Thirty Days of Thanksgiving - Day 19

Day 19. The Letter S. 

Today I’m thankful for my son Scott. He came twenty-four tension-filled minutes after his twin brother, Brett. Their differences were apparent from the beginning, being fraternal for one thing, but I’m amazed at how early in each of our boys’ lives their personalities became evident. Scott has always—ALWAYS—been a competitor and understood the concept of numbers.

He figured out multiplication in kindergarten (stunning his teacher) and by the time he was seven years old, he read the sports section every morning with his Cocoa Pebbles and began memorizing the baseball stats of his favorite players. He spent hours every day shooting baskets in the driveway. Rain or shine. Summer or winter. He took breaks by throwing a baseball against a pitchback.

It didn’t surprise us when he chose to major in math in college and went on to get a Master’s in statistics. Scott thinks in percentages and can probably tell you the odds of how often a fraternal twin becomes the father of identical twins. What goes around comes around, and he now has the pleasure (and challenge) of raising twins.



He and Denice get bonus points, though, for presenting us with our first grandgirl four years ago. I’m 100% certain she’s the cutest girl on the planet, and I’m 95% sure that Scott can still give you the lifetime stats of his all-time favorite baseball player, Reuben Sierra.

I’m a lucky mom. My heart overflows with thankfulness for these fine young men. Selfishly, I’m also a wee bit thankful for the solitude of my life now. Can you relate?

Little Did I Know . . .

When I embarked on this writing journey seven years ago, with visions in my head and ideas exploding in my heart, I had no idea what lay ahead. No clue that one day my vocabulary would include terms like writer’s platform, technorati, blogging, stat counting, and web presence. What was I thinking?

Playing with words, studying craft books, attending writers’ conferences, and keeping my eye on the goal—now those things I envisioned. But certainly not the techie things that would tax my very untechnological brain. In today’s publishing world, though, every writer must become savvy in all these things. And more. Like marketing, finding my brand, and networking. Heaven help us all.

Thank goodness, there are some ginormously wonderful, helpful, caring people out there to help writers navigate these strange waters. I’ve mentioned Mary DeMuth before and her “So You Want To Be Published” blog for writers. It’s an oasis of great ideas that I visit often.

Randy Ingermanson also has the Advanced Fiction Writers Blog that addresses all sorts of writing and techie subjects. He’s talking about building websites this week. Today’s post has a comprehensive list of ideas and questions for anyone wanting to set up a website or revamp an existing one. He also talked about web (blog) presence which is based on “hits” to your site and part of building a platform.

I’ve been tracking my stats for a while. While the majority of my readers come from the good old USA, I’ve also had visits from Canada, Australia, Africa, India, China, England, and other distant lands. Bless you all for stopping by.

The one thing I hadn’t done was check my Technorati rating. I found out that my “authority” (number of people who link to my blog) is 27 and my “rank” is 305,717. Not sure that it’s means anything, but the way I understand it, out of the sixty million or so blogs out there, with # 1 being the most popular, that’s my rank. It’s not something that keeps me awake at night, but it is definitely not something I would’ve thought I’d be checking on.

What does it all mean? Is this the meaning of life? If I don’t do all this technological stuff, am I doomed as a writer? Who knows? Certainly not me.

The bottom line, God planted the desire to write in my heart. He equipped me with enough gray cells to figure out what needs to be done. He guides my steps and holds my hand.

I’m holding up my end. Writing on my novels during the day. Slogging through the tech stuff in the evenings. And you’ll be the first to know when I sign a book contract. Thankfully, there are people out there to help me sort that out, too.

Tell me, do you struggle with any of this, or is it just me???