#WeekendWritercize 1: New Endings

Welcome to the first edition of #WeekendWritercize!  

Good luck to all the contestants!

writercize:  Enough with "they lived happily ever after" fairy tale endings. Pick a familiar fairy tale, throw out the happily ever after, and tell us what really happened!

To enter the competition, leave your entry as a comment below. Be sure to include your Twitter handle and link to your blog or website. Tweet and Facebook fellow entries using the hashtag #WeekendWritercize.

Please avoid violence and profanity since this blog is used by students as an educational tool.

Competition closes at 11:59 p.m. Sunday night (Pacific time) - no entries accepted after that. Winner announced Monday.

This week's winner will receive a Writercize Weekend Winner badge to proudly display on their website and a $5.00 Target gift card. Must be reachable to win!

Hey Students and New Writers! Writing Advice - writercize #151

I recently received an e-mail from eCollegeFinder, an onine source to assist students in finding accredited online educational institutions. The e-mail asked for two seemingly simple pieces of information: a blog description and advice for student writers. Each had to be summarized in a mere two to four sentences. Most writers and bloggers could probably go on for days to answer such a question, so it was a task to narrow it down. Talk about precision!

I'd like to share my answer to the second question with all of you, and challenge you to share your best advice for student writers as well! I will be a bit more lenient on the limitation, and expand on mine in the sample response below.

writercize: What advice can you offer students aiming to improve their writing acumen? (I am adding: what advice can you offer beginning writers and bloggers?) 

No worries about the 2-4 sentences; you may expand to a couple of paragraphs or a max of 15 bullet points.

Read "click more" for writercizer sample response, including those extra goodies not included in the original email, and remember to stop in this weekend for the first ever #WeekendWritercize challenge!

Bathing Penguins - writercize #150

Posts have been a bit heavy lately with real world applications and serious tones, so I want to lighten things up and give you the chance to tell a story. And what animal could be more fun to highlight than the dapper little waddler, our friend the penguin?

writercize:  Tell a story, any genre (non-fiction or journalism also perfectly acceptable), prompted by the two following words: penguin, bath.

I look forward to reading about your bathing penguins!

Click "read more" for writercizer fictional (children's) sample response.

#WeekendWritercize Coming Soon!

Get your hash tags ready and your keyboards prepped, because a new competition is coming to the blogosphere!

Please join me this weekend for the start of #WeekendWritercize, a weekly challenge of the writercize sort. 

The competition will consist of one writercize without any set-up or sample response. It will go up Saturday mornings and the last valid entry will be accepted at 11:59 p.m. Sunday nights.

Genres and themes will vary.

In generally, the prize will be recognition via tweets, facebook promotion and a winner badge for your blog, but there will be material goods for U.S. contestants occasionally!  Winners will be announced Mondays.

If you would like to submit a #WeekendWritercize question or serve as guest judge, please send me a message at alanagwrites (at) gmail (dot) com.

Thank you for allowing me this brief interruption - back to my regular programming tonight!

I Hereby Resolve - writercize #149

In the spirit of New Year's resolutions, I am pleased to announce that I have finally settled on what I plan to do for this year and I choose to hereby make it public knowledge.  I posted my best and worst of 2011 list after the first of January, so I figure I had a little extra time to pick a resolution as well.

It may be to my benefit that I did not choose hastily as the hours in 2011 wound down. According to a poll shared on January 2 during the Rose Bowl parade, over one third of the people who responded had already broken their New Year's Resolution. That's quick! 

With my resolution, I'm aiming for a gradual adjustment rather than a quick turn-around.

Why post a resolution online? According to a Daily Record article posted a couple of years ago on the topic of New Year's resolutions, one of the top six strategies to stick to your resolution is to tell people about it. In case you were interested, here a summary of the entire list:

• Make sure the resolution is your own.
• Plan it out – break it down into smaller, achievable goals.
• Write it down and post it somewhere you will see everyday.
• Make it specific.
• Tell people about it.
• Forgive yourself – if you slip up, start the next day with a fresh resolve and move forward! 

So, I'm giving you the chance to write it down in public and tell the world!  And even if you are not prepared to forgive yourself if you slip up, I promise to forgive and support you regardless.

writercize:  Create or share your 2012 New Year's Resolution.  Begin with the words "I hereby resolve" and identify at least two strategies towards achieving your goal.  End with "I am human and will forgive myself and try again when I have difficulty staying on track."

Click "read more" to see my writercizer sample response and learn what I plan to do to improve myself this year.

Product Review - writercize #148

Now that the holidays are over and the decorations are slowly making their way back into their storage homes, I expect that everyone has had a chance to fully experience all the new gifts of the season. 

I was a very lucky, very spoiled girl this season by my husband and parents, and rounded out the year with a slew of new technology, including the iPad 2 and the Kindle Fire. Needless to say, I'm enjoying world wide access at the tips of my fingers. 

I am also really enjoying a third piece of technology, a gift from my Mom, one that I would not expect to elicit such joy - a vacuum cleaner. Not just any vacuum cleaner, the Mercedes Benz of vacuum cleaners. After years of frustration over a complete lack of suction in my previous upright model purchased at Target, I am thrilled to watch the floor lighten before my eyes and hear the sweet sound of granules of sand from my daughters' preschool get sucked right up out of the carpet fibers. I went to a vacuum cleaner store that sells and services vacuums, and was able to try a couple of models before settling on the beauty you see to your right.

I love it so much, that I have decided to spotlight it in today's writercize, a simple task which allows you to share your product "expertise" with the world, put your voice into the world wide web, work on lingo for marketing or critiques and have the satisfaction of instant online publication.

writercize: Accolades or a scathing review, pick one of your gifts from Christmas or Hannukah and review it online.  

(Hint: Amazon is an easy site to submit a review since they seem to have almost every item known to mankind, but if you can't find the product there, google it and follow one of the links to purchase the product. You'll almost always be able to review a product on a site that sells it.)

Click "read more" for the writercizer sample review about the Miele Titan.

Best and Worst of 2011 - writercize #147

It's the time of year for, well, truly for New Year's Resolutions, but I'm a little bit behind as usual (darn procrastinating) so we'll fall back a week and work on lists of the best and worst of 2011.  

The challenge, beyond that insurmountable task of completing a superlative, is to come up with your own categories.  Use the news, or your personal life, or a list of pop culture, or whatever comes to you as inspiration, but pick at least three things for each of your lists.

writercize:  Create (at least) three "Best Of 2011" and three "Worst of 2011" categories and fill in your perspective to summarize the year just passed.

Good luck!  Please share as a comment, and I'll see what I can come up with you offer my personal perspective for each of your best and worst lists too!

Click "read more" for writercizer sample response for best and worst lists from technology to government to insensitivity.