6 Story Words, 5 Clint Eastwood Impressions and 3 Writing Tips: it's a Me Me Me Meme Soup

Of all the various freelance writing jobs I do in real life, my all-time least favourite task is to write the little blurb for the back cover of a book. Succinct is not my forte. I am a natural-born babbler, as those who move through my life will know (to the detriment of their ears and patience).

Another thing I really strongly dislike is to impose (or attempt to impose) my will upon others. I say please a lot, and thank you even more — the way more forthright souls might sprinkle their conversation with colourful expletives.

Colour me pathetic.

So of course I am vaguely appalled (and yet, truly, flattered) whenever I am tagged for a meme — especially since they do, by definition, tend to require tagging someone else…

I dither.
I procrastinate.
And eventually I fall back on the tried-and-true:

If this looks like a fun meme you’d like to give a try… you’ve been tagged!

And in this case, I save up a bunch of memes and tumble them all together into one big manic bowl of steaming mulligatawny —

1. The Six-Word Memoir

If this looks like a fun meme you’d like to give a try… you’ve been tagged!

Mitch challenged me to summarize my life story in a mere six words. Wow. That’s a tough one! See above, about my lack of self-restraint when it comes to spewing out words words words and more words… It took a long dog-walk and an even longer bubble bath (top two venues for Deep Thought) to come up with this:

But I forgive Mitch, because it was Pinhole who put him up to it.

And both of these fine gentlemen make it to the list of —

2.Five People Who Make My Day

If this looks like a fun meme you’d like to give a try… you’ve been tagged!

There are just too many to choose from, in all conscience, and who ever likes to play favourites? But beadinggem was kind enough to send me the award, and it would be simply churlish not to play on. Besides, I like her.

So…. hard choices… but right off the top of my head, and among the rich treasures of the internet and my subscriptions, I can refer you with confidence to these Day-Brightening Bloggers:

• the aforementioned Mitchell Allen;
• the aforementioned Pinhole O’Rourke;
• Mary Emma Allen (no relation to Mitch) who’s been giving sage advice to craft-business quilters on the LIfestyle Channel at b5media for the past 4 years, as well as blogging Alzheimers Notes from the caregiver’s viewpoint;
• Liz Strauss, who can rock an open mic night like nobody’s business; and
• Claudia, who cracks me up and makes me weep and spits diamonds whenever she feels like it.

But I’m not out of the woods here yet, oh no! On top of all, ever since January I’ve been deep in guilt and meme-debt to Pinhole (poor man) who slathered on the compliments in a shameless ploy to extract —

3. Three Writing Tips

If this looks like a fun meme you’d like to give a try… you’ve been tagged!

and, whew! Thank heavens, an easy meme!

Everything I know about writing, I learned it from my lifelong quest to become a half-decent visual artist. (Yeah, I know… don’t rub it in.)

Here we go, three writing tips:

1. Just because everyone else makes the sky blue and the grass green, that doesn’t mean you have to do it that way. Find your own voice and vision.

2. Sometimes, to get to the good stuff, you’ve got to colour outside the lines. Never mind how you originally planned the piece to go — if it wants to go somewhere different, at least take a moment to explore the possibilities.

3. If you don’t stop talking about it, roll up your sleeves, and get your hands dirty — art just ain’t gonna happen.

And there you go!

Oh and…

If this looks like a fun meme you’d like to give a try… you’ve been tagged!

:D