. But both know that life does get in the way. I’m really psyched for the two of them and their new strategies to accomplish their Round 4 goals.
For me, they gave two big takeaways that will help me set my goals:
- Writing everyday is not realistic for us all.
- When you know “Life” is going to drop you into an Indiana Jones movie set and watch you run, set small, achievable goals.
*applause, applause*
Thank you Kait and Gene for those stellar bits of advice! I was racking my brain trying to discern how I would tackle writing every day or setting big goals for ROW when I’m working 12+ hour days, and will be throughout the holidays. The writing plan that works best for me now is maximizing my precious days off to work on writing and crank out the: blog posts, plotting, journaling, WIP – whatever needs to get out.
As an example, Kait set a goal for herself to write 2/3rds of the days of the month (or 20 out of 30 days) which allots her days of guilt free reality check happiness, yet also demonstrates she’s a lean, mean (not really) writing machine!
What I expect Kait does 10 out of 30 days of the month.
(image courtesy Mrs. Inman – Creative Commons)
And Gene shared that he combats life interruptions by breaking his goals down into weekly goals, and then into tiny bite size daily goals. He’s able to keep ongoing track of his accomplishments and opportunities and adjust as needed.
That fact alone is why you all need to be friends with Gene. He is excellent at calming the jittery, wide-eyed faces of a writer in meltdown. I shall now refer to him in all future posts as Gene Lempp, The Writer Whisperer.
Yah, he’s like that cool.
(image courtesy Mrs. Inman – Creative Commons)
So, taking what I learned from this week’s Role Models of ROW, I shall create a weekly plan of what I want to accomplish but give myself the wiggle room to know it may not happen every day. Which reminds me of something else Gene taught me, and has since become the mantra for my life – See what I mean…The Writer Whisperer! Gene reminds me from time to time that I may not be moving as fast as I’d like to, but I am still moving forward. One day at a time, right?!
This week:
- Read one chapter of Stephen King’s On Writing
- Finish reading Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer – prepare to discuss with Great New Books
- Journal something – I have a lot to get off my mind and this process helps.
- Blog ahead 3 posts.
*****
Your turn! What are the big takeaways you’re implementing this ROW80 round? Who’s been a role model for you? Please share a link for that person, I’d love to meet them! What are the focuses this week on your goal list?
The Writers’ Bandwagon, RSVP Regrets Only
It’s time for the ultimate mash-up, in the truest sense of the word. I’ve met so many wonderful writers and bloggers on my Happiness Project journey and I wanted to show my vast love and appreciation for each of you. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so in the following post, might I recommend how we can each collaborate together to create a superpower of literary merit. Let the mash-ups begin!
Example of a literary mash-up.
This whole blogging/writing quest I’m on began with the simple click to a Freshly Pressed blog by Kristen Lamb. Kristen blogs about social media, author platforms, writing tips, procrastination pixies, and twitter. Her best selling book, We Are Not Alone, is essentially her years of hard work and love of writing all combined to help make YOU a better writer, and maybe a PUBLISHED writer! I do not claim to have the writing chops that Kristen does, so my mash-up suggestion to her is that she re-publish her book and call it We Are Not Alone: Kristen’s Watching; she could add in hundreds, probably thousands of quotes and comments by her readers on how they’re progressing in their writing and editing endeavors only to feel her experienced eyes drawing flies on their pages and pulling that lever on their office chair to make them bump way down and have to start over. Sounds like a great boot camp right? And then when you complete her book and your own writing piece, she will appear before you in a sparkly pink dress and tell you that you’ve earned the right to now call your blog Fairy Rainbow Glitter Dreams if you really want to.
Margaret Reyes Dempsey is another published author I know. Her book, The Benefector, is already quite a suspenseful read, but I know she too has toyed with the idea of a re-write/re-publish version in which The Benefactor is actually a champion wrestler. Since I’m convinced that Madge (my nickname for her) and I are roommates in a parallel world, I too needed a wrestling name. I decided on Pain Austen (instead of “Jane” Austen, get it?) I would like to go on the record as saying The Benefactor vs. Pain Austen would be a gripping read. Chapter after chapter of roommate wrestlers arguing over the proper way to brew tea, the exact amount of days one may go before changing into clean pajamas, and how much meat (or meat product in theory) is too much for a toddler going on twenty-something?
Writing from Portland, Oregon, my friend Mark details life as a freelance writer. Always keeping me up to date on Portland quirks and never failing to bring a laugh, I think we have a lot in common. My suggestion for a mash-up would be Tales from the Pacific Midwest: From Farmland to Freelance. It’s the story of two struggling writers who have to overcome regional obstacles like cheese factories at every off road stop and hippy bicyclists demanding strangers to recycle. Upon completion of the book, you get a mail in rebate for one Voodoo Donut and one glass of milk from a happy Wisconsin cow!
Shhh! Be quiet, we’re about to intrude on my pal, Hack, from over at The Hack Novelist. He’s editing. He needs to focus. My simple mash-up would be The Happiness Hack Novel Project where two writers ignore everyone and drink their usual coffees (Eh-hem, Hack will have a regular black coffee with dash of cinnamon/world peace in it, and I’d like a green tea latte). Page after page of fantastic, caffeinated ideas will emit themselves in this book, which may never get finished, but when we die, we’ll have a whole folder of material you can read at our funerals, and subsequent memorials, scholarship fund banquets, and inaugural addresses because we’re kind of a big deal, duh!
My final mash-up for today would be to work with Charles from Mostly Bright Ideas. I’m incessantly envious over his ability to tell stories. I would want a job as his assistant or a mini byline in one of his books: Jess Witkins, Extraordinary Reader. We could potentially co-author a book called Double Stuff Oreos for the Author’s Soul, in which we each chronicle the sometimes absurd, sometimes genuine moments of our family histories. He could write about the time he begged to help his dad hose off the driveway and ended up spraying water all over his father, and I could write about the time my dad left me for dead in a snowbank. Happy times, you know? Good ol’ published nostalgia!
So that concludes this week’s Writer Wannabe Mash-up! Send all query letters to Jess Witkins, 1111 Daydreamer Drive, Wishful Thinking, WI. I’ll have to limit my projects to five a week, but sit tight, there’s more to come!
Who are the authors/bloggers you are inspired by? I’m sure I’ve missed many and I always love a new read! Happy writing!
Jess Witkins' Happiness Project 