Pulling weeds

So I was ranting to my good friend, Mel, yesterday about all the frustrating things that were going on that day - from cell disrupters not working, to bosses being kind of slack, to toddlers not eating, and in the end I mentioned how therapeutic it is to pull weeds. What? You say? Pull weeds? Yes, pull weeds. If you've never benefited from this stress reliever you don't know what you're missing. First there's the satisfying physical exhaustion of your back aching and your arms feeling like they're getting going to burst, then there's the sweet sound of ripping earth. And then... then presto! Your yard/garden looks so much more bee-u-tee-ful without all those ugly eyesores of nature. Sure, you get a bit of dirt thrown in your face, and once in a while a spider will land on you, but that sound.... oh, it's so comforting. Hitting a punching bag or pillow cannot compare. Pulling weeds. Yes, that's where it's at.

Writing. Oh right. I forgot this was a writing blog. Well, I suppose that pulling weeds is a bit like doing revisions. We all have a few weeds in our manuscripts, those paragraphs or descriptions that just don't need to be there and are suffocating the rest of the beautiful words around them. And, most often our finished work looks much better after we pull a few of those out. The sound - well, no. You don't get the satisfying crunch of roots disentangling themselves from the ground. Really, all you get is a little click as you hit that delete button. And of course, not all of our writing weeds are big ugly patches of crabgrass. There are a few flowers, often prettier than dandelions, that have to be snipped/ripped now and then, and that's never fun. So, the satisfaction is not quite complete. But, in the end it has to be done. How extensively is of course up to you to you the gardener... er, writer. Yeah, whatever.

So my big question of the day is  how many weeds... um, words did you rip today? In the past 24 hours - I've pulled 1700!!  Yep 1700. I'm going to need some hedge clippers soon. And that's my random rambling for today.

Now on to some contests: (my real reason for blogging today). :)

First up is a contest for some awesome books from the folks at YA highway.

Second is a contest from Roni and Julies contest where they are giving away some awesome prizes including query letter or first 5 pages critiques from Agent Suzie Townsend, Editor Brendan Deenan, Janet Reed's assistant Meredith Barnes and Fine Print Lit's intern Gemma Cooper. This is a super cool contest that all inspiring writers should enter. *I'm keeping my fingers crossed*


Thursday's addendum - looky, I got a new blog award from Jen at unedited. Go check out her blog.


And that's all folks,
Cheers,
Angie