The Trendsetter

I am so busy writing my blog five days out of every week since August that I’ve neglected to dress my blog for success. Since I started blogging on writing, writing tips, reviewing books and more, I have always become entangled on the technical side of setting up the wordpress theme to make sure it will be more presentable to you - the reader. If it was a house, I must admit it is still a mess, and I’m unable to tidy-up the guest room.

Now that readers have stumbled upon my site I still haven’t spruced-up the layout so they will be comfortable and enjoy their visit. Please forgive me, but even if I am familiar with the computer scripts, the technical sides of blogging just wears my brain out. There are so many themes; so many plugins and widgets to chose, yet so little time to peruse them all.

Do I have a choice? Can I just blog without taking care of the technical issues? The answer is a big fat NO! I forgot that when I decided to set up my blog, I am also responsible for the layout, the widgets and security so that when my guests come for a visit they feel safe and don’t receive a big fat pulsing headache when viewing the layout. So, I have to drag myself to tidy-up the layout.

In order to make the blog more reader friendly, I have installed several plugins for my wordpress green theme. Here are several of the tasks recently performed:
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Do you like the Peanuts characters? How about the one and only Snoopy, the beagle owned by Charlie Brown? If you do, and you are a new writer, the book titled Snoopy’s Guide to the Writing Life is worth reading.

This hardcover book is edited by Barnaby Conrad and Monte Schulz (Charles Schulz’s son) and features 32 essays by famous writers. They include essays by Danielle Steel, Clive Cussler, Sidney Sheldon, Cherie Carter-Scott, Thomas McGuane, Leslie Dixon, Oakley Hall, Catherine Ryan Hyde, Fannie Flagg, John Leggett, Dominick Dunne, William F. Buckely, Jr., David Michaelis, Frances Weaver, Herbert Gold, Sue Grafton, Jay Conrad Levinson, Barnaby Conrad, Elizabeth George, Budd Schulberg, Monte Schulz, A. Scot Berg, Sol Stein, Ed McBain, Jack Canfield, Shelly Lowenkopf, Ray Bradbury, Charles Champlin, Lair Koeing, Julia Child, Elmore Leonard and J.F. Freedman.
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Most of the writing I have read mentions how emotions help to create believable characters for your fiction or memoir. Yet there are no articles that focus on the writer’s emotions and how it influences the writing process. This article is written for you, the new writer. Did you have the day where you were so fired up to write your creative writing or any type of writing? You can’t wait to get started and your ideas just flow like water. What kinds of emotions do you have when you are motivated to write? Do you feel happy, sad or angry? Then, there was the day when you just don’t feel like writing? You tried to coax yourself to start your writing yet, you just stared at an empty screen or a blank piece of paper for a long time. Again, when you have this moment, what emotions do you experience? Do you feel bored?
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The Internet makes writing seem much easier these days. Blogging about your hobbies or interests becomes one of the must do type of activities for bloggers. Writing is one of them. Everyone has their own blog to express their interests, business and experiences in getting into networking. It is an exciting activity nevertheless. I enjoy writing for my blog as much as I enjoy reading other’s writing on their sites.

While looking for a websites for ideas and inspiration for my writing, I found several that have encouraged me to keep the writing momentum going. I would like to share them with you.

1. Writer’s Break - For writers. Articles on fiction, nonfiction, freelance writing, author interviews. This site has many how to articles for writing fiction and nonfiction. Jen Minar is the managing editor and a freelance writer based in Washington D.C. The articles written in this site are really helpful for a writer like me and I hope it will help you too.

2. Quotable Online – if you’re looking for inspiring quotes for your writing, this site has tremendous content in their database. It is over 25,000 quotes! I like the writing quotes and it give me all the motivation I need to inspire me to write.

3. Reader’s Digest – This is one of my favorite magazines to read whenever I have the time. Their site has archived many articles to help you get ideas for your writing.

4. Writer’s Digest Blogs - Writer’s Digest provides blogs on their site. Check it out. There is a lot of information available – especially from the editor’s blog. I always read their blogs when I need to find some info about getting publish. They also update the contest page frequently.

5. Fiction Writing - This site has a lot of advice on writing fiction and writing in general. I find the content to be very informative and I hope it will help you too.

Writing can be very daunting at times. It is best to find and read other sites to refresh your ideas and then get back to your writing. There are so many resources on the net and the five sites on my today list is only a fraction of it.

Happy writing!

Being a writer is not a career choice - it is a lifestyle - so I’ve heard. If you need a 9 to 5 job to make a living, being a writer is not a choice, not to mention when you graduate with your first degree to prepare you to enter the workforce and get paid, yet, you choose to become a writer for other reasons. This is one of my life stories. It is one of the happiest memories in my life and now here I am trying to relive it again.

Everyone has experienced events in their life that are shaped into happy or sad memories. Do you remember your first puppy love? Your first success in something you loved to do? Why not turn it into a memoir?
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