Author Archives: Danielle

Coffee Shops – My Therapy

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coffee therapy.png

Friday, you got the pleasure of reading a wonderful guest post by Brent Jackson (if you didn’t read it, make sure you do!) about how for him, coffee shops are his second office.

After my mental breakdown on Wednesday (I call it that, but I don’t think it was that bad), I needed to recuperate. On Thursday, I don’t go into work until 2pm, so I stopped in at Starbucks (just a mile from work) and got up to the counter pondering what was going to give me the best start to my workday.

Deb (I seriously love her) was working, and she asked if I wanted my usual – a grande blonde roast, with room for cream. “It’ll have to be a pour over though, is that okay?”

I have no problem with pour overs, I get them all the time! But I wasn’t sure I was feeling the plain coffee thing today though. And I think she could sense my hesitation before I said yes.

She asked if I wanted her to use less coffee grounds or something, and that’s when I told her that I’d had a bad day the day before, and wanted something different. Continue reading →

Starbucks: My Second Office (Guest Post)

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by Brent Jackson

dreamstime_xs_58237049 - Starbucks Cafe Interior

 

“When that first sip of coffee … touches your soul.” I see memes with this saying all over the internet. I have a few pinned to my Coffee Shop Stuff board on Pinterest. I love coffee! I love coffee so much, all I have to do is walk two blocks to my local Starbucks. The moment I open the door, I’m at my second office.

Think about it. A coffee shop is a special place. The smell of fresh coffee greets me the moment I open the door. The sounds of busy coffee machines and steaming milk fill my ears. The look of bar tops, tables and comfortable chairs inviting me to make myself at home. All that’s left is to order my coffee.

Continue reading →

Wedding Planning is Hard

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Pardon the non-writing related update, but dangit I had a bad day Wednesday and I want to write a post about it. Which is double unfortunate because I woke up in a great mood. I had every plan to have a wonderful day.

Wednesday, it suddenly hit me that our wedding was a mere 4 1/2 months away, and that we still didn’t know where the ceremony was going to take place. We’re getting married on a Saturday in June. It’s kind of imperative that we put a deposit on a church sometime soon.

Brad’s family is very religious. Southern Baptist, specifically. They don’t want alcohol at our wedding reception, but that is not happening.

The one big request I am trying to guarantee is that we get married in a church by a (male) pastor (their request).

But oh my goodness. It’s kind of difficult when you’re planning a wedding in Texas when you live in a Virginia. I have only spoken with one church, but (no particular surprise), their requirement is pre-marital counseling. IN. PERSON. Continue reading →

Monday Musings #9

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On Procrastination:

Yesterday I read a post by Bryn Donovan titled “Stop Procrastination and Unleash Your Full Power… In Writing and Everything Else” and boy did it make me remember the good ole days of college (like they were so far back, my goodness haha).

I’ve always been a master procrastinator. If such a degree existed, I would have it for sure. Maybe it’s not a good thing to have, but oh well.

In college, I was terrible. We’d get a syllabus at the beginning of the semester with deadlines. We’d get the actual assignment for papers at least a month before the due date. Some classes scheduled library research days where we would learn (for the millionth time) how to use the library resources, find good articles, etc. This class day got incredibly old come my junior and senior year. Just because we’re taking a 100-level class does NOT mean we need to learn how to do research, my goodness. They’d make us turn in an outline or an intro paragraph or whatever.

No matter how hard they tried, I wrote papers the night they were due. Even if they required a rough draft ahead of time, that was written the night before, and then the final paper was rewritten/edited the night before as well.

Some funny (terrible) college procrastination stories: Continue reading →

Intriguing Results of Online Searches

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Especially in regards to WordPress.com blog posts.

Photo: http://blackwoodand.com/digital-marketing

When I was setting up my blog, it asked me if I wanted my blog to be found via online searches. Of course! I was blogging to share with the world!

It’s hard to actually tell how many of my page views come in from online search engines. Well, that’s not quite correct. I get the number, but I rarely get to see HOW they’re finding my blog. The analytics software that the free version of WordPress.com uses isn’t great.

In 2015, I had 43 page views attributed to search engines (out of over 2,500 total views), including Google, Yahoo, Bing, AOL, and live.com. Out of those 43, it recorded these search terms: Continue reading →

Open Submission — Pitch Your Guest Post Ideas

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I haven’t been around the blogging world long, but I’ve been around long enough to see that guest posts are quite a thing.

From what I’ve noticed and what I’ve read about them, they have a few pros and cons:

Pros:

  • Fresh content
  • Different voices
  • Less posts for me to make
  • More exposure when the poster shares their post on my blog to their followers

Cons:

  • The time you spend not writing posts, you spend editing the guest’s post.
  • Sometimes you have to be mean and reject peoples’ posts.

Well, at this point in time, I have a hard time coming up with cons.

I, for one, think (as of right now of course) that allowing guest posts is a great idea. We’re a community here, and I want to be able to let other people share their posts on my blog, and vice versa. That way we can find new bloggers to follow, with a beaming recommendation from someone we already do follow.

I think there are a lot of opportunities to be had by allowing for people to guest post.

Everyone is always looking for a way to get their name out there. My blog is not huge by any means, but I’m hoping it works its way up. Someone with a smaller blog can guest post here and get more exposure for themselves. On the flip side, someone with a huge following can guest post here and I can get more exposure when they share the link with their followers.

Look, I think we all get the picture here –

I am opening submissions for guest posts.

Guest posters.jpg Continue reading →

Making it Big as an Author

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FROM TROY & LAURICE.jpg

At work today, my coworker made a jab about my lack of progress on any of my writing lately. Part of me needs to be jabbed on occasion.

Not with anything sharp or pointy though. Not the literal jabbing. Please.

We got to talking about how hard it was to really “make it big” as an author these days. The market is saturated with books, and unless you can land publication with a huge publishing house, the odds are definitely stacked against you.

(For the record, I am NOT bashing self-publishing by any means. So please don’t take it that way.) 

It is definitely possible to make it big in self-publishing. It’s just really, really hard. You have to do everything for yourself.

But for many, it’s our only option when it becomes obvious that the big publishing houses aren’t willing to take many chances on new authors.

The chances that your debut novel will make it big time are slim to none. Continue reading →

Snow Weekend

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Today I got a snow day from work! Yay!

This is not a surprise. I work at a college where most of the students are commuting from as far as 2 hours away, so closing when we need to is no surprise.

Between Friday and Saturday, they’re predicting 18-24 inches of snow. Now, to some of you crazy northerners, that may not sound like a ridiculous amount of snow. However, I live in the south. I am in the 6 bottles section in the map below (though right on the cusp of 12 bottles, so…). And yes, when I’m not drinking coffee, I am definitely a wine-o. (A cheap wine-o though. Like no more than $15 a bottle.)

My fingers are crossed that I also get Monday off, but I won’t be getting my hopes up on that one. It just depends on how well the city/county does with getting it cleared out. (For what it’s worth, in the past, they’ve been pretty terrible about it.)

I’ve made myself a game plan, and it involves a mixture of catching up on my DVR shows, drinking coffee, drinking wine (I have 3 bottles, not 6. But I’m also not trying to get drunk like that one Saturday…..), playing in the snow, making a snow margarita, begging my dog to please go pee outside, and more than all of that combined, WRITING.

Because what better motivation than the beautiful, serene tranquility of a snow day. Not to mention, the view from my patio is AH-MAZING with the mountains in the background. I’ll share some pictures later! 🙂

So, short post today. Will update a little later with word counts, wine glass counts, and pictures of the snow. Gah. I LOVE snow days!

Happy writing!

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