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Hi, folks! I'm continuing my Bloom series for the month of May.  There is nothing more heartening to me than a flower blooming in the crack in the sidewalk, the crevice of a mountain, or on a cliff face by the sea. Another surprise is a bloom in the desert place. There is no circumstance than can hold back a bloom. You must bloom where you are planted. This is your purpose. Life finds a way.

"Bloom where you are planted" is a quote attributed to St. Francis De Sales, the patron saint of writers. This is a little quote I whisper to myself often. It is a story of tenacity and one I am close to. Flowers that bloom in impossible places are the heart of tenacity. They put down roots in rocks. They cling to life when there is little chance of life. They bloom even if that bloom is stunted and its flower is deformed. Writers have a similar tenacity to bloom. I am no exception.

How does a writer bloom where they are planted? You may live on the backside of nowhere, i.e. suburbia.  You may work a mind numbing job that is mocked on national TV.  You may be over the age of 50. You may have family members with complex health issues and you care for them. You may suffer from depression during this same time.You may have received more writing rejections at this point than you considered was humanly possible. At the end of the day, it's tough to stay alive in a place like this this, much less bloom.

So how do you do it? How do you bloom?  Here some of the answers: live in this moment. Don't think about the road that brought you here. Don't think of the road that will take you on. Be here and now and exist. Place your baggage down and move on. Don't refuse to forgive yourself and others. Move on with your life. Stop the foolishness. It is time to let all that stuff go. Focus of all the good you know, have known and hope to know. Believe that you will  rise above the waves that wish to beat you down. Work when you are too tired. Be positive even if the waves crash over you.  Be positive if you are washed out to sea and must swim back to shore. Believe that your gifts will make a place for you. Never stop trying. Do these things and you find yourself blooming in some odd places and at some odd times.

Life is tenacious. Whatever you facing, don't let it choke you. Bloom.

I'm glad you dropped by!  Come back next week for the end of the Bloom series.

Here is a doodle for you. Cemetery Roses.

I was thinking this morning about my new book coming out this fall, Girl, Stolen.

I've got a really good feeling about this book. Sometimes, though, I worry about sharing good news, because I know a lot of people reading this blog are still waiting for their good news, wondering if it will ever come.

I have been there, in all its incarnations, including after I was published (a point which a lot of people thinks means you have made it and will keep on making it).
- I went through over a hundred rejections before I got an agent (with my second book).
- That agent submitted not one, but two books that never saw the light of day.
- I have been dropped by a publisher (while on book tour for a series, which resulted in my having the "deer in the headlights" look whenever anyone cheerfully asked me, "So, what's next?")
- I have written four books over the last 13 years that did not get picked up (even though I was already a published author) (writing for an already saturated market is one problem, and writing books that don't quite fit any category is another problem).
- I have been with a house that did little more than publish the book.
- I have had a book I loved, a book I thought was one of the best things I had written, rejected rather dismissively by one of my editors.

And I've had a lot of great things happen in the last 13 years as well. And I'm still being published, despite a couple of times (one lasted a couple of years) when I wondered if it was over. In fact, I now have contracts for seven more books.

I think the trick is:
- to take joy in the writing.
- to never give up.
- to do what you can to learn and grow. (I still check out writing books from the library, for example.)

And if you do those things, you will eventually get good news.

Hi folks, I'm on the road so the post will be short. This week I've been down to the Johnston Space Center in Houston and toured the simulators and checked out mission control. I've also kept my eye on the Mars landing and the possible discovery of water on the red planet. Those images of Mars are haunting. It's red, rocky and desolate. Everything about the space program inspires me to reach for the stars, but most of all it's the astronauts who make me think anything is possible.

I'm so inspired by the tenacity, fluidity and single mindedness of the astronauts. It takes all out efforts to get into space, and that strength to do whatever it takes helps me get up each morning and sit in that chair and make the magic happen. It also takes a person who goes with flow and moves with the ebb. This fluidity to lay hold of the task at hand lends me great strength. Last of all, you've got to sleep, eat, and taste that mission objective. That's the attitude that I want to bring to my novel writing. I want to wrap my mind around the mission objective and get it done.

And to bring this all around, my quote of the week:

“That some achieve great success is proof to all others that we can achieve it, as well.”

Abraham Lincoln


Doodle of the week: Some Bunny

Remember: ©Molly Blaisdell, all rights reserved. If you want to use my cool doodles, ask permission first. It is so wrong to take people's doodles without permisison!

As OUP lexicographers monitor the linguistic radar for new words and meanings, sometimes we find a usage that appears novel but has actually been kicking around for quite a while. Consider the verb big-up, meaning ‘to praise or promote; to raise the profile of.’ Three recent quotes from American media sources give you a sense of how it’s being used these days. Here’s the actress Jaime Pressly critiquing the show “Ugly Betty”: “They’re purposefully big-upping the ugly fat girl to make everybody feel great, but it also glamorizes the fact that people are getting plastic surgery because they can.” The music blog Idolator had this to say about an “American Idol” contestant: “This is actually the second time that Hennessy has been big-upped by the Idol powers that be,” adding, “is big-upping this girl really the best strategy to boost ratings?” And finally a profile of Staten Island’s Budos Band notes: “Legit blogs like Brooklyn Vegan and online publications like Pitchfork and RollingStone.com have also big-upped the band.” This might be the verb of the moment in hip, pop-culture-savvy varieties of American English, but it already has a long history in Caribbean and British English.
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