Leaping Liebsters

In my last blog post, I mentioned my nomination for the Liebster “Award.”

In fact, this is not an award but a chain letter. You might wonder why someone as skeptical as I would fall for such a thing. Fear not: I go in with eyes open. I understand the honor is not bestowed by some Editorial Board in the Sky but by a fellow blogger who stumbled on my blog and liked it.

In that stumbling spirit, I accept and pass along the Liebster Award.

One of the Liebster rules (see below) requires nominating other bloggers for the award (does the chain-letter nature of this start to become clear?). I took this opportunity to expand my blog-reading horizons—something WordPress makes quite painless—though I stuck to blogs about reading and writing.

As they say in the world of Netflix, Amazon, and Goodreads, “If you enjoy Writing of Many Kinds, you may also enjoy…”

So, let’s leap in.

Each nominee must link back the person who nominated them.

Thank you to A Journal of Impossible Things, written by a fellow Sixfolder.

Answer the ten questions given to you by the nominator.

1) How lit [sic] the fire for your writing? When did your passion for the written word start?

Reading sparked my passion for writing. I can’t remember learning to read; it happened early. Apparently I was disappointed to find that I would be learning to read in kindergarten, since I already knew how. As a kid, I read everything I could get my hands on, visiting my town’s tiny public library at least weekly. I remember writing a story in second grade about a rainstorm. Soon thereafter, I was writing “novels” imitating the books I read—and learning about character, plot, and structure in the process. Why? I wanted to be able to create the luxurious sense of escape that reading provided for me.

2) Do you listen to music when you write? If you do, do you play a playlist or just one song on repeat?

Oddly, I rarely listen to music. When I do, it’s mostly to drown out distractions (TV in the other room, kids making noise). I find instrumental or classical music helpful in those situations. Music with lyrics distracts me.

3) What’s your favorite place in the world? That magical place that you always feel at home in and dream about when you haven’t visited in years?

I’m a “home is wherever I am right now” kind of person. I live in Northern California now and love it here. I loved rural New York when I was growing up there. I loved Boston when I lived there, and even Syracuse when I was there for grad school. I loved visiting Greece, France, and Italy; I loved hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

4) If you could only watch 5 movies for the rest of your life, what movies would they be? Care, not favorites. What movies do you think you could watch forever?

Only five for the rest of my life? Oh, come on. And watch forever? I mean, life is great and all, but I wouldn’t want it to be eternal. And I wouldn’t want to watch Dustin Hoffman or Jack Nicholson or John Travolta or Leonardo DiCaprio or Guy Pearce forever either. That said, I’ll play along:

• The Graduate
• The Shining
• Pulp Fiction
• Inception
• Memento

5) Name a moment in your life that was out of a Hollywood movie. Action moment, romantic.

Deciding to get married after spending only three days with my husband-to-be. We’ve been married for almost 23 years.

6) What was the last dream you remember?

Trekking up a mountain carrying a trumpet for my son and being attacked by sand flies.

7) What fictional character would you like to pick the brain of, if you could meet them?

Milo, from The Phantom Tollbooth.

8) What book are you most looking forward to reading in the next year?

CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, by George Saunders.

9) What’s something you really love doing and occasionally think you could have made it a living but realized if you did, you’d hate it forever?

Being a concert pianist.

10. What animal would you love to keep as a pet, no matter if it’s extinct or not really a pet type of creature?

A cougar (also known as a puma).

Nominate 10 other bloggers for this award who have FEWER than 200 followers. Here are EIGHT. So sue me.

• Literate Lives
• Twenty Six
• MaxEverhart
• Susi Lovell
• Ed Desautels’ Maximum Fiction ~ Writing up the Multiverse
• Michael J. McDonagh
• Eight Ladies Writing
• Sandra Chmara Editing & Writing

Create TEN questions for your nominees to answer.My lucky nominees only have to answer five! Add that to the list of charges against me…

1. What’s your favorite time of day?
2. What’s your biggest fear?
3. What gives you the greatest joy?
4. Do you read paper books, e-books, or a combination?
5. What do you like about blogging?

Rules for honorees

It’s nice to get recognized, but when the recognition come with a list of rules, the honor may feel more like a burden. Although this is like a chain letter, my nominees won’t contract a horrid disease or be attacked by the big Liebster in the sky if they don’t participate. Should they choose to do so, here are the rules (edited by me for grammar).

1. Each Nominees must link back to the person who nominated them.
2. Answer the 10 ten questions which are given to you by the nominator.
3. Nominate 10 ten other bloggers for this award who have less fewer than 200 followers.
4. Create 10 ten questions for your nominees to answer.
5. Let the nominees know that they have been nominated by going to their blogs and notifying them.

Happy blog exploring…

In case you missed it

My flash fiction piece, “Now You Are a Public Nuisance” appeared in Every Day Fiction and is getting lots of positive feedback.

Next Up

My next blog post will also be off the strict literary path as I’ll be participating in August McLaughlin’s wonderful Beauty of a Woman Blogfest III at the end of the month.