Month: April 2021

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My Work Is Progressing Well!

carolyncordon

I’ve been doing some more work on the Covid-19 related anthology I’ve been editing since around the middle of last year. I’d put out the word that I was accepting submissions, and in they came, poetry and prose, serious, silly, and in between, many excellent works that I had to consider and fins a place for inside a book.

This book to be is coming along amazingly well, there is a shape to it, fine words written in the beginning, letting potential readers know more about what was in the ‘meat’ of the book, and giving further thought about this whole crazy Covid time.

There will be a terrific front cover (I’ve seen an early version, and I love it already). and the back cover is looking good too. There are writer’s bios from all of the contributors (just waiting on one more), and the strength of the various pieces just blows me away with the sheer quality and variety of what has been submitted!

People have been so kind to me regarding this project, and so I am extra keen to make it a fantastic book to own, and to share with others. This will be a piece of history, showing the ridiculous, the frightening, the serious, and the intelligent thoughts that have come to people’s minds regarding Covid-19, and the lives we have had to live because of it, and the government’s, and our reactions to it.

This anthology is planned to be launched during the Gawler & Adelaide Plains Festival of Words (Recovery) 2021. This is the sixth Festival put on by my writing group, Adelaide Plains Poets, and it is hoped it will be a great Festival, after the sad little Festival we were reduced to for 2020, when Covid was closing down everything, and we only had a tiny window to present tiny snippets of what we’d planned to put on.

So the Festival subcommittee has done a great job, things are coming along well, and there will be a slot for this wonderful book to be launched, with as many contributors as possible present to get their own copy of the book they, their thoughts, and their words are a part of. History about how this truly was, what we were thinking about, and how we were getting on with own scaled back lives, as best we could.

I thank all of the people who have been working on this project with me, from my writing group members, to my family, and to the wonderful contributors, and others, you’ve been great, all getting together to make something good, from something terrible. People getting together and working to make something awesome happen, I thank you all, and I say, come along to the Launch, the venue, day and time will be announced soon.

I hope you’ll be able to come along, and get yourself your own copy of Plague Invasion!

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Changing My Mind – A Good Thing

carolyncordon

I’ve begun writing for a new platform, and earlier today thought about what I could share on this new platform. I had a look through the files I have stashed away on my laptop, and found a non-fiction-book-in-progress that had not been making any progress at all not for a very long time.

I still like the idea of it, and the words I’ve written so far, but my life has moved on, times have changed, and getting things ‘out there’ and being read is a better use of my time, than struggling to add more to a proposed book that I may have written all I can about for the time being.

So I bit the bullet and did it, a quick copy and paste, found a relevant image I already had, and there I had it, a great little article that thousands of people will love ! (I hope) I suspect that magic number of ‘thousands’ of people reading my piece is highly unlikely to be true, but I can have my dreams, can’t I? Haha, it’s all good fun, writing and sharing my words, that is the best part, making money is just an extra bonus for me, when and if it happens.

Anyway, this is my most recent post on the new site, which is Medium.com here’s the link The title of the article is People Beat “Stuff” and it is from my not yet published work ‘Wise Words?’. It’s a non fiction book containing some thoughts I’ve had about things, wise words, I hope, but I wasn’t really sure, hence the question mark in the title.

Depending on how this goes, or how I feel, I may post more of my possibly wise words. Have a read and tell me what you think, in a comment here!

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My Latest Writing Platform

carolyncordon

I’ve begun writing for an online writing platform, Medium. A friend of mine, Hi Marie! shared the news about it, and said she’d joined up with it, and it seemed to be quite a seamless one to join, and to use, so I thought about it for a bit, and then jumped on board.

I published something, earned a little bit of money, published something else, earned more money, and thought, hmm this does seam to be a good site! I like blogging, and will keep on with my blogging, but for other things, perhaps Medium cold be an excellent site to use as well.

I’m never going to earn money through my WordPress blogs, not directly anyway, but that isn’t why I hang around here for making money, I hand around on my blogs to rant and ramble on a bit …

Anyway, I published another piece on Medium next, and haven’t earned a single cent … I’m not sure whether I did something wrong, or it just wasn’t interesting enough. It was a longer piece, 7 minutes reading time, while the first two had been only 3 minute reads … So perhaps short and sweet is the way to go with Medium, I’m not sure, I’ll keep on exploring the site.

There is some interesting and varied reading there for sure, with writers from all over the world, writing about anything and everything. It is dead easy to publish articles to the site, and photographs too, so that makes it even more attractive to me, when I’ve been with other sites in the past where their rules and regulations were difficult to understand, and work with.

I decided to have a look back at my ‘stash’ of bits and pieces on my laptop, and found a piece about Covid, and the toilet paper shortage that happened last year, and is still happening for some people. I had some photographs of toilet paper rolls, so I used one of those as the image to head my article, and posted it. I’ll keep an eye on it, and see whether this has a broader appeal, so I can get more people following me, and build up a readership, perhaps.

The idea of writing something that ‘goes viral’ holds a lot of appeal to me, but I’m not sure if I have it in me to manage that, who knows? I have a feeling my most recent piece will attract more attention than any of the previous three pieces. Perhaps I’ll manage to build up my earnings to, oh, I don’t know, 20 cents?

I definitely can’t see myself becoming a millionaire with this site, but I’m enjoying myself with it, and surely that is important. Writing, and sharing my words beings me joy in life …

And for a bit of a giggle here is one of my ‘toilet paper’ images , not the one I used in the article.

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Planned Covid-Related Anthology

carolyncordon

The Anthology I’ve been editing over the past year is edging ever closer to publication, so it’s time to get some of the non-writing things organised, in particular obtaining permission to publish submitted works, from the authors who wrote and sent them in. Only problem with that is that I didn’t actually have email addresses from every person who sent in work to me, so the task of getting the needed online addresses was my task for this afternoon and tonight.

I much prefer more strictly ‘writer-related’ things, rather than more office worker kinds of things, but so be it, if I want to be an editor doing things like putting together anthologies using the works of others, the day to day mundane tasks are important too.

Author’s image

So that was today, and tomorrow, I will being sending out agreement notices for contributors to fill in and sign, then send back to me. And then, woohoo, the exciting task of getting this books printed can happen!

The actual book is almost all done, just waiting on a few more things to happen and once those notices are in, turn on the printers! This book will be an important historical document into the future, looking back at how people reacted to the terrible Covid-19 virus that caused so much disruption in the lives of millions of people, whether they were infected with the virus or not.

Keeping safe, cost jobs in Australia, but it also saved lives. Looking at what is happening in Europe right now, early in April 2021, is quite frightening, with many deaths from this virus still, even as treatments are being rolled out. The vaccinations though are not being accepted as widely as may be needed, and there are still some who fear the treatment may be worse that the disease.

My personal thought is that being protected by a vaccination and staying alive is a good way to go, and when my turn comes, I’ll take a shot, have a jab, get vaccinated, however you want to put it, for sure. I always have the flu vaccination, and have only a bit of a sore arm for a while afterward, and I’m expecting this Covid jab, AstraZeneca, is likely to be similar.

I don’t have time to get Covid, I have a book to get ready to launch! ‘Plague Invasion – Creative Writing Responses to Covid-19’ is set to break out into the world at the end of July!

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I’ve Been A Good Writer Today

carolyncordon

This afternoon I’ve been thinking about things, big things. The most important thing deals with the concept of ‘good’ and what the word actually means. The dictionary definition, or one anyway, “that with is morally right”, “advantageous”, and “to be desired”. So to be a good writer could mean one who writes things that are morally right, advantageous, giving results which are to be desired, none of which really hit the spot, in regards to a writer, a good one, necessarily.

Although for me today, the good writer I’ve been today, would fit in with the ‘to be desired’ definition, in that it involves some of what I’ve done today with some of my writing. I have sent off three poems, for consideration in a great little publication, The Crow, a poetry journal, and I’ve also finally submitted my latest poetry collection to a publisher. Fingers crossed on those too things, with no guarantees of any success, but if it’s not sent, it will never get published!

I’ve had a email from that publisher, indicating to me they actually require a hard copy of the submitted work, rather than an electronic copy, oops, not very good work from me, especially considering I’ve been published by them before and know they required hard copies … Silly me, and not a thing to be desired at all!

Further to my work as a writer, a good one, I’ve also been looking a little bit around at the new (for me) online platform for those interested in reading, and writing thought provoking articles. This platform is Medium, and I mentioned it in my most recent post on this blog. I may post another article to this site today, if I settle down and actually get one written … Having a laptop is another good thing, so handy for writing on wherever one is, light enough to be easily carried in a suitable bag.

Having a theme, even a self-given one to write on, that is another good thing, but the internet, so handy for connecting with others, publishers, sites for research, useful for sure. But so easy to fluff around on, producing no useful writing at all, just hours spent doing vast quantities of not much at all.

So while I have done some good writer work today, there has been much that is bleuh, nothing … I have a day today that could and should have produced much useful work, but no, even with the other adult in the household off to the movies with our son, I’ve not produced any new work for my novel, put together any already written pieces for an illustrated piece I’m thinking of self publishing, anything for the Mallala Crossroad Chronicle I edit, or sent out necessary requests for agreement forms for the anthology I am editing …

Actually, that’s a good reminder to myself, a thing that is what I will do next. Throw away my coffee that has gone cold, and get working on collecting email addresses to add to my list of contributors, then I can send out the email asking for the forms, so I can then, once I have them all, get this book to the printer!

OK, that feels GOOD, to have my work for the day allocated, so I’m off, I have a job to do!