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Frocktober begins tomorrow & I’ve picked my charity
FROCKTOBER BEGINS TOMORROW… And I’m announcing the charity I have chosen for the next 31 days. What is FROCKTOBER? It’s a 31-day fashion challenge, whereby you post an outfit a day on Instagram, that calls attention to a charity of choice! As an educator, author, blogger, and reader, I am so happy to support and call attention to another woman of style’s organization that fosters reading: Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Dolly’s nonprofit organization is a book gifting program that delivers free books to children from birth to age 5 in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Republic of Ireland. The organization was inspired by Dolly’s father’s inability to…
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What I’m Writing Now (or my current WIP)
* Currently, I’m not writing anything, but next week, I will begin to dive deeply into novel number five, picking up with Chapter 3 where I left off before coronavirus intensified the nature of my working life. The novel is still to be named, which I hate, actually. I typically have to have a working title, but now that the premise of the book has morphed into something different, the working title “Four in a Year,” is just, well, not working. Wrapping up the semester leaves me time only to write this short blog post before getting my grades finalized and uploaded. I shouldn’t even be taking time to do…
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Getting My Books in Order
This whole lockdown has been pretty strange. Not only are we getting sick of being in the house, we’re in front of our computer screens nonstop, with walking breaks stretched throughout the day to keep us sane. I thank goodness each day for the park/farm up the street and the odd little jobs we’ve been doing, in addition to watching Game of Thrones from the beginning all the way through with our kids (they had not seen my favorite all-time show before) as diversions from work. It’s truly been a whirlwind. One of the projects I decided to undertake was rearranging my bookshelves in both my office and piano room.…
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Podcast 13 – Ideas to Help Foster Creativity During This Crisis
It’s difficult to feel happy during a crisis when there is so much heartbreak happening on the front lines of this coronavirus pandemic. I know I’m feeling a little depressed by the situation and can only watch bits of news each day in order to carry on with the things I have to accomplish for my students and university as I teach from home. We are all doing the best we can, and being home hasn’t been all awful, but I do feel as if my creativity has been zapped a little. Do you feel the same way? Today’s Podcast 13 offers ideas for those of us writers who need…
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Podcast 10 – A Little About My Books & Storytelling to Help You Write Your Stories
*** So…in this podcast, I recorded it from my back porch, replete with airplanes flying overhead and a noisy crow in the background (I think I even got a little choked up—seriously—and coughed, only briefly). But that’s how we do it here on Steph’s Scribe: we keep it real. Real talk about real stuff with no edits. I thought I would take a moment to talk about my books and my storytelling. The intention here is to share how I got from point A to point B…and it is entirely meant to kick those of you who need it in the ass to get yourselves writing! So often we say…
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Dear Fellow Writers
Dear Fellow Writers, Here’s a list of the things we do as independent authors: -write our books -edit our books -publish our books -promote our books -attend book signings -attend book talks -visit book clubs -blog -enter writing contests -support other indie authors -build an author platform -curate social media posts -network with others -create a podcast -join a writing group -learn photography -begin a new story -start all over In addition, we also read a lot. And some of us have full-time and/or part-time jobs. Fellow writers, what am I missing? There’s so much that we do. The list is long, and quite diverse, But I’m sure I forgot…
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Dealing with Disappointment
After watching Brene Brown’s Ted Talks, other videos, and reading her books, I’ve decided to just be vulnerable (which isn’t my strong suit) and say that I’m dealing with a bit of disappointment over here. The world of being an independent author is not always kind, nor is it always fun. My latest book, Little Milestones, a follow-up book to Inn Significant, is not faring well at all on Amazon. I have two reviews. I work hard busting my butt on Instagram and Facebook to try to ascertain readers and ask for help with reviews online, but it can be tiring. Exhausting. It can depress the soul, to be frank.…
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Podcast 5 – Clearing Your Head, Work Space, and Thinking About POV
Today’s Podcast #5 covers the need to clear your head before beginning a new project, along with the reasons to clear your workspace. I touch on these two motivators and then roll right into deciding how your narrative is going to take hold. Which point of view is right for your story? Sharing some thoughts on that and why you should think about this now…to avoid a lot of additional reworking down the road. Enjoy! Xx, Stephanie * Stephanie Verni is Professor of Communication at Stevenson University. She has authored five works of fiction and one academic text on Event Planning. Her character-driven books are typically set in Maryland to…
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The Thing That Connects Us
*** I was sitting here staring at a blank cursor knowing what I wanted to write but not knowing exactly how to say it. Then I remembered studying writer James Baldwin during my first master’s degree, and thought of his quote: “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who are alive, who had ever been alive.” – James Baldwin I’ve been “officially” publishing fiction now since 2012. Fiction is the best outlet to tell…
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Saying Some ‘Thank Yous’ This Thanksgiving Season: A Reflection
Thoughts and a Reflection on Thanksgiving In my humble opinion, the best four days of the year have just passed. The four days of Thanksgiving weekend are always my favorite time of the year. We are permitted to just stop and reflect for a few days, spend time with family, and in our home, begin the Christmas traditions we set forth when the kids were babies of cutting down our Christmas tree and decorating for the holidays. For the last several years, I’ve cooked the Thanksgiving dinner, with sides provided by my mother and mother-in-law. This year, the pumpkin pie and apple crumb pie were ordered from Kirsten’s Cakery by…
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The Water Wheel: A Short Story
I promised myself I’d write ONE thing during this year’s 2019 NaNoWriMo, and today I hunkered down and did it. It’s not a novel or the 50,000 words required to “win” at NaNoWriMo, or even the 43,000 words of Little Milestones I wrote during last year’s NaNoWriMo. It’s just a short story about grief with a little bit of a twist. I’m not sure what, if anything, I will do with this piece of writing, but for some reason, I needed to write it. Today was the day, and here is the story. The Water Wheel by Stephanie Verni There were many ways he could show his appreciation for her.…
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Vlogging about the Writing Life—Connecting Inn Significant & Little Milestones
After I published Inn Significant in 2017, I seriously considered a sequel. People were writing to me and asking me what happens to the characters. I began constructing the sequel and dabbled with about 13 chapters until I stopped writing it altogether. After I put it away for a while and took a break, a lightbulb went off in my head: what if I wrote a second book with a character with a somewhat parallel life and had them meet in the new novel? It would be more of a series rather than a sequel, and that appealed to me much more. Typically, sequels aren’t very good. There are exceptions…
