Thanks and Welcome

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First, I want to say thanks to everyone who had great ideas and encouragement last week on how to get through my writing funk. I've been able to get my butt in the chair and work a few times since then. In addition to my editing on Fighting Fate, I've also gone back to an old, shelved project and dusted it off. The combination of writing something "new" and editing/revision something has been extremely good for me. I feel revitalized. I'm even excited to get to work in the morning, and not as interested in procrastinating.

The encouragement from all of you, old friends and new, has been amazing. I love the blogosphere! You're all great. Thank you again.

And a warm welcome to any more Campaign group cohorts. I'm very happy to meet you. Glad you could stop by :)

An Award :)

First, if you haven't heard yet or you're still on the fence, please join me and Charity for the HONE YOUR SKILLS Blogfest on March 16th. It's a chance to try your hand at a short story, get feedback from fellow writer-bloggers, and encouragement to try and publish it. We'd love to have you, so just click the link above or on the sidebar to join.
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Last week, I was given an award from Allan Russell at Publish or Perish AND from Michelle at Perfecting the Craft...

UPDATE: I also just received this award from Kristina at KayKay's Corner. Man, am I feeling the love or WHAT?

Kristina also gave me this award:

Thank you so much, Al, Michelle, and Kristina!

For those of you who don't know Al, he is the author of Veiled in Shadows, the beautiful cover of which is staring at me from the top of my to-read pile. Then again, maybe I'm just a sucker for the big blue eye :)

(On a side note, stop by on Monday for a guest post by Al.)

According to the rules of the award, I should tell you seven things about myself and then pass it on. Here's a random assortment of things you may not yet know about me. I'll limit myself to non-writing things this time. For other random Rosie facts, you can check out these other posts: from here, here (the the truth behind it), here, and one more.

1. As a recovering linguist, I'm a language junkie. I'm not fluent in any language (I sometimes contend that I'm not even fluent in English), though my husband likes to argue this point with me. Anyway, over the few decades of my life, I've studied (in no particular order) Spanish, French, German, Russian, Polish, Macedonian, and Welsh officially. If I have a dictionary, I can usually read Czech, Slovak, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Bulgarian, and Ukrainian well enough. I also know lots of random syntax facts about Icelandic, Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and Dogon (my friend is currently working on a Dogon grammar).
2. I'm a graduate student in my last semester of coursework. There exists about a 2% chance that I will write a dissertation (with a 3% margin of error).
3. If I were ever to write a dissertation, I would write it on Polish syntax and the reflexive particle się. (I promise, it's a little more interesting than Wikipedia makes it out to be.) Last summer I got to meet Norbert Hornstein, whose most recent syntactic framework is called MOVE! (yes, with the exclamation point), and talk to him about my ideas using his framework. We argued a lot. We disagreed even more. It was fun and discouraging.
4. My graduate employment consisted of teaching Russian for only one year. I have never worked so hard. I taught in the 2007–2008 school year. Many of my former students were freshmen that year, and so are seniors now. I occasionally run into them on campus, and sometimes they even invite me out for a drink to catch up. :)
5. My current GA employment is working as the Managing Editor of the for Journal of Slavic Linguistics for Slavica Publishers. I prepare journals and books for publication. In addition to the journal, which I have worked on since 2006, I am currently preparing a book on Macedonian. It should be finish in the next month and be published by summer.
6. I have never published anything regarding linguistics. I've only edited other people's work. This doesn't bother me, though my colleagues think it should.
7. I had no intention of this turning into a Rosie's-grad-school-life post. Just to mix it up, I'll tell you that I got new glasses last week. They've got the Transitions lenses, too. I can't begin to tell you how excited they make me :)

Okay, now for passing on the love.

Carol at ArtziCarol Ramblings
Jan at Crazy Jane
Sallee at The Highly Educated Housewife
Medeia at Sharif Writes
Charity at My Writing Journey
Dezmond at Hollywood Spy

Thanks again to Al, Michelle, and Kristina for the award. :) Have a great Wednesday!

Monday Montage

Update from Saturday's Post

Thank you, everyone, for both your empathy with my cyber-struggle and your suggestions.  I've decided to try a system of scheduled visits—though I haven't worked it out yet.  Of course, if I work out my schedule this week it will be interesting to see how well I can keep up with it over the next month with classes ending, two weddings to attend, my mother visiting, and classes starting again.

Bottom line:  I'm not ignoring you!  I'm trying to get my cyber-bum around to visit everyone, but it will be sporadic for a while.

Writing Update

Instead of being a cyber-junky this weekend, I did some hardcore revising of chapters 1–4 (now chapter 1–6).  More will still need to be done, and my notes are quite extensive, but I'm feeling pretty good about it.  Again, thank you to anyone who shared encouragement or sympathy on Thursday's post.  They helped keep my motivation up all weekend, and I'm still going strong this afternoon.

EPL Book Club

I'm a little delinquent in my reading of EPL.  My final book club post will be up by the end of the week (hopefully...)

Last Week's Random Act of Awesome

Well, it's not entirely random.  I've been planning this for a long time.

PS—Don't EVER get a tattoo on your foot unless you're a true masochist.

Thanks!

Wow, that's two thank-you posts in one week.  Apparently I'm feeling grateful.

I want to thank everyone for their answers to my advice question from yesterday.  I was extremely helpful hearing a few different points of view, and hearing that maybe—if done right, of course—the info dump wouldn't be too bad.  It seems like most people liked the exam studying options, be it textbook or study session.  There will surely be some general exposition—how could I possibly get around it, really?  Some of the information I'll try to spread out.  For example, in the opening chapter they're watching a special news break, and that would be an easy place to throw some of it in, but not enough.  And a decent amount shows up in Chapter 6 already, but the complaint I got was that it was too late and the reader was already skeptical about the reality.

Okay, well, I shouldn't info-dump here, either.  Just a big thanks to those of you who kicked in your two dollars (inflation, don't ya know?).

Cheers!

An Award +7 Mystery Items

Jan, you made me a little weepy when you passed this on to me.  I hardly think of myself as versatile in my short blogging life.  Of course, I made my last post right about the same time Jan bestowed this upon me, and Cruella Collett ended up visiting me.  Her comment may not indicate my versatility, but it's nice to know that we can touch people without even trying.

I want to say for the record (CC, if you're listening), that I know all about deadlines and Masters theses and other academic bureaucracy that makes you want to pull your hair out in tufty little patches.  Good luck with your break.

All that being said, I want to thank Jan for passing this on to me.  And the green is rather fitting, no? :)

Okay, so, I don't simply get to bask in the glory of my award.  It comes with a price.  No, I'm not selling my soul to anything/one, nor am I writing oaths to be someone's servant forever.  It's much simpler than that.

1.  Thank those who loved me enough to bestow this gift.  

Jan, let me know if you need more praise.  I could continue, for example, by thanking you for your Friday challenges...

2.  Share seven things about myself.
Oh, boy.  Welp, let's see...

• I've lived in seven US states and two European countries (three, if only a month counts as more than vacation).  I've also visited the majority of the continental 48, a province or two, and two more continents.  Yeah, I like to travel :)
• I finished my first novella (horrible as it was!) when I was thirteen.
• I began legal adulthood and my college education as a creative writing major.  Due to not-so-peer pressure, I changed my major to something more practical (international studies), and have even since fumbled around looking for my soul's true home: politics, anthropology, religious philosophy, ESL, linguistics.  I have now come full circle, and want to kick myself for not taking greater advantage of those writing workshops.  Of course, I don't think I was ready for them then.  Can I go back and try again?
• It took me nearly eighteen months to muster the nerve to start this blog.
• I have a strong propensity to pick up the accents of the people I'm around.  It's usually temporary, and completely unconscious.  But I do still have a few things that stick with me (like saying "Wisconsin" as if I were from there, thanks to my first college roommate X+ years ago).
• In my Dr. Jekyll life (which makes my writing persona Ms. Hyde?), I am a PhD student in Slavic Linguistics.  This entails me studying tiny, semantically empty word-like things in Polish called clitics.  I promise, it's not at all sexual!  (At a New Year's party a few years ago, I said, "I study clitics" before explaining what they were, and the woman I was talking to became instantly disturbed and uncomfortable and walked away.  So, now, I explain it before giving it a proper euphemism... *cough* er, name.)
• My husband and I have two loving and adorable cats, one of whom we adopted in Poland, and the other from the local animal shelter.  In fact, they are so loving that they are standing at the door, crying for my husband to take them outside with him because they don't want him to be out there alone.  Aren't they sweet?

3.  Bestow this award upon others whose blogs you believe are versatile and worthy of acknowledgment.  

Jan, by her own confession, isn't good at following the rules.  So, I have no idea what the original ideal number is, but it doesn't really matter.  Here is a short list of blogs that regularly impact me and my life, writing-related or otherwise.

Jan at Crazy Jane (I don't feel bad passing this back, since my award came from Jan's other blog)
Rory at RAWR
Lindsey at Lindsey Leavitt
Jennifer at writerjenn
Charity at My Writing Journey
Dawn at Officially Twisted
Laa and Dio at Goat Spice

and two newbies, who will soon become versatile:
Heather at Heather's Krafty Korner
Maria at cards and crafts by maria (particularly note the Squirl Power card.... :)

There are loads of other blogs out there that I could pass this on to, but I wouldn't be able to stop.  Oh, and for some I'm one of their 4928 followers, and they don't know me from any other random groupie.  Just because I didn't list them doesn't mean they're not awesome.

4.  Drop by and let my friends know I love them.

You don't have to tell me twice!