Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Writing.

     Life, as any writer will tell you balancing life and writing is a high wire act that is a difficult art to master. My life consists, of being a mother of four children whom I home school. On top of that I work from home packing the media items that my husband sells. We live in a five bedroom house with one acre of land. To top it all off I must not forget the six dogs, two cats, and several fish all who need maintenance. . This all takes a considerable amount of time it is a wonder that I get to write at all but I do my best to write whenever I can fit it in. I have eight children stories, one bio, and seven others that I am not sure what genre they fit in.

      Which brings us to liberty. My greatest weakness as a writer if you have not guessed by now is, punctuation, grammar and spelling. I wish that I had the freedom to write what ever comes into my head without having to worry about spelling, punctuation, and other such things that could make or break me as an author like word count. I am extreemly confused by word count and what the rules are regarding the size of the story. Here is what I know about the average word counts for the different types.

Adult

• Flash Fiction 100 - 1,000 words,
• Short Story 1,000 - 7,500 words,
• Novellette 7,500 - 20,000 words,
• Novella 20,000 - 55,000 words,
• Novel 55,000 -110,000.

Children

• Baby Books -- (under 300 words) Books are short (12 pages is average)
• Picture books -- Traditionally, picture books (also called "picture story books") are 32-page books Manuscripts are up to 1500 words, with 1000 words being the average length.
• Early picture books -- contain under 1000 words.
• Easy readers -- Also called "easy-to-read", 32-64 pages long, with 200-1500 words of text, occasionally going up to 2000 words.
• Transition books -- Sometimes called "early chapter books" For ages 6-9 Written like easy readers in style, transition books are longer (manuscripts are about 30 pages long, broken into 2-3 page chapters), For ages 7-10, these books are 45-60 manuscript pages long, broken into 3-4 page chapters.(2-4 sentences is average).
• Middle grade -- 8-12. (100-150 pages),
• Young adult -- For ages 12 and up, these manuscripts are 130 to about 200 pages long.

Finally there is the pursuit of writing. Now I know some what about the numbers what do I do with them? I don't even know what genre my stories fit.

Here are a list of my stories and what their word counts are

For Children
The case of the Haunted House Hunters DK Case 1 1  10,758 words, 22 pages
The Case of the Prize Pumpkin Pickers DK Case 2: words 2,867 pages 5

The Case of the Christmas Star Caper  DK Case 3: words 4,956 pages 6

The Case of Easter Egg Envy DK Case 4: words 4,772 pages 7
The Case of the Missing Parrot Piñata DK Case 6  Words 2.501 pages 6

David and The Magic Cat: words 14,672 pages 30

Clean it up (unfinished): Words 5,270 pages 7

Let's Talk to the animals: Words 513 pages 1

Let's See the New Baby: Words 373 Pages 1

Lets Go to the city: Words 315 Pages 1

Let's Find Opposites 1,042 pages 2

For Adults

To Sleep with out a Dream Words 1,166 pages 2

My childhood story Words 3,685 pages 4

The Chase words 2,076 pages 5

Eye of the Storm: (Unfinished) words 4,314 pages 4

The Closet: Words 1,225 pages 3

Take me out to the ball game. Words 1,022 pages 2

When the Vampires Kissed: Words 4,817 pages 7

Poems All  31

     This is what I have written to date. I am not sure what to do with them all other than share them with my friends and family. I have not found anyone who would be willing to read and correct my stuff so I cannot submit it to a publisher or publish it myself on a portable reader device. In order for me to be published I need to be able to have the fallowing, someone correct my work, a place to publish for free to start, and the ability to publish under my alias Sally A Wolf. I would eventually love to get paid for what I write as every writer does but I am currently stuck in a rut of just filling up my own webpage.

If you have any ideas please feel free to leave a comment.