No NaNo For Me

Around this time last year, I was getting ready for NaNoWriMo.  For those of you that don't know, that's an acronym that stands for National Novel Writing Month.  I have several blog posts about it if you want to learn more.  Anyway...

I'm not doing NaNo this year for a couple of reasons.  Number one, I have three novels in progress in various stages of completion.  One of them, I am ashamed to say, has been on my to do list since 2001.  Now I've revamped it a number of times by changing the title and practically changing the whole story line to fit what I think someone would really want to read.  Quintina Mitchell's story, Her Leftovers, is the book that has plagued me for a decade.  From the responses I've been getting to the excerpts that I've posted, I think I have a pretty good story, I've just got to make up in my mind to just be done with it already and let the readers tell me if they like the whole thing. 

The other two works in progress are my NaNo projects from the two previous years.  Sassy Johnson, the private detective and Cole Slaw, the bounty hunter, have been battling for attention the last couple of years.  They both want me to finish their stories ASAP but I haven't because well... I don't know why.  Probably because I keep going back to Her Leftovers.  So if I can't decide which one of these books to focus on, what's the point of starting another one.  Since I like all three main characters, the next book would probably be a part two to one of these projects.

The next reason why I'm not doing NaNo this year is because of my crafting business.  It's getting cold and everyone is hounding me about hats and scarves.  I've been getting a lot of orders for the jewelry too so my spare time is usually spent surrounded by beads or yarn.  It's tiring but I love it.  You can check out some of my Youtube videos (www.youtube.com/suzyquzy) and the photos on my Facebook(http://www.facebook.com/susienmccray) page if you want to see the different items I have made.  

Speaking of YouTube, I have been trying to document my hair growth since I've been natural.  My hair is now longer than it was right before I started growing the relaxer out.  My goal is to get it to the length and thickness that it was in high school.  I'm almost there, yayyy!  Maybe by next May I will have reached my goal, which will be the 2 year anniversary of being completely natural.

Despite all of these things I'm doing besides writing, I still think about writing.  Writing was my first love and I will always go back to it (Hence this blog post.)  One day I'll slap myself upside the head and complete at least one of these books.  If I do it before next October, I will definitely start prepping for NaNo. 

Boy

Who can I talk to about adding more hours to my day?  Mary J. Blige is loving her man 25/8 (25 hours/8 days a week) so maybe I can get 29/12. Just a thought.

To all of you who will be NaNo-ing this year, I wish you the best of luck.

Social Media's Effect on Relationships

Please don’t be silly enough to let Facebook, Twitter and other social media networks contribute to the ruin of your relationship.

I saw a tweet (That’s a Twitter update if you’ve been living under a rock.) Sunday that mentioned how people shouldn’t let social media destroy their relationship. I had heard this before, but hadn’t thought much of it. But after reading that tweet, I decided to see what other people had to say about it. So I posed this question—“Can someone please explain to me how a social network can ruin your relationship?” The first response I got was from my friend Shannon (@youngshay112).

“A social network can broadcast selfishness, expose infidelity, but it can't create those flaws.”

To me, this means that people put too much of their personal business (both positive and negative) in their tweets and Facebook status updates. The whole world can see what’s going on in their lives. Now, if you don’t know, here’s a tip. If you are always talking about what you and your boo did; what your boo bought you; what your boo said to you to make you smile, I guarantee there is someone out there that wishes you weren’t so damn happy. So whenever given the opportunity, they are going to say little things that will make you question your relationship.

For example: Valentine’s Day just passed and you posted that you and your sweetie had a great time at (insert restaurant or wherever) and you really enjoyed your (insert present received). Some jealous chick or dude saw this and commented, “Humph, he did all that? I wonder what kind of dirt he’s trying to make up for.”

You may respond one or two ways. You may shoot off on the person and tell them to keep your boo’s name out of their mouth or that they need to stay out of your business. Or, you may say that your sweetie hasn’t done anything wrong and you may question the person asking them why they would say such a horrible thing.

Whichever way you respond “out loud”, in your mind, even if you are just a little insecure about your relationship, you will begin to wonder if your prince charming is really a frog-legged, two-timing cheater in disguise.

Let’s say he is messing around with some Facebook floozy, keep in mind that this wasn’t a matter of the busy body speaking this negativity into existence, but a case of something in the dark coming into the light.

This takes me to the next response I got to my question, my namesake, Susie (@SusieWriter) said, “people become obsessed with comments & w/e and become paranoid that that's a sign that you're cheating.”

This means that dude is always “stalking” his girl’s social media accounts to see who responds to her tweets or whose statuses she comments on. If it looks like she’s talking to this one dude a little too much, he sees that as a cause for alarm. This brings to mind a YouTube video that I saw some years ago titled “Facebook Breakup”.

To be fair, I asked my Facebook friends what they thought of this subject. Catherine stated:
“I honestly can't see how, but perhaps I lack imagination. I mean, maybe someone could find out something you meant to keep a secret, but then wouldn't it just be your own behavior that's ruining the relationship? Blaming FB or Twitter because you got caught doing something or were indiscreet would be silly imo”.

That’s my opinion as well. People have been messing around for years and getting caught, way before the advent of the internet let alone social media. It used to be where you would get an anonymous phone call from someone saying they say your boo with the next door neighbor or your sister. Now a days they sneak and take a picture of the creeping couple and post a link to it so you and all of your friends can see the drama unfold.

The last response is from my friend and coworker, Amanda.
“Insecurities.. jealousy ..lies. FB should b fun...”

There are a lot of insecure people that seem to always wonder if their mate is messing around on them, whether they are or not. Jealousy can come from two angles. First, one partner or both partners are jealous are always looking for dirt so they can accuse the other of doing something wrong. Second, other people outside of the relationship could be jealous and try to throw some salt in the game. Which leads me to the next point--lies. Some folks just lie on you for no damn reason and what better place to spread those lies than Facebook and Twitter? People love drama, whether it’s true or not. Social media, both Facebook and Twitter, should be fun. If you take some of the goings on too seriously, you will end up being a very unhappy person. Take everything you read on the internet with a grain of salt. You don’t want to be breaking up or getting a divorce because your boo comments on someone else’s updates or tweets more than they do on yours.

I’ve said all of that to say this—
1) Stop putting all of your business on the internet if you don’t want anyone saying something to you about it.
2) If you’re in a relationship, keep your goodies between you and your mate. This will keep the drama status to a minimum or it will be non-existent.
3) Let’s say (God forbid) that you’re going through a crisis (mid-life or otherwise) and you’re anxious to see if you still got it, and you see some pretty young thing or pretty old thing that can get it, make sure there are no pictures taken that could incriminate you. (shaking my head)

Please be safe out there.

I Love It

I decided not to rant about anything today because, hey, I'm in a good mood. Instead I will be paying homage to a very special entity--YouTube. If you have never taken advantage of the many uses of YouTube, you should start today.

If YouTube was a dude, I'd marry him.

I'm in love with YouTube because it has so many uses and I have learned so many things from it. Plus, when I want to hear a certain song, all I have to do is type in the title, or just a few lyrics, and it plays the song for me.

When I'm trying to find a new hairstyle to do with my nappturally (nappy and naturally) curly hair, I search for styles and watch the tutorials.

I listen to YouTube when I'm at work to drown out all of the foolish talk going on around me so I can concentrate on my work.

When my son is begging to see a certain cartoon that he hasn't seen in a while, I check YouTube and there it is. Yayyy! (He watches it for 5 minutes then goes in the other room to watch some other kiddie show.)

YouTube even has videos on how to make videos and how to upload them. I put together a few pictures and some music in Windows Live Movie Maker and TADAA a video. It's only a little over a minute long, but I'm proud of it. The music's kind of loud so you may want to adjust your volume (I haven't mastered that yet).



Alexa ranks YouTube as the third most visited website on the internet, behind Google and Facebook. I kind of agree with the ranking except I think Twitter should be a lot higher than number eleven, but that's a story for another day.

Do you use YouTube? If so, what interesting things have your learned from it?

Teen Pregnancy Prevention

In my not so humble opinion, I believe that parents should introduce their teens, especially their girls, to birth control and condoms as soon as they hit puberty. We all wish that our children would remain virgins until they are 25 or married, whichever comes first, but that is unrealistic. We must explain to our children that it would be better if they waited to have sex, but we should still give them the tools needed to protect themselves from disease and pregnancy.

Susie Q (1994)

My Twitter and Facebook friend, Lakisha M. Johnson (@MySoulOnPaper) posted a link on Facebook to the story about the 90 pregnant girls at Frayser High School here in Memphis. I had heard about this on the radio last week and the first thing that came to mind was--whatever happened to the free clinic?

Here's the link to the story (http://www.bvblackspin.com/2011/01/14/90-girls-pregnant-at-memphis-middle-high-school/ )

I moved to the Frayser area when I was fifteen years old. Having lost my virginity 4 years prior, I was blessed and lucky that I didn't already have two or three crumb snatchers by the hand. When I moved in with my dad, he took me and two of my older sisters (ages 16 and 17) to the clinic to #1 get tested for STDs, #2 get birth control pills, and #3 get a bag of condoms. Daddy told us from day one that he was not condoning any sexual behavior but he wanted to make sure we were protected, just in case. "I don't need any accidents keeping me up all night and drinking up all the milk," he always said.

The reason why he did this was because he was a truck driver and was only home every other night. He didn't have time to watch us. We had to be in the house before the street lights came on but we could stay out until no later than 10 pm, when he was home. If we disobeyed these rules, we would be on punishment for two weeks to two months depending on how late we were out past curfew and what he thought we were doing while we were gone. (I was on punishment the whole summer one year, shaking my head.) My stepmother was always in a world of her own, so I and my sisters pretty much did whatever we wanted until dad asked the neighbors to start spying on us.

Even though my dad did the unthinkable in the eyes of most parents, he still taught us that we shouldn't just lay down with any old dude and that neither the birth control pills nor the condoms were 100% effective. He also schooled us on the importance of getting an education and having faith in God. As a scare tactic, he often used family members as examples of how not to be--Young mothers with three kids by three different fathers; living in the projects with a new car and big screen TV; those that had no job and weren't looking because (they said) "the man" was holding them back: high school dropouts that complained about cleaning hotel toilets.

My sister that was 16, at the time, didn't have a baby until she was around 18 or 19. She married her son's father, he joined the army and they hit the road. The sister who was 17, at the time, doesn't have any kids at all. And I waited until I was an old maid (31) to have a kid.

Even though he took us for the initial doctor visit, it was up to us to make our subsequent appointments, to take the pills and to make the guys use the condoms even if we had to put them on "the thing" ourselves (which I got pretty good at, LOL).

Parents, please help your children to enjoy their childhood and not try to grow up so fast. Set rules for them and enforce those rules. Stop trying to be friends with your kids, they have enough of those, they need guidance. Once the babies come, playtime is over. Once HIV hits, their lives may be over.

Like another one of my Twitter/Facebook buddies, Rob Grant (@Ima_Writer) says, "Condoms are cheaper than diapers, B, wrap it up."

Proofreading is the Key

After reading Julie's (@WritingSpirit) blog post about keeping the way Facebook posts links in mind when writing opening paragraphs for your blog, I took a look at mine to see what it looked like.

There are two things wrong with this link. First of all, the comment, "Please forgive the formatting" was written a little after 1:00 am, when I was very sleepy. I wanted to make sure my post could be read at the top of the morning for Short Story Saturday before I went to bed. After tinkering with the HTML coding, I have corrected the formatting issue. Also, there's a misspelled word in the link. "The reports were off and some of the clients had been calling saying significant somes..." This should be sums not somes. This has been since corrected but just because I have changed the blog itself, the link on Facebook is still the way it was when I first uploaded the post. The lesson I learned from this is that I will definitely have to do a better job of proofreading before I hit the publish button.

Now, I'm guessing this could be the reason why I used to get so many rejection letters when I was actively submitting short stories and poems for publication. Who wants to publish someone who can't even write a single paragraph without a misspelling? I wouldn't if I were the publisher.

Please be careful how you send things out in the world, as they say, you only get one try to make a first impression.

In response to--Shine Online Blogging Tip 2

Causes of Social Media Addiction

I’m trying to figure out when my two year old son became a football fan, because I don’t know if I’m ready for this. It’s Sunday, so I was trying to watch a little TV, but every 30 minutes, D asked if he could watch football. Because I’m kind of sneaky, I would turn the channel to football and when he started playing with some of his toys, I would change the channel. Of course he would notice that the game was not on and he would ask to see it again. After about 6 times, I got sick of it and went into my office to catch up on some blog reading and do some research for my Social Media Addiction-Solution essay for English class.

Now I enjoy using sites like Facebook, Twitter, even YouTube; but I’m always conscious of the amount of time that I spend online. I am a true believer in the adage, “Time flies when you’re having fun.” This means that I know I could easily spend 4 to 6 hours playing games, tweeting, and watching silly videos. Last week I turned in an essay about the of Social Media Addiction-Causes, which in my opinion is 50% boredom, 25% loneliness and 25% avoidance.

Boredom
We all get bored sometimes but there are a lot more things to do besides sitting in front of a computer all day, especially if you are not doing anything constructive. First of all, you could read a book. Maybe you could watch something on TV. Get out and go for drinks with friends. You could even learn to crochet a sweater for your dog. But spending 4 or 5 hours sending notes and posting comments on MySpace gets old after a couple of days. Yes, the games on Facebook are very appealing but you should try to win (or lose) some real coins by taking a trip to the casino.

Loneliness
A lot of people that are addicted to social media are online to make friends because they don’t have any friends in real life. These internet fanatics feel comforted by the fact that they have an endless number of people that listen to their rants and raves. They feel that no one ever listens to them but their Facebook friends by commenting on all of their status updates. This internet empathy that is received is not real because real friends tell you the truth, for your own good, but internet buddies just tell you whatever you want to hear or because it sounds good to the rest of your audience.

Avoidance
Social media addiction affects an addict’s daily life in so many ways. The house is always a mess, their kids have eaten nothing but Happy Meals for 6 months, and they are late or have missed work more than once on a weekly basis, why? Because they felt that updating their blog or sending a tweet every ten minutes was more important than fulfilling their real life obligations. This is not a good way to live. The house will get so dirty that they won’t be able to find their laptop. All of the kids will be 20 pounds overweight and develop high blood pressure. If they do not go to work, eventually they will not have the money to pay the utilities or keep on the internet service.

When social media is used properly, it can be a great business tool or a nice way to entertain yourself. But when used improperly, it can cause problems in your everyday life.