Ready.

About 15 years ago, the woman I dated at the time was getting her Masters in African American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and she was responsible for getting lecturers and poets to come to the school.That was one of the benefits of dating her; through her I was able to meet  some very influential  people like Desmond Tutu, Louis Farrakhan. I was also able to meet two of my favorite poets, Amiri Baraka and Maya Angelou. I made sure I brought  my favorite books of poetry of  theirs to sign.

Maya Angelou had a Q & A after her lecture, and I was sitting in the front row. I asked her if there was any advice she could give to us aspiring writers, and she said :

"I can sum it up in three words. Revise, revise, revise. Before I first had Phenomenal Woman published, I wanted to revise it everytime I looked at it.I had to force myself to accept that it was ready."

That's how I've been for the past 10 years. 

My book of  poetry, The Love Experience, Pt 1 is ready, I believe. It's a collection of 150 romantic poems.  I've been revising the poems every time I looked at them, but there comes a time when I have to decide that it's ready for me to send to publishers. 

So, in my spare time, when I'm not looking for affordable vacation rentals for my trip to Paris in November, or writing novellas for my collection  Designer Strait Jackets & Other Novellas I'm also looking for literary agents, for book publishers, and even publishers of poetry magazines. 

Please pray for me!

Day 1

I can’t believe Christmas has come and gone already.  I had a terrible Christmas week at home and I said goodbye to 2011 and I welcomed 2012 at church, on my knees.  I hope all of you had a fun and enjoyable Christmas holiday. I'm hoping that 2012  will be good to me.
I've made a few resolutions the other day and as the first few days of 2012 go by, I may add more to the list, according to my mood, my needs, and my reality. The overall theme though, will be that  falure is not an option.
As I write this, what first comes to mind is procrastination.I've been pretty good at blogging, and not so good at my short story novella writing. I always planned on writing a thousand words a day, but life always seemed to get in the way.  I kept putting it off to tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow. Well tomorrow came today. I made it come today. I had breakfast with a good friend, and when I got home, I opened a bottle of champagne, and  I've been sipping and writing since then. I worked on three short stories novellas that had been in my head the past few months. I wrote 75 pages today. I'm happy. I have 4 more short story novella ideas in my head to put on paper. Once I've edited what I've written today, I will start on them, while sending out individual manuscripts for publication. Hopefully by Mid- February, Designer Strait Jackets and other Stories will be ready to send to publishers.

Banana Cake with Hazelnut  Buttercreme frosting

There are other things I tend to put of as well, but that was last year. In 2011, I've baked about thirty-four cakes, 10 of which were for birthday or other celebration gifts, 12 for dinner parties of which I was responsible for desserts, 8 cakes that were ordered, and about 4 cakes given to friends for no reason,  all from recipes that are in my head. I hope, this year, like in my previous resolutions, not to do anything out of the goodness of my heart for those that don't appreciate it, to start charging for the cakes that I am asked to bake and maybe even write a cookbook.


There are other things I tend to put off as well, but that was last year. Failure is not an option in 2012.