2015 October Platform Challenge: Day One

October has arrived, once more. Hmmm. This is not very Halloweenish, but here goes.

Growing up, we started getting a subscription for Reader’s Digest. Soon, very soon, the wall of our computer room in the basement was lined with Reader’s Digest volumes, in braille.

I read one particularly gruesome story in RD, on the way to a family function, and I never read from those braille editions again.

Eventually, we got rid of them, when I moved out and we were cleaning house.

I was delighted when I discovered, not only was there such thing as Reader’s Digest (as much as I loved to read) but that Writer’s Digest existed too.

A lot of selling of their products, but I loved to write and I am now participating in their month long

2015 October Platform Challenge

As for platforms, I have mixed feelings.

I know it is important, in this modern moment in time, to have one. I have one and am trying to find my voice there, but the mood comes and goes. I am not quite sure why.

Here goes and I am not participating in the commenting on WD’s website. It involves all that fun stuff I just love about websites. I tried to sign in and it wasn’t a simple process.

Surprised? Not at all.

😦

I don’t care about winning some prize of a huge book for writers, one I can’t even read anyway, so I will go with the daily promos and see how that goes. See if I make it through the month.

I have never gone and done any monthly challenge, posting every day, so I hope this will not annoy the hell out of any readers I have gained in almost two ears of blogging.

My platform is this blog and the second blog I began a year ago, I guess it was now.

Name (as used in byline): I am Kerry Kijewski

AKA

Kerry L. Kijewski

Kerry Kay (a future author’s website title idea)

Her Headache

The Insightful Wanderer

Kerr

Kerr-Bear

Take your pick.

🙂

Position(s): published author, writer/blogger, public speaker, travel writer, interviewer/interviewee

Skill(s): writing, literary writing, creative writing, fiction, non fiction, memoir, reviews, interviews, poetry, articles and blog posts, speeches, public speaking

Social media platforms (active): I am on Facebook and Twitter most often.

I have a LinkedIn page, but not sure I like it.

Also, an Instagram account for any future travel, but not sure I like it. Need a photographer on staff.

😉

I started a Pinterest page a few weeks ago. Don’t yet understand that platform at all.

Did I do that, trying to find more of a platform, just because everybody else did it first? Why do everything everyone else does anyways?

URL(s):

This blog.

http://www.theinsightfulwanderer.ca/

Accomplishments: being a blogger, published author, Certificate of Creative Writing, public speaker, guest blogger on many blogs

Interests: creative writing, fiction, non fiction, memoir, doing interviews, blogging, reading, travel, movies, psychology, marine biology, astronomy, feminism, women’s and gender studies, history

In one sentence, who am I?

Kerry is, first and foremost a writer, but also she blogs and she is interested in honing her writing skills for any and all future possibilities which might present themselves.

I am bad at summing up, at being brief, and that is why I hate these one sentence questions.

“Feel the rain on your skin. No one else can feel it for you. Only you can let it in.”
–Natasha Benningfield, Unwritten

THIS IS MY PLATFORM!

http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/2015-october-platform-challenge-guidelines

Guidelines were made to be broken, right?

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Who are you? What is your platform? Can you sum up who you are, using just one sentence? Or do you need more than one, like I do?

Solstice and the Big Red Dog

It’s December 21st and I feel something strange today.

I feel all the merriment approaching, but today is all about the natural world.

I am captivated by this occurrence, with the interest in astronomy I’ve always held, but of which was never meant to turn into more than that.

🙂

I am in awe at the earth and it’s rotation and found the information on the below website truly fascinating.

Today marks the beginning of winter here in the northern hemisphere, Winter Solstice.
For everything you might want to know about this phenomenon, because I never did study astronomy after all – go

Here!

Today the north pole will see no light and the south pole no night. I guess, as a child, this is how I could imagine Santa’s home. He would take off in total darkness, his red suit and the gleam of the white snow under foot.

Maybe some day I will get to witness, in person, the feeling of Solstice in either the north or south pole. I know that many people have trouble with the amount of darkness around this time of year, adding to feelings of depression, but it’s important to note that without night there can be no day, eventually.

I guess we here in the northern hemisphere cling to the fact that from here on out the days will slowly be growing longer, a thought necessary to get us through the coming winter days.

This planet of ours is endlessly mystifying and wondrous to me.

***

THIS WEEK IN LITERATURE:

Norman Bridwell, creator of the Clifford the Big Red Dog books dies at age 86

Last spring it was the author of another one of my childhood-defining books, Spot, who died.

Now another dog to live on through the magic of children’s literature.

One of my favourite books to be found in the school library or the one in my town was Clifford The Big Red Dog. I loved him for the two most obvious and simplistic reasons: he was big and he was red, but wasn’t that what they were going for with the name?

🙂

I loved his huge red presence on the page. He went on adventures with his friend, Emily Elizabeth, the female version of Winnie the Pooh and his pal Christopher Robin.

Bridwell was rejected multiple times before Clifford would go on to entertain and educate children, like myself, for fifty years.

I hope the character of Clifford will go on to draw young children into his bright red world for years to come.

Check out his books here.