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?

Unfinished Story

To A Future Writer: building a more creative world

Today would have been Anne Frank’s 85th birthday and who knows, if she hadn’t been murdered by the Nazis, what she might have contributed to the world.

She started as a child with a diary. That was not so unique for a young girl, but she went into hiding and became a writer. She was learning what that meant while she was still young enough to believe she could do or be anything she dreamed of. That is something most of us lose as we grow into adults. Sadly, the thing she lost was her life.

As she leaned harder on the support her diary and her writing provided her in that hiding place, she learned how to harness her creative strengths. She taught herself how to edit and polish her words and thoughts, crafting something into something more.

While the 60th anniversary of D Day has been celebrated lately, I celebrate the young writer who never got to grow up and live her dream.

I consider it a great honour to be able to write anything at all and I can see where I started at the age she was taken from the world. I want all people to express themselves, starting from any age, women specifically. We have a lot to say, this is true, and as we grow and mature we learn how to take control of our individual voices. I hope my own niece will do whatever it is she feels will show off her true self. It is a great tragedy when potential is squashed.

I waited too long to speak my truth and take a risk on what I knew I had to contribute to the world. I believe it is never too late, but suddenly it might be. I realize the inconsistency in this thought, but both are true. I know I am lucky to still have a chance when others have not been so lucky.

It was National Novel Writing Month which gave me the motivation to start to really write and today I wanted to participate in this social media initiative. I don’t know if they meant it to fall on the birthday of one of my writing idols who never got to see what her future as a writer might have been, but the two are connected for me.I hoped to be one of those future writers and I look forward to seeing what other future writers have to say. I have so much hope for the next thirty years of my life and can’t wait to be able to look back on this time and see how far I’ve come.