Saturday Edition – What We’re Writing and Reading

Welcome to this Saturday Edition of What We’re Writing and Reading.

We’re taking a little detour on the weekends now to share some of what we’re up to with our writing (when we’re not here) and what we’re into with our reading (around the web). We’ll also pull back the curtain a little to give you a behind-the-scenes look at what went into a piece.

We hope you enjoy this little diversion and encourage you to share your own posts and picks in the comments.

Happy writing! Happy reading! 

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Diane MacKinnon: This past week or two I haven’t been able to do much writing, except keeping up with my blog posts and my journal. I have some time blocked out tomorrow to work on my novel as I need to submit to my critique group by Friday afternoon, and I am really looking forward to getting back to that work. As far as reading, I’m now reading a book about how play shapes baby’s minds. It’s called Einstein Never Used Flash Cards. It’s one of a number of books about play that I downloaded samples of to my Kindle. I’ve been thinking about play a lot lately so now I’m in research mode. I started with this book because I have a 3 year old and I thought it would be fun to learn about how he learns as he plays. So far the book is fascinating and it is also very reassuring to me as a parent. There are a lot of products out there that claim to improve babies brains and this book, at least, says that my son’s not missing out by not being exposed to Baby Einstein or LeapFrog.

Jamie Wallace: Hello! Happy weekend, writers! 🙂 This has been a crazy and short week for me. I spent a lovely and long weekend with my daughter and beau at Acadia National Park in Maine, came home to an intensive discovery session with a new client on Tuesday, and have been playing catch-up and plan-ahead for the rest of the week. “Whirlwind” and “breathless” are two words that come to mind as I try to sum up my work week. (Not to mention that this is my daughter’s first week of summer vacation and our first time experimenting with having her home vs. at camp. It went quite well, but definitely added some chaos to the mix.)

What I’m writing: I did manage to write a post over on my marketing blog about how to create the best customer experience – online and off. Though the post is geared towards business readers, it does have some relevance for writers as well since today’s writer needs to think like a business in order to succeed in this competitive and ever-evolving publishing landscape. The post is called Are you accidentally turning your customers off? I included some real life experiences with different businesses to illustrate my points. It’s amazing just how bad some service can be!

Amazon links = not-to-sneaky affiliate links 😉

What I’m reading: While up in Bar Harbor, I visited one of my favorite bookstores – Sherman’s. I bought a “big kids’ picture book” about Darwin for my daughter, a book on drawing zentangles for her (and for me), and two fiction titles (which I won’t reveal … yet). I have all those treasures stashed in my To Be Read pile, but at the moment I’m enjoying a wonderful little gem of a book by David Almond, author of Skellig (Printz Honor)(one of my favorites). The book I’m reading is a prequel to that title and is called My Name Is Mina. I am really enjoying the stream-of-consciousness format and flights of fancy combined with quiet and deep thoughts. The fact that a book can be written in this way is especially interesting to me since it’s a journal-like format that I haven’t seen before.

Well – I have to dash, but happy writing & reading!

PS: There is still a little time to take our Live to Write – Write to Live Writers’ & Readers’ Survey. You can get the details in this post. Love to have your two cents!