https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/ Jean Marie Bauhaus - LiveJournal.com Thu, 15 Dec 2016 20:13:05 GMT LiveJournal / LiveJournal.com jmbauhaus 15127820 personal NOINDEX https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/72479124/15127820 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/ 100 98 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/174287.html Thu, 15 Dec 2016 20:13:05 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/174287.html <lj-embed id="38" /> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/174287.html?view=comments#comments paranormal books &amp; fiction romance novel book trailer paranormal romance video public 1 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/171410.html Fri, 29 May 2015 21:48:39 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/171410.html <p>So apparently someone has taken over one of my old domains and used the Wayback Machine to pull up one of my old website layouts and are using them both to impersonate me for some reason that only God can fathom.</p> <p>Not only that, but they&#8217;re using my picture and they&#8217;ve scraped old blog posts of mine and changed wording in an apparent attempt to avoid (further) copyright infractions and made the writing terrible in the process. Just compare <a href="http://jeanjeanie.blogspot.com/2011/09/be-still-and-know.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">this blog post</a> I wrote in 2011 to the one of the same title on the imposter site.</p> <p>Even worse, until about 20 minutes ago they were also displaying photos from my Flickr stream. I went and made that private as soon as I discovered this site.</p> <p><a href="http://jmbauhaus.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Here&#8217;s the imposter site.</a> I hate to send them more traffic (or help their SEO rankings), but I&#8217;m hoping that if they&#8217;re tracking stats they&#8217;ll see this and know that I&#8217;m on to them and I&#8217;m going to shut them down. I&#8217;ve already reported them to both their web host and their domain registrar and if that doesn&#8217;t get it done I&#8217;ll get a C&amp;D. And if THAT doesn&#8217;t get it done I&#8217;ll see about getting a lawyer because, seeing as how I make part of my living as a professional writer, this site could do a lot to damage my professional reputation and I may very well have a case for damages.</p> <p>In the meantime, hopefully anyone who stumbles across that site will click through the link to my LiveJournal and see this post and know what&#8217;s up.</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/jmbauhaus-com-is-not-me/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/171410.html?view=comments#comments are you kidding me with this uncategorized public 1 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/171243.html Sat, 23 May 2015 17:02:13 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/171243.html <p>I&#8217;ve been thinking and praying a lot over <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/to-blog-or-not-to-blog/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">the question of whether to continue my blog</a>, and suddenly I&#8217;ve been flooded with ideas for stuff I want to blog about. So I guess there&#8217;s my answer.</p> <p>So instead of doing anything drastic like eliminating my author blog or putting it on indefinite hiatus, I&#8217;m just going to relax and give myself permission to only post when I have both the time and the energy as well as something to say that&#8217;s worth spending those resources on.</p> <p>It&#8217;s the first two things that are the most difficult to come by, of course. Or rather, the problem is that when I think of something I want to write a post about&#8211;which actually occurs pretty frequently&#8211;I don&#8217;t have the time or the mental energy to do it at that moment. I&#8217;ve tried jotting down notes about what I want to say for times when I <em>do</em> have more free time, but that just hasn&#8217;t been working. By the time I finally sit down to write the post, I read over my notes and just can&#8217;t get back my train of thought. So I still need to figure out what to do about that. But it&#8217;s not something I&#8217;m going to stress myself out over.</p> <p>There will still be greater changes coming. My web hosting account expires this year and I hate my current host, so I won&#8217;t be renewing with them. And since my past experiences with other inexpensive web hosts haven&#8217;t really been much better, and I can&#8217;t afford a better quality of hosting services, I&#8217;m just going to move my site to WordPress.com, which has everything I need at this point for free.</p> <p>At that point I <del>may</del> probably will go ahead and separate out my blog from my author site. I think part of what I struggle with here is that much of what I want to write about isn&#8217;t the sort of things one might expect or want to read from a paranormal romance and dark fantasy author, and that&#8217;s hanging me up. So when the time comes I will probably cease having an &#8220;author blog&#8221; and just set up a static author website with a link to my personal blog, which is a separate entity.</p> <p>Where to host this personal blog (which will really still be this here blog, just with a different name at a new location) is the big question. The simplest thing would just be to make <a href="http://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">my LiveJournal</a> my main blog, seeing as how I&#8217;ve been cross-posting there this whole time and everything is already archived there, and then I wouldn&#8217;t have to worry about cross-posting from another platform. LJ has its drawbacks, though, not the least of which is the difficulty of commenting for non-members (or their willingness to do so).</p> <p>I had long been a proponent of Blogger/Blogspot&#8211;that was the first blog engine I ever used, back when it was a wee startup run out of Ev Williams&#8217; garage, and I stayed loyal to it for much longer than common sense dictated (I&#8217;m even at this moment wearing a Blogger hoodie I received as a reward for my loyalty after Google bought them out)&#8211;but the fact that Google treats it like a forgotten step-child and the customer service is terrible to non-existent has cured me of said loyalty. Still, I&#8217;ve already got <a href="http://jeanjeanie.blogspot.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">this old blog</a> archived there, so starting that up again is an option.</p> <p>I think the most attractive option is moving it to its own url on WordPress.com. By now I&#8217;m used to the WordPress interface, they make commenting pretty easy for everybody, and they also make it really simple for other WP.com users to follow you, which would make it easier to build the community I long for. Of course, I would still have to work out the problem of cross-posting to LJ for the benefit of the small community I&#8217;ve already established there.</p> <p>Also there&#8217;s the problem of LiveJournal constantly getting hacked by angry Russians who take the whole site down for long stretches of time. So&#8230;.</p> <p>At any rate, these are the things I will be pondering as I gear up to move this site. In the meantime, you can expect posting here to continue, albeit sporadically.</p> <p>What about you guys? Do you have a vote as to where I should park my blog? This isn&#8217;t necessarily a democracy, but feedback will definitely help my decision, and I always love to hear from my readers. So leave a comment and give me your two cents!</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/to-blog-i-guess/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/171243.html?view=comments#comments blogging uncategorized state of the blog life blather meta public 1 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/170816.html Tue, 19 May 2015 18:02:46 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/170816.html <p>Well, when I said I was going to get back to a regular blogging pattern this month, I guess I kind of underestimated how many other demands would be placed on my time. It&#8217;s been a pretty hectic couple of weeks. On the bright side, things are starting to settle down, and it&#8217;s looking like I&#8217;ll get to take that long Memorial Day weekend like I was hoping.</p> <p>Of course, when you&#8217;re a freelancer, &#8220;things settling down&#8221; usually is code for &#8220;I have no more work lined up so I&#8217;d better start hustling to find some before this latest infusion of money runs out.&#8221; Incidentally, if you need to have a book critiqued, edited or formatted, <a href="http://daydreamerpublishing.wordpress.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">my schedule&#8217;s wide open after the holiday</a>.</p> <p>Sooooo&#8230;</p> <p>I&#8217;m kind of at a crossroads as far as this blog goes. I&#8217;m writing this book about self-publishing, and yesterday I was writing about author platforms and how all you really need is a mailing list and a website where you can have people sign up to it. You don&#8217;t really need a blog, although it does have certain advantages, the biggest of which are that it gives people a reason to keep coming back to your site and it keeps your website relevant to the search engines.</p> <p>And I stopped and asked myself: do <em>I</em> really <em>need</em> this blog?</p> <p>And then I answered myself: I&#8217;m not sure.</p> <p>Really, those last two reasons I mentioned are the main reasons I&#8217;ve been concerned about carving out time to update this space. But really, the only things I&#8217;m getting out of it at this point are guilt and stress. I&#8217;m certainly not getting a ton of traffic or a grounded community of loyal readers. I get a little interaction, but only from people I already interact with regularly on Facebook. For that matter, anyone who really cares about what&#8217;s going on in my life follows me on Facebook or Twitter and are kept fully abreast of how things are going, and anyone who cares about my writing and when I will finally get around to finishing and publishing another book is presumably signed up to my mailing list.</p> <p>So exactly what purpose is this here blog serving in my life at this point?</p> <p>I&#8217;m going to be pondering that question over the next few days, and what the alternatives are. I&#8217;m pretty sure I don&#8217;t actually know how <em>not</em> to be a blogger, at least long-term, so we&#8217;re probably not looking at a complete shut-down. At the very least, I may leave a link to the archives on a static author website, and update it sporadically when I&#8217;ve got news or just need to get something off my chest. But as far as spending the time and energy to blog on a regular basis, that time and energy would probably be better spent on my writing and publishing blog, where it&#8217;s a little more crucial to get some traffic flowing.</p> <p>So, that&#8217;s on my mind. What say you, readers? If there&#8217;s anyone who would really miss it if I stopped blogging here regularly, now&#8217;s your time to speak up.</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/to-blog-or-not-to-blog/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/170816.html?view=comments#comments blogging uncategorized a sensible wife state of the blog life blather blog-what is it good for public 2 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/170638.html Fri, 01 May 2015 21:01:21 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/170638.html <p>As you might have guessed, April turned into a pretty hectic month. In order to keep up with things (and to keep my sanity), I had to put the blog on the back burner for a while.</p> <p>But it&#8217;s a new month, and I&#8217;m turning over a new leaf; although, so far, the freelance editing &amp; publishing biz is continuing to bring in a steady flow of work (incidentally,<a href="http://daydreamerpublishing.wordpress.com" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> I&#8217;ve still got openings for May</a>), which, while it&#8217;s something to be grateful for, it&#8217;s not leaving me a lot of room for non-paying projects.</p> <p>Unfortunately, I had not only back-burnered both this blog and <a href="https://daydreamerpublishing.wordpress.com/blog/" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">my nascent writing and publishing blog</a>, but also any real attempt at trying to make any progress on my current novel. That simply cannot stand. I&#8217;ve got to make the novel a priority again, but in order to do so, something&#8217;s got to give, which is why, though I fully intend to start blogging consistently again, it&#8217;s going to be at a slower pace. So while I&#8217;m in the throes of drafting my novel, I&#8217;ll be aiming to post here at least once a week, as well as once a week at the other blog, although if work stays busy it may turn out to be twice a month over there.</p> <p>And what about that novel? I&#8217;m talking about <em>Ghost of a Chance,</em> the sequel to <em>Restless Spirits</em> that I&#8217;ve already been writing off and on for the last six months or so. That might sound like it should be close to done, but I&#8217;m sorry to tell you otherwise. The short version is that I tried to pants it (seeing as how i pantsed <em>Restless Spirits</em> and that turned out just fine, albeit it&#8217;s also the <em>only</em> book I&#8217;ve ever successfully written without an outline) and it totally went off the rails. So I&#8217;ve had to go back to the drawing board and start over from the beginning with an outline.</p> <p>Trouble is, finding time to sit and think about the story as a whole and break it down into a working outline has been harder than finding time to sit down and just write. I&#8217;ve got act one sorted out and pieced together, but there&#8217;s still a lot more to go.</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 658px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-version="4"> <div style="padding:8px"> <div style="background:#f8f8f8;line-height:0;margin-top:40px;padding:50% 0;text-align:center;width:100%"></div> <p style="margin: 8px 0 0 0; padding: 0 4px;"><a style="color: #000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;" href="https://instagram.com/p/2Jt7jKsfD7/" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">It&#8217;s growing. #outlining #amwriting #RestlessSpirits2</a></p> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;">A photo posted by Jean Bauhaus (@jmbauhaus) on <time style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;" datetime="2015-05-01T19:56:49+00:00">May 1, 2015 at 12:56pm PDT</time></p> </div> </blockquote> <p></p> <p>I think another part of the problem is that there&#8217;s a murder mystery aspect to this one that keeps psyching me out. I&#8217;m not really big into the mystery genre, so I&#8217;m kind of afraid of botching it. It&#8217;s the B plot, but it&#8217;s integral to the main plot, so I can&#8217;t scrap it. I guess I&#8217;ll just have to muscle through and hope it doesn&#8217;t suck.</p> <p>At any rate, this is setting my publishing schedule way, way behind. The first attempted draft isn&#8217;t a total loss, though. I should be able to salvage quite a few of those scenes, so that&#8217;s good news.</p> <p>Besides getting my writing and blogging back on track, my other goals for the month of May include making more time for fun. These last few weeks I&#8217;ve been so bogged down with stuff I <em>have</em> to do or <em>need</em> to do that there hasn&#8217;t been nearly enough of doing stuff I simply <em>want</em> to do, which hasn&#8217;t made life very enjoyable. So I&#8217;m trying to work in more breaks just to play or doodle or daydream and just enjoy life. To that end, I&#8217;m also planning (read: hoping to be able) to take a long weekend around Memorial Day. It would be super-awesome if we could fit in a camping trip that weekend, but that&#8217;s not looking likely; still, if I have anything to say about it, that weekend is going to be devoted to fun and relaxation and to not even one iota of productivity.</p> <p>I was also going to talk about the stuff I&#8217;ve been into during my scant amounts of free time lately, but this is already getting pretty long, so I&#8217;ll save that for next week&#8217;s post.</p> <p>In the mean time, what about you guys? What have I missed? What are your plans for the merry month of May? Tell me all about it in the comments!</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/2273/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/170638.html?view=comments#comments ghost of a chance writing outlining freelancing life blather public 0 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/170026.html Tue, 07 Apr 2015 17:50:18 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/170026.html <p>I was feeling kind of hermity in the week leading up to my birthday. It wasn&#8217;t so much the getting older, but I got some bad news that kind of threw me for a loop and, well, the getting older part wasn&#8217;t helping. But then I had a long weekend, which was productive as far as spring cleaning goes, and a nice Easter, and a lovely birthday spent over-eating on cheap sushi and Chinese food followed by makeup shopping with my mom, and I was feeling well sorted and kind of gung-ho about digging back into everything today.</p> <p>And then I managed to hurt myself in my sleep. Not just sleep in the wrong position, wake up with a crick in your neck hurt, but actually managing to severely strain a muscle hard enough to wake yourself up with the pain while turning over. And now just sitting here propped up with a heating pad and holding my head just so to avoid mind-numbing pain is using up quite a lot of my energy, and I&#8217;m back to not feeling so great about this whole getting older experience.</p> <p>I haven&#8217;t done my bullet journal yet for the week, but I&#8217;ve still got two book critiques on my plate, and a freelance blog post, and a bunch of client e-mails that I&#8217;m trying to psych myself up to answer. I&#8217;d hoped to get some walking in this week, and to make more progress on the spring cleaning, but as much as it hurts to move right now I&#8217;m thinking those things are going to have to wait.</p> <p>At least there isn&#8217;t any pressing yard work that needs to be done. There is no big loss without some small gain&#8230;</p> <p>So how are you guys doing this week? Better than I am, I hope.</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/a-quick-update-from-infirmity-land/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/170026.html?view=comments#comments uncategorized ow life blather public 0 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/169833.html Mon, 30 Mar 2015 16:50:50 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/169833.html <p>Last week I only managed to accomplish about half of my weekly list, but considering that the week began with a broken toilet seat, ended with a funeral, and had a tornado in the middle, I&#8217;m fairly impressed with myself for getting that much done.</p> <p>Seriously, y&#8217;all, what a week. I really needed the whole weekend to recover from it, but we had all that tornado debris to deal with, plus the lawn was overdue to be mowed. I had wanted to get that all done on Saturday, but it rained that morning so we decided to give it another day for everything to dry, so at least I got to spend some time vegging on Saturday, and also to finally touch up my henna job.</p> <p>So yesterday we got out there and piled up most of the fallen limbs, and I got the front yard mowed. But first I made the colossally dumb decision to  try and move an entire downed tree out of the way all by myself, and ended up smashing my right middle finger between the tree and the metal flower bed border. It didn&#8217;t break, thankfully, but it scraped off the entire top layer of skin, left a deep cut on my knuckle, and now what skin is left on top of my finger is a lovely shade of dark purple. I also ended up with a nasty bruise on my knee from banging it into the sharp end of a broken limb, and every muscle in my body feels like I put it through a week of boot camp. Even so, they&#8217;re predicting more rain (and possibly storms) for later this week, so I&#8217;ve got to get back out there this afternoon and finish things up.</p> <p>When I wasn&#8217;t busy abusing myself with storm debris, though, I managed to crochet this colorful pair of springtime wrist warmers and this bunting necklace:</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="data-instgrm-captioned" data-instgrm-version="4"><div style="padding:8px"> <div style="background:#f8f8f8;line-height:0;margin-top:40px;padding:50% 0;text-align:center;width:100%"> <div></div> </div> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="https://instagram.com/p/0260wLsfLW/" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">This weekend&#39;s #crochet output.</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A photo posted by Jean Bauhaus (@jmbauhaus) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2015-03-30T16:12:31+00:00">Mar 30, 2015 at 9:12am PDT</time></p> </div> </blockquote> <p></p> <p>The necklace looks white in the pic, but it&#8217;s actually off-white with gold thread running through it. <a href="https://www.pinterest.com/pin/63331938486470723/" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Here&#8217;s the pin that inspired it</a>, and also <a href="https://www.pinterest.com/pin/63331938486470730/" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">the pin for the wrist warmer pattern</a>.</p> <p>Moving on to this week&#8217;s bullet list: it&#8217;s a pretty long list, what with adding the unfinished half of last week&#8217;s list to everything I&#8217;d hoped to accomplish this week, so I&#8217;ll just give you the highlights. I&#8217;m still working on two client critiques, and I still need to launch my Publishing School blog, as well as write two more posts for this blog for the week. I also need to place an ad for <em>Midnight Snacks</em> and my mailing list in <em>Dominion of the Damned</em> because that&#8217;s going on sale next week. I&#8217;ve got several inquiries and quote requests on Fiverr that I need to respond to today, and after lunch I need to finish cleaning up and mow the back yard. And I still need to finish outlining <em>Ghost of a Chance</em> so I can get back to writing it.</p> <p>I also want to get my spring cleaning done this week. And it&#8217;s going to (hopefully) be a short week, because I&#8217;m planning to give myself a four-day weekend for Easter and my birthday. The plan is to take off Good Friday and spend it and Saturday cleaning, so that I can kick off my 42nd year with a clean house. Sunday will hopefully be spent resting and eating Easter candy, and Monday will be spent celebrating the fact that I survived another year on this planet. I&#8217;m hoping this involves both lunch and shopping with my mom and a date night that includes sushi and sake.</p> <p><strong>Word of the Week:</strong> &#8220;Surrender&#8221; &#8212; I&#8217;m still working on not needing to be in complete control of my life, but letting go and trusting in God&#8217;s plan instead of trying to wrestle my life into submission to my own ideas of what it should look like. I&#8217;ve come a long way in this regard, but sometimes I still need a reminder to just relax and trust.</p> <p><strong>Verse of the Week:</strong> Acts 17:28 &#8211; &#8220;For in Him we live and move and have our being.&#8221; A reminder that the only identity that truly matters is my identity in Christ.</p> <p>How about you, dear reader? What&#8217;s on your slate for this week, and was your weekend restful or eventful? I&#8217;d love to hear about it in the comments!</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/in-which-i-darn-near-break-a-finger-and-then-overschedule-myself-for-the-next-four-days/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/169833.html?view=comments#comments productivity a sensible wife life blather bullet journal goals public 0 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/169475.html Thu, 26 Mar 2015 21:38:05 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/169475.html <p>Yesterday, I opened up my laptop to be greeted with the news that a family member of a family member lost her battle with melanoma. As a writer, words are usually my strong suit, but in this instance I&#8217;m kind of at a loss. There&#8217;s really nothing you can say that feels adequate. &#8220;Cancer sucks&#8221; only scratches the surface.</p> <p>I knew this brave lady from kids&#8217; birthday parties, but I&#8217;m sad and ashamed to say that I never got to know her well because I was always too shy to have a real conversation with her. The last time I saw her was in November at my great niece&#8217;s third birthday, where she was anxiously awaiting the results of a liver biopsy. She asked my mother to pray with her, and they stepped aside to pray while the cake was being served. Not long after, she and her husband excused themselves to leave, and on the way out the door she stopped and patted me on the shoulder. I was extremely touched that she felt enough familial warmth toward me to do that, despite my quiet tendencies, and I resolved to make more of an effort to talk to her at the next birthday party.</p> <p>Except there won&#8217;t be any more birthday parties, at least not with her in attendance. She received her test results, and her diagnosis, later that week. Now, just five months later, she&#8217;s gone.</p> <p>Our hearts and prayers go out to her husband and kids. As much as it pained me to watch from a distance as things took a bad turn, I can only imagine how hard all of this is, and has been, and will continue to be for them. If you&#8217;re the praying type, please remember the Rohde family as they go through this.</p> <p>***</p> <p>As if that wasn&#8217;t enough to ruin a day, yesterday evening we got hit with a tornadic thunderstorm. Once the tornado sirens started blasting, I shoved the cats (and the turtle) in a pet carrier and placed them in a central hallway, then held Pete, ready to dash for cover as I kept one eye on the TV weather coverage and another on the skies.</p> <p>In true Okie fashion (which is funny considering how much of his formative years he spent in California), Matt kept going outside to see if he could see anything. Thankfully, the rain arrived and forced him back inside mere minutes before a gust of wind blew the tops of a couple of dead trees down into the yard right where he&#8217;d been standing.</p> <p>Other than the tree parts scattered all over our back yard, we didn&#8217;t sustain any damage, thank goodness. Sand Springs, a suburb to the northwest of us, was hit the hardest, and the funnel cloud stayed about a mile north of us as it moved through Tulsa.</p> <p>Last year, Oklahoma mostly got a break from the really scary storms, like after that awful spring of 2013 nature said, &#8220;Okay, Oklahoma, I&#8217;mma lay off you guys for a while.&#8221; But I guess we&#8217;re back on the hit list. I really hope last night wasn&#8217;t just a sneak preview of how the rest of this season&#8217;s going to go.</p> <p>Local folks, how badly were you hit? Did you take cover when you heard the sirens, or head outside like my husband?</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/cancer-sucks-so-do-tornadoes/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/169475.html?view=comments#comments uncategorized cancer sucks life blather tornadoes public 1 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/169034.html Mon, 16 Mar 2015 18:42:51 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/169034.html <p>I&#8217;m still racing deadlines this week, so posting here is probably going to be sporadic, if it gets done at all. My only real goal this week is to finish this client&#8217;s book copy edit, and to make good headway on a couple of manuscript critiques. I also need to get on the stick and take care of some financial paperwork I keep putting off.</p> <p>I&#8217;m also trying this week to get back into the habit of walking at least three days a week. Although, looking at the weather forecast, it looks like we&#8217;ve got some more rain and a few more chilly days on the way, so this might not&#8217;ve been the best week to start. At any rate, today the weather is gorgeous and I kicked it off with a 20 minute walk around the neighborhood this morning, so at least that&#8217;s a start.</p> <p><strong>Word of the Week:</strong> Focus. Because deadlines.</p> <p><strong>Verse of the Week:</strong> Joshua 1:9 (emphasis mine) &#8211; &#8220;Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. <em>Do not be discouraged</em>, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.</p> <p>What about you guys? Anything big on your agenda this week? Tell us about your goals in the comments!</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/quick-look-at-this-weeks-goals-march-16-22-2015/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/169034.html?view=comments#comments editing fitness freelancing a sensible wife life blather bullet journal goals public 0 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/168756.html Thu, 12 Mar 2015 19:59:57 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/168756.html <p>I woke up this morning to a bit of a kerfuffle in the writing world. The short version is that a well-known male YA author gave an honest answer to an interview question about why he sucks so bad at writing female characters that could possibly be taken as a sexist answer, maybe, if you tilt your head just so and squint really hard at it while wearing sexism-colored glasses.</p> <p>And it just so happened that a female YA writer read the article while tilting her head just so and squinting really hard through her sexism-colored glasses, and then went on her Tumblr blog and ripped the guy a new one for his sexist (according to her) attitudes and called upon women and feminists everywhere to join her in a campaign of public shaming.</p> <p>As a result, some of her followers did just that, although she also received quite a bit of backlash from people asking her to please stop making feminists look crazy-pants and distracting people from the real issue, which is why so many male authors in our society are so terrified of even attempting to write women.</p> <p>On the positive side, this has opened up some more dialogue about women in fiction, and it seems like a good time to round up some good links on writing female characters, like this excellent article from Tor.com:<a href="http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/03/writing-women-characters-as-human-beings" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Writing Women Characters as Human Beings by Kate Elliott</a></p> <p>And this one, also from Tor: <a href="http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/02/oh-no-she-didnt-the-strong-female-character-deconstructed" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Oh No, She Didn’t: The Strong Female Character, Deconstructed</a></p> <p>There&#8217;s also the one I wrote a few weeks ago that says pretty much the same thing: <a title="How to write [insert adjective] female characters" href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/how-to-write-insert-adjective-female-characters/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">How to write [insert adjective] female characters</a></p> <p>And the Chuck Wendig post that inspired that one: <a href="http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2015/02/16/how-strong-female-characters-still-end-up-weak-and-powerless-or-do-they-pass-the-action-figure-test/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">How “Strong Female Characters” Still End Up Weak And Powerless (Or, “Do They Pass The Action Figure Test?”)</a></p> <p>Or I could just distill it all down to this: women are people, dude. Just focus on writing a well-rounded, complex <em>person</em>, and don&#8217;t let the fact that that person is attached to a pair of boobies throw you.</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/say-it-with-me-women-are-people-so-just-write-people/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/168756.html?view=comments#comments writing oh dear not this again how to write female characters links link public 0 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/168593.html Mon, 09 Mar 2015 21:00:18 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/168593.html <p><img class="" src="https://imgprx.livejournal.net/097d51991665bb3777da1869e2f71c58277f3723/N1PGUWfoCbSOFMcaf4oXC-Jm9Powh-DHBjerh_EX4CVve81DviG5GzIUWIUcBLhj8cMzwlWm9C7fcLpkwvD98pVrRR2On85mXdtQaM2_or6GdUvOgRmqy8AXLC2vYZxHt4mIRai2Ys_4p3Lh5zPPms7zSj9SX9XOLaRkSj599kk" alt="http://static.someecards.com/someecards/usercards/MjAxMy1iNDk3MzllNGEyYWZjNzc2_512354fc24c09.png" width="300" height="210" loading="lazy" />I should not be blogging right now. I should be editing my client&#8217;s book. But my client&#8217;s book (and all the edits I&#8217;ve done on it so far) live on Google Docs, which for the last couple of days has refused to let me access it. After sitting here fighting with it for literally the last <em>two hours,</em> I&#8217;ve managed to get it to let me download a copy (which will hopefully have all my edits and editing notes saved), and right now I&#8217;m downloading Apache OpenOffice, which I will attempt to install and run. I&#8217;m not actually sure this computer has enough available RAM to run it, which is why I didn&#8217;t just do that in the first place. At any rate, hopefully it will run and all of my edits and notes from GD will carry over and I can get back to work. Otherwise, all of my current freelance work will be stuck on hold until Google Docs gets its act together, which is not really an option, because deadlines.</p> <p>And that&#8217;s just part of the utter ridiculousness of this day, which started out with yet more plumbing issues, because this house has the crappiest pipes (no pun intended) of any house I&#8217;ve ever inhabited. So instead of walking around the neighborhood for a nice, invigorating and calming session of exercise and prayer like I&#8217;d planned, I ended up instead walking all over Home Depot with Matt looking for a toilet auger (after I hiked all the way to the back to use their restroom because ours was unusable).</p> <p>Thankfully, the auger did the trick, so at least we can use our bathroom now. But it&#8217;s now almost 3:30 PM and I haven&#8217;t actually accomplished anything useful. Which might not be so bad if I wasn&#8217;t already looking at a hectic week and an overflowing work load.</p> <p>And oh, good! The bulb on my bedside lamp just burned out, and I&#8217;m not sure we have any light bulbs in stock. It just gets better and better.</p> <p>Here at last is some (tentative) good news, though &#8212; OpenOffice started up just fine and the book file has all of my changes and notes. I&#8217;m hesitant to officially declare it as good news because it remains to be seen whether it will let me do my work without crashing. I really need to step away from this infuriating devil-machine for a little while before I find that out.</p> <p>&#8220;But what about your goals for this week?&#8221; you might be asking. This week, my goals are simple, as there is really only one goal: to get through this week with my sanity and peace intact. So far, today I&#8217;ve already bungled that goal. Hopefully the rest of the week will be better.</p> <p>By the way, this may be the only blog post I end up having time for this week. We&#8217;ll just have to play it by ear.</p> <p>How about you, dear reader? Any big stuff to accomplish this week? Anything going on where you could use some cheering on? PLEASE tell me your Monday is going better than mine. If not, let it all out in the comments, where I promise virtual hugs and pats on the back and there, there&#8217;s.</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/let-me-tell-you-about-how-ridiculous-this-day-is/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/168593.html?view=comments#comments computer woes freelancing plumbing woes a sensible wife life blather mondays goals public 0 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/168001.html Wed, 04 Mar 2015 14:30:31 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/168001.html <div style="width:310px" class=""><img class="" src="https://imgprx.livejournal.net/2fd8c3d9ea317ee7131724c9f70c071f4abf0754/N1PGUWfoCbSOFMcaf4oXCyZb1aHGfwXJwMvBeg79M1tcFErlb9YNgf55fMrQa7eiG5VS4RP8W6DnF9vsh71ZYI1iA5tIr_t6pz07IyqlyvoaoIGiklxkZnY4hlZhLyxqgtg1LKTrPeB_ElljHhAJjw" alt="Into the Woods image via WSJ" width="300" height="385" loading="lazy" /><p class="">Take it from Into the Woods &#8211; getting what you want isn&#8217;t a guaranteed recipe for happiness.</p></div> <p>I haven&#8217;t seen the recent film adaptation of <em>Into the Woods</em>, but I&#8217;ve seen a couple of iterations of the stage version and mainlined the Original Broadway Cast recording enough times during the heyday of my Broadway geekdom to be familiar with the story&#8217;s themes. It&#8217;s easy to sum the story&#8217;s message up as, &#8220;Be careful what you wish for,&#8221; but I think it goes a little deeper than that. In this, the real world, where wishes aren&#8217;t magically granted after undergoing a quest through the dark and dangerous woods, a more relatable but no less true message is this: don&#8217;t pin your happiness on accomplishing your dreams.</p> <p>I&#8217;m currently living one of my dreams. I&#8217;ve actually realized a few dreams in the last seven years or so. Back when I had a steady, safe job as a cubicle jockey, I dreamed of being a freelancer, and all of the apparent freedom that went with that. Freedom to set my own schedule, to write when I feel like writing, to decide who to work for and which jobs to take on, to not put on pants or makeup unless I just felt like it. It all seemed so awesome.</p> <p>And then I got laid off during the lowest point of the Great Recession when there were no jobs to be had, and I turned to freelancing out of sheer desperation and survival (note: these are not ideal circumstances under which to begin a freelancing career. I really don&#8217;t recommend it if you can avoid it). And yes, I won&#8217;t lie: certain aspects of freelancing ARE awesome, like the aforementioned flexibility, and that whole pants and makeup thing.</p> <p>But freelancing &#8212; especially doing it without a safety net &#8212; was fraught with its own set of problems, and it turned out to be very, very hard work, with long hours, and no benefits or job security.</p> <p>Initially, I had dreamed of being a freelance editor. I had even started taking editing classes through Mediabistro right before I got hit with the layoff. I finished up the classes post-layoff, but I couldn&#8217;t get anyone to hire me as an editor. At the time, the only ones hiring freelance editors were mainly newspapers, magazines and websites, but thanks to budget cutbacks, they were turning more and more to having their writers edit their own work.</p> <p>So instead I set myself up as a virtual assistant. I offered copy editing as part of my service package, and a few people took me up on it, but I also offered my HTML/CSS skills and that proved to be way more popular. It was also something I could charge more for, so after a while I moved the focus of my business to web design and development, even though that&#8217;s not something I ever really enjoyed doing as more than a hobby.</p> <p>Still, business was good for a while, and I was living out my freelancing dream, so I tried not to complain. And then the web design business went belly-up and I went months&#8211;long, scary, stressful months&#8211;without being able to find work of any kind. I found a lifeboat in content mills, but I&#8217;ll tell you bluntly, writing for content mills sucks. It sucks your energy, it sucks your spirit, it sucks you in like quicksand and doesn&#8217;t want to let go. I don&#8217;t recommend that either.</p> <p>Sometime in the midst of all of that I&#8217;d managed to realize another dream &#8212; to become a published author. I caved in and turned to self-publishing to make it happen, which at the time felt a little like cheating, but I no longer feel that way. It feels great to have my books out there, and I have no regrets about how I went about it. Another dream realized &#8212; and when dreams get realized, they become reality, and reality continues to be difficult. Self-publishing is a lot of hard work. There are a lot of ups and downs. It&#8217;s worth it, but it&#8217;s far from the easy path, if there is such a thing.</p> <p>And now I&#8217;m finding that my initial dream of being a freelance editor is coming true. I took a very meandering path to get here, and  I&#8217;m very happy and grateful to have finally arrived. But it&#8217;s not all lounging in my PJs and reading all day. It is, again, a lot of hard work, and fraught with its own set of problems and difficulties.</p> <p>You may see a pattern beginning to emerge here.</p> <p>Ultimately, my big dream is to make a full-time living from writing and publishing my own novels &#8212; to have them sell well enough that I don&#8217;t need to have any kind of &#8220;day job,&#8221; freelance or otherwise. I like to daydream about it and in my daydreams I have all this free time on my hands. I only need to work a couple of hours a day to make my word count, after which I can be free to play around online and have a clean and orderly house and craft and read and watch TV and basically spend the rest of the day doing whatever the heck I feel like doing.</p> <p>Of course I know that in reality, writing and producing quality books takes a lot of time and hard work. Selling books takes even more time and hard work. Once I&#8217;m making a living as a novelist, if that day ever comes, my days probably won&#8217;t look that much different than they do now. I&#8217;ll still be sitting here in my pajama pants, trying to balance my laptop precariously on a lap filled with furbabies, still wishing my house could be cleaner and fighting the temptation to watch last night&#8217;s episode of whatever and forcing myself to get work done, it&#8217;ll just be a slightly different type of work. But it will be work, and it will be fraught with its own set of problems and difficulties.</p> <p>I&#8217;ve come to realize over the years that life is a lot more akin to a video game than to a storybook: reaching a goal or realizing a dream doesn&#8217;t mean achieving happily ever after. Rather, it means you level up to a whole new set of challenges.</p> <p>Does that mean dreams aren&#8217;t worth pursuing? Of course not. As much as I fantasize about getting to take it easy, I subscribe to the notion that most things that are worth doing are hard. This looks kind of insane on paper, but I think most people are this flavor of insane. Things that require hard work are usually more rewarding than things that are easy.</p> <p>I mean, sure, a Saturday afternoon spent lying on the couch mainlining your favorite show on Netflix is a reward unto itself. But after a whole week of that? Chances are, you&#8217;re going to start to feel like you&#8217;re wasting your life.</p> <p>On the other hand, after a week of putting in hard work in the pursuit of something worthwhile, you&#8217;ll feel perfectly justified in spending that afternoon being a couch potato. You&#8217;ve earned a break, and knowing that lets you relax and enjoy it. Not so crazy after all.</p> <p>I really think that even if your day-to-day life looked like a Corona commercial, you&#8217;d still have problems: sand in your shorts, having to worry about sunburn, plus eventually just sitting there sipping beer and staring out at the ocean is bound to get boring and you&#8217;re going to want to go somewhere and do something that involves having to put up with people and traffic and all of life&#8217;s little frustrations.</p> <p>Problems and hardship are a constant part of life. Achieving your dreams won&#8217;t deliver you from having to deal with hard stuff. There will always be a new set of challenges and things to complain about. Which is why it&#8217;s a really bad idea to look to your dreams to make you happy. Contentment is a daily state of mind, and there&#8217;s joy to be found in the pursuit.</p> <p>All of which is to remind myself to be grateful and enjoy finally being a freelance editor, and try not to complain too much about the new challenges it brings, or spend too much time daydreaming about being a full-time novelist, but to do what I need to to achieve that dream, too.</p> <p>What do you think, dear reader? Do you agree or disagree? What dreams are you chasing, and how do you expect your life to change when you catch them? I&#8217;d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/on-leveling-up-and-achieving-your-dreams-its-not-all-its-cracked-up-to-be/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/168001.html?view=comments#comments writing into the woods editing freelancing a sensible wife quitting your dayjob achieving your dreams public 1 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/167572.html Fri, 27 Feb 2015 20:13:13 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/167572.html <p>So, Leonard Nimoy passed away. I&#8217;m not usually one to jump on the celebrity death commentary bandwagon, but I gotta say, this one hurts. But it&#8217;s a comfort, at least, to know that he did, indeed, live long and prosper.</p> <p>I wish I could think of something more poignant or elegant to say, but I&#8217;m too busy being bummed. Besides, his final tweet does a better job of it than I could:</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP</p> <p>&mdash; Leonard Nimoy (@TheRealNimoy) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheRealNimoy/status/569762773204217857" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">February 23, 2015</a></p></blockquote> <p></p> <p>Thanks for many perfect moments and memories, Mr. Nimoy.</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/he-lived-long-and-prospered/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/167572.html?view=comments#comments pop culture star trek sadness internet leonard nimoy television movies spock public 0 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/167328.html Sat, 21 Feb 2015 00:27:42 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/167328.html <p><img class="" src="https://farm5.static.flickr.com/4064/5158937321_a062841b50.jpg" alt="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4064/5158937321_a062841b50.jpg" width="300" height="225" loading="lazy" />Step 1: Get a new story idea that you&#8217;re totally stoked to write.</p> <p>Step 2: Spend hours outlining and plotting that puppy.</p> <p>Step 3: Start writing!</p> <p>Step 4: Write about three chapters, then decide your B plot should be your A plot and your A plot should be put aside for the next book in the series.</p> <p>Step 5: Throw everything out, including the outline and start pantsing it from the beginning.</p> <p>Step 6: Just as momentum starts to build, have life become unusually hectic and force you to stop writing for about a month.</p> <p>Step 7: Get back on that horse. Make progress. Sluggish progress, but still, progress.</p> <p>Step 8: Get to what you think is the halfway point and celebrate!</p> <p>Step 9: Get a little bit past the halfway point and realize you have no idea what needs to happen next. Spend days opening the file, staring at it while munching Cheetos, then closing it without writing anything.</p> <p>Step 10: Feel like an utter failure, fraud and phony who will never finish another book again. Eat more Cheetos.</p> <p>Step 11: Debate whether to throw it all out and start over, or keep going, knowing that probably at least 50% of it will have to be completely rewritten.</p> <p>Step 12: Decide to keep going, because a finished broken draft is better than an unfinished draft and you&#8217;ll never finish if you keep going back to square one.</p> <p>Step 13: Push yourself over that wall, bit by bit, one word at a time.</p> <p>Step 14: Get sudden inspiration as to how everything comes together and get totally stoked.</p> <p>Step 15: Write like the wind!</p> <p>Step 16: Reach the end. Collapse. Have some celebratory Cheetos. Try not to think about all the rewriting ahead.</p> <p>***</p> <p>Currently, I&#8217;m at steps 9, 10 and 11 as regards <em>Ghost of a Chance.</em> I haven&#8217;t written on it all week, save for 334 words on Monday that I&#8217;m pretty sure are going to get deleted. I think the problem is that I&#8217;m at a point where what I feel is best for the main character and the story is conflicting with my own personal morals and values.</p> <p>That might sound odd, but for a writer who happens to be a Christ follower but who doesn&#8217;t market herself as a &#8220;Christian Author,&#8221; this tends to be a thing that happens. My characters want to have sex! But they&#8217;re not married! And my mom might read this! And people from church! And what will God think? Will I be glorifying sin? Am I gonna get in trouble? Arrgh!</p> <p>I always end up going with what&#8217;s best for the story and truest to the character. After all, not all my characters share my beliefs and values, so it would be weird for them to behave as though they did. Still, as a rule of thumb I try to write things I won&#8217;t be too embarrassed for my mom to read, and sometimes that rule gives me anxiety.</p> <p>Sometimes that rule has to go out the window. This may be one of those times.</p> <p>***</p> <p>What about my end-of-week update on how I did on my goals for the week? Here it is: outside of getting caught up on my freelance editing queue, I got frick-all done besides. Between the weather and hormones, and all of the gluten- and cheese-filled comfort foods those two things compelled me to munch on all week, my focus and energy levels were shot. This means I&#8217;m going to have to spend tomorrow doing our taxes, but really, I&#8217;m just happy to be caught up on the client stuff, and I&#8217;m really, really glad it&#8217;s Friday.</p> <p>How did your week go, dear reader? Better than mine, I hope. And for the writers in my audience, what kind of conflicts tend to derail your writing, at least temporarily? I want to hear all about it in the comments!</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/how-to-write-a-novel-in-16-easy-steps/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/167328.html?view=comments#comments ghost of a chance productivity writing faith life blather public 2 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/167001.html Wed, 18 Feb 2015 14:56:18 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/167001.html <div style="width:260px" class=""><img class="" src="https://imgprx.livejournal.net/71179d84859e6c0eea1b7fe7560751d0b6cd347b/N1PGUWfoCbSOFMcaf4oXC8hhSjp5GCDh4ngDyQAirT1FQnpOuEMxIeZ014uq_0Aq7Tqq2ISBviUq3jP8wbbux3w6E1INTwli8nrgzWT-2Pc" alt="http://cdn.sheknows.com/filter/l/gallery/buffy.jpg" width="250" height="358" loading="lazy" /><p class="">Your &#8220;strong female character&#8221; doesn&#8217;t have to be a Buffy clone . . . although she&#8217;s not a bad template to start with.</p></div> <p>I see variations of this question from time to time on writing blogs and forums: “how do I write ___ female characters?” Usually the blank is filled with either “strong” or “convincing.” I also see various answers. The most recent iteration was on <a href="http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2015/02/16/how-strong-female-characters-still-end-up-weak-and-powerless-or-do-they-pass-the-action-figure-test/" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Terrible Minds</a>, wherein Chuck Wendig makes the very excellent point that making a female character physically strong does not make her well-developed.</p> <p>But what I want to know is, are we women really so mysterious and difficult to write? Granted, there are some differences in how men and women process information and emotions that can be useful to know about when developing your characters. Men tend to be better at compartmentalizing whereas women tend more to let the different aspects of their day mingle and interact.</p> <p>For example, say (hypothetically) my husband and I have an argument early in the morning. He’s going to have an easier time setting it aside to focus on his work and other relationships, whereas I’m more likely to stew and obsess and let it affect every aspect of my day until we resolve our disagreement and make up. But other than that, we both feel the same things: hurt, angry, frustrated, sad, etc., because minor gender differences aside, we’re both human.</p> <p>And that’s the key to writing convincing/effective/strong female characters: remembering that women are first and foremost PEOPLE, just like you. We feel the same things and react the same way to situations and circumstances as you do. We, by and large, have many of the same interests, basic desires and motivations.</p> <p>There may be some women out there who only ever want to talk about men and shoes and hair care products or whatever, just as there may be some women who only ever want to talk about their kids and housework and what pregnancy and breastfeeding did to their bodies, but these women are in the minority (and most likely women who appear to fall into these categories only do so in certain company or during certain phases of their lives and don’t deserve to be caricaturized like this).</p> <p>Interesting women, MOST women &#8212; women worthy of being protagonists &#8212; might be interested in these things but they’re also interested in art and politics and religion and books and TV and film and pop culture and current events and their families and their pets and music and crafting and making art and food and cooking and good restaurants and good beer and good wine and good Scotch and comic books and role playing games and video games and sports, and, and&#8230;the list could go on forever.</p> <p>Women generally want the same things men do: to be loved, accepted, understood, to have people in their lives who they can talk to and count on, for life to be more easy and uncomplicated than hard, to avoid drama, to get a good night’s sleep, to be respected and treated like competent adults, to be recognized and rewarded for accomplishments, to be emotionally supported and encouraged in pursuit of their goals. Women have big dreams and desires that often don’t include landing a man and/or having babies (although some women do dream of being wives and mothers, but that’s usually not ALL they dream of, just like how men who dream of having families someday also have other pursuits).</p> <p>Want to write a strong/effective/convincing female character? Start with striking out “female” and just focus on writing a strong/effective/convincing CHARACTER. This doesn’t mean you should just write a man with breasts. What it <i>does</i> mean is that your focus should not be on making your character convincingly female, but on making her convincingly <i>human.</i></p> <p>Give her quirks and complications and interesting interests and desires and realistic motivations and logical reactions. Make her imperfect and screwed up in interesting ways that help drive the plot. Give her weaknesses that balance her strengths, and vice versa. Make her smart enough and emotionally strong enough to keep her head and take care of herself and others in a crisis.</p> <p>Give her steel-toed boots and a big gun or martial arts training or superpowers if you want but know that physical strength is not a substitute for emotional and spiritual strength. Don’t make her so tough that she doesn’t have a soft side, or so soft that she can’t be tough when it’s required.</p> <p>Just look at the character who started the whole &#8220;tiny butt-kicking girl&#8221; trend &#8212; Buffy Summers. Buffy is physically strong, yes. But what makes her a compelling character is not that she can beat up vampires. What makes Buffy a great character is that she fights, and survives, emotional battles that often take a greater toll on her than her many physical altercations. Buffy can train her body to be able to take on the biggest, baddest hell-beast out there, but nothing can prepare her for betrayal, or having to slay her first love, or losing her mom, or battling severe depression, or getting involved in an abusive relationship and having to find a way to heal from all of that. It&#8217;s not the super-powered Slayer side of Buffy that makes you care about her; it&#8217;s the human side, with her normal human desires, and all of the totally relatable human travails that she endures.</p> <p>And <i>that’s</i> how you write a strong, convincing, interesting female character.</p> <p>Did I miss anything? Let me know what you think makes a great female character in the comments, and while you’re at it, tell us some of your favorite female characters. I’ll start: Elizabeth Bennet, Jane Eyre, Buffy Summers, Leia Organa, Marion Ravenwood, Ellen Ripley, Sarah Connor, Kerrin Murphy, Suzannah Dean, Diana Scully, Olivia Dunham, Michonne, Aeryn Sun, Kate Beckett and Abby Mills, to name a few.</p> <p>Your turn!</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/how-to-write-insert-adjective-female-characters/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/167001.html?view=comments#comments writing buffy the vampire slayer pop culture writetip character development writing advice strong female characters television movies public 0 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/166891.html Sat, 14 Feb 2015 00:24:05 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/166891.html <p><a class="" href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/bullet-journal.jpg" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><img class="" src="https://imgprx.livejournal.net/a7d97b7523bcdd00f6ccff22f1bb9ab1e201f7b1/N1PGUWfoCbSOFMcaf4oXC0Rjm3EJ0w3cVmtHv9c2PQRtNm94uLVIcR0xzOb05W9q28jrsiomx6OXZZlYzjfAaYQRz3R8xJxVQYVsPPWs87ruwCvpUuqgstgr6BI5sdTHae8PSkoUTdd-B_FP6WG9rQ" alt="bullet-journal" width="300" height="225" loading="lazy" /></a>I&#8217;m still liking my bullet journal. I wasn&#8217;t able to experiment with it this week like I wanted to, but in its basic form, it got the job done.</p> <p>I didn&#8217;t meet all my goals this week, but it seems I never really do. Let&#8217;s look at how I did.</p> <p><b>Writing/Publishing</b></p> <ul> <li>Write at least 250 words per day on Ghost</li> </ul> <p>HA HA! No. I think I managed a little over 300 words on Monday and over 400 on Tuesday, and nothing after that.</p> <ul> <li><del>Let my mailing list know about my <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/restless-spirits-is-now-perma-free/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">free book</a>.</del></li> <li><del>Write and schedule 3 blog posts (this one counts!)</del></li> <li>Start reading <a title="Amazon affiliate link" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005DC68NI/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B005DC68NI&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=ritalinjunkie&amp;linkId=M5ORGBD4R4RZIY56" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><i>Let’s Get Digital </i></a>by <a href="https://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">David Gaughran</a>.</li> </ul> <p>Nope, but I <em>did</em> finally finish Stephen King&#8217;s <em>Dark Tower </em>series last night. So I guess I&#8217;ll read LGD before I start in on another novel.</p> <p><b>Freelancing</b></p> <p>I got the big things that were making me twitchy crossed off my list, and I can take the whole weekend off with a clear conscious, so mission accomplished. Hallelujah.</p> <p><b>Home/Health/Other</b></p> <ul> <li><del>Stretch/work out at least 3 times this week (one down, two to go)</del></li> <li><del>Vacuum the house</del></li> <li>Wipe down sinks and maintenance clean 15 minutes/day</li> </ul> <p>Ha ha ha ha!</p> <ul> <li><del>Look into whether we can afford to get me health insurance before the deadline</del></li> <li>Complete various financial paperwork that needs to get done</li> </ul> <p>Nope.</p> <ul> <li><del>Finish my crochet bunting (pieces are blocked &#8212; just need to assemble)</del></li> <li><del>Stick to my low GI/GF/DF diet all week long</del></li> <li><del>Vote in Tuesday’s local election</del></li> </ul> <p>In my defense, I didn&#8217;t sleep that great this week, either. Also, Matt found reasons to go run errands every morning this week, save Monday, and all that going has left me worn out. Morning errands also make it really difficult for me to get focused and find my groove the rest of the day, too. If I had my way, we&#8217;d go do that stuff in the afternoons/early evenings after all the work is done, but he likes to get to places as soon as they open and beat the morning rush. And to be fair, traffic in the afternoons/evenings is a biznatch (don&#8217;t tell Tucco we said that) (oh yeah we also found time to watch <em>Better Call Saul</em> and so far it&#8217;s great).</p> <p>How did your week go?</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/weekly-plan-follow-up-february-9-13-2015/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/166891.html?view=comments#comments writing freelancing planning health and fitness a sensible wife self-publishing ocd organization public 0 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/166436.html Wed, 11 Feb 2015 15:01:24 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/166436.html <p><img class="" src="https://imgprx.livejournal.net/44504db600b83f4f060199c8072b2255010b6a9b/N1PGUWfoCbSOFMcaf4oXC_geju03Q0Yd85w-FYr4-ht30gzIAeA_EixUxo3__tIMLjtROLW8wJe-WlxdmqQ8DMayXkd4N-Fa8hdJbzsHLx2MOzc-w4X_dX0jhATSekJfXG_7tqdeMGiC403mJkUsshpXKv9Bo3LoA1DypjLw4z9XMEqdd81d0UmBk4T06i0VxinUaOR583YrtOOJdRegutx8hTnBvEsMIG4Q7JB7K3mN6N0VASMWICgXSufkyXhH" alt="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51TdgHrJGpL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-v3-big,TopRight,0,-55_SX278_SY278_PIkin4,BottomRight,1,22_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg" width="250" height="250" loading="lazy" />I’ve been trying to keep my topics here more general because I know not everyone who visits my blog are writers, but sometimes I feel compelled to share certain things for the sake of the writers who I know do read this here blog (note to writers: if you want me to post more writing/publishing content, holla!). For example, I recently stumbled across a couple of resources that I think are going to be game-changers for me when it comes to marketing and selling my indie books.</p> <p>The first of these is <a href="http://noorosha.com/what-are-reader-magnets/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Nick Stephenson and his concept of Reader Magnets</a> (hat tip to <a href="http://www.thecreativepenn.com/blog/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Joanna Penn</a>). This is not necessarily a new concept, but he lays out the precise steps involved in using freebies to build your mailing list for dense people like me who have trouble figuring it out on their own (and he does so for free). Funny thing is, there are only two steps&#8211;maybe that’s why I had so much trouble figuring this out on my own. It’s too dadgum simple.</p> <p>At any rate, I implemented these steps a couple of weekends ago (hence why <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/restless-spirits-is-now-perma-free/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><i>Restless Spirits</i> is now perma-free</a>), and already I’ve added more than 10 new mailing list subscribers, without doing anything else. That might not sound like an impressive result, but considering it took me over two years just to get 30 people to sign up on my own, that’s a pretty big deal.</p> <p>I also signed up to Nick’s free video course, <a href="http://www.yourfirst10kreaders.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Your First 10K Readers</a>, a series of three videos explaining how people find books on the various online bookstores. Video #2, which explains how to leverage keywords on Amazon, was particularly helpful at increasing the Amazon rankings for <i>Restless Spirits.</i> The third video pretty much recaps the first two and then goes over the Reader Magnets steps, so at nearly an hour long, you can probably skip it if you’re busy and not miss very much.</p> <p>Finally, in order to make <i>Restless Spirits</i> perma-free, I had to first distribute it for free everywhere <i>but</i> Amazon, and then wait for Amazon to price match it. Since you can’t list your books for free by going directly through Nook Press, Kobo, etc., I used <a href="https://draft2digital.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Draft2Digital</a> to distribute it. This is not really that new of a service, but I haven’t used it in the past because I was under the impression that it’s a paid service. And it is, sort of; they keep 10% of the royalties you earn through them. But they also track sales on all of your non-’zon sales channels, and you can publish free books through them at no cost.</p> <p>This is exceedingly useful, as before the only way to do this was via Smashwords, which, if you’ve published there, you know is a PITA. Plus, D2D recently added Tolino to their distribution channels, which is the largest online bookseller in Europe next to Amazon&#8211;and as far as I know, D2D is the only way to get your books listed there if you’re in the US.</p> <p>What about you, readers (and writers!)? Are there any tools or resources you can’t do without? Have you gotten any good advice that turned out to be a game-changer for your own writing career? Please share your tips in the comments!</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/game-changing-resources-for-indie-authors/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/166436.html?view=comments#comments self-publishing tools book marketing how to build your indie author mailing l resources indie publishing self-publishing public 0 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/166208.html Mon, 09 Feb 2015 21:54:50 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/166208.html <p>So as I mentioned on Friday, no sooner did I share my weekly planning method here last week than I up and decided to try something new, and that new something is keeping a <a href="http://www.bulletjournal.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">bullet journal</a>. If you don’t know what that is, here’s a quick intro video, or you can skip it and read my explanation below:</p> <p><lj-embed id="36" /></p> <p>If you didn’t watch the video, basically a bullet journal is a handy, all-in-one way to keep your calendar and To Do lists, along with pretty much anything else you want to keep track of, all in one place, for those of us who do this better with pen and paper than with gadgets and apps.</p> <p>It’s kind of an evolved version of what I was already doing. The genius thing about it &#8212; at least, for me, the thing that totally makes it work &#8212; is the index page. Not just its existence, but the way it’s set up so that you don’t have to have all of your various projects and topics on consecutive pages, and yet it’s still organized and easy to find what you need.</p> <p>I also like that it’s highly adaptable. There’s no limit to what you can include. So far, mine includes my daily tasks and deadlines along with Bible memory verses, grocery lists and daily pill reminders, and a section dedicated to tasks relating to growing my author mailing list. The daily lists include bullets that are basically mini diary entries mixed in among my To Dos.</p> <div style="width:330px" class=""><a class="" title="My daily bullet journal for the first week" href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/bullet-journal.jpg" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><img class="" src="https://imgprx.livejournal.net/ec3bc6fcb69e983811fe9527ca29420e2cedd8af/N1PGUWfoCbSOFMcaf4oXC0Rjm3EJ0w3cVmtHv9c2PQRtNm94uLVIcR0xzOb05W9q28jrsiomx6OXZZlYzjfAaYQRz3R8xJxVQYVsPPWs87pO9KwsXj-Mzz-X7IBl6Npc" alt="My daily bullet journal for the first week" width="320" height="240" loading="lazy" /></a><p class="">My daily bullet journal for the first week</p></div> <p>The other thing that makes this workable for me is how easy it is to migrate tasks and keep track of them once they’re migrated. This is a must because of my tendency to over-schedule myself and overestimate how much I can get done in a day. Of course I could already do this with my old planning method, but not without cluttering up the page, plus my old way made this stuff difficult to track.</p> <p><a href="http://misszoot.com/bulletjournal/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">This blog post</a> has a lot of great ideas for customizing your bullet journal. She also has printable calendar grid pages you can paste in if the list format doesn’t do it for you.</p> <p>The only drawback is that it doesn’t really include a way to record and track weekly goals. I’m still pondering how to incorporate that, or whether I really need to. So far, just going over the big monthly task list and incorporating items from that into my daily lists seems to be working. It might even be working better for me, but the jury’s still out on that. At any rate, maybe these weekly blog posts will serve in that regard.</p> <p>Speaking of which, on to this week’s goals!</p> <p>For the purposes of these posts, I’ll keep the three main categories that I introduced last week.</p> <p><b>Writing/Publishing</b></p> <ul> <li>Write at least 250 words per day on Ghost (it’s not much, but I’m anticipating another busy week, and this should be doable. It’s definitely better than not writing at all).</li> <li>Let my mailing list know about my <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/restless-spirits-is-now-perma-free/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">free book</a>.</li> <li>Write and schedule 3 blog posts (this one counts!)</li> <li>Start reading <a title="Amazon affiliate link" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005DC68NI/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B005DC68NI&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=ritalinjunkie&amp;linkId=M5ORGBD4R4RZIY56" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><i>Let’s Get Digital </i></a>by <a href="https://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">David Gaughran</a>.</li> </ul> <p><b>Freelancing</b></p> <p>I’m still behind here, even though I ended up working Saturday to help catch up (at least that was a formatting gig, which wasn’t too mentally taxing, and I was able to listen to a podcast while I got it done). My goal for this week is mainly to meet my deadlines and close out my active projects to make room for new ones, and to get it all done by Friday so I won’t get myself stuck back in the dreaded cycle of having to work weekends because I’m exhausted and useless during the week.</p> <p><b>Home/Health/Other</b></p> <ul> <li>Stretch/work out at least 3 times this week (one down, two to go)</li> <li><del>Vacuum the house</del> (done!)</li> <li>Wipe down sinks and maintenance clean 15 minutes/day</li> <li>Look into whether we can afford to get me health insurance before the deadline</li> <li>Complete various financial paperwork that needs to get done</li> <li>Finish my crochet bunting (pieces are blocked &#8212; just need to assemble)</li> <li>Stick to my low GI/GF/DF diet all week long</li> <li>Vote in Tuesday’s local election</li> </ul> <p>So those are my goals for the week. What about you? Do you have any pressing goals to share? Are you trying anything new, or maybe quitting something old? How are those New Year’s Resolutions coming now that we’re almost midway through February, anyway? I’d LOVE to hear about it in the comments!</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/goals-for-february-9-14-and-my-introduction-to-the-bullet-journal/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/166208.html?view=comments#comments writing freelancing planning health and fitness a sensible wife self-publishing ocd organization public 0 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/166141.html Fri, 06 Feb 2015 21:00:37 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/166141.html <p>I wish I could say that sharing my weekly plan was super motivational and helped me kick this week in the hinder; but alas, I really struggled to accomplish anything this week.</p> <p>I blame the Super Bowl. Well, not the actual game, but the social event and the cleaning and preparations leading up to it, which kept me from really having any time to properly rest and recharge my batteries. When I don’t do this on the weekend, I end up running down midway through the week and becoming virtually useless. Such is what happened this week.</p> <p>So how’d I do as far as meeting my goals? Not great. Let’s take a closer look:</p> <p><b>Writing/Publishing/Author Platform</b></p> <ul> <li>2500 words on GHOST OF A CHANCE (500 words per day)</li> </ul> <p>I managed to write about 1790 words total &#8212; 1112 on Tuesday and another 679 on Wednesday. Monday I used up all my words on prepping blog posts for the week, and by yesterday I was starting to fall behind on my freelancing projects and had to skip it. Same for today, although I’m hoping to fit in a brief writing session before I shut down this evening.</p> <ul> <li><del>Write and schedule at least 3 blog posts (this one counts!)</del></li> <li><del>Finish the “First 10K Readers” video series (more on this in a later post)</del></li> <li><del>Implement mailing list advice from the training video</del></li> </ul> <p>These are about the only goals I actually met this week.</p> <ul> <li>Read three chapters of<a href="https://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> David Gaughran</a>’s<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005DC68NI/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B005DC68NI&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=ritalinjunkie&amp;linkId=M5ORGBD4R4RZIY56" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> LET’S GET DIGITAL</a>.</li> </ul> <p>I haven’t even managed to start this book yet.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><b>Freelancing</b></p> <ul> <li>2 ghost blog posts and 4 Facebook page updates for steady client</li> </ul> <p>I needed clarification on what the client wanted for these posts, and while I was waiting for them to get back to me my book editing and formatting queue filled up and I had to move on. So this still needs to get done.</p> <ul> <li>2 editing gigs via Fiverr</li> </ul> <p>I delegated these to Matt.</p> <ul> <li>1 book formatting gig via Fiverr</li> </ul> <p>This one turned out to be a lot more work than I’d anticipated. I’m hoping to get it done by tonight&#8211;if I don’t, I’ll have to work tomorrow, which I’m really trying to avoid so as not to perpetuate the whole busy weekend, useless work week cycle.</p> <ul> <li>Add graphic design and author platform services to this here website</li> </ul> <p>This is going to involve moving my portfolio over and writing a bunch of new copy, so it’s proving difficult to fit in.</p> <ul> <li><del>Update Fiverr profile info to include Matt</del></li> </ul> <p>Done!</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><b>Home/Health/Other</b></p> <ul> <li>Stretch daily</li> <li>20 minutes of maintenance cleaning daily</li> <li>Dust &amp; vacuum the living room</li> <li>Finish the finance book I’m reading</li> <li>Block and finish my crochet bunting</li> <li>Meal plan based on what’s on hand/make Sprouts/Aldi lists</li> <li>Make a pot of goulash w/ thawed ground turkey before it goes bad</li> </ul> <p>Ha ha ha! Nope. None of these. I think I stretched on Monday, or possibly Tuesday? But it didn’t happen again after that. I did manage pretty well to maintain the house, but not in any kind of organized fashion. I’ve barely had time to read and haven’t had the energy to touch my bunting, and our kitchen sink is currently having plumbing issues that makes cooking problematic, so we’re relegated to what we can either eat cold or pop in the microwave so as not to dirty too many dishes.</p> <p>So… not the most productive week ever, or even in recent history. I think I may have overscheduled myself&#8211;I have a terrible tendency to overestimate how much I can do in a certain amount of time, and underestimate how long it will take me to finish things&#8211;which is something I need to keep working on, but I think the main problem, as stated at the top of the post, is that I just need to get some proper rest so I&#8217;ll be more focused.</p> <div style="width:310px" class=""><a class="" title="My bullet journal, so far" href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/bullet-journal.jpg" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><img class="" src="https://imgprx.livejournal.net/a7d97b7523bcdd00f6ccff22f1bb9ab1e201f7b1/N1PGUWfoCbSOFMcaf4oXC0Rjm3EJ0w3cVmtHv9c2PQRtNm94uLVIcR0xzOb05W9q28jrsiomx6OXZZlYzjfAaYQRz3R8xJxVQYVsPPWs87ruwCvpUuqgstgr6BI5sdTHae8PSkoUTdd-B_FP6WG9rQ" alt="My bullet journal, so far" width="300" height="225" loading="lazy" /></a><p class="">My bullet journal, so far</p></div> <p>One thing I did, though &#8212; I forgot to share the “if I have time” items I’d listed, one of of which was, “look into bullet journaling.” I managed to fit that in Monday evening, and by Tuesday morning, I’d thrown out the planning method I shared on Monday (or at least, set it aside for the time being) to try this method. So far I’m liking it, and I think it’s an improvement over the other method. I’ll go into more detail about it next Monday, but if you’d like a sneak preview of what I’m talking about, check out these links:</p> <p><a href="http://bulletjournal.com" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Bullet Journal</a></p> <p><a href="http://misszoot.com/bulletjournal/" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">The Post To (Maybe?) End All Bullet Journal Posts</a></p> <p>So did you take up my challenge? How did you do? Were you more or less productive than I managed to be this week? Tell us about it in the comments!</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/weekly-plan-follow-up-february-2-6-2015/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/166141.html?view=comments#comments writing freelancing planning health and fitness a sensible wife self-publishing ocd organization public 0 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/165662.html Thu, 05 Feb 2015 15:00:48 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/165662.html <div style="width:260px" class=""><a class="" title="Image via IMDB" href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/august-osage-county.jpg" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><img class="" src="https://imgprx.livejournal.net/fceeebda6f40d28044e077a486571430dd20f5e3/N1PGUWfoCbSOFMcaf4oXC0Rjm3EJ0w3cVmtHv9c2PQRtNm94uLVIcR0xzOb05W9q28jrsiomx6OXZZlYzjfAaXHpPytYEOGHecei4RyqMf0qmahnX9kv7y-DrLS-dNgZ7SQgqrF71I7mxTAbSv2FaA" alt="Image via IMDB" width="250" height="476" loading="lazy" /></a><p class="">Image via IMDB</p></div> <p>My husband and I sat down to watch this movie last Saturday, mainly out of curiosity. It’s not the sort of thing we usually watch, but it was filmed practically in our backyard, and we felt compelled to see exactly what Benedict Cumberbatch in Oklahoma looks like, because when is that ever likely to happen again?</p> <p>Gotta say, I didn’t care for it. This is partly because I felt like it kind of bashed Oklahoma (and Oklahomans) and perpetuated a lot of unpleasant Okie stereotypes &#8212; poor, bitter, cousin-marrying hicks who are racist against Indians and who knows who else (even though the vast majority of “white” people in Oklahoma are part Indian) but at least the playwright (who also wrote the screenplay) is actually from here, so it was criticism from an insider. Fair ‘nuff, I guess.</p> <p>But mostly it was because this left me feeling the same way most non-musical plays (as well as literary fiction) usually leaves me feeling &#8212; depressed and wondering what, exactly, was the point? The whole “story,” if you can call it that, can pretty much be summed up thusly: angry, unpleasant people sit around sniping at each other in various settings for three acts, the end. There’s no real plot, no clearly identifiable protagonist to root for, no clearly identifiable antagonist because everybody is antagonistic to each other. Nobody arcs &#8212; nobody learns something about themselves or grows as a character; everybody is exactly the same at the end of the movie as they were at the beginning.</p> <p>Bleah. I will never understand why so many literary critics slobber all over this sort of thing and disdain so-called “commercial fiction” &#8212; both genre and mainstream &#8212; that has actual plots and characters that you can care about and root for and actual development of those characters. Especially because doing those things is not easy, and doing those things well is really hard. Do you know what’s easy? Having your characters do nothing but argue for three acts. Bleah.</p> <p>I do understand why this sort of thing works as a play, though. It’s a great showcase for acting. In this case, it made an excellent fight ring for Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts to try to out act one another (it’s telling that I thought the most natural performance came from the one actress in the film that I’d never heard of before; and before the Sherlock fangirls hurt me, Cumberbatch did a pretty good job, too). Still, it seems to me an even better acting challenge is to portray, y’know, character growth. Otherwise known as that little thing that makes a story an actual story.</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/an-okie-reviews-august-osage-county/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/165662.html?view=comments#comments plot pop culture story elements character development august osage county literary fiction vs commercial fiction movies i do reviews sometimes public 0 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/165410.html Tue, 03 Feb 2015 15:01:07 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/165410.html <p>I’ve been gradually making myself over these last few weeks. This was prompted by several things, not the least of which was feeling frumpy-dumpy after weeks of wearing various combinations of layers of fleece and flannel and a big wide knitted headband/earwarmer on my head.</p> <p>It started with a haircut. When we had a warm spell that actually made it too hot for said headband, I realized that my hair had grown out to a really awkward length, and it was time to either commit to growing it long and making friends again with ponytail holders and barrettes, or cutting it short again. I opted for the latter and gave myself a chin-length wavy bob with straight bangs. It turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself.</p> <p>Next, I finally bought some new glasses. They’re just readers; I can’t look at a computer screen or small print for very long without them without giving myself a headache. But my old ones were pretty scratched up, and I was really bored with the frames. The new ones are black/green rectangular frames with a slight cat’s eye thing happening, and I think they’re quite fetching. Better yet, I can actually see out of them, which is nice.</p> <p>Finally, this past Saturday I did something I’ve been meaning to do for quite some time now: I put henna on my hair to cover my ever-increasing number of pure white hairs. I’ve never used henna before, and it was quite the project. After a lot of research and combing through a lot of reviews, I settled on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001ET7LAI/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B001ET7LAI&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=ritalinjunkie&amp;linkId=TNNERLHNLQOKL3EP" title="Amazon affiliate link" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Light Mountain pure henna</a>. Following some suggestions left in the reviews, I added lemon juice and ginger to the mix. The day before, I did a strand test, and after letting it set almost two hours, the strand overall had a lovely boost, just a shade more vibrant than my natural hair color, with the white hairs having turned a coppery gold. The effect was subtle but lovely, and it was just what I wanted.</p> <p>So I repeated everything for the main event &#8212; which, let me tell ya, was messy and tiring; applying henna to your hair is definitely the sort of thing that’s best done with the help of a partner &#8212; and actually shortened the time I left it on … and it came out just a couple shades shy of bright Bozo red. I mean, it’s bright. The picture below doesn’t really do it justice.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="data-instgrm-captioned" data-instgrm-version="4"><div style="padding:8px"> <div style="background:#f8f8f8;line-height:0;margin-top:40px;padding:50% 0;text-align:center;width:100%"> <div></div> </div> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="https://instagram.com/p/yIS25aMfMF/" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">New specs, new &#39;do.</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A photo posted by Jean Bauhaus (@jmbauhaus) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2015-01-21T20:35:26+00:00">Jan 21, 2015 at 12:35pm PST</time></p> </div> </blockquote> <p></p> <p>Note that the white balance in the above pic was off and made my hair look much redder than it actually was at the time. Which doesn&#8217;t really make it a good &#8220;before&#8221; pic to pair with this one&#8230;</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="data-instgrm-captioned" data-instgrm-version="4"><div style="padding:8px"> <div style="background:#f8f8f8;line-height:0;margin-top:40px;padding:50% 0;text-align:center;width:100%"> <div></div> </div> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="https://instagram.com/p/ykmqoYsfPp/" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Henna&#39;d my whitening hair. It came out just a LEETLE brighter than anticipated. #neon #ginger #owmyeyes</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A photo posted by Jean Bauhaus (@jmbauhaus) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2015-02-01T20:27:15+00:00">Feb 1, 2015 at 12:27pm PST</time></p> </div> </blockquote> <p></p> <p>I don’t hate it, but it’s taking some getting used to. It definitely looks better when I’ve got on makeup, and use eyebrow pencil to make my brows match. Otherwise, it looks pretty fake &#8212; and the last thing a true redhead wants is to look like a bottle redhead. Other than that, though, the henna left my hair really soft and manageable. I’ll be sticking with it &#8212; I kind of have to for a while since I bought three boxes (that’s how they were sold on Amazon) &#8212; but I hope I can figure out a way to tone it down a bit next time.</p> <p>At any rate, I’m hoping that my slow makeover and my recently acquired cute green jacket are going to add up to some kick-ass author portraits, just as soon as the weather warms back up enough for Matt and I to head out and do a photo shoot somewhere picturesque.</p> <p>In other news, the friend I thought was coming over on Saturday came over Sunday instead, along with my nephew, so we had a bona-fide Super Bowl party. Matt cooked lots of yummy stuff and I mixed up some dirty margaritas, and the game was close enough to be interesting even to a non-football-fan such as myself, although we were all rooting for the Seahawks (or rather, for NOT TOM BRADY, really), so the ending kinda blew. Still, it was a very nice time overall.</p> <p>The commercials were also pretty disappointing, but there were two that stood out for me: the Liam Neeson “Revenge” one, and the <i>Breaking Bad</i> one, with Walter White having replaced the lady’s pharmacist. I have no idea what that second ad was selling, but it was funny, so good job, I guess?</p> <p>After everyone left, we were both still pretty wired, so we watched a couple eps of <i>Breaking Bad </i>(we’re still in the middle of a nightly BB binge) before turning in, after which we both wanted to read, so it ended up being almost 2 AM before we finally turned out the light and went to sleep. And that is the latest either of us has intentionally stayed up (insomnia notwithstanding) in a very long time.</p> <p>And then our dog woke us up at the usual time this morning, so we’re both very tired.</p> <p>What about you guys? Any changes you’ve made recently, big or small? Did you watch the Super Bowl, or did you find something else to do with your Sunday night? Did you sit around cracking “The more you know” jokes at the finale of Katy Perry’s performance? Does Tom Brady’s face make you want to stab somebody? Let’s hear it in the comments!</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/in-which-i-go-gingerer-and-host-a-super-bowl-shindig/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/165410.html?view=comments#comments super bowl makeover breaking bad uncategorized henna for hair life blather light mountain henna katy perry redhead public 0 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/165166.html Mon, 02 Feb 2015 21:23:12 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/165166.html <div style="width:310px" class=""><a class="" title="What my weekly plan looks like. Don&apos;t mind the vampire slaying implement that&apos;s serving as a paperweight." href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/2015-02-02-Plan.jpg" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><img class="" src="https://imgprx.livejournal.net/fe622b080961d8eefb63af1063894618231710ce/N1PGUWfoCbSOFMcaf4oXC0Rjm3EJ0w3cVmtHv9c2PQRtNm94uLVIcR0xzOb05W9q28jrsiomx6OXZZlYzjfAaZyYQFHlXNogB9CZi6eKYZhF2K318FNi2DzqZAzKWvmaukeuul5d45drPf5vJoVE7A" alt="What my weekly plan looks like. Don&apos;t mind the vampire slaying implement that&apos;s serving as a paperweight." width="300" height="282" loading="lazy" /></a><p class="">What my weekly plan looks like. Don&#8217;t mind the vampire slaying implement that&#8217;s serving as a paperweight.</p></div> <p>At the start of every week, I sit down, collect my thoughts, and write out a plan for the coming week. It’s not an especially detailed plan, and it’s guided by my recently-acquired philosophy of focusing on what’s truly needed and letting God take care of the rest&#8211;a philosophy which has helped to eliminate a lot of stress and overwhelm from my life, let me tell you.</p> <p>At any rate, I was writing out this week’s plan in my work notebook, when I thought to myself, “Hey, Jeanie, I bet there are some OCD list-making geeks like you out there who might actually get something out of seeing this, and might even want to play along at home by posting and sharing their own weekly plan. What say we put this up on ye olde blog?”</p> <p>To which I replied… okay, I didn’t actually reply, because I’m not really <i>that</i> cuckoo. Most of the voices in my head belong to fictional characters, and I am aware that they aren’t real, which makes me perfectly sane, regardless of the fact that I sometimes address myself by name. Right?</p> <p>Yeah.</p> <p>So anyway, I thought that was not the worst idea in the world, and so here begins a new weekly feature wherein I post my plans for the week up on Monday. Hopefully, besides appealing to the aforementioned OCD list-geeks in my audience, it will also help to keep me accountable and on track.</p> <p>But before I get to the plan, here are the guidelines I follow. First, I don’t actually schedule anything at this point. It’s basically just a master list of things that I want/need to accomplish during the week. Second, I break the list down into three broad categories: Writing/Publishing, Freelancing, and Health/Home/Other. Your categories will probably look different, but you get the idea.</p> <p>Third, I do my best to keep it realistic and write down specific, achievable goals. F’rinstance, I don’t write “Draft my novel” or “Clean my house.” Instead I put down, “Write 2,500 words on my WIP” and “Dust and vacuum the living room and wipe down the kitchen counters.” I find that smaller, specific goals or tasks are a lot more likely to actually get done and not create decision paralysis, which is something that’s a big deal for me.</p> <p>I sort my list into three columns, with the above categories as headers. I try not to list more than 5 &#8211; 7 things in each category. Usually, if I go over five, those extra things don’t get done and carry over to the next week. Which is okay, but for the sake of feeling like I actually accomplished something, I generally try to stick to five goals each.</p> <p>One more thing: underneath the list, on the bottom half of the page, I leave plenty of room for notes. Here is where I write down important reminders &#8212; not just appointments and significant dates and such, but also little reminders to myself about proper priorities and what’s truly important. I also list things that I’d like to do in my spare time, if I have any, but that aren’t necessarily needed that week.</p> <p>Without further ado, here is my plan for the first week of February.</p> <p><b>Writing/Publishing/Author Platform</b></p> <ul> <li>2500 words on GHOST OF A CHANCE (500 words per day)</li> <li>Write and schedule at least 3 blog posts (this one counts!)</li> <li>Finish the “First 10K Readers” video series (more on this in a later post)</li> <li>Implement mailing list advice from the training video</li> <li>Read three chapters of <a href="https://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">David Gaughran</a>’s <a title="Amazon affiliate link" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005DC68NI/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B005DC68NI&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=ritalinjunkie&amp;linkId=M5ORGBD4R4RZIY56" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">LET’S GET DIGITAL</a>.</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><b>Freelancing</b></p> <ul> <li>2 ghost blog posts and 4 Facebook page updates for steady client</li> <li>2 editing gigs via Fiverr</li> <li>1 book formatting gig via Fiverr</li> <li>Daily &#8211; read and respond to Fiverr messages and e-mail</li> <li>Add graphic design and author platform services to this here website</li> <li>Update Fiverr profile info to include Matt (he’s learning editing and is getting quite good &#8212; good enough to help out when I’m overbooked)</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><b>Home/Health/Other</b></p> <ul> <li>Stretch daily</li> <li>20 minutes of maintenance cleaning daily</li> <li>Dust &amp; vacuum the living room</li> <li>Finish the finance book I’m reading</li> <li>Block and finish my crochet bunting</li> <li>Meal plan based on what’s on hand/make Sprouts/Aldi lists</li> <li>Make a pot of goulash w/ thawed ground turkey before it goes bad</li> </ul> <p>That’s my plan. Throughout the week, I’ll refer to it as I make my daily To Do lists, which are basically shorter versions of the above, broken down into the same three categories. On Friday, I’ll post a follow-up to review how well I stuck to the plan and how much I actually accomplished.</p> <p>Now it’s your turn! I challenge you to post your own plan for the week on your own blog, and then leave a link to it here in the comments. It doesn’t have to follow my template and it can be as detailed or as streamlined as you want it to be &#8212; I’d love to know how you go about organizing your week. Tell us what works for you!</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/introducing-the-weekly-plan-challenge/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/165166.html?view=comments#comments writing freelancing planning health and fitness a sensible wife self-publishing ocd organization public 0 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/164646.html Thu, 29 Jan 2015 15:04:18 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/164646.html <div style="width:310px" class=""><a class="" title="Some of the gluten-free products from Aldi in my kitchen" href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/2015-01-26-16.31.40.jpg" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><img class="" src="https://imgprx.livejournal.net/e4a3438e59bb043570914d842a3f2294df28b96f/N1PGUWfoCbSOFMcaf4oXC0Rjm3EJ0w3cVmtHv9c2PQRtNm94uLVIcR0xzOb05W9q28jrsiomx6OXZZlYzjfAaR4W7RML-J4Ji1eWQ-J4Qj3FX4KJv-wVDWFLsMB68y2hNxbWcnZeBl8GUiNbhR9Vfg" alt="Aldi gluten free foods" width="300" height="225" loading="lazy" /></a><p class="">Some of the gluten-free products from Aldi in my kitchen</p></div> <p>As you probably know if you’ve been following along here for a while, around the start of last fall I decided to severely limit my gluten intake to see if it helped my thyroid issues and gave me more energy. I’m happy to report that it has indeed.</p> <p>You may recall how in the beginning I was reticent about gluten-free substitutes for all of the wheat-based foods I enjoyed. Flavor was one concern, but a bigger concern was cost. Up to that point, all the GF breads, cookies and the like that I’d seen were on the pricey side.</p> <p>As luck &#8212; or Providence &#8212; would have it, right around the time I decided to avoid gluten, Aldi started rolling out their own line of gluten-free foods, Live G Free. Now, you should know that I love Aldi. It’s not perfect &#8212; Lord knows the produce section at the one we frequent leaves a lot to be desired &#8212; but back when we were on a rice-and-beans budget, this store made us feel like we could eat like kings.</p> <p>Their gluten free stuff is just as affordable, for the most part, but it still took me a while to get around to trying it. This is partly because at first they didn’t offer that much, or at least not that I noticed. But it must’ve proved popular enough for them to expand the line, because now there are quite a few items in the line. This include:</p> <ul> <li>Pretzels</li> <li>Cookie, brownie and pizza dough mixes</li> <li>Breakfast/snack bars</li> <li>Crackers</li> <li>Pasta &#8211; spaghetti, rigatoni and penne</li> <li>Mac &amp; cheese</li> <li>Bread &#8211; white and whole grain</li> <li>Frozen foods including pizza, breaded chicken nuggets, waffles, and Hot-Pocket-style sandwiches</li> </ul> <p>The other reason it took me a while to get around to trying the stuff was concern about flavor. But you never know if you’ll like something until you try it, so a few weeks into my GF venture I bit the bullet. The first thing I tried was the crackers, made primarily from rice flour. They don’t taste like wheat crackers, no, but they’re quite tasty in their own right, and great with tuna or egg salad.</p> <p>The second thing I tried was the fudge brownie flavored breakfast bars. These are actually quite delish, but they’re not very substantial. I keep a couple in my purse for when I have low-blood sugar attacks and start to get <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Hangry" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">hangry </a>while I’m out, and they work in a pinch, but they don’t tide me over very long.</p> <p>Since then I’ve also tried their pasta (the rigatoni), bread and chicken nuggets. I’m actually quite a fan of the whole grain bread and the pasta. The chicken nuggets take a little getting used to, but they’re starting to grow on me.</p> <p>I plan to try out some of their other fare in the coming weeks. I’ve mainly got my eye on the waffles. I’d like to try the Mac &amp; Cheese, but I’m also avoiding dairy, so that’s going to be a real indulgence when I do. At any rate, adding some of these products into my rotation has made it a lot easier to stick to my new GF lifestyle, and if you’ve made a decision to give up gluten in the new year, you could definitely do a lot worse.</p> <p>What about you, reader? Have you ever shopped at Aldi? Do you love it as much as we do? How is your relationship with gluten working out? I’d love to hear all about it in the comments!</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/how-aldi-is-helping-me-stay-gluten-free/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/164646.html?view=comments#comments aldi food health cooking a sensible wife pcos going gluten free thyroid health public 0 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/164469.html Thu, 22 Jan 2015 22:19:09 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/164469.html <p>This is a hectic week. In addition to a full freelance workload, I&#8217;ve got to company-clean in preparation for entertaining my mom on Friday, and hormones and lack of sleep are making me scattered and bad at managing things.</p> <p>So in lieu of blog posts written by yours truly this week, here instead is some recommended reading:</p> <p class=""><a href="http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2015/01/13/delilah-s-dawson-25-writing-hacks-from-a-hack-writer/" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Delilah S. Dawson: 25 Writing Hacks From A Hack Writer</a> &#8211; this is a bit long and, being that it&#8217;s a guest post on Chuck Wendig&#8217;s blog, it&#8217;s laced with profanity. But it has broader application than just writing&#8211;it&#8217;s really about how to hack your life to chase your dream&#8211;so if you can get past those two things, it&#8217;s definitely worth the read.</p> <p class=""><a href="http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2015/01/21/arting-hard-like-an-artful-motherfucker-25-ways-to-be-a-bad-ass-maker-who-makes-bad-ass-stuff/" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Arting Hard Like An Artful [MoFo]: 25 Ways To Be A Bad-Ass Maker Who Makes Bad-Ass Stuff</a> &#8211; this is sort of a companion piece to the first article. Being that it&#8217;s written by Chuck himself and I even had to censor the title, it should be apparent that the same caveats apply.</p> <p class=""><a href="https://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2015/01/01/want-to-be-a-success-learn-to-be-an-outlaster/" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Want to Be a “Success”? Learn to Be an Outlaster</a> &#8211; Motivated yet? Well then, here&#8217;s a whole six-pack of motivation from Kristen Lamb &#8212; and with zero cussin&#8217;!</p> <p class=""><a href="http://momastery.com/blog/2014/08/11/give-liberty-give-debt/" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Give Me Gratitude or Give Me Debt</a> &#8211; A great post to read if you feel envy and dissatisfaction creeping into your life. Or if you just like to dance in the kitchen.</p> <p class=""><a href="https://gladerrand.wordpress.com/2015/01/13/manners-for-gentlemen/" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Manners for Gentlemen</a> &#8211; It&#8217;s not often that I recommend poetry &#8212; okay, more like never &#8212; but this is just lovely and you should read it.</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/busy-week-so-have-some-links/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/164469.html?view=comments#comments writing poetry kristen lamb links chuck wendig recommendations public 0 https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/163879.html Thu, 15 Jan 2015 21:28:39 GMT jmbauhaus https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/163879.html <p>So after the first official business week of the new year got derailed with the big web server hack, on Monday I declared a New Year do-over &#8212; and so far, it’s paid off. This week so far has been very productive. I’ve added over 1500 words (and still counting) to my novel WIP and got a good start on the non-fiction self-publishing book, in addition to the freelance stuff. I’ve also made good headway with getting my house in decent shape, and, apart from a Monday night deviation that I’m trying to forget, I’ve done well sticking to my dietary restrictions. I’ve even managed to do some light yoga every day this week (well, except today, but I’m still hoping to fit it in later)&#8211;and all in all, I’m feeling much better.</p> <p>Part of that may be because we went to the health food store at the end of last week and stocked up on supplements. In addition to my <a title="Review: Natural Sources Raw Thyroid" href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/review-natural-sources-raw-thyroid/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">thyroid </a>and ADHD supplements, I also picked up some purified fish oil and a vitamin C &amp; D3 combo, the latter of which I think has already done a lot to combat my <a title="5 Ways to Bust Seasonal Depression" href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/five-ways-to-bust-seasonal-depression/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">seasonal affective disorder</a>. But if that didn’t do the trick, then the fact that today kicked off a solid week or more of gorgeous spring-like weather should cure my winter blues once and for all.</p> <p>And speaking of healthy eating, today we went to Aldi and I stocked up on salad fixin’s in the hopes of getting more leafy greens in my diet. I also picked up a loaf of their gluten free bread to try, and a bag of GF pasta, which I already tried and with which I am suitably impressed. I’ve been doing a lot more cooking from scratch lately, too, and for the last several weeks I’ve been on a soup kick. The other day I made a big pot of stuffed pepper soup (following <a href="http://www.pinterest.com/pin/63331938485703271/" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">this recipe</a>), and it was delicious. I’ve been eating on the leftovers every since.</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="data-instgrm-captioned" data-instgrm-version="4"><div style="padding:8px"> <div style="background:#f8f8f8;line-height:0;margin-top:40px;padding:50% 0;text-align:center;width:100%"> <div></div> </div> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="https://instagram.com/p/x2JYoZsfG1/" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Greek stuffed pepper soup (recipe on Pinterest). #food #cooking</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A photo posted by Jean Bauhaus (@jmbauhaus) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2015-01-14T19:26:20+00:00">Jan 14, 2015 at 11:26am PST</time></p> </div> </blockquote> <p></p> <p>So what else is new? Not much. We’re happy for the return of our shows, particularly <i>Sleepy Hollow</i> and <i>Forever</i> (and I’m really looking forward to the returns of <i>Once Upon a Time </i>and <i>Supernatural).</i> We’ve got <i>Agent Carter</i> saved but haven’t watched it yet. Matt and I also started re-watching <i>Breaking Bad</i> from the beginning last weekend, and there really should be a writing clinic taught from that show. It’s a master class in storytelling. If I didn’t feel like such a huge goober whenever I try to do a podcast or vlog….</p> <p>So what about you guys? How’s your new year going so far? Any new or returning shows you’re psyched about? Should we be making time to watch <i>Agent Carter</i> or not? I’d love to hear your thoughts on these things in the comments!</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://jeanmariebauhaus.com/new-years-mulligan/" title="Read Original Post" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jean Marie Bauhaus</a>.</small></p> https://jmbauhaus.livejournal.com/163879.html?view=comments#comments food writing health cooking a sensible wife tv new year goals ghost of a chance pcos breaking bad television going gluten free public 6