Wake Up Your Muse

I think the reason I've found it a little more difficult to stay consistant with my blog is that Facebook has sort of taken over the world of communication. It's so easy to update your FB status and let the world know what's going on. And it can be as simple as one sentence. Or even one word. Or it can be a mini essay.

I won't get started ranting about people who air their personal crap on their facebook status. Sometimes its a regular Jerry Springer show out there in FB land.

But it's not all bad. It's nice for a young mom to be able to post a minor frustration with her wee ones and get support and encouragement from all manner of people. It's great to hear little accomplishments and even to get far away weather reports. Truth be told, I've heard far more wedding and baby announcements on Facebook in the past couple of years than by any other means.

Sometimes you make a comment and it takes off like wildfire.

Take for example someone, say like me, posting "won a writing contest!" And good gawd by the response you'd think I won the Pulitzer Prize. Don't get me wrong. Truly I appreciate the response - it's very encouraging. However, it's kinda embarassing. All I did was submit last weeks Flash Fiction story. I won. The prize? A ten dollar book. And not even a paper book - a pdf book that was emailed to me. But I am excited about it, it's called Wake Up Your Muse. It's a book of 1001  prompts for flash fiction.

I contemplated paying the 10 bucks to buy it, so it is cool that I won it.

Besides, winning the Pulitzer isn't all that much more financially rewarding. They only get 10 grand. Last year's winning novel had 192 pages. Average 300 words per page and Paul Harding wrote for months (possibly years) and only raked in 17 cents per word. I spent an hour plunking out 399 words and pocketed 2.5 cents per word. Not too bad for a first effort I suppose.