Writing Unleashed with Laura M. Harkins

Hi! Can you see me? Yes, I'm still alive.  After months riding in the backseat, I’ve finally let my blog sit in the front again. Back in November, a copywriting job fell into my lap, turning my world upside down. I was immediately busy with training and sharing the holidays with my family. Although I missed the online writing community, the distance really gave me the time to balance my life and writing. Things in the blogsphere are picking up for me, again. Tomorrow, Ali Cross is putting me in the Narly Ninja Spotlight over on her blog.  And next week, Laura Barnes will be critiquing my blog to see what I can do to improve and increase my readership. So, now, I’m officially a professional writer. The weight and stress of agonizing over when I would see my goals become reality are now alleviated. I’m still adjusting to the demands of the production environment and the 3:45pm-12:15am schedule of the new job, but getting paid to write everyday rocks....

It’s New Year’s Day.  I am pleasantly stuffed with pork loin and sauerkraut in hopes of bringing myself wealth and prosperity in the New Year.  As the cliché goes, we say goodbye to our past and set down goals we hope to accomplish with our clean slate.   Although, I feel my past is important in making future choices, I welcome the opportunity to revise the past year and start fresh.  Last January, when I started this blog, I was very unhappy in my teaching career.  I’ve longed to write for as long as I can remember, so I resolved to take the year to write more; I hoped it would move me in a new direction, perhaps, a writing career. Well, I am no longer teaching.  I joined a writer’s group in Philadelphia, and I'm creating one with a fellow writer for the Buck’s County area.  I started a novel.  I interned with a college professor and a parenting magazine.  I wrote an article to be published in the Feb. issue of the magazine pending approv...