Blogging About Blogging

Deb Ng from Freelance Writing Jobs wrote a little piece over at Performancing (great place, btw) on getting your blog ready for the new year. She mentioned several points, but I really took away these three to put to use over here at LWAOT.

1. Create specific activities to occur on certain days of the week. I've already been plotting this one out. From Mon. to Fri. each day will have a theme, topic, or what-have-you.

• Monday - Book Reviews/Writing News
• Tuesday - Random Thoughts
• Wednesday - Whiny Wednesday
• Thursday - Article on one of the topics for the month (See below)
• Friday - Writing Wrap-up/Friday Snippet (maybe)

2. Create an editorial calendar for your blog. You know, like the magazines use to tell them what topic or area to focus on that month. So, I started jotting down ideas that sort of tie together for each month. For example, for January, I jotted down the following ideas: Resolutions, Weight Loss, Exercise, Quitting smoking. For my Thursday article, I can use these to build some writing samples.

3. Use your date/time stamp to let you work ahead on your material and have it appear on your blog when you want. I don't think blogger really supports this capability, as I've yet to find something on it. Wordpress, however, I believe has some code junkies out there that will let you do this. So, I'll see what I need to do.

I think these things could really up the content of my blog, which I've wanted to do. We'll see how it goes. Things don't always work the way I want them to.

Not Doing So Hot on This Posting Thing...Or Writing For That Matter

Things have been a bit nutty. They always are this time of year. It's when I become a widow to the deer hunt. This holiday weekend was the longest ever. It just wouldn't go away. Normally I'm all for the paid time off from work, but Piper just wouldn't quit. No naps until an hour or two before bedtime. Stripping all her clothes off and peeing on the floor. Honestly, it felt good to go drop her off at my mom's for work yesterday. The whole plan for the weekend: Write when Piper's sleeping. It just never happened. I swear I have bad luck or bad karma. Bad something.



Then there's is this personal thing that I've been going through. I think it's a quarter life crisis. I don't know. It's just that I've realized that you only live one life, and, well, I want a job that makes a difference in someone's life. Even if it's just to make someone's day go by a little easier. Plus, I really want to run my own business. Have for long time.



This current job I'm now is supposed to be the big after college job. But I don't feel that great about it for a lot of reasons. Most of which I won't mention here because they are private. It's not the first time that I've felt that I'm not right for the corporate world, though.



So I've decided that I want to start an errand business. I think it's an unfilled niche to this area. I also think it won't take off right away, so I'd like to supplement with freelance writing. I suggested this to my dad and the response was less than overwhelming. I knew better than to mention it to my husband.

Then I pitched the idea to Miss Michele's Tarot, the lovely alter ego of Dawn Allcot. The reading? Basically, I will be successful, but it will take work and there will be obstacles. Story of my life. I've always been a fan of hard work to reach what you want. It builds character. But that reading also meant that in order for this to start happening, I'd have to talk about it to my husband. Which scared the crap out of me.

I walked around for many days with my stomach twisted in a knot, and tears leaking down my face. Finally, this weekend, I got the nerve to say something to him about what I wanted. His response, very typical for him, was something about how we couldn't afford it right now. Well, I don't mean right now. I'm thinking of a launch in a year or year and a half or so. Huge planner, right here folks.

So I'm going to put together a plan, get my foot in the door freelancing, and do this thing. I don't know how much time that will leave for fiction writing, but I want this. I really want this. So I'm going to try very hard to achieve it.

TGTD - Weekend One

This is the first weekend in The Great Tea Debacle (it comes out in a great booming voice in my head, in case you were wondering). So far things have sucked. I wrote some during the week, and I thought to write some this weekend. I thought to write quite a lot this weekend.

Then my allergies flaired. I feel somewhat better today, but not great.

Then Piper started. Poor thing has been off the mark for the last few days, and yesterday she was a mess. I was so tired and frustrated by the time evening came, that I was near tears. The husband was gone all day (big surprise here ) and being alone with a million things I wanted to do was no fun.

Finally, yesterday evening, my husband and his buddy were talking, and I guess the buddy is bringing his new girl over tomorrow evening. Thank goodness I was already planning a big dinner, so there isn't much extra effort there. The big thing is that now I have to do housecleaning I wasn't planning on doing, and I was going to write today.

Today has already been interesting. Time changed last night. Piper woke up and when I checked the alarm clock, it said 5:30, so I thought, "That's okay. It's close enough to six that we'll just get up." Then I make it to the computer, and realize that we didn't set our clocks back before bed. It's really early.

Now, I'm going to try and write a few words since Piper is napping and the husband is still in bed. While I write, I am going to enjoy a pot pie for breakfast because it was the only thing that sounded good. Hopefully, I can have a decent number to email in tonight.