Odds, Ends and Links

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I forced myself away from blog writing to focus on other things this week. When it came down to generating a post this morning, all I could think of were snippets from the past few days, so that’s what you are getting:

For example,

I have a habit of ducking when inside a garage and the door goes down because fifteen years ago, in our garage, a spring snapped and went flying. Last week, my sister saw me bobbing my head while running out of her garage as she closed the door, and teased me until I explained why. Five days later, another spring on our garage door broke. I’ll keep ducking, thank you very much.

When the cat claws the door to the bedrooms in the middle of the night in an attempt to break it down for no apparent reason, there probably is one--such as the coyote standing on the back patio sniffing the wind (or the cat) early the next morning.

If you stare out the window before church on Sunday morning moaning about how the absentee next door neighbor will never cut down his dead trees lining your property, be careful what you wish for. He may, four days later, have a crew cut them all down, with the exception of the ugliest broken one, which he will leave standing. 

Success is in the little things—like being told after six months of trying, that the prosciutto you cut on the meat slicer was the perfect thickness. Humor me. It’s not easy.

With that said: here is some interesting reading I came upon this week.

From Writer’s Digest: 8 Ways to Write a 5-Star Chapter 1

Anne Gallagher over at the Piedmont Writer included the following link in her post today:
The ten mistakes writes don’t see (But can easily Fix When they do).

Jodie Renner of JodieRennerEditing lined to here today for a bunch of great articles on writing fiction. 

Oh, and this is my 455th blog post.  That's a cool number, don't you think?

Happy Friday to all. What helpful reading have you found this week?