blog about it

The results from Joanna Young’s group writing project are in. I’m a little late posting this; the results came out and I was notified on October 24th. But, I still wanted to list it here. I like to post the results because it helps me to think that I’ve completed the circle.

There’s added incentive to put it here this time, not that I needed any. As always, there are great posts that were submitted. A grand surprise for me, though–I won second place! It was quite exciting to learn that my post garnered some recognition.

It’s been a delight exploring the posts that Joanna Young collected with this group writing project. They are really thought provoking and inspiring. I’ll bet you’ll find something you want to bookmark.

Visit the following sites to see the results:

• Confident Writing – Joanna introduced this project
• Absorbing Writing – You can get more information about the writing retreat as well as the results of the project.
• Group Writing Projects – Has the results of the test; as well as it’s a great resource for writing projects including the upcoming twittering project. I’m new to Twitter so I’m definitely intrigued.

Listening to a child tell a fanciful story is like listening to a daydream.

Do you ever think about thinking? About daydreaming? What does it do for you really?

We All have Choices

Either you need a topic, or you need a way to begin writing about the topic you’re given. You stare at the blank screen, and stare becuase the pressure is on to finish. So really starting is not where you want to be for long. You have to choose.

Daily we have to pick from a wealth of opportunities and ideas; divine moments is what Erwin Raphael McManus calls them. Kirk Byron Jones discusses how we have been imbued with free will for a reason; throughout our lives we have choices to make. It’s not a new idea that we get to choose, it’s newly gaining acceptance.

It’s not just the brilliant, the genius or the well studied and not just writers. We all have choices available to us. The question, then, is how do we choose.

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This is the first installment for the post from the healthy habits series. Be sure to return for other entries in this set.

Do you know what to do when your health starts to flag?

You know how sometimes you get sick, your sinuses fill and apply pressure to your head to bulge, only there are no plates in your skull to allow expansion? Your eyelids want to shut but it feels like they can’t go over your eyeballs which are burning, itching, and stinging–even they feel swollen. Whoa, I had a flashback.

Anyway, it makes you wonder how you can avoid the next bout of flu or sinus infection. Or, you hear someone else’s story and you think it’s time you took stock. What do you do with that motivation? Start by reviewing some key lifestyle points. Thins often covers things that we overlook, underestimate or just let slide now and again, until bad habits are formed.

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The above picture is one that I shot from the New Orleans Riverwalk Marketplace.

I love traveling. Really. Sometimes, I’ll get to a point when I feel the need to take a trip. A feeling washes over me and I will think It’s time I took a flight out. Without leaving town, I would indulge myself by picking a place away from my house.

When writing is a factor, I need to know where I feel like going. I’ll pick a location that resonates properly in my spirit, as well as a place that facilitates my work.

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Lately, the topic of healthy habits as a writer keeps coming up. I needed a starting place to consider what I was going to change. I’ve been reviewing my lifestyle and my less than stellar habits. I sometimes take health matters for granted, and allow bad habits to stand. In part it’s because I’m writing; I think how much damage am I doing.

However, since I need to make a lifestyle change, I’m going to share some healthy habits that work for me and may work for you. As I do the research, I’ll link the collection back here for easy reference.

Read the rest of this entry »

Blogging is a lot of work, and it’s a pleasure too. I’m including my pictures, now, every chance I get. I may have to start shopping on Flickr or other image vendor site. More than likely though, it’ll finally push me to start to plan my photography shoots—to cover my posting needs. Lately, a bigger issue is my generally flagging FOCUS.

Focus Can be Hard Work

Although writing for my blogs is satisfying, several things must be present for me to generate accpetable posts. One of the most important for me is FOCUS. It comes to mind lately because I’ve been a bit distracted. To regain my focus, it’s important to know what’s blurring my vision.

Even for something that I enjoy, there are times when I’m just not fully present with it. In blogging everything starts to feel the same and there’s no newness to what I’m writing. It’s like smelling perfume; after you smell 4 I think, they all smell the same. And who wants posts that offer nothing new?

4 Things that Blur My Focus

1. There are times when I don’t have a clear purpose or point for my post. I have trouble writing just to be writing, when it comes to posting.
2. Getting ahead of myself is another problem I sometimes run into. I want to put everything out there in one epic post. Clearly, that’s not the best choice to make.
3. When I allow intrusions of random thoughts and concerns to intrude on my writing sessions, I can lose track in mid-thought.
4. I have trouble sleeping right now, because I have so many things on my mind to get done. The lack of sleep can make me a little fuzzy, which defeats the reason I’m awake. Often times it makes the other reasons worse, if it doesn’t precipitate them.

If I stop blogging tomorrow, I will appreciate the experience forever. Right now I’m staying awake to write and there’s no way that I need to be awake right now. There’s also no way that I’m going to press the publish button tonight because I know that what’s here may scare me when I’m fully alert. I know who’s in charge, but still I fight.

In a post, Problogger author Darren Rowse asked his readers how long they take to write a post. I saw answers that ranged from 10 minutes to days. I fall in there, as another responder said, depending on my focus. Lately, I’m near the slower publishing times.

Being Well-Rested can Fix Focus

I want to be one of the faster blog writers. Things that hang me up are all surmountable. I have a few tactics that I use to get the job done. Some of the things that help me are meditation and journal writing. Gratitude is a key salve in the process of sharpening my focus. These all help me to calm my thoughts. And the main thing that I do, before anything, is to rest more.

You need more than sleep. Usually, when I get blurred it’s because I’ve stopped resting, too. A rested mind is one that can easily clear thoughts. The ability to quiet your mind is how you prepare sleep. Sometimes, a simple word I use before I go to bed is “tomorrow,” to dismiss my thoughts so that I can sleep.

I have a schedule, but many times I want to go longer. When I notice my focus is not so sharp, I rely on discipline to stop when I’m scheduled and rest. In my resting times I do different things to clear my head to be rejuvenated.

So, why do all this for blogging? Really, I won’t be declared a master blog writer this week. But I work at it just the same because I know that improvement comes with effort over time. And as long as I can take joy in and appreciate what I’m doing, it’s worth my effort to see it through.

What do you do to regain your focus? How do you know when you’ve lost it? If any of this sounds familiar to you, please share your experiences.

Related Entries

• writing life: 7 strategies to keep going
• gaining perspective the write way
• The Boss of Me

Since I do much of my writing on the weekends, I’ve been thinking up ways to make the time most productive and pleasurable. So, participating in this just seems like good fun and useful too: It’s a group writing project over at Joanna Young’s blog, Confident Writing. This one is about your ideal writing weekend.

I first saw it some time ago but I ran out of time. A couple of weeks ago, Joanna shared some of her writing weekend essentials and the rules, and she extended the project’s deadline to September 1, 2008. I thought I would pass it along.

In March this year, I participated in Joanna’s 4×4 sources of writing inspiration project, and that was fun and thought-provoking. The results post on April 3rd was an excellent resource. These projects offer keen insights and novel perspectives.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that this is actually a competitive group writing project. You can visit the link above or go directly to the Absorbing Writing website to get the details.

10.24.2008 My entry for the project, my ideal writing weekend has actually won second prize.

10.30.2008 RESULTS: The results of this project are in! For more details, visit this post to see where it’s posted.

Losing the Remote. On a groggy Friday evening, I lost my TV remote. When I lost it this time, the TV input was in DVD mode. I can’t switch input signals from the TV-mounted controls. So I really needed to find it.

I looked in the obvious places, first. And when nothing turned up in those places, I looked in the I-can’t-believe-I-put-that-there places. I got a little frantic but decided that it was early in the weekend. I wanted it in time for Bones on Monday night.

Through my weekend of activities and errands, I looked for my remote when I thought about it, to no avail. One thing was stuck in the back of my mind and not too far: I was making this too hard.

Finding Your Story Line

It can be a lot like finding the remote control. Only in writing, it’s a bit more frustrating. You have your topic, tone, and your point of view, none of which addresses how you get your point across. Often, the bloodless way to get down to the path of your project is to start writing. I find what helps me is to list everything that I know about my topic.

Researching the topic can be part of the process, sometimes it yields the perspective you search for, yielding something that captures your attention. And it can prove you wrong, pointing you in a new direction.

So, don’t think that because you don’t know where you’re going in a topic, you need to dump it. It happens to writers, that we start out with one idea, decide how to reach it, and write until there’s a whole story and it only remotely resembles what was planned.

Added Benefits of Searching

Do you ever research a topic and get to a point where you’re just writing? I find that the research helps me to tap into the data that I have stored in my head. In an editing stage, I search for the information to verify my recollections.

I try not to keep my focus too narrow, like entertaining things that crossed my mind while searching for the remote control. I came up with dinner plans, weekend dress ideas, and this blog post. You definitely want to stay open to new thoughts, as, a good research session can lead to some very interesting tangents, so catch as many as you can.

So Where was My Remote?

Finding the remote. I didn’t tell you what happened with my remote. After a few thorough searches over two days, decided to pay attention to the voice in my head, the one that said I was working too hard. I decided to listen after I’d just bought a cheap remote on the way home Monday evening. It couldn’t adjust my input signals either. I sat at my desk thinking it would jog my memory. I thought for a moment, taking a slow look in the immediate area. And there it was on the floor, face down, blending in with the carpet. I picked it up and was able to tune in to Bones for the last half hour.

Related Entries

• chasing the poem
• writing life: 7 strategies to keep going
• Body Position Jogs Memory

When You Can’t Blog About It

While I was swamped at work I was still saving random thoughts. So, now I’m going back through them to mine for post-able material. As I researched for work projects, thoughts would pop int my head about my blogs, in spite of my dedicated focus.

Since I am a believer in tracking tangential thoughts, I always have at hand something to write on. I have used many different papers through the years and have come to really enjoy writing on blank pages. Since I’ve discovered Moleskines, I have the variety to suit my tastes.

• pocket ruled reporter - goes pretty much everywhere and collects whatever comes to me
• large blank hardcover notebook - catches my poems
• large squared reporter - records/plots business ideas, plans and implementation

My daily journal is a composition notebook.

Software and Browser Addons

Online is another story. I am a WordPerfect user since the days of its DOS-based version. I have Word to accommodate business communications for those who are “WordPerfect-challenged.” I wanted to find something more closely integrated with the internet, so I added a few applications this year and experimented with them. Here they are in the order that I tried them.

Google documents: I like it well enough for ideas and starting posts, journaling progress of ancillary tasks, when I don’t want to pick up a pen, or leave the internet. It’s only a tab away.

Google notebook: It did some things that were really interesting. Like, when you highlight and clip content, it automatically snags the website URL. The great thing about that is it makes returning to the site later a snap—or a click, no re-searching or address-typing required required. It stays out in front of the screen so you can work right from the site you’re on. Or you can pop it out in a separate tab. Or, you can put it in a separate tab, which gives you access to more of the capabilities.

What I like about Google Docs and Notebook:

• They’re portable. Wherever you log in, there’s your work, in the corner, or on a tab.
• They offer a place to capture live links for one-click returns.
• Docs pages are printable from the app, so I can edit manually whenever I feel like it.
• Docs offers a spreadsheet application and that’s a big plus for me.
• Notebook offers tabs capability which offers an alternative way to filter notes.

What I don’t like about them:

• One thing that gets in my way is that it gets in my way. Sometimes I have to actually close the Notebook, or put it in another window, to get it out of the way of my content.
• The Docs page is always on a separate tab, which means no side-by-side viewing.
• Notebook pages are only printable in full tab view.

They’ve served me well for a few months now. I kept an eye out for different applications to research.

I’ve Discovered Scribefire

For a while now, I’d been noticing a new application. I am skeptical about adding techno gadgets, but it kept nagging me that this might be the add-on to eclipse the others. Finally, just before my vacation ended, I decided to try one more thing. I went to Scribefire from ProBlogger.net because I kept seeing it there. The application is quite stunning! I haven’t used all of its capabilities. I didn’t even integrate it with any of my blogs, yet, and its usefulness is undeniable. I’m not dismissing my Google additions, for now, but I’m definitely making use of Scribefire.

What I liked right off:

• The download was really easy.
• When it’s closed it’s quite unobtrusive.
• It’s fully integrated with the browser window.
• I didn’t need an email account.
• You don’t need a blog to use it.

What I’m hoping for in future versions:

• Live link capture - it’s a help especially for double-checking information on the fly
• Portability - so I can work from whatever computer I’m near, if I choose

My brother was looking for an application to collect information while he surfed. I told him of the different applications I was using. After the first couple of days I used Scribefire, I shot him an email to let him know about it. And I thought I’d share it here. I’m glad I finally tried Scribefire. Now, I think I have all bases covered. Really there’s no way I’ll miss an idea unless I just don’t make the effort to capture it. It happens, but I try to keep that to a minimum.

Tell me what you use to capture your thoughts. If you’ve found something that you really love, that you think does everything, let me know.

While I Was Away

It wasn’t my plan to spend so much time away from my blogging space. I gave in to the dark pressures of my day job, and let it spill into my mornings and nights and weekends. I completely the balance I had maintained. It was easy to do because I really like my job a lot. And my blog has suffered tremendously, which means that I suffered too. I missed it.

This is not my only site that has flagged in my absence. Telling Stories took a powder too. And it’s been a challenge to face the setback. And yet here I am to rebound, to breathe life back into my lifelines, with more than a small measure of hope that I can regain my balance between work and non-work. I really like blogging. It has become part of what keeps me balanced, so it’s definitely worth the effort.

Since I climbed out of the pit of over-work, I took a few days off to breathe life back into me and the things that keep me going. I’ve learned a great deal in my months-long absence.

What I Read

• I have read Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett’s PROBLOGGER: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income. I was delighted to have finished it while I was still on my break. Now, to calm down and plot my course!
• I started reading The 4-Hour Workweek, an interesting book by Timothy Ferriss. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I’m not there yet.

I read my constant companion blogs by Darren, Joanna, Catherine and Brian and many others that reaffirmed for me that “DO IT” is a good plan. It’s a positive thing to change and grow. For me to be balanced again, I do need to CHANGE things a bit, so I made the first efforts to DO IT. More on that later. As I surfed through other blogs too, I found that I’m not the only person for whom change is in the air.

• Joanna Young of Confident Writing, has some great, exciting and inspiring changes; her new company/site, and working out her current site changes including the bookstore.
• Catherine of Sharp Words is working a little differently with her book reviews and it’s coming along better than she’d hoped.
• Amy Palko, now of Less Ordinary, moved to a self-hosted site. She inspired me too because she’s well-known and made this big change. And, quite successfully too, because the her new site seems to be off to a very good start with the familiar stunning quality images.

What I’ve Done

• I started catching up on my blog reading, as you may have noted above.
• I caught up on my sleep.
• I caught up with my family and friends.
• I’ve come up with some ideas of how my blogging may lead to bucks.
• I’ve brainstormed some posts ideas for my blogs.
• I’ve planned to change my blogging setup.

Three Things I’ve Learned

1. In an effort to stay on top of my game I have come to the realization that I will have to get a bit ahead of myself, with respect to my writing.
2. Change is everywhere. It feels like a good thing because it is, and a necessary part of regaining and maintaining balance
3. It’s okay to doubt—a little. It’s okay to stop—briefly. It’s not okay to give up—period.

What’s to Come

My addresses will be changing here. I bought the names a while back and I recently set up the first one that I will be using for this blog. The other will come soon. I don’t know how it will work, or if the content switch will happen. No rush there, I just want to start posting to the new site as soon as I’ve finished the setups. In the meantime, I’ll continue to share my adventures here.

This was a fantastic “stay-cation” that I took! I added a few extra days around the July 4th holiday. And, it was as much fun and revitalizing as I’d hoped, just relaxing and reading and thinking and being. I know the guidelines, and yet I managed to lose track of my rule to keep some time for me. I’ll renew my vigilance.

If you’d like to, please share your experiences with overload and how you manage to regain your balance.