Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Not Your Mother's Library

Yesterday was a wild library day. My friend Janie says our meeting place has become the epitome of the “new library” where silence isn’t golden or necessary. One can sit with drinking containers of water or cola but they must have lids. Children are allowed to chase each other through stacks of books, shrieking and giggling. Yesterday one of them ran under our table, bumped his head and howled to high heaven. Worse, a mom fussed at her high school grad daughter for not knowing the details of an internship. Mom kept saying, “Don’t show me attitude, I’m just volunteering my time to help you.” I sympathized with the daughter and wished the mom had not volunteered her time. Since they sat across from me, I heard every word; must have missed the part where daughter showed attitude. Mom seemed to be the only one displaying attitude. I woke up this morning thinking about them.

To top off the escalating chaos, every now and then, believe it or not, someone yelled, “Go Thunder” and a few cheerful voices joined it.  I wondered if the moon was full. I think I must have bragged on my library writing too much. Payback time--at least for the summer.

Regardless of the noise, I was able to re-work the first four chapters. I’ll have to go over chapter four again, the louder the noise, the more distracted I became. And by ‘rework’ I mean I did some layering, revised some of my sentences, changed the how of my main character and sprinkled in a little attraction between the hero and heroine, as well as suspicion and hesitancy. Since things have to move faster in a novella, I’m wondering if it works.  We’ll see when I submit, won’t we? All in all, I felt satisfied with my accomplishment. Revising and editing doesn’t move as fast as writing from scratch. Maybe I’ll get more done today, but honestly, I keep getting distracted by my genealogy. Sigh. I have way too many interests!
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Yesterday I received a nice surprise. Andrea Teagan from The Enchanged Writer nominated me for the Liebster Award.  How cool is that? She wrote: Jessica Roach Ferguson from Praise, Prayers, and Observations a southern writer with the sweetest heart. Don't miss her blog.

Wow, I’m thrilled and honored, Andrea. Thanks! I hope you all will check out The Enchanted Writer. Andrea has some interesting links to contests, critique groups and lots more.

Google told me that the origins of the Liebster Blog award are a little sketchy but the general consensus is that it originated in Germany, "Liebster" meaning favorite or dearest, to showcase bloggers with fewer than 200 followers. Upon accepting the award the recipient must then pass it on to five more blogs of note.

Here are the rules:
1- Choose FIVE up and coming blogs to which you award the Liebster. Blogs must have less than 200 followers.
2- Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them.
3-Post the award on your blog. List the bloggers you gave the award to with links to their sites
So, I’m passing the Liebster Blog Award to:

Linda  at The Incurable Itch of LF Todd. Linda is a fairly new blogger and she's doing great. We took a road trip together last year and headed to the Killer Nashville conference. Fun!
Jan  blogs at Beyond Acadia: Reading, Writing and Living Well. Jan is my coffee drinking buddy, my Swamp Lily partner and my encourager.
Beth hangs out at Creative Wordlenik. She signed up for my NF writing class. She's fun, brave and one of the best writing pediatric nurses around.
Pat tells all at Life’s Autumns. If you want to laugh, cry, and learn about emotions, this is the blog for you.
Lynn is one of my favorite bloggers. She's a letter writer and shares some heartfelt memories at Present Letters. She's multi-talented too as you'll find out if you visit.




7 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

Yeah, sounds like my recent experiences with public libraries. University libraries are still a bit better. At least ours is.

Pat Carroll Marcantel said...

Thank you, Dearheart, for the mention of my blog. Kudos for your latest award. It is well-deserved. I'm still laughing and cringing at your summer library experience!

LD Masterson said...

Happy to say, my library still holds with the traditional "shhhh".

Unknown said...

You really do have the sweetest heart! Thank you, Jess.

Suze said...

'And by ‘rework’ I mean I did some layering, revised some of my sentences, changed the how of my main character and sprinkled in a little attraction between the hero and heroine, as well as suspicion and hesitancy. Since things have to move faster in a novella, I’m wondering if it works.'

You will know it works when you don't wonder, anymore. :)

Keep at it! It sounds to me like you are doing brilliantly.

Lynn said...

You're way too sweet to nominate me. I've been a bit out of the loop lately, but I'll try and blog about this tomorrow. Thank you!

Andrea Teagan said...

Best of luck with your work in progress. I am so glad you enjoyed getting the award! You deserve it! :)

Looking forward to reading more more of your blog.

Andrea