What's Your Motto?

I did another article for HubPages.  Why?  You'll know why if you know what my motto is.  You'll know what my motto is if you take a look at the article.  CLICK HERE to see the article.

I hope people are interested in mottos because I spent just about the entire day writing it. 

Please enjoy the article, do the little poll in the article, and tell me your motto in the comments section.

Thank you for your support.

Found Poetry Revival

Found Poems Collage

My second post for HubPages is about found poetry in general and about my news print poetry project.  Naturally, I included a link to my News Print Poetry 2012 blog.

Suddenly traffic to my poetry blog skyrocketed from a handful of visits a day because I rarely post new stuff  to nearly 100 in a day.  Recycling creativity.

 

CLICK HERE to see my HubPages article. You'll find a good explanation of found poetry and also some how-to tips.   I even did my own blackout poem especially for the article.  You can see it in the article.

 

Now I can't wait to see if I sell some books.

 

Sharecropping Words

I’m trying something new with my writing—sharecropping. 

It is called HubPages.  It works like this. I plant an article in the HubPages field and I get a percentage of the sales. 

Without the tortured metaphor, it means I write an article and post it on the HubPages website. HubPages gets advertising revenue and affiliate sales from the web page with my content and I get 60% of that revenue. 

I posted my first article yesterday. Today I saw I had earned one cent. 

Help me get this off to a good start. Click this link to see my article: Understanding Tarot. I think I did a nice job explaining the history and practice. 

At the end of the article, there is a little poll about whether or not you think psychics are real. Take the poll—it will improve my ranking.  

If you want to be really nice, leave a comment. Comments improve my ranking. But even if you do nothing but click, it will help my ranking. Please click.

 

If you are a writer and want to try this, contact me. I’ll be glad to help you can started. (There’s a lot to learn and it would have saved me a lot of time if I had had someone to explain it.) And you’ll be helping me earn by letting me make a referral.

Please tweet, like and share this post.

Dear Loyal Reader

Dear Loyal Reader:

I want to thank the loyal reader who used a link on one of my posts to buy something from amazon.com yesterday. I don't know who you are, but you made my day. It's a little endorphin jolt every time I see that someone was nice enough to use my link.   

And a big thank you to everyone else who has used my links. I appreciate it a lot.

And now a request to the rest of my loyal readers or even random people who have stumbled upon my posts:

If you want to buy any of these books, you will click on the amazon shopping cart at the top right of this post first so I can earn a little omission from amazon, won’t you? I totally appreciate your clicks. 

Also as a loyal reader, you will share, tweet, like, and even leave a comment, won’t you? I thank you in advance for your kind support.

With Love,

Your Devoted Blogger

 

CLICK HERE FOR BOOKS ON HAPPINESS

“Te Amo” Accepted for Publication

I did it!

I had a story accepted in the Florida Writer’s Association annual anthology. The theme for 2014 is “the first step.” The book will be published this fall.

I wrote a very personal story about the day I first met my son—it was in Guatemala, he was five years old, and I was adopting him. 

Every time I think of that story, I mist up. It’s very emotional to me. Maybe that emotion came through to the judges.  



Please like, share, and tweet this post.

 

The anthology is also a contest. A famous author-–this year it is Mary Burton--picks the top ten stories from the 60 stories accepted—and ranks them from one to ten. Last year for the It’s a Crime anthology, my story was ranked second.  Will I be able to top that this year? Will I even make it into the top ten? I will be a couple of more weeks before I know.  

Haiku Halcyon

by Catherine Giordano

I participated in a haiku contest at the Orlando Fringe Festival last haiku contest. It was wild.

 

Please share with a like, a tweet or a +1.

I thought it would be traditional haiku, 3 distinct lines, 5, 7, 5 syllables , the first two lines setting it up and the third line resolving it. The topics would be about nature or something really ‘deep.”  So that’s what I came prepared to read. 

I was wrong. Most of the haiku’s were bawdy, like limericks which are often “dirty.” And sometimes they just went for 17 syllables (more or less) without bothering about having discrete lines

These contests are meant to be entertaining.  A bar is the usual site for them, not a library or university lecture hall. Of course, they would be bawdy. I just hadn't thought it through.

The Haiku Handbook

Each contestant was paired with another contestant by drawing numbers from a hat.  We took turns doing haiku and after each set of two (his and mine) the judges picked a winner.  It was best 3 out of 5. I won twice, but lost the final set to my opponent. I didn’t get to move to the next round, but I heard people in the audience say “beautiful”, and that was win enough for me.   

I thought about coming up with some bawdy ones for next time, but so far I can’t think of any.  I decided instead I’m going to come up with a bunch more really beautiful ones, because I won the two sets with my two most beautiful haikus. It will be the battle of beauty against raunchy.

 

Fair is Fair (Except When it is Not)

By Catherine Giordano

I’m going to announce that I have a new writing credential, even tho I’m not sure a “letter to the editor" qualifies.

I used to have letters published in the Orlando Sentinel quite frequently, but yesterday was the first time I had sent one in years.

The letter was about Fair Districts, the constitutional amendment Florida voters passed in 2010.  It forbids gerrymandering.  Now Florida courts have to decide if the districts were fairly drawn. (Of course they weren’t--they were done by politicians using voting data to insure that their seat was "safe.")

Here is my “letter to the editor” published in the Orlando Sentinel on May 20, 2014.

Fair Districts, Please

To create fair districts, all we need to do is to put a couple of cartographers into a room with a map of Florida and population statistics. If any politicians, political consultants, or voting data is present, that is prima facie evidence of gerrymandering. Please, can we finally have the fair districts we voted for.

 

 

Learn more about the issue at Fair Districts Now


7/11/14: Florida won! A judge has ruled that the Republicans violated the law and gerrymandered districts to favor Republicans. The districts have to be redrawn. Republicans will probably appeal. They should be ashamed.