Here are some tips for “greening” up your diet:

1. Eat more greens! No, I’m not taking the easy way out here. Instead of eating meat, add kale, broccoli rabe, Brussels sprouts or spinach. They are all chock-full of vitamins and they take less of Mother Earth’s resources to produce. And the process is generally more earth-friendly than producing an animal product for consumption.
2. Eat only organic produce. If it’s certified organic, that means it hasn’t been sprayed with harmful chemicals that can seep into the soil and run into our water supply, contaminating nature’s bounty for decades after that apple is consumed. Yes, it does cost more money, but isn’t your health and the health of our planet worth a little more to you?
3. Eat only local produce. Here is where the line gets a little gray. Sometimes local farmers don’t have the funds to get that certified organic label, but they may use the same organic methods to produce their food. Talk to the farmer about their methods before turning your nose up at something that isn’t certified. Local produce is better for you and the environment in another way, too. When you buy local produce, it was usually picked straight from the vine or tree earlier that morning. It doesn’t take much fuel to get it from the farm to the farmer’s market, so Mother Earth is happy. But, you should be too. Produce begins to lose nutritional value as soon as it’s severed from the plant. Less travel time means more vitamins and minerals make their way to your body.

Some writers dread the revision process. I know I used to… I told myself – especially about my poetry – that revising the work would be sort of like tainting the captured moment because I was changing something emotional that was captured and I wasn’t in the same mindset during revision as I was during the writing process.

Well, after a couple of published poetry collections and a novella, I realize that the revision process is absolutely vital to making sure your work is at its best, especially if you want it to be presented as professional.

I used to think of revising as such a tedious process, but then I started to enjoy it. How? Well, what I tend to do is wait at least a day or two before I revise anything, short story or otherwise. This allows me to look at the whole piece with a fresh perspective and make objective changes without feeling like I’m too close to the work for too long and can’t do it anymore.

If you think about it, too, the longer you give yourself to kind of mull it over and continue learning in the meantime, the more experienced and educated you will be when you do go in and revise or edit.

So how can you make it more fun? I mean, personally sitting in front of a computer screen without anything else going on is boring and I cannot stay focused in the silence. If there’s too much going on, I can’t focus either. I know, weird, right? So I tend to listen to some music – no lyrics, though – and let my son watch TV so he’s entertained by something while I get some work done.

Here are a few ways you can make revising and updating your stories and poetry more fun to do.

• Play music.
  This shouldn’t be so distracting that you can’t focus or that you wind up singing along… the last thing you want in your novel is a snippet of song lyrics that you didn’t even realize you put in there! Believe me, that’s happened to me with an e-mail and the recipient wrote me back massively confused. I was so embarrassed! That’s why I tend to listen to electronica, piano, and some classical thrown in the mix. Mellow electronica is my favorite to listen to while I work.
• Imagine your story.
  I love going back and kind of playing out the events that happen in my mind. If you do this and notice some other detail as you’re imagining your story unfold, you can easily add it in for the reader to enjoy the same detail. It could be as small as adding the color of a coat or as big as a complete scene revision, but if you imagine it in your mind and then it becomes consistent on the page, your revision has been a successful one.
• Read aloud.
  This is an extremely useful way to make sure your writing sounds, feels, looks, and comes across the way you want it to. If you read aloud to yourself (or even imagine hearing the words being spoken in your mind, which can also be done with enough experience), you’ll notice repetitive words that can be changed, poor sentence structure, and if a sentence doesn’t make any sense. If that happens you’ll be likely to have to read it several times before you understand what it says, and that’s a clear indication that it should be changed.

Developing your writing and revision skills can open up a world of possibilities from middle school on – that’s why it’s important to make sure you learn what you need to and practice your skills! Once you’re in high school, you’ll have that much more of a chance at receiving a number of unique scholarships, amazing grades, and over all better jobs once you graduate.

What are you waiting for? Let’s get in the mindset of making revisions fun and make our work the best it can be.

Why?

It’s usually because they think creative writing isn’t technical at all, that it’s strictly emotional. That’s not entirely true.

Some of the best stories are outlined, planned, and structured in advance, before the writing aspect of it even begins. This eliminates the possibility of getting stuck on a chapter and not knowing where to go from there. All you have to do when you’re ready for the next part is move on in the outline. How simple is that?

Especially when you’re working on a novel or a structured essay, outlining can be your best friend in the writing process.

Let’s say you’re working on a novel with two sub-plots running beneath the main plot. The first sub-plot is resolved fairly early or towards the center of the story, the second toward the end and right before the final plot is resolved and finalizes the story. This can get a little tedious to keep track of, so why not outline the book chapter by chapter?

That’s the beauty of having several main characters – they all think differently, they all take different actions, and they all have their own ways of communicating. You don’t want them all to be the same or to follow the same patterns, so keeping an outline of the main events in a story is a great way to make sure you don’t get confused before you get to know your characters during the writing process.

A novel outline can also be used to write a basic synopsis of your novel in case you’re already looking for an agent for it. Agents will look at novel outlines as well as full submissions, so why not send them a complete outline so they know the gist of the story?

Another big plus is that, once you have your novel outlined, you know in advance what you need to research in order to make it as real as possible. For example, for a crime thriller, you would need to ask what do police officers do? Without doing this research, chances are that the section containing things you don’t know will be less-than-realistic.

I’ve used an outline several times for writing major projects and have to say that it makes the entire process much more doable. You can see the smaller chunks that need to be accomplished in order to achieve the main goal: writing a novel.

How do you help yourself stay on top of your novel writing endeavors?

The Formation of the Rolling Stones

Mick Jagger (vocals) and Keith Richards (guitars, vocals) form the core of the Rolling Stones. They were friends’ way back in 1951. They met as children at Dartford Maypole Primary School, but their friendship was interrupted when both of their families moved in the mid-fifties. They ran into each other in a train station on October 1960. By then, Jagger was a hardcore blues fanatic playing with Dick Taylor in a blues band called “Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys,” while Richards’ was more on the Chuck style Rock and Roll. Within a year after Richards joined the band, they met Brian Jones (guitar, vocals) a Blues Incorporated member with Alexis Korner fronting. Jagger, Richards and Jones soon become musical collaborators. Brian wanted to form his own band so with Dick Taylor on bass the band recruited drummer Mick Avery and Ian Stewart on keyboards. Thus the Rolling Stones were born.

The Introduction of the Rolling Stones

On July 12, 1962, on a BBC radio show Jones seized the opportunity to launch his new band. It was the band’s first public appearance. Soon after the band inked an eight-month resident gig at the Crawdaddy Club, fans and fellow musicians trooped to the club to watch them. The band’s final line-up will include founding members Jagger, Richards and Jones with Charlie Watts on drums and bass player Bill Wyman.

The Music of the Rolling Stones

In May 1963 the band cut its first record under Decca label. “Come on,” penned by Chuck Berry, was on the A side and “I Wanna Be Love,” a Willie Dixon cover, was on the flip. “I Wanna Be Your Man” by Lennon/McCartney original was given to the Stones for their second single. In early ’64 they released a Buddy Holly cover “Not Fade Away” that reached number three in the U.K. and in the spring of that year reached number 48 as their first American hit. “It’s All Over Now” was their first UK number one hit but missed America’s top 40.

The band’s first original single was released on June of 1964. “Tell Me” was the band’s first U.S. top 40 while “Time Is on My Side” became their first U.S. top 10. But the song that really made the Stones was “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” in 1965 in which Richard’s compelling fuzz tone guitar riff was built around. Number one for four weeks, it opens for a string of top ten single in the next two years of their careers. That included hits like “As Tears Go By”, “Get Off My Cloud”, and “19th Nervous Breakdown”.

The first album of the Rolling Stones was “Aftermath,” released in April 1966. The album includes “Under My Thumb”, “Lady Jane” and “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby (Standing in the Shadow)”. Some of their greatest hits includes “Honky Tonk Woman”, Paint It Black”, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” “As Tears Go By” and many more to this date lives and lingers among rock and roll fans. The Rolling Stones made 27 albums to date and still planning on doing their 28th.

The Members of the Rolling Stones

The band member has changed throughout the past four decades. Jagger and Richards remained as the core of the group. Brian Jones was replaced by Mick Taylor even before his death on July 3, 1969. Others who joined the legendary band are drummer Charlie Watts and guitarist Ronnie Wood, who up to this day is an official member of the Stones and Bill Wyman.

The Future of the Rolling Stones

With the history this group already has behind them, there is no question that its name will live on in infamy. From the magazine to the music, the Rolling Stones will forever be a recognizable name in rock and roll. If you had no clue what this band was before reading this article, you need to see a forensic psychologist for a mental evaluation. Everyone who is anyone has heard of the Rolling Stones, as will everyone who becomes anyone in the future. Now you know just a little more about them than some other people do. Congratulations. You can feel accomplished now