Surprise Badges & Fairy Godmothers

So...I've been off the internet radar for most of the past week. Some of that is due to being out of town a couple days for Father's Day. The last few days, however, I've been leading a week-long art camp on upcycled fashion. It's been fun - but tiring, which means I've been crashing early every day this week. Almost as soon as I get home, in fact.

And then, in the middle of all my fantastically busy, artistic, non-writing week, I received a flock of tweets pointing me toward a most WONDERFUL surprise.

You see, I apparently have a fairy godmother in the online writing world. And she is supremely awesome. For proof, I submit the following evidence:

Isn't it wonderful?!?? A website banner of my very own, magicked into existence by the blogging Fairy Godmother herself, Donna McNicol. In honor of the Visual Dare flash fiction posted here every week, Donna made this lovely badge for the Anonymous Legacy blog.

If you don't already, I strongly recommend that you follow Donna on Twitter (@DonnaBMcNicol), and her site Write for Ten,  which is a great challenge to write every day, even if it's only for 10 minutes. Her site has a nifty cool banner as well, and you would all do well to link through and follow it:

Of course, weekly writing challenges are NOT the limit of Donna's awesomeness. She's also a writer and author in her own right, with two forthcoming novels and several shorter works already available for Kindle or Nook. Her author website can be found here: http://donnamcnicol.com/.  She also has a writing blog (http://donnamcnicol.blogspot.com/) and a personal blog that spotlights her traveling adventures with her husband Stu (http://www.2takinga5th.com/).


And you know what? My amazing badge is not the limit of Donna's sweet fairy godmother ways. She's also made a banner for fledgling writer's website Sweet Banana Ink, and recently spotlighted it on her writing blog.

See what I mean? If anyone is a fairy godmother with a double scoop of awesome AND fairy dust - it's this lady.

When I joined the Twitter/blogging/online writing community in September 2011, I was totally unprepared for the wonderfully accepting, encouraging network of writers I would find. So much of the artistic world can be cutthroat and divisive, but I have found the online writing community to be anything but. Thanks to wonderfully creative, writer-ly souls like Donna, my journey down the path toward Authorship has been full of encouragement, thoughtful questions, running jokes, and lovely surprises.

Thank you, Donna, for my AL badge. And thank YOU, wonderful readers, for making Anonymous Legacy and the Visual Dare a banner-worthy endeavor!

I hope all of you have a fairy godmother, online or in real life. Do you?

What's the nicest thing a fellow writer has done for you?

Creative Pacing

A new month, a new blog design - and a new update schedule. Welcome to the new AL.

When I started my blog waaaaaaaaaaay back in September, I decided that I would not marry myself to one specific updating schedule, though the "shiny" of a new endeavor naturally meant that I was posting a lot. As in, every day.

I wasn't worried about the frequency at the time. New things always have their lustre that must wear off before you step back and readjust. Knowing that this blog would be a learning process, and an ongoing "writer's resume" (of sorts), I decided to keep up the 5-6 posts per week routine until I felt that both the topics and the pacing had worn thin, and I needed to scale back.

The big surprise: It took me five months to get to that point.

But that threshold - or perhaps I should say crossroads - has at last come. Personal craziness aside (the Goff Clan has been racking up frequent flier miles at the doctor's offices and hospitals lately), I've come to a point where the daily writing energy that I've funneled into blogging needs channeling to other projects, not the least of which is the now nearly-completed trilogy that I hope to query beginning in late May or early June.

The Upshot: I am going to hold true to my original vision of what I set out to do, by:

(a) Going to a Tuesday/Thursday update schedule (weekend silly posts and Six Sunday Sentence excerpts will continue as usual) 

(b) Hold myself accountable to the original discipline which started this adventure in the first place. (Especially item #3 in that link)

This new schedule will allow me to do three things:

1.  Focus on the writing that is at the heart of why I do what I do. 

2. Give updates of higher quality to my blog followers (including the popular Agent Tweets series) 

3. Stay sane.

OK ---- so maybe that third item is a bit of a stretch. But here's hoping. :-)

I also intend to continue with Lillie McFerrin's weekly Five Sentence Fiction challenge (really excited about this week's prompt, by the way - go check it out!). So expect the odd random flash fic to appear here from time to time.

So with all that being said...next Agent Tweets coming to you next Tuesday! With a little weekend silliness along the way.

Keep Reading --- Keep Writing --- Keep On Creating!

Let me know what you think in the comment section!

http://anonymouslegacy.blogspot.com/2011/09/new-endeavors.html

Anonymous?

A word of explanation is in order.

One might wonder, upon reading the title of my blog, why someone who aspires to be published would say their legacy is given anonymously. The reason lies chiefly in the wellspring behind the writing.

My first job, love, aspiration and joy of this life has been teaching. I was one of those weird kids who knew at three what I would be when I grew up and never changed my story. By eighth grade I knew what my major would be in college.

I. Love. To. Teach.

During the time that I had a Facebook account, I had only one line in my "about me" section, and it never changed: My dream is to die anonymous and leave behind a legacy of students who change the world.

And my writing? It is a dream of its own; but a dream that grows out of my teaching. I don't teach because I write; but I do write because I teach.

If I am ever published, I guess I will have failed at the anonymous part. But I also know that my greatest legacy is in my students. They are my wellspring, the overflowing life that must be channeled somewhere - and where better than on the page? Nor can I predict where that legacy begins and ends, if it ends at all.

This is not to say that my blog will revolve around my students, though they may creep in from time to time. (They are rather persistent critters, after all.) But I draw enormous creative energy from them, and as a teacher I hope to pay them back in kind, one way or another. At the very least I intend to prepare them for bigger and better adventures that will, in turn, become legacies of their own. Legacies that outlive their creators, cascading forward into even further lives, with ever-growing boundaries.