I’m inspiring – Part IV

March 8, 2015March 6, 20155 Comments

VeryInspiringBlogAward The very kind (and very talented!) Mark Nolan has nominated me for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award. This is the fourth time I’ve been nominated (the second time this year, even!), and while these sorts of things are always fun, I am fresh out of interesting things to say today.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to share one answer from each of my previous posts, which you can read in full here, here, and here:

1. I’m ready to head somewhere warm and stay till spring. Yesterday when I left for work, it was -11°F with a windchill of -27°F. This morning, it was -13°F with a windchill of -38°F. Our windows are horribly drafty and our heaters are on their last leg. I am so over this winter. (from my third award)

2. As a teenager…

Inspiration, or, What’s in a name?

July 22, 20141 Comment

spongebob One of the new blogging buddies I met during April’s Blogging U. course is hosting a Guest Blogger Week over at her place, and today it’s my turn to share! If you’re not familiar with the Avid Reader blog, you should definitely check it out. Lots of neat stuff there. And there will be guest posts all week!

My post is on the inspiration behind my humble blog’s title and tagline. To read more about my inspirations, head on over and check out my post. Then have a look at yesterday’s guest spot and some of the other booky news!

The legacy of words

June 13, 20144 Comments

One of the blogs I enjoy reading belongs to Icess Fernandez Rojas, and today she posted a letter to her readers. The following is an excerpt:

I took to writing the last scene of the latest Jennie Manning story on my typewriter. I like using it and wished I could use it more often. There’s something about the way the keys hit the page. There’s a connection to the words there, an authenticity that a computer screen can’t duplicate. I’m not sure that authenticity is the right word but it’s the right sentiment, the trueness of the experience of writing. This is what I’m referring to — the purposefulness of words (since there is no deleting or backspacing), the rhythm of the keys tied to the fingertips, then the arms, the shoulder, the neck, the brain. That delicious, intoxicating rhythm when the brain is practically drilling the story onto the blank page. This is something that a typewriter can do that a computer can’t. –Icess Fernandez Rojas

I love the way she describes the process of writing with a typewriter, especially as it so closely mirrors my own feelings about writing longhand. I write all my stories longhand, and the pencil is my writing tool of choice because I just can’t stand to have a page full of scribbles where I’ve made mistakes and I don’t have enough White-Out to get me through a whole project.

Plus, there’s only so much White-Out you can put on a page.

Anyway, if you haven’t checked out her site already, what the heck are you waiting for?

I’m a guest again!

June 11, 2014Leave a comment

Today I’m guest posting over at Don’t Delete Me about writing in general. Stop over and check it out and, while you’re there, have a look at some of J’s other posts. They’re all pretty great. 🙂

And in the end…

May 1, 20148 Comments

Okay, so this isn’t really the end. How could it be? I’ve only just begun, after all. 🙂

But, this is the end of the posts for a while. We’re starting the hard-core moving tomorrow, we’ll be at it all weekend, and I don’t see any computer time in the schedule anywhere till Monday. And I’ll probably be around rather less than I have been lately because the only internet service available where we’re moving is either through our satellite company (prohibitively expensive) or through our cell phone provider (also prohibitively expensive, but somewhat cheaper).

So in the meantime, I’ll be cutting back to posting three times a week. The internet thing is supposed to change come fall, and I hope everything will go according to plan. I want to revive my Photo Friday feature, and I’m going to have some help this time around, so be sure to stop back next week and check it out. And I’ve been sharing some fun stuff over on Facebook this week, so there’s that. But in the meantime, here’s a pretty picture of the view from my new office:

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A post shared by Kay Kauffman (@kaysiewrites)

Have a great weekend, everybody! See you all back here on Monday! 🙂

Time flies

December 17, 2012December 17, 20122 Comments

My little Tomcat at the tender age of four
Photo by Kay Kauffman

My, how time flies! Without my even realizing it, this little blog o’ mine has turned five years old. That happened somewhere around the tail end of last month and I forgot all about writing my planned retrospective about my time in the blogging world.

Five years. My, how the years have flown! I started blogging about six months after my divorce was finalized. I wanted to write passionate political spiels of great depth and insight; I wanted to pen fantastic short fiction that was sure to catch the eye of someone important, that elusive one right person who could make all my lifelong literary dreams come true; I wanted to create a wildly successful blog that would spawn book deals and syndicated columns and who knows what else.

In short, I had high hopes. I was young, bright-eyed yet jaded. Possibly I had delusions of grandeur.

Reflection

October 28, 20122 Comments

Well, the October Memoir and Backstory Blog Challenge is finished. At least, it’s finished for me, anyway. I’ve never done a blog challenge before, and this one was a challenge in more ways than I had expected, but I’d like to think I’ve grown as a result.

Some of the posts were a challenge to write in that I had trouble coming up with things to write about (my teen years and my early twenties, most notably), while others were a challenge because I had so many fun stories to choose from and it was hard to pick just one thing to write about (the early childhood years). Other posts were a challenge to write because they dealt with topics that I’ve spent a lot of time blocking out or just plain not dealing with. I don’t cope well with change, especially if that change is negative in any way. It’s not something I ever learned how to do and I wonder if I ever will. But…

Holy shamoly!

October 2, 201213 Comments

I don’t know what I wrote, but evidently someone – or several someones – found something I said of interest because my blog traffic is through the roof today. Normally I can expect to see twenty, maybe thirty people stop by on any given day. On a really good day, the number of visitors jumps up to around fifty. It’s a small following, I know, but I truly appreciate those who stop by regularly. I think it’s better to have a handful of loyal fans than a thousand people who maybe stop in only once.

But today? Today I’ve had 303 hits. I don’t know what I wrote that was so dadgum interesting, but whatever it was, I wish someone would let me know so I could do it again! Or at the very least, I could try to do it again.

And now, back to my writing cave!