Unbagging the Cats 1

Unbagging the Cats 1

Sunday, January 1, 2012

If At First Val Doesn't Succeed

Look for some changes to Val's little venture in the coming days.

Unbagging the Cats began letting Val's secrets out the bag in February, 2011. Before that, I had fiddle-faddled around with my supersecret blog, whining and slice-of-lifing and being creatively inappropriate as the whim hit me. Since deciding to get seriously into real writing last year, I have submitted 11 works to contests, and 5 works for publication. Five are still in limbo, the results not yet in. Four of my contest entries have placed. That's a success rate of 36%. If I was a baseball player, my batting average would be .364, which is not too shabby for a rookie. If I do say so myself.

My new goal is to submit MORE. That way, I might enjoy more success. Not necessarily a better success rate, mind you. But a greater quantity of successes.

Please excuse the disjointed nature of tonight's post. I am preoccupied with technical issues.

I have been trying to get a new template going for the last two hours. I'm not really that stupid about Blogger templates. The problem is with switching out the names on my blogs. It worked like a charm on my old supersecret blog. I simply moved the name forward to the new blog, and renamed the older ones as Supersecret Blog One, Supersecret Blog Two, etc. Like I said, it worked like a charm, all the way up to number five, soon to be number six. But the old unbagged cats are giving me fits. The domain name refuses to be manipulated so easily. So I'll be trying again tomorrow, because I wash my hands of it tonight.

I blame New Blogger. Even though it's several years old now.

6 comments:

Mrs. Tuna said...

It only took me a year to figure out how to change my background.

Donna Volkenannt said...

Hi Val,

Congratulations on your many writer's successes. Quite impressive indeed.

I think our writer's motto should be "If you don't submit, you can't win it."

Donna

Linda O'Connell said...

About time you started taking your writing serious. Kudos on those acceptances.

Sioux Roslawski said...

I agree with Linda. You write funny stuff, Val. I look forward to seeing you enjoy more successes in 2012.

labbie1 said...

Nice batting average! Hope 2012 brings you more success! :)

Val said...

Mrs.,
Enough with your bragging!

***********
Donna,
Thank you. I agree with that motto. It's like my justification for buying a PowerBall ticket when the jackpot goes over $60 million.

***********
Linda,
Thanks. I needed a kick in the pants to get serious about my humor writing.

***********
Sioux,
Great! Another pants-kicker. Why don't we all jump on the Kick-Val-in-the-Pants Bandwagon?

Mrs. Tuna, in addition to providing each bandwagon rider with a tasty box lunch, can give a short presentation on how to change your blog background in 365 easy steps.

Donna can practice her public speaking by standing up front with a cordless microphone, narrating the tour through Backroads. Because there's not much to see, she will have plenty of time to read her works aloud.

Linda can make some crafts out of discarded trash along the road, and sell them at a profit to pay for our gas. Because she's sharing, caring, and selfless like that.

Labbie, an accomplished tour-guider in her own right, can take a load off and put her feet up on this one. I decree her to be my official statistician and head cheerleader.

And you, Sioux, can rock a pair of blown-out Crocs like nobody's business. For a small consulting fee, Linda might be able to give you some tips on picking up pieces of retreads from the right-of-way, so you can start your own brand of comfortable teaching shoes. I think "Sioux's Butt-Ugly Teaching Shoes" has a nice ring to it. At first I considered "Butt-Ugly Sioux's Teaching Shoes", which reminded me of shooting an elephant in my pajamas. Or catching a possum eating dogfood on the back porch. (I just threw in that last one because "possum" generates the most Google searches for my blog)