Inquiring Minds Want to Know

With full power restored and all my phone lines working, I've been trying to get back to normal in my writing, blogging, and life itself.

How Safe Is A Safe Room

Hurricane Ike made me realize that I've gotten lax in storm preparedness. When you live in an area prone to hurricanes and the tornadoes they can spawn, you should always have a safe room, or in the case of just about everyone I know, a safe closet where you can take cover when a warning is issued.

The closet should be in the center part of the house and not near any large expanse of glass, water heaters, furnaces, or anything else than can explode and kill you.

I Dub Thee Joan, Queen of Writing Clutter

Our designated closet is the one in my study which is chock full of all kinds of writing clutter from old keyboards to piles of manuscripts that never found a publishing home. I keep the hard copies in case I have to prove that writing is a career not a hobby. Or at least that's what I always tell my husband who wonders after 20+ successful years of earning income from writing why I feel compelled to hang on to those hard copies.

I looked at those piles of paper - some saved for years - and started wondering: am I the only obsessive person who saves all this crap? Or do my fellow published authors have manuscripts gathering dust in the back of some closet or under a bed?

Lightbulb moment! This would be a great subject for a fun blog post. So I asked around and got some very interesting answers. Enough answers to be a series starting Monday, September 22.

Sling Words Special Report

So visit Sling Words next week for this new series and see how other published authors deal with their unpublished manuscripts. You'll smile a lot, and you just might get some ideas for new storage solutions.

Takeaway Truth

When you think you may be slightly crazy, just ask around. You'll realize you're just normal.