It’s April. Do you know where your blog is?
So, I decided, being the sane, plodding person that I am, to challenge myself for April. Self, sez I, I need a challenge. The internetz sez do the A-Z in April.
Okay. I’ll do it TWICE!
Yup.
Totally sane.
Come egg me on:
A to Z Challenge: Do You Haz It?
I plan to post both on my Darla M. Sands family friendly blog and the sometimes X-rated Sand Castles, depending on the subject matter. I hope you’ll check us out!
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| Boria |
It’s Monday at four o’clock in the morning, almost five. I couldn’t sleep so I got up to write a bit. I figured I’d use the time to share some thoughts on writing and life, at least according to Noony.
First, a digression: the picture above made me laugh this morning when I wandered my archive looking for something to illustrate today’s post. Boria is an odd cat. Raised by our dog, he thinks he is a dog. This is a look he gets on his face when I do things he doesn’t expect – like get out of bed at an unholy hour.
I talked about blocks last time I had a regular bimonthly post, and I’m still in a similar situation vis a vis my story. But this isn’t all bad, at least in my opinion. Why?
Fallow periods are necessary in any artist’s life. Sometimes they arrise because we fish our pond too aggressively and don’t take the time to restock the fish. Other times they arrise because of outside stressors. This latter one is the case for me as I extricate myself from an organization I’ve been actively building for the last three and a half years.
On the other hand, as I sit back and reflect on all I’ve done and learned, I realize I am wealthy indeed. I’ve made friendships that I’ll keep for a lifetime, and, like Thomas Edison is quoted as saying relative to his failed attempts to invent a working light bulb, I’ve learned things that don’t work in running a business. While I haven’t been writing as much in the last two months in terms of story output, I have been blogging quite a lot and working on my social media tasks. I think it’s important to remember that even if we aren’t working on a particular project, it does not mean that we are not working – even if there’s no action apparent to the outside eye.
Fallow periods are necessary and deserve our respect.
One hopes that after this one, I won’t freak out my cat anymore, as well.
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| Boria |
In thinking about a topic for today’s post, I am reminded why blogging is good for writers. Of all the forms of social media available to us, blogging is the most flexible and the most adaptable to an individual writer’s style. Not to diss Facebook, by any means, I merely want to point out that if you’re a writer, you ought to be blogging. Why?
Here, then, are Aunt Noony’s Five Reasons Why Blogs Are Good For Writers:
1. Blogging allows you to explore your voice. What is voice? It is, quite simply, the thing you use to talk with. It’s a Zen concept and, for that reason, tough to pin down. But what is definite is that voice is as individual as the writer. The better we can get in touch with our own voice, the better writers we become. We get in touch with our voice by writing. A lot. Blogging lets you do that in a low-pressure, supportive environment.
2. Blogging gives you a platform. Do anything long enough and you begin to develop a set of topics and opinions upon which you can feel qualified to write. If you love coffee, for example, pretty soon you’ll get tired of writing “I love coffee” and start to come up with some interesting coffee facts. Collect enough of those kinds of articles and poof: instand coffee platform, just add water.
3. Topics for blogs are unlimited. Do you enjoy talking about underwater basketweaving? Go for it! Cosplay? Have at it! Knitting? Do it! Any and all topics, both tame and adult-oriented, lend themselves well to blogging.
4. You can expand your skills by blogging. You will, over time, learn a bit of HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language), the language in which websites are written. You will begin to understand how search engines find topics when users are looking for things. You will make friends and influence people though your blog, and one day, maybe help others into the world of blogging.
5. You don’t have to limit yourself to arbitrary character limits. If you only feel like posting a sentence or two and a bunch of pictures, you can. If you feel like writing and writing and writing on a topic that makes you passionate, you can. The sky’s the limit! You can adapt your writing to your moods and, in the process, collect a set of clips that you can leverage later to other blogging opportunities.
Still on the fence? Why not ask your favorite blogger if they’d be willing to let you do a guest post on a particular topic? No one says you have to dive in head-first your first time. You can ease into the blogosphere gently.
I’ll warn you, though. It can quickly become addictive. Enjoy!
Write on!
Have you ever set a goal for yourself, like, “I’ll finish this story by X date,” and then realized your mind’s gone blank?
Yeah, me too.
I wanted to have the next chapter of The Night Is a Harsh Mistress today, and set that as my goal. Then, when I sat down to write, my mind went blank because I worried about whether it will be any good. Rather than fight the goal, I figured I’d chat about what works for me for getting around it.
First, be careful about what goals you do accept. If you know that setting your expectations can tend to block you, then be selective about what goals you do try to struggle for.
Second, set small goals for doing the work. For example, try using a timer and set it for 30 minutes. Even if you just stare at your computer for that 30 minutes, (and no cheating on Facebook or garbage surfing), see what happens.
Third, if that doesn’t work, try sitting with your journal for a while. Write about why you don’t want to work on your goal. Write all the nasty, petty, complaining little putsy comments that you can think of. Sometimes, just getting them out there can help.
Fourth, try something else. If you have another craft, like knitting, do that for a bit just to get moving creatively. Or, try a blog post, like this, for example.
Fifth, give yourself permission to fail. By the time it got to be dinnertime, I realized I wasn’t going to get the chapter done today. Instead, I decided to be honest and write about my block, and in the process, came up with some ideas for how to get around them. It doesn’t make my goal happen, but it does keep me moving in the right direction – and that, in and of itself, can help you.
Above all, remember we are all imperfect beings. It’s not about the goals you accomplish, but the journey you take along the way. As they say, you win some, you lose some. Just keep moving forward and you might be startled by how many you start finishing.
Happy creating!
I’m having so much fun learning to do multi-media presentations that I figured I’d inflict my enjoyment on all of you. 🙂 (Aren’t you lucky?)
This is a brief, three-and-a-half minute presentation on how to get a permalink to a forward-dated post in Blogger. I hope it’s useful to you.
Enjoy!