I began reading aloud a new chapter reading book, Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  In thirty minutes, I had read only four pages.  Four!  There was so much happening in the story, we had to stop and talk.  That always means learning.  And a captive audience.

Let me back up, as there is much to tell about yesterday…

The day before, we finished reading The Story of Doctor Dolittle.  At the end of the book I closed it and said, “I don’t want the book to end.”  This is what happened next:

Ella said, “Can we read it again and again and again?”

Me:  ” I wish we could, Ella.  Your Mom and Dad can read it to you again.”

Ella:  “But I don’t have the book.”

Me:  “The library has the book.  Mom and Dad can get it at the library and read…

by Doug Lewars

Book reviews are a fact of life. If it’s your book being reviewed, they’re nice if they’re positive and decidedly unpleasant if they’re negative. Every book is going to have a few negative reviews. That’s a fact of life because people are different, have different interests, enjoy different things, and will relate to your work in different ways.

Are you frustrated with Facebook?

Irritated every time you click the share button and Facebook chooses the wrong picture to post?

Me too!

What’s this all about? Apparently, from what I’ve been able to find out, Facebook controls this in an effort to stop people from changing legit articles by adding fake pictures.

Huh?

I don’t know about you but I’m tired of the same picture posting every time I click share. So, I’ve discovered a workaround. Well, works most of the time.

Instead of clicking on the share button, try this.

• First copy your post address. (  https://      )
• Open your Facebook page.
• Paste the post address in Facebook.

The link should show default picture with arrows so you can select a different image.

If this doesn’t work, you may need to SCRAPE/DEBUG your Facebook. 

Click on this link – FACEBOOK DEBUG

After you click the…

On more than one occasion I have declared my love affair with the word ‘had’. When you use a word so many times it jumps off the page, you have a problem. It doesn’t matter if the word is used correctly or not. You need to find another way to write the sentence without using ‘the word’. In my case that word is ‘had’.

What’s wrong with using the word ‘had’ over and over, besides making it an awkward read?

• If you are using ‘had’ a lot, odds are you have a lot of backstory/info dump, because it specifically details things that happened before the current action. In some circumstances, that can seem dull, or like the focus is in the wrong place. Why spend so much time on something that’s not happening right now?
• Using ‘had’ too much can also indicate you are telling vs. showing.
• ‘Had’ is also rather formal…

I’m in the process of turning this pile of scribbled-upon paper into a book. In other words, I’m editing the first draft of my work in progress. (Well, okay, I’m actually working with a Word document, but it started out with pen on paper).

As I work through each of the fifteen sections that may very well end up being chapters, I ask myself questions like these:

Why?

Is this logical?

Would it really take that long?

Could it possibly happen that fast?

Why this word/sentence/paragraph? What do they add to the story?

Why would he/she/they say/do/think/want that?

Does she know that yet? Why would she care?

Etc.

The first whack at the first draft is really hard. And annoying. Here’s why: to create that first draft, the imagining part of my brain worked full blast, making up scenes and putting down words. That was hard enough.

But editing…

Blogging takes up a lot of time. To arrange a decent post takes at least an hour depending on how long the post is. For posts that require lots of research, it can take several days of research and gathering links before actually composing the post in the WordPress editor. Still, we are told that the best way to blog is to do it consistently. For busy bloggers, those with jobs and children and basically a life outside of the internet, blogging consistently is a real challenge.

You Don’t Have to Blog Everyday

The assumption that you have to publish a post every day is not entirely accurate. While posting every day is cool, that’s not ideal for everyone. Keeping a consistent blog is important but you don’t have to publish a post every single day in order to be successful. Be disciplined but do not obligate yourself to other…

Wow! Two years have passed.

Yes, it was two years ago this April, I finished the final touches on my first pre-school picture book.

Writing and publishing a picture book was a big learning curve.

Took me a year to finish this tiny 32-page book. Whew!

Maybe you have an idea for a children’s book, but like so many, you’ve put off starting because a picture book is a bit different from writing an adult story.

Let me speed you along toward your goal.

I’ve put together a list of 8 things I learned the hard way about writing a picture book.

1. Buy a good PDF program. Yes, some people use MS Word but, trust me, it’s not worth the headaches. I finally settled on  Nitro Pro 10 Page Plus. It’s cheaper than Adobe and easy to use.
2. Writers write and editors edit. Use an editor that understands children’s…

Not exactly luminescent. More like the exact opposite.  

If you are on your dashboard and you go to Reader (I don’t know what dashboard you are using because they keep “fixing it” and this latest fix has REALLY fixed it but good). Open Reader, go down to “Search” and type in your name. See what you get. If you are lucky, you will see most or all of your posts including recent posts.

If you are me, you will find nothing — not the name of your site or your name or any post from your site at all. Almost everyone else can find at least their older posts. In my case, I effectively do not exist in the WordPress search engine.

Why is this such a big deal? Because the search engine — otherwise known as “the database” — is how WordPress hangs together. It’s the core information about…