All posts by NewEngland_Muse

I'm a traditionally and self published author. I write in the genre of children and YA at the moment but working my way up to adults. I'm a sports loving, photo taking gal who loves to sing/dance to my own enjoyment. I love to laugh even at myself. I am also owned by 8 birds and 2 hamsters, and yes they know it. :)

Clothes, Life, Spring Cleaning, Weight

Spring Cleaning and Weight Loss=Reality Part 1

June 12, 2012 NewEngland_Muse 2 Comments

Spring cleaning were two words that I dreaded coming out of my mom’s mouth. It meant a top to bottom sweep to clean our home to get it ready for another year. Part of doing this manic mad drive in a weeks time included going over one’s closet. As children we were to separate the clothes that we had outgrown or were beyond repair.

Once I was older and on my own that broke down even further into placing in the corner clothes that you could not fit into but would save. You know for the time the weight would be lost. We would be able to fit into every single thing in our wardrobe because after all the pounds would be coming off. That is the lie a lot of us tell ourselves when we do a cleaning of our closets.

I am no exception. Especially since a medication that I was on had ballooned me 38 pounds over. My darling husband had noticed the gain but he had decided I knew and that it was not an issue or the pain relief from the drug was worth it to me. If only he spoken up. First of all the medication was helping slightly and second the gaining of weight had not been noticed by me. Who really looks in a mirror?

When the crap hit the fan, aka the realization of how much my body weighed a plan was formed. The slow and steady format of watching what one ate, counting calories and exercising was the way I went. I monitored week after week and soon month after month as the scale number slowly went down. Slowly is probably an inaccurate word, it took its bloody time to go down.

The added poundage was not good for me especially for someone who has fibro. It effect the joints and the pain just gets enhanced. Exercising was painful due to the condition but not doing so meant my body was hurting even more. While my primary goal was to lose weight to be healthy the underlining reason was to help with the pain to be reduced to any degree.

My main problem was having a fixed number in my head of what I wanted to weigh. It did not matter that the weight was started to be dropped. I kept at it with my regiment. My doctors were noticing well I pointed it out to them. I was proud and at the same time wanted their praise for doing so well. Still that magical number in my head was like a beacon of light never diminishing as it flashed 24/7.

The measurement around one’s waist should not be over 35 inches according to my doctor. Anything higher one is at risk for stroke and heart attacks, Through the many months I went below this number not just slightly but enough for breathing room. They were pleased as well as I was.

Time came to tackle the closet.

To Be Continued- The Closet

Formula, Reading Levels, SMOG Readability, Writing

SMOG Readability Formula

June 6, 2012 NewEngland_Muse 1 Comment

Have you ever wondered what age group you write for? Some of the lines blur between children, YA and adults. While some are clear-cut and obvious others are not so much.

There are some clever formulas one can use to calculate your written words to the age group of the readers. One such format is the SMOG Readability Formula. In short it counts 10 consecutive sentences in the beginning, middle and at the end of your story. It counts every word with three or more syllables in the 30 sentences regardless how many time it appears. It adds that total number and then compares it to the SMOG Conversion Table so we can determine what grade level we are writing toward.

There are some rules one needs to remember. A sentence is any string of words that ends in a period, exclamation point or a question mark, Words that have hyphens count as one word. Proper nouns are counted as words. If you have numbers in your story read them out loud to see how many syllables they have. In long sentences that have colons or semicolons followed by a list count each part of the list with the beginning phrase of the sentences as one sentence each. You also should count abbreviations as if they were not. Do not include verbs ending in “ed” or “es” for that will make the word have a third syllable.

This will give the writer a good clue of where their book is geared toward. I have found this particular useful for my writings when the line between the ages are so close together it is hard to determine who to pitch to. There will be some exceptions to the rule. By the time I was in 3rd grade the books being read by me were the ones my sister in high school was reading. You will have kids who are more advanced and will not fit this profile. But for the most part it’s a good starting point

Don’t have time to do all of this? Well it got easier. The link below gives you an opportunity to cut and paste from your story and it will calculate for you where the readability is.

http://www.readabilityformulas.com/free-readability-formula-tests.php

I am so glad these tools exist for us to take advantage off. This gives me one less thing to do which I happily embrace.

Bloggers, Kreative Blogger Award, websites, Writing

Kreativ Blogger Award

June 2, 2012 NewEngland_Muse 8 Comments

The lovely Kate http://katepolicani.com/ has nominated me for the Kreative Blogger Award. This is my first time and Kate thank you that did put a smile on my face.

The Rules:

1. Thank my nominator and provide a link to their blog

2.List seven things that readers might find interesting about me

3.Nominate seven other bloggers

4.Smile on the inside, it does a body good.

Seven things about me:

1-I am owned by eight birds.

2-I love walking in the rain, for real, but especially in the snow.

3-My favorite genre to read is horror.

4-I am a budding photographer

5-I read my bible daily.

6-I still miss my dad even though we lost him in the 70’s.