Readers’ Letters and Comments for 05/17/18

Readers’ Letters and Comments for 05/17/18

FREELANCE WRITERS COMMENT ON:

How I Successfully Cut Our Grocery Bill in Half! (And, No, I Do NOT Use Coupons.)

I have a friend who has written an ebook on saving at the grocery store, and she pointed my family toward a grocery store that is a little out of the way, but has huge savings on groceries. We regularly spend $100 less on groceries there that last for about two weeks. Her family is larger than mine, and more active, so she makes dinners in advance for the weekdays and freezes them and then cooks or reheats them each day of the week. She also recommends gleaning fruit from neighbors trees (they often don’t want or use all the fruit on the trees in their yard) and for the past couple of years she’s been bringing her teenage kids over to pick pears off our trees which they then can and use all winter for recipes.

– DeAnn


The Champagne Taste/Beer Budget Cookbook”–available from BookLocker–offers great-tasting money-saving meal ideas. Most are fast enough for a busy day, and easy enough Mason can cook them without you watching over his shoulder.

-Woodrow Wilson

Response from Angela Hoy – Publisher of WritersWeekly.com:

I LOVE your book, Woody! 🙂 – http://booklocker.com/books/4255.html


When we worked and traveled in our RV and shopped every 4 or even 6 weeks, I had a chart with columns for categories like canned goods, meat, dairy & eggs, etc. As I planned out the menu for that time period, I would check what ingredients I needed and add them to the list. If I ran low or out of something between trips, I immediately put it on the chart. Shopping was a breeze. That helped us shop in unfamiliar stores but might be useful in grouping like items for when you fill out your online order.

– calamityjaimie


I have tried this type of shopping with Walmart — forget it! Your order is broken up and shipped in pieces over about a week. No more!

We have reasonably recently seen Hy Vee and Natural Grocers jump into the local delivery business or at least, the ‘call it in and then you drive through and pick it up’ routine. I haven’t tried that one yet.

I can honestly say, online shopping cuts impulse buying to absolute ‘0’, saving at least $35 per trip — and this is huge!

-Wendy Jones
Highlander Imagine – Beyond Infinity
Duncan MacLeod must fight a South American Immortal at Teotihuacan.


I buy a gift certificate for the grocery store and put the month’s food money on it. Every shopping day I spend only what is allotted for that week. If I go over, I have to go under next time. I cook sauces and stews en masse so I am not buying meat every week plus I have my chicken thighs skinned and frozen separately by the store so I can freeze them and get out what I need for a meal. I get my order delivered by the store for $5. I don’t buy anything prepared or organic (they admitted to spraying it) and most of my food is fresh vegetables (California etc although we are in orchard country Canada we don’t grow some of the stuff we get from the US et al). I gave away my crock pot. And my impulse spending! You are a smart lady!

– writerleenda

Response from Angela Hoy – Publisher of WritersWeekly.com:

LOVE LOVE LOVE the gift certificate idea!!!


Whole Foods sells small sizes of spices. Some organic stores may have bulk spice that you can buy just a small baggie of.

– cgiblets

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33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About Blind Characters



I admire any writer who wants to tackle a blind character. But so many writers take up this challenge and FAIL. They research blindness by reading other fiction books, by observing their blind colleagues and acquaintances, and by tying on a blindfold and pretending to be blind themselves.



I understand the challenges your characters face, their triumphs, their hopes and their fears, because I've lived them. I work with people who have varying degrees of blindness every day, so I've seen every challenge, every situation you could imagine.



Let me share my knowledge to improve your writing. You can create blind characters that readers will fall in love with.

~Stephanie Green