StorytimeWednesday

Happy Thanksgiving everyone Wishing everyone a joyous and rewarding Thanksgiving. May you also have a peaceful day to enjoy each others company, and maybe learn something about one another. Remember to say a special prayer of thanks to those serving in uniform here at home and around the world, protecting freedom and democracy.    Author Elizabeth Kilbride is a former political operative, author, scriptwriter, historian, journalist. business professional, and creative artist, and life coach consultant. Ms. Kilbride holds a Masters in Criminology and a BS in Business Management who stepped out of the loop for a while, but who is now back with a powerful opinion and voice in the direction of this country and our economy. As a life coach, she is available to counsel individuals to enjoy their dreams and a better life. Ms. Kilbride loves to travel, photograph her surroundings and is also a gourmet cook who loves to garden and preserve food for the winter months.   

  Short Stories can help in writing process Many authors didn’t start out writing the preverbal 125,000-word novel first time out, they actually honed their talents by writing short stories and holding on to them, then later on digging them out and adding to them to make them into a novel. Even I have at times written maybe 10-25 pages or less type of short story. I just get the story out of my head and put it away until I have the time to flesh out the story or add to it.   Today the 24 th of November 2021 starts the Thanksgiving holiday weekend here in America, why not spend Friday sitting down and begin writing a short story? If you already have a story concept in your head, just sit down in a calm place and write. See what happens. You never know you might spark a full-length novel in my mind. Don’t tell anyone what you’re doing if there is company in the house, just quietly do it on your own. A short story is just that, short so you don’t have 30 pages to describe the entire

      NDA’s – Importance of protecting and safeguarding your work  What does NDA mean, you ask? It means Non-Disclosure Agreement. It is a document that protects you when you share your work with someone else within either the publishing, movie or editor industry from stealing your work and using it for their own profit.   If someone is not interested in signing an NDA before you meet or share your work with, run for the hills. All they want to do is steal your ideas and concepts. That’s why when you meet with someone in Hollywood, or who represents a movie house or is a producer, never share your entire concept idea with them, only share a paragraph with them because if you give them anymore of your idea, they will snatch it from you and claim it was their idea. Here is what it should say and the format:   NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT The undersigned party (Person to whom you plan to share your concept idea plus resident address and phone number (the "Receiving Party"

  Today is Veteran's Day which means it is a day we civilians say thank you to all those wearing the uniform of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Merchant Marines for putting that uniform on every day. It is because of their sacrifice each day in defending our way of life, our Constitution, and our country that we remain free. I salute you all and say a special thank you, from the bottom of my heart for what you do -- Author Elizabeth Kilbride is a former political operative, author, scriptwriter, historian, journalist. business professional, and creative artist, and life coach consultant. Ms. Kilbride holds a Masters in Criminology and a BS in Business Management who stepped out of the loop for a while, but who is now back with a powerful opinion and voice in the direction of this country and our economy. As a life coach, she is available to counsel individuals to enjoy their dreams and a better life. Ms. Kilbride loves to travel, photograph her surroundings

    Grammar is for editors Many writers prevent themselves from finishing a book or script because they’re hung up on editing their story for proper English grammar. Guess what, that’s not your job. Your job is to create the characters, the storyline, the plots, the ending and most of all the flow of words that describe all of the above. Your job is not to concentrate on the grammar, you’re not an English teacher grading a paper for some student. Thinking about grammar and how it looks on paper is the editor’s job not yours. As I stated in my last post “get the story out of your head”, concentrate on the story and forget about the grammar until you’re done with the book. You can worry about how it sounds or inserting grammar once you’re in a position to reread the draft. Trust me when I say you will go through a minimum of 4 drafts before you are done, so you’ll catch any grammatical errors along the way and you can fix them as you find them at that point. In the meantime, just get the

  Get the story out of your head One of the great things about having a creative mentor is they don’t hold any punches and tell you like it is no matter how it makes you feel. I have just one of those types of mentors. Don’t get me wrong he doesn’t tell me anything that is going to hurt my feels, but he does raise my awareness by giving me critical feedback that if you look at it the wrong way, you might think he is being seriously harsh. But as writers and creative individuals we need that type of slap upside the head at times, right? During one of his check up calls as he called them, he asked me how much writing I achieved for the book I was working on called “Last Wish”. My response was simple, I’m still on the first page, I’m stuck on all this grammar and editing as I go. He was not only frustrated with my response he hung up on me. I was like damn I pissed him off. Two hours later my phone rang and he apologized for the dropped call. His cell phone died and he had to fully ch