Call to action - April Platform Challenge - Day 19

As part of the April Platform Challenge my task today is to ask you to do two things:

• Please click on the share buttons  - they are big and prominent at the top of the right side bar on this page

• Please sign-up for my email feed – see the little box just under the share buttons. It has room for you to type in your email address. Please click Submit when you've finished.

And one more thing that is not part of my assignment:

Please join me at the LA Times Festival of Books on the University of California campus either or both Saturday and Sunday June 21 and 22, from 12 noon until 2:00 pm. I’ll be at the Greater Los Angeles Writer’s Society booth number 970. Hopefully I’ll be signing lots of copies of my book: Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother’s Memoir of Living with Her Son’s Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide (Lucky Press, 2011).

You can’t miss me. I’m the one with the long gray hair.

April poem a day challenge

In honor of National Poetry Month, Robert Lee Brewer, editor at Writer’s Digest and creator of Poetic Asides, holds a poem a day challenge. I love to take the challenge because his prompts are always fun. He also provides his examples to help get us started. This month Robert has also created a platform building challenge through his blog: My Name Is Not Bob. I’m doing that one as well.

Here are a few of my April PAD poems with Robert’s prompts.

Day 5. Write a poem about something before your time. Maybe it’s a certain time in history. Or a type of music. Or a story that was shared by friends or family–before your time.

Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris

brought back a world before my time

and people that I would kill

to have known:

Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald

Porter, Baker,

Picasso, Man Ray, and Dali

all in the raucous 1920s.

And for a little more romantic and quiet

take he took us even further back

to the 1980s Belle Epoque

and the artistic worlds of

Toulouse-Lautrec, Gaugin, Degas.

If I can’t be as lucky as Gil

to go back in time,

Woody’s homage to the creativity,

beauty, and romance

of the City of Lights long past

will have to do.

Day 10. Today’s “Two-for-Tuesday” prompts are: 

1. Write a Forest poem or 
2. Write a Tree poem.

Three Palms (Tweet-length)

Outside my window I only see

their wide round trunks

still wet from last night’s rain

that seeped in streaks

into their vertical pores

Day 11. Pick a season (any season) and make it the title of your poem; then, write your poem. For instance, your poem might be titled “Winter” or “Spring” or “Rabbit Season” (if you have a sense of humor and like Looney Tunes cartoons).

What Spring?

In sunny southern California

we have no spring,

and no summer, fall, or winter

either for that matter.

Here the seasons are all mushed together

It’s never hot enough to break a sweat

or cold enough to see your breath

But somehow the flowers

know when to bloom

and the leaves

know when to fall.

Day 15. Use the following five words in your poem: slash, button, mask, strap, and balloon. Use them in any order.

In sharp sweeping strokes

he slashed the flimsy fabric

eliminating all traces

of straps and buttons.

He let the skirt flow free

to billow like a floating

balloon.

April challenges update

I took a break over the weekend and caught up today with my two April challenges.

The Platform Challenge Days 5 through 8:

Day 5. Create a blog – since you’re reading this you know I already have a blog. I also post at several other blog sites you might not know about:

http://redroom.com/member/madeline-sharples/blog/  - Red Room blog

http://www.naturallysavvy.com/savvy-over-60 - Naturally Savvy Over 60 blog

http://www.psychalive.org/index.php?s=madeline+sharples&image.x=15&image.y=7 - PsychAlive blog

http://tlswriters.wordpress.com/ - The Last Sunday Writer's  group blog

Day 6. Comment on a blog: Robert LeeBrewer posted a few possible ways to respond (and he suggested linking back to our own blogs). I think these are great suggestions. I just need to learn to follow them:

Share your own experience. If you've experienced something similar to what's covered in the post, share your own story. You don't have to write a book or anything, but maybe a paragraph or two.

Add another perspective. Maybe the post was great, but there's another angle that should be considered. Don't be afraid to point that angle out.

Ask a question. A great post usually will prompt new thoughts and ideas--and questions. Ask them.

Day 7. Add share buttons to your blog by going to the Add This website: 

Day 8. Create a LinkedIn profile.

The only thing I hadn’t already accomplished was to add share buttons on my blog. I already have them at the bottom of my posts supplied by blogger, but I added some at the top – bigger and hopefully more conducive to sharing. Now, I’d like to know how to get rid of the ones below the post.

The Poem a Day Challenge

And I wrote three poems (drafts of course) today to catch up with the poem a day challenge. Here’s the list of prompts I’ve received from Robert Lee Brewer so far. I’ve also included a couple of the draft poems I’ve written in response.

Day 1. Write a communication poem

Day 2. Write a visitor poem

Day 3. Write an apology poem, or…Write an unapologetic poem

Day 4. Take the phrase, “100% (blank);” replace the blank with a new word or phrase; make the new phrase the title of your poem; and then, write your poem

Day 5. Write a poem about something before your time Here’s mine:

Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris”

brought back a world before my time

and people that I would kill

to have known: Hemmingway,

Stein, Fitzgerald

Porter, Baker,

Picasso, Man Ray, Dali

all in the raucous 1920s.

And for a little more romantic and quiet

view he brought us even further back

to the 1980s Belle Epoque

and the artistic worlds of

Toulouse-Lautrec, Gaugin, Degas.

If I can’t be as lucky as Gil

to go back in time,

Woody’s homage to the creativity,

beauty and romance

of the City of Lights long past

will have to do.

Day 6. Write a hiding poem. Here’s mine:

They kept the real words

hidden away for years.

How could anyone in this family

have a mental illness?

Instead, they’d say:

She had a nervous breakdown

He was just a little depressed

She is having a little crying jag

anything instead of saying

those stigmatized words.

Well, the truth finally came to light

where it should have been all along.

Don’t keep it hidden.

Talk, write about it

often. Perhaps then we can

save some lives.

Day 7. Write a poem describing a scene in which two or more people interact without speaking.

Day 8. Write a rejected poem. 

If anyone cares to take these prompts and write to them, please do. And please post them in my comments.

Challenges and writing work update

Yesterday and today’s assignments for the April platform challenge were to accomplish things I had already done – build a Facebook profile and give myself a Twitter name. I also have a Facebook author page. So I was ahead of the game there. 

However, Robert Lee Brewer is always very generous with his helpful hints. I’ll give you the links to Day 3 and Day 4 here and you can visit both sites if you’re interested in learning more. I feel that I know very little about how to use Twitter so I can use all the help I can get. I have, however, heard that Re-Tweets are golden. I had two yesterday that got to thousands of followers. I guess I’m doing something right.

I’m also keeping up with my goal of writing 1000 words on my novel a week, and I'm now writing a poem a day for Robert Lee Brewer’s other April challenge. The prompts are always interesting. Today’s was: take the phrase 100% (blank), replace the blank with a word, make that the title of your poem, and then write a poem. So far my poems are very drafty. They will need a lot a work before the end of the month. But at least I’ve written something to work with.

And in case you’re interested, here’s an update on the hummingbird.

The hummingbird is gone. I went out to check yesterday morning and it was nowhere in sight. The day before he was quite active. He was talking, turning his head every which way, and sticking his beak into the hole in the squeeze bottle spout to drink.  Every time I came by he opened his mouth. I was told to try putting him on a tree branch, so I did. But he was back on the path within twenty minutes. Maybe that showed him he could fly and he just finally got up the nerve to fly away. I hope so. I’ve left a hummingbird feeder out for him in case he comes back to his old neighborhood. After all he lived outside our front door for almost a week.

April Platform Challenge - Day 1

I’ve decided to enter Robert Lee Brewer’s first ever April Platform Challenge. Anyone want to join me?

Here's how he says it will work:

• ·      On April 1, I'll post a task for writers to complete that day. (I didn’t get April 1 until today)
• ·      Each day afterward, through the month of April, there will be a new task for writers to complete on that day.
• ·      At the end of the month, every writer who completes the challenge should have a stronger platform and be able to say they took part in the first ever April Platform Challenge.

Day 1:

Define yourself. I don't want you to worry about where you'd like to be or anything in the future. Instead, I want you to take a look at who you are, what you've done, what you're currently doing, etc. Below is a chart I'm using (with my own answers).

Here’s my information:

Name (as used in byline): Madeline Sharples

Position(s): Author of Leaving the Hall Light On (Lucky Press, 2011); Web journalist at Naturally Savvy and PsychAlive, Published poet; Writer of literary fiction; Blogger; Event Speaker.

Skill(s): Editing, creative writing (poetry, memoir, and fiction), technical writing, managing proposals, blogging, newsletter writing, problem solving, idea generation, public speaking, willingness to try new things, ability to continually reinvent myself.

Social media platforms: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Blogger, Pinterest.

URLs: http://madeline40.blogspot.com, http://redroom.com/member/madeline-sharples/blog, http://www.naturallysavvy.com/savvy-over-60, http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/madeline-sharples.html, http://www.psychalive.org/index.php?s=madeline+sharples&image.x=13&image.y=5,

www.MadelineSharples.com,

Accomplishments: Published memoir Leaving the Hall Light On (Lucky Press, 2011); Wrote the poems for two books of photography: The Emerging Goddess and Intimacy; editor of the poetry anthology: The Great American Poetry Show; worked as a technical writer and editor and proposal manager in the aerospace industry for over 28 years where I was awarded the Women of Achievement award in 2005; Volunteer at Facebook page Putting a Face on Suicide and Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, BA in English from University of California at Los Angeles, studied journalism at University of Wisconsin.

Interests: Writing (all genres), family (I love my husband of almost 42 years and my son and his wife – I miss our older son who died in 1999), fitness (I workout every day in some way), friends, movies, reading. I have a mission to educate and make people aware of the mental illness and suicide in hopes of erasing the stigma and saving lives.

In one sentence, who am I? Madeline Sharples, married for over 42 years to Bob, is a retired technical writer/editor and proposal manager, who now works full time as a writer, specializing in memoir, fiction, poetry and blogging.