Tag Archives: blogging

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!

http---signatures.mylivesignature.com-54493-383-F769D72EAB588F3CF6E0DDD3CD6F2215

A Writer’s Writing Tools

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Everybody has their favorite method of writing. Some have a couple. Your preference is not the same as everyone else’s, and that’s okay! We all have our method of doing things. Do what works for you!

There’s desktop computers; laptops; iPads; smartphones; pen and paper; hammer, chisel, and stone. (Did I miss yours? Comment below!)

I think every option has its pros and cons. Let me highlight a few below. Continue reading →

Monday Musings #6

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Outback

On Screenwriting:

A couple bloggers that I follow have been posting recently about trying their hand at screenwriting. Which I, for one, think is AWESOME.

While I was in college – well, let me explain a little more detail about my college. I went to a liberal arts university (great experience, ouch on the wallet though) that ran a 4-1-4 schedule. The 1 was a separate term in January.

The January term (aptly called J-Term), was where students could either do a trip abroad, do a month-long internship, or you could take one seminar.

So, while I was in college, I used my J-Terms to just take classes. I had 2 jobs to work, thus no time for an internship or trip abroad.

Each year, I pretty much took a different variation of the same class – something that involved creative writing AND screenwriting.

Freshman year was called Flash: Short Forms of Literature and Film
Sophomore year was called Double Trouble: Texts and Films
Junior year was called Next Episode: TV as a Narrative Text
Senior year (my favorite) was called Writing the TV Sitcom

Sense a trend? LOL Continue reading →

How (Not) to Write the Next NY Times Bestseller

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  1. Don’t watch Food Network as “research” That Thursday-night marathon of Chopped will most likely not help you. (If you’re writing Food Network fanfiction, disregard this tip)
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  2. Also, do not do dangerous stunts as “research” For real, just because you’re planning on being a bestseller and making moolah, medical bills suck. I’m sure someone else has made that mistake. Watch endless Youtube videos of them doing it instead. (If you live in a country where ER visits are not hundreds of thousands of dollars, disregard this tip)
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  3. Don’t try typing the entire novel with your eyes closed. Sure, it may sound like a great idea to write as you envision the story in your head. But I guarantee that at some point, your fingers will end up on the wrong keys. And you will be sorely disappointed when you start reading a bovel qgwew tiue dingers qwew off. (If you are blind, disregard this tip)
    1.    Continue reading →

New Blog Title/Tagline

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So I signed up for Blogging 101 this month, which is like a back-to-basics type of session for bloggers. While I’ve been doing this for a few months, I figured it couldn’t hurt to maybe learn some new stuff.

The assignment today involved setting up a title/tagline for your blog, which obviously I have had done for awhile now, haha.

BUT upon conversing with some other bloggers, I realized that my title did nothing to really pull a reader in, nor was it very descriptive to the subject of my blog. And my tagline was just kind of blah. So I did some searching and have come up with a semi-new identity.

I’ll decide in like a week if I like it or not. But for the time being, welcome to —

header5

 

Let me know what you think! (I’ll play around with the picture/font color later too. I know it’s a tad hard to read.)

(And I’m so not getting rid of or changing Monday Musings. It just won’t fit perfectly with my blog title anymore. But that’s okay.)