Monthly Archives: June 2017
Celebrate the Small Things 9: Small Miracles and Gratitude Make a Difference #fridayfeeling
Fridays are all about celebrating the Small Things thanks to a weekly blog hop created by author Lexa Cain. Joint co-hosts this week are authors L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge Tonja Drecker @ Kidbits Blog The mission coincides with what I’m hoping to do with my own writing, inspire and focus on the light when those slippery shadows creep around our shoes. Want to sign up? Click Lexa Cain’s link to find out more.
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Worry creeps into our heads. The pulse races. The heartbeat starts to pound. The hairy monster you dreaded meeting is right in front of you, worse than you ever thought it might be. Before you know it, you’re waving your hand at the monster, or kicking and shouting outloud. In anycase, the thing you dread the most arrives and you actually pass it. How does it happen? How do you go from biting your nails, your knees shaking, to raising your arms and screaming outloud, “I did it!”
Yes, inner strength and perseverence counts. But today, I’m thinking of our shadow champions. Our dearest ones who hold our hands in the dark when we can’t seem to get control. Today, I’m celebrating my own champions in my life who’ve helped me see through the dark, given me an extra flashlight and squeezed my hand right before I had to face what I really didn’t want to face.
This week I moved to a new home. I cleaned up my old home and managed to get everything done and vacated in the time I’d planned. It was rough. I pushed myself to the limits. I pushed others to the limits but the best part is, they still love me.
I have so many wonderful memories from the past three years in my old home, but now I’m ready to make new ones. So thank you to my partner Dave, my girlfriends Chrissy and Diana and my mom Joyce for all the love and support given through this difficult time.
On the writing side, my computer is up and running again and I’ve been rereading all my notes, my synopsis, and all my short clips of chapters I plan to include in my new working manuscript. Thank you Becky for being such a great writing partner and inspiring me to believe in this new idea I have.
My mother and stepdad came out for a whole weekend and I’m celebrating seeing them as well. They live in Denver, a solid 8 hour drive away from Kansas City, so we don’t see each other as much as we’d like.
My post is short, but my heart is big. Encountered your own small miracle this week with the helping hand of someone you love?
Always remember:
Grow Your Blog. Be You. #AuthorToolboxBlogHop
The Author Toolbox Blog Hop is “a monthly blog hop on the theme of resources/learning for authors: posts related to the craft of writing, editing, querying, marketing, publishing, blogging tips for authors, reviews of author-related products, anything that an author would find helpful.” Want to jump into the writing tool box? Search #AuthorToolboxBlogHop or to join via blog, click here.
Thank you Raimey!
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I used to dread blogging more than any other aspect as a writer.
Do I sound ridiculous or fake?
What if I’m boring?
How do I pick and choose topics of interest?
Tweeting was another story for me. Short statements of who I was seemed less daunting, and I loved the interaction piece. I could heart things. I could post a really great quote and the author who’d said it might find it and respond back to me.
Today, I’m reflecting on what is currently working for me regarding my marketing platform, and why I don’t dislike blogging quite so much. I spent months and even years on my blog with little interaction. Today, I’m feeling different about it.
- Blog what you like.
- What inspires you? Funny quotes? Quick tips? The most important thing I’ve learned is to be you and to post for you no matter the platform. When I started blogging, I dreaded sharing my thoughts from my life with the world. Now, I’ve found a balance between my life and my topics of interest.
- Network with those you want to reach. For me, I don’t want to write solely for writers. My tagline I use is: Author, writer, dreamer. I maintain a dreamy Cloud Nine Girl Facebook page on the importance of waking up every morning and giving your best to live your dreams. I try to post 2 to 3 times a day. It’s a huge effort, but the interaction is worth it for me. I do also really appreciate my writing groups. Being a writer can feel sort of lonely, and I’m grateful to Author Anna Simpson for joining the IWSG group so I could find them too. Without the IWSG group, I might not be feeling the momentum I do to succeed. I’ve met some really great friends in the group and I’m thankful.
- Visit and like fellow followers media efforts. Share their posts. Comment. I try to like everything I can relate to. Also along those lines, I try to reach out to blogs of different interests. Simply Ulna, Anja Ge, Maverick on the Move, are a few blogs I enjoy.
- Guest post with others when the opportunity strikes. This tip came from an article I found on a google search called the blogging wizard. The author also mentioned the importance of Triberr and I admit, I’ve never heard of it but I plan to explore it this month and will let you know how it goes next time.
- Promote others just as you hope they will promote you. When I have time, I’ve seen a technique on twitter work out pretty well, where you retweet a tweet and add your own comment and tags. It’s probably my favorite new twitter promotion tip and I also enjoy leaving comments to others when I can. When I post a tweet in a hashtag, I try to like others in the hashtag and forward a few of theirs along too.
- Frequency of posting. I recently went to a Writer’s Digest workshop in Kansas City and a speaker mentioned blogging once a month was enough. It wasn’t for me. The more I blogged, the more people visited my site. Maybe it was the combined efforts of twitter and blogging, and even though it was incredibly tough for me to maintain three posts a week, it really worked to reach a greater range of individuals. My topics also wove together my love for writing and my desire to inspire people with guest interviews on those real hero individuals who have inspired me. I can’t keep up with three blogs a week now, but I did enjoy jumping around other’s blogs and posts and commenting back.
I think the best success comes from the heart. I try to walk in the shoes of what I hope and want to achieve. I research a great deal, read a great deal, and try my best every day to do what I can to help promote others, and to not beat myself up if I can’t do more.
Celebrate the Small Things 8: Optimism Gets Me Everywhere #FridayFeeling
Fridays are all about celebrating the Small Things thanks to a weekly blog hop created by author Lexa Cain. Joint co-hosts this week are authors L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge Tonja Drecker @ Kidbits Blog The mission coincides with what I’m hoping to do with my own writing, inspire and focus on the light when those slippery shadows creep around our shoes. Want to sign up? Click Lexa Cain’s link to find out more.
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What is optimism? Why do some of us have more than others?
op·ti·mism, According to google:
ˈäptəˌmizəm noun
- 1.
hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something.
And Lucille Ball said: “One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn’t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.”
I whole heartedly agree, and to celebrate the small things, here’s what I’ve been most optimistic about:
- Wednesday, June 13, I got the word from my real estate agent that a truly pesky bank and a last lien note on the house I worked to buy finally cleared through the underwriters. I don’t know if you know much about technical paper work and real estate, but I learned a lot about it these past couple of weeks. Every day, I waited, praying, hoping that the details would go through. My stomach is still all knotted up as I faced fears of where would I live, how would I afford moving twice, once to a storage place and second to the home? But at the last minute, my hope and optimistic outlook paid off.
- Monday night, the kids and I made the best of our packed up home and built a fort in the living room and slept on the pull out couch. We watched a really great movie, A Dog’s Purpose. It almost brought me to tears, then made me smile, then brought me to tears again, and left me with the best feeling in the world about animals. I highly recommend it. Original, gripping, each scene and actor in the movie was spot on and held my attention.
- Lastly, through all the mess of scheduling utilities, I am moving in my new home as you read these words today! So bare with me through the next week. I promise to be back with a force when I have my writing desk and all my things ready to go. Trust me, it won’t take long 😉
Happy Friday all, believe with all your heart you deserve your dreams.
IWSG Post 21: The Human Flicker of Doubt
[I wrote this post as a member of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group where we share our worries and also offer support and encouragement to each other on the first Wednesday of every month. If you’re a writer like me and you’re looking for a bit of support, you can click the link and sign up here]
This month’s awesome hosts are JH Moncrieff, Madeline Mora-Summonte, Jen Chandler, Megan Morgan, and Heather Gardner.
Thank you so much! And thank you founder Alex J. Cavanaugh!
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- I really wish I never screwed up.
- I really wish my every last word and sentence I typed was exactly right on.
- No typos. No forgotten punctuation, and every word flowed smoothly with purpose.
- Why can’t my first draft be perfect? It’s perfect in my thoughts, right?
- And why can’t I act the way I really want to act?
Every time I finish something I write, I want to believe inside it’s really great. After all, stories are alive inside of us, and why can’t we get it out perfectly the way we really want and mean to do the first time?
I just told my kids the other day no one is perfect, and we must forgive and admit we screw up and say sorry. Emotion is a tricky thing though, and in answer to this month’s IWSG question, “Did you ever say ‘I quit?’ If so, what happened to make you come back to writing?”
My answer is never on purpose. My philosophy is to try and to keep trying until the sport, the class, the project is over. Reflect. Think about what works and what didn’t. Ask others to help. But the honest heart felt thought should be, if you loved it, if you liked it, then I encourage continued steps. True, at one point in high school I walked away from writing. I think my own emotional chaos erupted and my thoughts shifted to graduation, college, and how to prepare myself for the real world. I walked away from me then, too, and always felt something was missing.
But I’m back, and I wake up every day with stories and words in my head. I can’t always write every day, but I know I will try as hard as I can the next time, the next day because there is always a next day.
Victoria Schwab, author of A Darker Shade of Magic, made a video about writing and how difficult it is to finish something and submit it to the world to analyze and decide whether it’s fit to print or not. Waiting is the worse step and a very emotional piece in anything we do. We practice. We perform. Then we wait for the evaluation. Yes, my head goes back and forth with whether my stories are good enough. One day I say, ‘of course it is.’ The next day, I find human doubt poking at me, and I say, ‘what were you thinking?’ According to Victoria Schwab though, writers never stop. The best way to get through human doubt is to create something new, and keep writing.
Question: Do you have words of advice you follow? What keeps your own fire burning past the doubt?
Cloud Nine Girl 