New Year’s Eve – staged!

Happy New Year to everybody and I hope you all have something amazing and wonderful happen in your life in the next 366 days (it’s a leap-year, so we all get one extra day to win the lottery)! I’m thinking about the kind of pure joy that Chris Gardner experienced in The Pursuit of Happyness – where you’re so excited and thrilled that you don’t know what to do with yourself (as happens at the end of the movie). Wouldn’t that be fantastic? I’ve had great joy in my life, but I don’t know if I’ve had that kind of elation before. This would be a great year for it to make an appearance. And if this has happened to you once or twice in the past, I hope it happens again.

I won’t bore you with my writing, diet, and exercise resolutions. I’ll bet we’re all in the same frame of mind. Even if you didn’t make a list, you know you’ve promised yourself that this year will be different! May it be so.

I am busy with Recurring, and I’m determined to get it right if I have to kill someone to make it happen. Chapters have to be shifted around and the first chapter needs some work. It’s tough to cut things and toss them, but it has to be done. As for Food for Thought, it’s going okay but changes also have to made – not as drastic as with the other book, but man, why can’t things go smoothly? I guess if it was easy, everyone would be a writer, but sometimes the work seems like rocket science and I’m missing my thruster (sounds dirty, doesn’t it?).

Example of PowerPoint Clip Art

I just discovered something this morning that sent me into a panic. Though I don’t use it often, I realized Clip Art has gone practically extinct on my Microsoft Word program. Did anyone else notice this? Though many of the images were kind of cheesy, at least they were free. I looked online for royalty-free, public domain pics and it seems there aren’t many of those out there, and you have to sign up at the various websites to use the free images – which I hate doing.

As a writer, I can sympathize with photographers who get no royalties for their shutter work, but I also know that as a writer, much of what I have written in the past has been viewed for free. Mostly, I consented for the purpose of name recognition (not that I have a household name, but geez, people do need to know you exist and write).

I did a little research and one blogger suggested downloading whatever Clip Art you can from your PowerPoint program. From her own sleuthing, she learned those clips are going by way of the dodo also. So, forgive the clip I used as an example from PowerPoint (photo above) – the lazy woman’s way to add pizzazz to a post. I think I’ll have to keep lugging my camera around and take my own rotten pictures (and I do take lousy pics, as you no-doubt noticed from my staged photo above). I guess practice makes perfect with photography, just like with writing.

May everybody have a joyous, healthy new year . . . and remember to read during all that newfound elation.