The Week in Review

I've decided not to do the Summer Article Challenge, because too many of the articles I posted on EzineArticles.com are ending up on questionable blogs. One person changed the title to make the photography article sound like it was an article on photographing nudes. Another is on a gay/lesbian site and another on a site with all kinds of porno-sounding ads. I can't figure out how to get them off, so I guess I'll just write articles to sell when I know where they will be published.

I'm going to get back into magazine writing. Suzanne Lieurance's Writers on Call is doing a four-part series of tele-classes on writing for the better-paying markets. I know I won't ever make a lot by writing for children's magazines, but sometimes I enjoy doing it. I'd like to do more travel stuff. Suzanne suggested I do more articles on photography. Those are the ones that have gotten the most views on EzineArticles. I also would like to do some on birding and scrapbooking. If I'm going to have these expensive hobbies, maybe I can make them pay for themselves, at least in part.

It rained all night Saturday, so only two of us showed up for the Birders trip to Fort Benjamin Harrison State Park in Indianapolis. It rained all the way there, but stopped just as we approached the park. Our friend, Don Gorney, led the walk. On the way home, Steve and I ate at Joe's Crab Shack. That was good.

Monday I babysat for Carson and Madison while Heather took her mom, Tina, to Dayton for a consultation with a specialist about her stomach problem. The kids were good. I'm posting a couple of pictures.

I subbed in sixth grade for language arts on Tuesday. Thankfully it was a nice cool day and the room is on the first floor. I had three double-period classes and they went well. I enjoyed the kids. That evening I went to Adam's ballgame. When he got there, he found out he had been changed from one team to another. So last week he was on the red team and now he's on the black team. They're high school kids, so at 5 feet and 70 pounds, he's the smallest. He played second base and walked twice and batted in a run when he grounded out to first. His fielding is always good.

Wednesday I took Carson to the preschool program at the Nature Center. It was about bees and he had fun. He kept talking about going to "school." Mandy tagged and released a newly-hatched monarch butterfly, but first she gave the kids a chance to hold it on their fingers. Carson didn't want to. He said he was scared. So the kid who is always out in front, leading the pack when Mandy takes them for a walk is scared to hold a butterfly! I had Photo Club Board meeting Wednesday night. Adam went with me because he was staying all night at my house. We had a LONG discussion about the new website and the idea of a Chat Room got turned down. I still don't see that it would be a problem, since it would be for members only.

Thursday I took Adam to the bus. I had a chiropractor appointment. I'm still having trouble sleeping because of my leg aching in bed. I slept all night and my leg didn't hurt! Kristi must have done something right yesterday morning. This morning I worked at the Nature Center. I signed up to be a volunteer to help with school field trips. Sometimes they have a lot of kids and would like to divide up into smaller groups, so that's what they're going to train us for. I would enjoy that, with my teaching background.

Just got an e-mail from the editor at Chicago Review Press where I sent my proposal for the Pioneer book. He said it's on the schedule for next Tuesday's proposal meeting! So that means he liked it enough that he didn't have changes he wanted me to make. He had said I could send in a rough proposal and he'd help me get it in shape. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the people on the committee will like the idea and I can write the book.

Well, I'm off to the Dragon Buffet for dinner with a group 0f friends.

Two Weeks of Company

I can't believe it's been a month since I wrote anything. I took my grand-nephew, who just turned 14, to my sister's. She's his grandmother. Grandpa took Adam to his son's in SE Ohio. Dave has 72 acres on the Hocking River, with woods, hills, etc. They gave Adam an old riding mower to ride around the place and he had the best time. I let him take my digital SLR camera, a Canon Rebel XT, my binoculars and my spotting scope. He took some good pictures, watched deer with the scope and birds with the binoculars. Meanwhile, Kay and I went scrapbook shopping, went out to eat, and just had a relaxing time.

Things weren't so relaxing when I got home. I spent a whole week cleaning and trying to get ready for company. On Aug. 15, Kay and our friend, Becky, from Pennsylvania, arrived, with all their scrapbooking stuff. Becky's little car was packed so full that when you opened a door, stuff fell out! We went to the country concert at the Darke County Fair on Sunday night. Josh Gracin opened for Terri Clark. It was good, but pretty loud. We had seats on the track, which means we got rained on for the first half! It didn't rain too hard, though.

I entered three photos in the professional division of the fair and got a second and a third. I'll post those pictures. I was disappointed Adam didn't win anything, but he had some nice pictures.

On Monday, our other friend, Karen, came with her scrapbooking stuff. We spent Tuesday at the home of a high school friend, chatting on the deck, eating, sitting in the hot tub, eating, etc. Wednesday we went to Dayton and went scrapbook shopping, which was NOT good for my budget. They keep coming out with all this awesome new stuff we think we need to have!

My family room is big (it used to be a garage), so I could get four big tables in it, arranged in a square so we could work on our albums and see each other at the same time. We got a lot of great pages done, although I spent most of my time cooking and trying to organize my stuff. I moved it all into a room next to the family room, so it's taking awhile to get it all organized.

Karen went home Friday and Kay and Becky stayed till Monday. Oz and I were tired out! We're used to being here by ourselves.

Now it's back to work on ICL lessons and finishing the proposal for the book I hope to do on pioneer life. I want to send that in tomorrow.

I'm also participating in the Lieurance-King Summer Article Challenge, which is to write 30 articles for article directories by September 30. I'm a month late starting, but if I do one a day, I'll make it. I post them on ezinearticles.com and people can pick them up free to use on blogs or in newsletters, as long as they include the box with my information. I found out today that someone changed the title of my article, Simple Composition Tips to Improve Your Photography to Simple Composition Tips to Improve Your Nudes. She also substituted that word a couple of places in the body of the article. Now I'm trying to find out how to get her to take it down. I can't see any way of contacting her. I guess that's one of the hazards of posting to the Internet.

Please Read My Articles at Ezinearticles.com

All nine of the articles that I had submitted so far to ezinearticles.com are now live on the site. I'd appreciate it if some of you would go read some of them and comment on them or rate them. I'm surprised how many of them are being read and are being used.They're supposed to approve them faster after you have ten, but the last ones only took a day to be approved. Also I just submitted number 10.

As soon as school is out in two weeks, I want to start writing some longer articles to submit to magazines. I may use some of the articles I've posted as the basis for longer articles. It's been a long time since I've submitted to magazines. Really, since I started the first book in 1998. I also need to send out query letters to publishers who do biographies to see if they have any to assign.

Mohican State Park

I spent the weekend at beautiful Mohican State Park in northeastern Ohio. I was attending the Ohio Ornithological Society's annual conference, so everything was about birds. Four of us shared a cabin, which was very nice. Regina and I had a bedroom with twin beds, and so did Steve and Dave. We had a livingroom with gas fireplace and TV, a fully-equipped kitchen, bathroom and a screened-in porch. It cost us about half what it would have cost to stay in the lodge. The food was great and the field trips were good. Saw about 70 species of birds, and added Kentucky Warbler, Prothonotary Warbler and Louisiana Waterthrush to the warblers on my year list.

The trip inspired two articles for the Article Challenge, so I wrote them and submitted them last night. They are still pending approval, so it will probably be a few days before they are live. One is called "Upgrade Your Bird Identification Skills by Learning Mnemonics" and the other is called "Amish Swallows Help Save Cliff Swallows in Ohio." I decided to write the first one when I felt the need to learn more of the birds' songs and calls in order to identify ones I couldn't see. The second was inspired by a visit to an Amish farm, where there was a colony of cliff swallows which included hundreds of nests.

Quite a few people have viewed my first two articles, "Migratory Bird Day at Magee Marsh" and "Eight Easy Steps to Writing an Article for Children." You can see my articles at ezinearticles.com .

I also submitted three other short travel articles today which were published several years ago. I own the rights to them, so it was okay to use them again.

Now I need to get to work and get some more written!

Read My Article at the National Writing for Children Center!

Suzanne Lieurance has picked up my article from ezinearticles.com to use at the National Writing for Children Center.

The article is entitled "Eight Easy Steps to Writing an Article for Children." Read it at the National Writing for Children Center or at www.ezinearticles.com

This weekend marks the last of my travels for a month or so. I'm going to Mohican State Park in northern Ohio for the Ohio Ornithological Society's annual conference. Next week I plan to write a BUNCH of articles!

Stalled at Writing!

Well, my writing has been pretty much stalled for a long time, so in order to give it a boost, I've joined the Lieurance-King Spring Article Challenge sponsored by writers Suzanne Lieurance and Kristen King. I first met Suzanne online on a writing list, then we became fellow authors for Enslow. I met her in person at a children's writers' workshop at Wildacres in North Carolina several years ago. We've been friends ever since.

The challenge is to write 30 articles in May and June and post them to article directories online. From there editors of newsletters or online magazines can pick them up and use them. I wondered at first why I should give away 30 articles instead of submitting them to paying markets, but Suzanne has convinced me that this will give me more traffic to my blog and more exposure for my writing.

Since the articles are short, around 400-500 words, I can still write longer, more in-depth articles on the same topics for submission to magazines. So I decided to give it a try. If I write 30 articles in two months, I should be in the article-writing mode and be able to jump from this to submitting to magazines. I haven't done that since I started writing my first book in 1998. Guess it's about time I got back to it. After ten books, I feel like I'd like to do some magazine stuff, although I would also love to do more books, especially biographies.

So I'm off to write my first article. I'll check in tomorrow and tell you it's all done!

Pat