Upcoming Workshop by Playground Monitor

Airing Dirty Laundry – Use Family Stories, Eavesdropping and Cable TV to Create Writing Income

Instructor: Marilyn Puett (Our very own Playground Monitor!)

Online Workshop Through Heart of Dixie, RWA, www.heartofdixie.org

June 7 – 21, 2010

Cost: $20, Deadline for Registration June 5th.

Course Description:

Airing Dirty Laundry offers information and tips on how to create a source of outside income by writing short stories for the confessions and romance magazines. This two-week workshop is geared for writers who want extra income while waiting to sell their first book, are between royalty checks or simply want an extra income stream.

This course takes students step by step through writing a confession. It begins with learning the market, developing hooks and compelling story lines and structuring a story properly. By the end of the course, students should have a story ready for submission.

Additionally, participants will be given the opportunity to submit the first few pages of a story they start during the class and have the pages critiqued by published writers. Two stories will be selected toward the end of the class to receive a full critique.

Instructor Bio:

Marilyn Puett has sold over thirty stories and a half-dozen short feature articles to the confessions and romance magazines. She has also sold to an e-zine called Chick Lit Review and an anthology titled, appropriately enough, I Confess. She appears in both the 2008 and 2009 Bylines Writers’ Desk Calendar and her article “Short Shorts – Not Just a Fashion Statement” was featured on the Writing for Dollars website. Marilyn is a member of Heart of Dixie RWA and serves RWA on both the local and national levels. A founding member of The Writing Playground, a website for aspiring writers (www.writingplayground.com), she lives in her empty nest in north Alabama and dotes on her granddaughter.

Life's Been Tough

Dear Blog Friends,

Sorry to say this, but this will be my last blog. Things have been tougher than usual lately and life is getting shorter and shorter every day. I want to take time and smell the roses. So I am going to quit writing and blogging, and instead I'm going to travel full time with a biker gang to see the country and enjoy life while I still can. Don't worry about me - they all seem like really nice people. It has been nice knowing all of you. But it's time to say good bye. A photo of my biker gang is below. Don't be sad, just smile.

Love Ya,









P.S. And remember my motto: Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body. But rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, a glass of go Cabernet in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO, what a ride!

.
.
.
.
.
.

P.P.S. Gotcha! Or maybe not. Maybe y'all know me well enough that this is the absolute LAST thing you'd expect me to do. But don't those guys look like fun? ;-)

Anyway, tell me your favorite email joke and one lucky jokester will win a book from my stash.

Boots and Spurs

Nope, this isn't a cowboy blog. It's about my foot. If you've hung around the Playground for a while, you'll remember I had foot surgery in February 2008. And you'll be glad to know the surgery was a success.

However, last December I began experiencing heel pain. I figured I'd bruised it since I have a habit of going barefoot around the house. After a month, though, I went back to the doctor who did my surgery and he diagnosed me with plantar fasciitis. I have a small bone spur in my heel, but according to the doctor, it's not large enough to be causing the level of pain I've experienced. You can see from the diagram that the plantar fascia is a band of connective tissue running from the heel to the ball of the foot and supporting the arch. Sometimes that band gets a tear or rupture, becomes inflamed and causes pain. It's common among athletes and also can be caused by improperly fitting footwear.

No one's ever accused me of being an athlete, and the Playfriends gently tease me about my sensible shoes. So the doc and I are still a bit unsure how this happened, but it did.

Plan A for treatment was a three-month round of thrice-daily stretches plus OTC anti-inflammatories. After four months, the pain has increased, so I went back to the doc last week and he said we needed to move to Plan B. He also said there was cause to believe I might have a stress fracture.

Yesterday morning I had an MRI and later in the day I returned for the verdict. No stress fracture but there's definitely a small rupture near the point where the plantar fascia connects to the heel.

The treatment? A short leg walking cast. In case you're not familiar with that, just keep reading.



This is Jeffrey, the very nice man who put on my cast. He's also a licensed massage therapist and showed me how to massage the foot once the cast comes off.

<-----This is the beginning of the process. He put a cotton sock on my leg and then wrapped it with cotton padding. And then he began applying an off-white fiberglass wrap.

Here's Jeffrey smoothing down the final layer of wrap. -------->

They handed me a selection of cast colors and had me choose. I figured dark blue would go with most of my clothes and not show dirt too much. Oh my gosh at the flab on my thigh. Don't guess I can do anything about it now.





<------------ The finished product.

The finished product with the walking boot, which looks like a Keen water sandal and probably costs ten times as much. ----->

And the Playground Monitor modeling her latest couture. Think Clinton and Stacy would approve?

The cast comes off July 10, just three days before I leave for the RWA conference in DC. I'm already seeing ugly shoes in my future and possibly an ankle brace since my joint will have been immobilized for six weeks and will most likely stiffen up. The muscles will probably atrophy too. Sightseeing is gonna be a ton o' fun.

Have you ever had a cast? Any tips on caring for it? Dealing with the inevitable itch about halfway down my calf? I did order something called a Shower Guard that's supposed to keep it dry in the shower. And Jeffrey warned me that if it got wet and had to be replaced, the insurance won't pay for the replacement.

Pimping at its Finest

This is the 2009 Bylines Writer's Desk Calendar. It's a good calendar for writers because it has lots of extra stuff -- a place to track monthly goals and tasks, a submissions tracking page, pages to log in writing-related purchases, a page for writing-related car mileage, and several pages of good websites for writers.

It also has me in it. :-) 2009 is my second year to be in Bylines. And as soon I get my comp copy, I'll look for the 2010 submission guidelines and shoot for number 3.

According to Sylvia Forbes, the Bylines publisher, this year's Bylines includes writers from 29 states and 5 foreign countries (China, Tasmania, Ireland, Great Britain, Canada).

The "celebrity desk" on the cover of Bylines 2009 is Mark Twain's. He used this desk for much of his writing and it is on display at the Mark Twain Museum in Hannibal, Missouri. Mark Twain was also one of the first authors, perhaps even the first (as he claims), to use a typewriter in his writing. A photo of one of his typewriters can also be found inside the calendar. Ms. Forbes is calling the 2009 calendar the "Mark Twain" edition because all the photos inside other than the photos of each contributor relate to him in some way.

If you're interested in getting yourself a Bylines calendar (and I get nothing if you buy one) you can learn more here: www.bylinescalendar.com . The site will also have submissions info for the 2010 calendar.