Mindy's Movie Reviews

Dogsled Dreams - Terry Lynn Johnson

2011-04-18T10:05:00.003-04:00

Last night I finished reading my friend's novel called Dogsled Dreams by Terry Lynn Johnson. I will be the first to admit that I usually don't read YA novels but I am glad I did with this one.This is Terry's debut novel about a young twelve year old girl named Rebecca. She has a dream of wanting to become a famous musher. Throughout the novel she struggles through training her beloved dogs all

I CHALLENGE you

2011-04-13T11:22:00.002-04:00

It is Script Frenzy month here and I thought it would be fun to share some famous movie scripts. My challenge (and it's an easy one) is for you to choose one of the four scripts below and read it while watching the movie itself. (Beware that there may be some changes done in the movie that were not included in the script)See if you can notice what makes a scene important, why they kept that

Blogging: Why is it so difficult?

2011-03-30T09:00:00.000-04:00

I apologize for not posting anything for the past few weeks.To be honest, I had no idea what to write. Can you believe that? A writer who doesn't know what to write! I know shocking right, but we all get some sort of block at least once in our life right?I have learned something quite interesting which I am sure many of you have experienced before. Blogging is much more difficult than it looks. I

Inspirational Writer - David Seidler

2011-03-07T07:00:00.004-05:00

David Seidler you might have heard of him before. If you click on his name you will find an article about how this man, at the age of 73, won his first ever Oscar for writing The King's Speech.Reading the article alone is inspiration in itself, especially when you read his life story.My favourite quote from the article is, "Too many of the young writers haven't lived any kind of a life but film

Ever Wrote a Song?

2011-02-23T14:43:00.002-05:00

FAWM is turning out to be a great challenge that I am going through for this month. To be honest I actually thought I was going to fail miserably and have cheap poppish songs that are only good for baby's to listen to. I am so glad I proved myself wrong.I like to share with others anything that I can share and for this week I decided I shall share one of my songs that I wrote. Today in my

Inspiration for the day

2011-02-15T10:36:00.003-05:00

Have you heard Born This Way by Lady Gaga yet? If not click here to hear the song and click here to read the lyrics.Now love it or hate it, when I first heard this song and read the lyrics I had tears in my eyes. Why? Well it greatly inspired me. We live in a world where we are constantly comparing ourselves and I just love how this song (through my interpretation) basically says it's okay to be

FAWM

2011-02-02T12:05:00.002-05:00

Today is official second day of February which means it is the official second day of FAWM.What is FAWM? I hear you ask?February Album Writing Month is what the abbreviation stands for. It's a month (okay the shortest month of the year) long challenge where participants write an album worth of songs in 28 days. FAWM considers 14 songs an album worth, so if you do the math about a song every two

Your Writing Space

2011-01-19T07:04:00.003-05:00

Have you ever walked into Staples or some other office supply store and just go ga-ga over all the office materials available at your finger tips?Okay perhaps that is just me and believe me when I say my family and friends try to keep me away from those stores.I was thinking about office supplies the last few days and wondered what other people's work spaces looked like. I thought I would share

Do You Really Learn From Reading?

2011-01-10T11:26:00.004-05:00

As a writer, I am constantly told to read. Read this. Read that. You will learn so much as a writer if you read, read and read some more.But do we? Do we really learn from reading so much?For me personally I don't learn anything from reading. Then again I don't like to read. Yes I am serious. I have to force myself to read any sort of novel with great dismay. Oh and don't get me started on why.

Be Inspired!

2011-01-05T14:14:00.004-05:00

Hello to you all out there!It is FINALLY 2011 and I personally could not be happier to begin a new year with a clean slate.By the way Happy New Year to you all. How were your holidays?My holidays went by way too fast but I am trying to get back into my usual routines before I go back to work next Monday.The beginning of the year brings on the beginning of new things (like trying to accomplish

2011 Mission Statement

2010-12-21T14:53:00.002-05:00

I recently read a blog post a friend of mine had wrote yesterday (Monday December 20th) which you could find here, where she wrote her own mission statement for the new year. I liked the idea and wanted to write my own 2011 Mission Statement for I could look back on and try to keep the promises I shall make to myself. So here goes it. If it interests you, give it a try. Make sure you link it in

Holidays & Goals

2010-12-15T11:20:00.002-05:00

Hello everyone!Hopefully you are all doing well during this December.Around this time, I begin to think about what I have accomplished throughout this year and begin to think about what I would like to accomplish in the New Year. Lately I have become quite anal about this and have created quite a few lists and charts.I have three main goals next year to work on which include:Opening my own Web

NaNoWriMo, Snow and December

2010-12-06T15:29:00.003-05:00

Hello Hello all my peeps out there!I hope you've been having a great two weeks and I hope you did not miss me too much! Though it has been six days since November and Nano has finished up I wanted to let you know that I fortunately completed this year's National Novel Writing Month! WOOT WOOT! I am very happy about writing my 50,000 words in a month but have come to the realization that my story

NaNoWriMo Update + Excerpt

2010-11-21T23:05:00.004-05:00

So sorry for not posting much lately...NaNoWriMo has taken over my soulUPDATE: I am dramatically behind in my word count but I am slowly trying to catch up little by little. As suspected, I think I'm writing utter crap but I still wanted to share some of my craptacular work with you all. I apologize for any of what I call you grammar-holics. What you're about to read will probably drive you up

It's NaNoWriMo Time eee yah eee yah!

2010-11-08T09:04:00.002-05:00

For some strange reason I have the "It's peanut butter jelly time" song stuck in my head. If you have no idea what I'm talking about then please click here to see the YouTube video. This video is from Family Guy.Now just replace those words with It's Naaano Wri Mo Time and you will get the newish song stuck in my head.So at the time of writing this post, it is Day 8 of our beloved National Novel

National Novel Writing Month

2010-10-27T12:02:00.002-04:00

As of today (Wednesday October 27) there is only 4 more days left until NaNoWriMo aka National Novel Writing Month. For those who have no clue what NaNoWriMo is about I will sum it up in seven words: One heck of a crazy writing month! This is, what I believe to be, my sixth year doing this event and I still find it crazy!The jist of this month long event is, you come up with an idea for a novel

Update

2010-10-19T19:31:00.002-04:00

I apologize for no post last week. I was attending the Muse Online Writer's Conference as mentioned before, with that on top of my everyday life it was one heck of a busy week.With that said, I wanted to update you all on some good news that has happened to me during the conference.I may or may not have mentioned that I was chosen to pitch my short story to a publisher (Muse It Up Publishing).

The Muse Online Writer's Conference

2010-10-05T20:59:00.001-04:00

If you are a writer and haven't heard of The Muse Online Writer's Conference then you are in for a treat this week!This is my 3rd year attending the FREE conference, yes you read right, it is free unless you register late of course.This year is also my 2nd year of volunteering which has proven to be quite chaotic to say the least.The conference is plenty of fun for being completely online. I have

Basics of Web Design

2010-09-21T09:30:00.005-04:00

Back in July I talked about Why a writer should have a website. To reread that post you can click here.I thought, hey why not help those who want to make their own website by giving them the basics aka HTML.A site can be made simply in a program you already have on your computer: Notepad.In this program you can make a basic page using HTML (HyperText Markup Language).HTML uses tags (ie. such as

Screwing Up Your Writing by Christina E. Rundle

2010-09-15T20:57:00.002-04:00

I must share with you all an incredibly informative blog post I have just read.It is called Screwing Up Your Writing Career over on Christina E. Rundle's blog for which I follow.She gives a nice detailed list of tips for any writer who does not want to screw up his/her writing career. The tips are endless yet the first thing I done once I finished reading them all was print it out.Thanks

Three Ways to Promote Yourself and Your Writing

2010-09-08T12:48:00.002-04:00

I recently wrote an article for Crafting Fiction that I would love for you all to check out and comment if you have time.The link here will direct you to The Crafting Fiction website.With that said, I love sharing and learning information with others. It always makes me feel excited when someone says "hey that's a very useful link you gave. Thanks" or "I was able to fix a problem thanks to that

Banned Books

2010-09-01T10:07:00.003-04:00

Can you believe that September is here? I swear the year is going by way too fast for me.I was reading a blog post over on the Indie Debut 2010 blog (found here) about the challenge to read Banned Books during the month of September.I wanted to let everyone know about this bit of a challenge, I suppose you can call it, as I know I am going to sign up for it for sure.I found out after a bit of

Am Writing/Blogging for Unpublished Writers

2010-08-25T20:13:00.003-04:00

So sorry for this blog post being late. I was away on a trip yesterday.I have a great FAQ article for you to read, especially if you are on Twitter.It is called Am Writing and is about the Am Writing hashtag on Twitter.Check it out by clicking here.If you are not on Twitter I have another link for you to check out.It is a blog post by Jody Hedlund called How Important is Blogging For Unpublished

Interview with Marybeth Smith

2010-08-17T17:05:00.005-04:00

Hey everyone!Before we begin the interview with Marybeth, I wanted to make a sidenote from last weeks post concerning the Crafting Fiction website. It has been brought to my attention that the web design articles on that site are going to be moved to Web Tech Design very soon.With that said I would like you all to welcome Marybeth Smith to my blog, to talk about her website Ask A Bipolar.You have

Website to share

2010-08-10T19:50:00.004-04:00

Hey everyone I apologize for not blogging much lately. I've been busy as I always am.I wanted to give you a link to a web site that has some articles about web design along with plenty of articles for writers as well. It's a very useful site that was created by a friend of mine named Rebecca Laffar-Smith.Please check it out by clicking: Crafting of FictionNext week I am hoping to have a special