Wonderful Writer Friends

I have some wonderful writer friends, two of whom kind of hold my feet to the fire. Particularly Ravyn Whyt whose blog, Random Acts of Writing, is steadily gaining quite a following. Another of my writerly friends, Kathleen Krueger, whose blog is Crafter of Words is also keeping me busy with learning new things. Between the two of them I've made a decision to resurrect Popcorn for Brain Cells. Thanks for the inspiration Ladies!

This blog began as just a fun way to get my crazy thoughts out in the world. It's something I wanted to do for quite a while but never had the nerve to do it. Blogging is simple enough, for sure. Only putting yourself "out there" in the world can be rather intimidating, especially if you don't really know what you are doing. So, I started the blog, then let it stagnate. Life happens!

When I stop to think about it, a lot of life has happened to me since my last post. My mom celebrated her 90th birthday. I won that second attempt at NaNoWriMo in 2013 and again in 2014. We will see how I do this year. I also won the People's Choice Award for two years running at the Poetry on the Wall competition in Brainerd, Minnesota. The pressure is on now! Can I make it three in 2016?

But the really exciting accomplishment is publication of one of my stories in the anthology Blues Vision, a collection of writings by African American writers in Minnesota including Gordon Parks and August Wilson. That is a special honor that I will always cherish. This project by the Minnesota Humanities Center and published by the Minnesota Historical Society is the first anthology of its kind to be compiled in over 30 years. The extraordinary thing is that this volume is going to be used throughout the state in high schools, universities and colleges and indeed is already being used is a variety of places to give voice to some of the missing pieces of Minnesota's literary history.

Well, I could go on and on about that. However, I think I'll save it for another post. After all if I am serious about resurrecting PFBC then I'll need things to write about. Lucky me . . . I can always find things to write about. The trick is to post them and hit Publish!!

If you are a blogger, what challenges do you have with your blog? I'd like to hear about them.