Roxann Delaney's Blog, page 5

A Little History of Home

Campbell Castle 1890Call me weird, but I have a thing for history.  Local history, to be precise.  There are two places that tickle my interest.  One is Wichita, the city where I was born and spent my childhood.  The other is Clearwater, where my mother's family settled, after immigrating from Germany and where I finished growing up.

The reason for the first is probably because my dad told stories about Wichita when he was growing up.  Born in 1910, he remembered thing...

SMART Goals 2

For anyone who stopped by here to take a look on Friday, you're doing better than I am.  It's 11:20 p.m. my time, and I'm finally getting to this.  Between a grandson who was sick and didn't make it to school, but needed to be watched over, to far too many website updates and Facebook Page creating, to a daughter who asked if I'd pick up her daughter after school, to another daughter who had to attend a funeral, the day didn't work out as expected.  And I'm 3 days behind on my...

Guess What Day It Is?

Awwww, you guessed it.  Yes, it's Wednesday, and as I type this, I'm almost to the halfway point.  Okay, of the daylight part of the day, that is.  But I don't get to sleep when the sun goes down.  I get to stay up and work.  Daytime is reserved for all those things that can't be done after 6 p.m.

My list today included a call to the bank, answering emails, checking out Facebook (which I really don't have time for, but...), a trip to get 6 items at the store  (only...

Monday Blues, Rock, or Whatever

My parents were music lovers.  Married in the 1940s, they were fans of the Big Bands.  Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and Jimmy Dorsey are among the bands I grew up listening to.  They also had collections of Classical music and Country/Western.  I even had a thing for Opera for a while in grade school.  I've never been to an opera. *grin*

I love music!I've lost count of the number of songs on my playlist, probably because my taste in music is very eclectic and I listen to...

SMART Goals

There's a trick to goal setting.  I haven't mastered it, but I'm gaining ground.  I'm learning how I work and what inspires me to want to reach my goals.

Yes, we're already two weeks into a new year.  No, it isn't too late to set goals.  If you've already set your goals for the year, congratulations!  You're on the road to reaching your goal.  You've already begun.

But have you really set goals in a smart way, not simply picked something that sounded good and made...

Do-Overs and Deadlines

deadline - the point in time at which something must be completed

We all know about deadlines.  We have at least one a year for paying taxes.  Most everything we do has a deadline, from making meals (deadline is people who whine that they're hungry!) to that April 15th one.

I knew I'd heard the back story (writers term) about how the word "deadline" came into play.  The etymology of the word.  But since I don't trust my memory, I looked it up.  It's believed the word wa...

New Year, New Goals

It's the first Friday of a brand new year.
How did you feel when you read that sentence?  Excited?  Shocked by the truth?  Afraid?
Goals are something I think about often.  They both excite me and scare me.  Sometimes they baffle me.  Sometimes they make me sigh, because there are days I don't want to think of them, much less work on them.  And at other times, they push me to work...not always with a smile, but determination of some kind.
Goals are also somethi...

All Work and No Play...

I'm in the midst of revising rewrites.  Sounds crazy, doesn't it?  I've rewritten 30,000 words of a nearly 60,000 word manuscript over the past month.  Not the most fun way to spend the first day of a new year, but it is what it is, and nobody will do it for me.

Monday is my goal to have this done and sent to my editor.  At the rate I'm going, there'll need to be an extension.  The holidays, family, and friends have taken more time than I'd planned, but I don't care.  Family...

Ring it Out, Ring it In

It's that time of year again.  The end of the year.  For most, it's a time of reflection on the past year to make room for improvements in the new year.

Of course we want the new year to be better than the one before.  Life is a cycle of ups and down,  good things and not so good.  We all know this, but when we're hunkering at the bottom of not so good, it's hard to remember that things change.

Millions of people will make New Year's Resolutions tonight.  I don't d...

A Writer Must...Write!

Millions of people think and talk about writing a book.  Only a small percentage of them actually do it.  Many might start, but few finish.  Of that small percentage who actually do write a book, an even smaller percentage of them are published.  Manuscripts get shoved into a drawer, left to gather dust, while life continues to happen.

There are all kinds of reasons why a person doesn't get around to actually write.  There's a mantra for that.  It goes something l...