At last, I have, starting with this account and now with beldarzfixon, officially made it to 100 weeks on LJ Idol. I have also twice made it to the cusp of the Top Ten. So what is the secret to my almost-success ( Read more... )

Before I forget, must note that tonight wraps up voting for LJ Idol: Exhibit A, Week 2 (poll open to all). The topic this time was "Throw back the little ones" -- I took it in this direction.

One of the Green Room discussions at therealljidol this week was about diversity and how we reflect that in our writings. I missed out on the conversation, but it did get ( Read more... )

Been several weeks since I looked at my Twitter account (@indybeldar). I caught a nice retweet that updates an inspirational cliche:

"Dance like the photo's not tagged.
Love like you've never been unfriended.
Tweet like nobody's following."

For those of you on the "tweety-bird," I highly recommend following @craigyferg (Craig Ferguson of the CBS Late ( Read more... )

Firstly, since I don't have a lot of time for posting, I'll put out a quick HAPPY BIRTHDAY for
( Read more... )

Over the last couple of days I helped judge the youth writing contest for our local Halloween festival. Kids were asked to submit poems, or short stories for grades 7-12. We got about 30 entries, with five of them stories -- one of them from an eighth-grader, the rest from elementary grades ( Read more... )

I found this interesting and a bit inspiring (or more to the point, confirming what I already suspected): The Internet has created a generation of great writers.

As proof, I submit over 200 samples, all linked here at LJ Idol, and while you're at it vote for the ones you like. There's a lot of good stuff there, but I must note that this from new ( Read more... )

To all my friends who are aspiring writers, I ask you check out this advice from murnkay :

Do it, already!

I've been working on taking that advice myself. Writing whenever I have time, starting to think in business terms -- how am I gonna *sell* this? -- Stuff like that. It won't necessarily make you a better writer, but it makes you more likely to get your ( Read more... )