Running out of things to blog about?

This post is in response to the following questions posted on the site A Bit Backwards: "Can one person really produce creative/thought-provoking/worthwhile/carefully edited content every single day - or even every other day for that matter? Am I cut out for this? So much thinking...to be a successful blogger...you need to write something - anything -as often and consistently as you can."

My response:
I say yes to all your questions. First of all, the secret to coming up with compelling copy is to be compelling and interesting yourself and to focus on interesting things. How do you do that? By reading magazines, books, newspapers, other peoples blogs, on line articles, etc. There's a wealth of information out there...the world is full of it. Also, traveling, engaging in conversations, watching TV and listening to the radio will generate ideas. Another place to look is at yourself: Do you have hobbies and talents? Are you a good mom? a good cook? and so on.

You absolutely do not have to come up with something thought provoking every single day. You can post a recipe and talk about how your baby would or wouldn't eat it. Or post a video. Or do a book review or review a TV Show or movie or a new CD just out and why you think it's awful.

Try this: Just start writing about the things that interest you...the thought provoking stuff will come later after you get used to blogging.

BTW, I have four blogs of my own, maintain a blog for the Louisville Bed and Breakfast Association, blog at SheWrites, Hub Pages, Examiner.com, Salon, and will soon start blogging at BlogHer. The more you write, the easier it gets. Jot down ideas for blogs as soon as they pop into your head. Good luck! I'll be looking for your posts..


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Blogging Challenge

To give my self a little boost in the blogging direction I've joined a blogging challenge. Details of the challenge and information on the originator can be found at: Blog.Writing Spirit.Com/ the site of Julie Isaac who is initiating the second of these challenges. She has challenged anyone who can commit to a given number of posts on their blogs within 100 days from today (September 20, 2011). I have decided to post one blog per week on each of three of my blogs every week. And this is the first one...starting the ball rolling on the site. Hope you will come back each week and check up on me to see if I am living up to my commitment.

I blog as often as I can right now, but it's really not on a regular basis. I'm not the kind of person who is very structured. I do have some structure in my life otherwise I wouldn't be able to run a small business and blog and write a memoir all at the same time. But that structure is quite loose and I'm very flexible so if I have to make changes I can do it in a New York minute. I always have a plan A, B and C and I am an excellent problem solver, having been a mother, a teacher, a business owner and an enthusiastic liver of life with all it's unexpected twists and turns. I just dive right in and if something goes wrong and presents a problem, I solve it. No questions asked.

I have recently committed to exchanging pages, as a Beta reader, with another memoir writer as a way to try to learn from her and do some heavy re-writing on my own manuscript. I want to get it ready for a final professional editing and polishing before I look for an agent and attempt to have it published. In the past three years, writing has become a big part of my life. I can see the more I do,  the better my writing becomes. It is a never ending cycle that I am totally happy with.

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SW Radio Show: How to grab an agent's attention

Today at 4:00 pm the following radio show,  How To Grab Them In Your First 2000 Words, was broadcast on She Writes Radio to help writers thinking about publishing and contemplating the all important query letter, synopsis, and proposal. Kamy Wicoff, founder and CEO of  She Writes, interviews agents Sally Wofford Girard, and Elinor Jackson along with editor Sara Weiss in a  discussion of one important part of the publishing  phenomenon.

I listened to the show and found it incredibly enlightening and useful.  Although, they were directing most of their comments to literary and commercial fiction, all three accept non-fiction as well and many of their comments were apropos to both categories. I thought I'd share this with my readers, who are mostly writers, and may be in the midst of or thinking about publishing themselves. If you are a She Writes member and missed this show, I really think you'll be interested.
...

Listen to internet radio with She Writes on Blog Talk Radio

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Rodney and The Boys

short excerpt from Operatic Divas and Naked Irishmen

I can't remember who gave me [Rodney’s] name but I think it was someone in the neighborhood, 'cause he lived just around the corner from me.

One day he sauntered down to my bed and breakfast and knocked on the door...When I open the door, he was slouching against the white wooden entrance way,  looking like a cross between one of Hell's Angels and a Hard Rock musician about to smash his guitar across someone's head. He assured me he knew all about putting up privacy fences. Despite outward appearances, Rodney was intriguing, especially to the writer in me.

After the many unfortunate experiences I’d had with local handymen and contractors, I refused to give him any money up front. No, we'd have to discuss the project thoroughly before that happened.  I asked for a written estimate of the total cost. That was fine with Rodney. He put together a small crew of seemly looking rednecks who rambled into my back yard and began putting up my fence.

The next morning, I walked out into my back yard and found Rodney planted on the deck in one of my plastic lawn chairs. He was barking orders to his crew, who were scattered all over the back yard, his tattooed arms waving back and forth. A blue and white bandanna was tied around his head keeping his long hair in place. Steaming ribbons of hot sweat were running down his suntanned forehead onto his neck, settling into and soaking the rim of his “Motorcycle Boys” T-shirt.  He looked at me through Aviator sun glasses, shielding his eyes from the strong morning sunlight with gnarly hands.

“Hi Babe” He gave me a wave as he turned his head in my direction.

The strong smell of marijuana nearly overwhelmed me so  I found a chair on the other side of the deck and joined him from afar.

“Hi, Rodney. How’s everything going?”

“Fine. The boys are doing great”

I glanced around the yard. The only thing I saw that looked like the beginnings of my lovely privacy fence were ten holes waiting for fence posts. There were five on either side of the yard.

“Rodney, what about along the back? I don’t see any holes there.”

Guzzling down a whole can of cola, he informed me that I had said nothing about the back of the fence.

“We don’t have enough slats for that part” he said.

“Well, we’ll just have to get some more, wont we? Rodney, why would I want a fence that only went three fourths around my yard? First of all, the dog could get out...”

“Lady, that was all you asked for.”

Now I was lady, instead of babe. A warning signal went off in my head.

“ Okay...Okay. But, Rodney, I’m going to need the fence to go all the way around the yard. Can you do that?”

“I suppose so, but we’ll have to wait until I can get some more money, to buy more slats,” he said.

Uh oh, here it comes.

“Don’t worry about that”, I said. “ I’ll just put it on my credit card. You and I can go to the lumber yard this afternoon.” That part, he didn’t like but he went along with it.

Since he only had a motor cycle, I told him I would pick him up at his home in a couple of hours. He was not out in front when I arrived, so I walked around back to where he said his apartment was and knocked. A black skull was carefully painted in the center of the door. Suddenly it opened. There stood Rodney with a can of beer in his hand beckoning me to come inside, his hulking frame completely filling the doorway. I stepped inside. The rancid smell of pot and alcohol immediately accosted me..

Dishes were piled in the sink and I could see that his bed, pushed against the far wall, hadn't been made in a while, if ever. Several guitars lay around the room and a double-barreled shotgun hung from the wall. There were books, magazines and newspapers everywhere and a black leather jacket with nail heads thrown across the faded flowers of the sofa. A large pair of blue jeans lay in a circle on the floor where someone had stepped out of them and just left them there. The TV was playing General Hospital in the corner as loud rock music blasted from a small plastic radio.

“Sorry, Rodney, but I just remembered I have someone checking in in a couple of hours, so we have to get this thing done fast. I’ll just wait in the car”

My heart was pounding as I turned, headed straight for my car, and jumped into the front seat. Taking a deep breath, I leaned my head back against the car seat and tried to relax. Just then, his back door slammed shut and he stumbled out from between the bushes at the side of the house. He staggered slightly and made his way down the path and around to the passenger side of my car.

We made it to the lumber yard and bought some extra slats. It was only after we got back home that I noticed the difference. The slats Rodney bought were rougher and had a lot more knot holes than the ones I picked out .They were obviously inferior and cheaper. But by that time I didn’t care. I just wanted to get the damn thing done...

That evening, the crew left after sticking the posts in the holes, leaving thick gravelly cement oozing out from all sides. I knew it wasn’t going to be the best fence in the world, but it was all that I could afford.......

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How I became a food snob: An excerpt from a memoir in progress

...My mother did a lot of canning. If you walked down the basement stairs into the cool, dark concrete, you would immediately encounter giant cocoons of cheese cloth hanging from the ceiling. Underneath each one was a pail into which thick, purple, syrupy stuff dripped for hours. The  smells of plum, grape, and blueberry mingled and hung in the air like a sugary veil. She would make the most delicious jams and jellies from the sweetly sour stuff. I can still taste that special  flavor on my tongue making my mouth water like I’d just eaten a fresh lemon.

  Sometimes the smells changed to the more pungent aroma of vinegar and tomatoes or the sweet comforting fragrance of fall apples as they boiled in huge metal pots on the stove daddy had moved down stairs and planted against the far wall. Shelves lined the wall across from it, a repository for rows of canning jars filled with jams, jellies, beans, corn, and beets all in a row. I can taste the delicious chili sauce and apple sauce.

 During the war, we had an huge Victory garden with everything imaginable growing in it, including canta­loupe and watermelon. In the summer, my sister and I would gather lapfuls of plump, ripe tomatoes and sit in the cool green grass with a salt shaker eating and laughing. We also had a peach and a plum-tree. It was then that I first developed a love of fresh fruits and vegetables ripened in the summer sun.

Although I had been a “food snob” most of my life, staying a purest was next to impossible when we became really busy at the Inn. I just didn’t have time to make everything from scratch, or to can and make fresh bread and granola.

Some of the other Innkeepers had started using mixes, pre­cooked bacon and even precooked omelets. I couldn’t bring myself to do the omelet thing, but I did try a few mixes and started using precooked bacon. I held out to the end on whipped cream from scratch and home-made granola, but eventually gave in. One of our signature dishes is a Quiche that started out as a simple spinach Quiche, but we kept adding more to it and tweaking it so it would taste better. Now it has herbs, spices, and sauted onions and mushroom and is abso­lutely wonderful. My guests tell me it’s one of the best Quiches they’ve ever tasted..........

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Repost: Good advice for beginning fiction writers from someone who writes non-fiction

I do not write fiction, but that doesn't mean that I don't use many fiction techniques in my non-fiction writing. Fiction writing fascinates me. I have even tried it a time or two but I have to say I find it very tedious...all that character development and dialogue...It's just takes too much time and effort, like sculpting a statue or like my She Writes on-line author friend, Meg Waite Clayton, puts it, "...like......making a jigsaw puzzle."

No. I'll stick with non-fiction. I prefer writing journal articles... in and out fast. Maybe do a little research...but that's easy with the internet, Amazon, and the library. And personal essays...writing about something you know and/or feel. For me, that's easy and satisfying, but making up stuff? What a chore. You might think I have no imagination but that's not the case. I can write fairly decent poetry, paint or draw a vase of flowers in the style of Picasso, write and perform an original song, and turn out a pretty good evening meal from left-overs. But I just don't enjoy making up stories.

I like to tell stories, stories about people and events that really happened. And so, when it came time for me to try my hand a larger piece of writing, I decided upon a memoir instead of a novel. Writing a memoir has been a joy. My main goal was not to get published, although I've deviated from that decision since I started writing it a year and a half ago. I'm still not sure which way to go, traditional or self-publishing. Maybe I'll format it for Kindle.


And by the way, the advice on writing fiction I mentioned in the title of this post, a title not geared to the memorist, can be found in the following straight forward, useful and well written article.

Don't Write What You Know by Brett Anthony Johnston: An essay on Fiction written for The Atlantic

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Repost: Fledging: The birth of a memoir

March 10, 2010: "I have started formulating in my mind an approach to writing a memoir, but haven’t come up with anything concrete yet. I’ve been running a bed and breakfast for 16 years and want the memoir to be about my life there. I do not want it to be focused on  my family, but rather on the interactions between me and my guests, employees, and colleagues. At this point, I don't know the  best way to go..."

I wrote the above almost a year ago, when I made the decision to put all my stories and blogs posts about my years as an Innkeeper into memoir form. I had never written a memoir before and had no idea where how to start. But, like most of my new experiences in life, I just jumped right in. I started gathering information and talking to every writer I knew about memoir and what they thought it was. There was a lot of controversy and many were not able to give me a definitive answer. So I went to the dictionaries, online and off. I started formulating definitions and writing about them on my blogs, my writers sites, and all my social networking sites. I got a lot of feedback.

On one of my writer's sites, I posted regularly about what it was like being an Innkeeper, the challenges, the interaction with guests,and  the running of a small business. I began getting lots of comments and interest in what I was writing. Many of my virtual friends suggested that I collect my posts into some kind of book form. at first, I laughed off the idea. Up to that time my thoughts about writing books were that they were too time consuming and required too much from me in the way of commitment and dedication. Never did I think that I couldn't do it. I just never thought about it at all....until one day, out of the clear blue.

I went to a place on line called Fast Pencil. I registered and started posting my stories as chapters into the program. It was free unless you wanted to self publish. I came up with a bland, working title and starting spending more and more time there. I still wasn't thinking about publishing; I just wanted to see what all of my stories and events looked like as an organized unit. My writing strategy was to organize the stories and information about the Inn I had already posted into chapters, then write a preface and afterward,  I decided that, if I didn't have enough stories to produce 70,000-90,000 words, I'd dig down into my memories of the past 16 years and add some more. I just wrote whatever came to my mind planning to re-write later. I wrote five to six hours a day...everyday for months.

I changed the title three times, and may not stop there. The first one was: Tales From An Innkeeper's Crypt. I used this one to post my stories when I first started writing about my inn keeping experiences. After studying the memoir market a while, I discovered there were too many "Innkeeper Tales..." out there and I needed to come up with something more original. Eventually, I adopted A Memorable Time of My life as a working title. The third and present working title came from a line out of the book: Operatic Divas and Naked Irishmen, a little off beat and more interesting.

Where am I now in the process?...and it has been a process, from which I've learned a lot. I'm over halfway finished with the first writing (approx 60,000. words), I'm working on a query letter for agents, and a proposal. I've had several readers look at it, have posted my query and excepts from the manuscript on several writer's sites for feedback, and have self-edited and re-written parts of it many times. It is now stewing on line, waiting for me to get back to it with fresh eyes,  to rewrite again, finish the chapters, have an editor friend look at it then re-read it through for clarity, flow, voice, etc.etc.

The process is complicated, many layered, and at times intensive...but for me, it's more comfortable than writing fiction. I actually discovered I am truly a non-fiction writer through this process. Few writers cross over very well and I guess I'm one of the one's who prefers not to. Non-fiction is the category of writing I've been drawn to all my life. I prefer reading biography and memoir to fiction as well, and enjoy satire. I don't like Sci-Fi or Fantasy. I like reality shows and prefer real life stories to made up ones. Since "voice" is an important part of any piece of writing, I have infused my book with humor and good-natured sarcasm, which is characteristic of my particular voice and style.

To anyone who wants to write a memoir, make it honest, authentic, and reflect the real you. You can make it creative, by using techniques from fiction writing, but get to the truth and flush it out. And remember this, it's not as easy as it seems.

MEMOIR-IN-PROGRESS

Description: OPERATIC DIVAS AND NAKED IRISHMEN is a humorous and poignant account of how an admittedly asocial retired school teacher with no business sense reinvents herself as an Innkeeper. The reader is taken on a  sixteen year journey as the author deftly wields her way around cantankerous contractors, harrowing housekeepers and no shortage of strange and interesting guests.  Through her collected stories, the author gives the reader a personal, in-depth, and honest look at what it's like to be an Innkeeper and not lose one's sense of humor.

Excerpt from Chapter eight: ...I opened the door to a barrage of people., having no idea who they might be. The only person scheduled to check in that night was a single, elderly lady.

"I am Madame Rosalina Capriani!, " the woman announced, "and these are my suitcases".

I scanned the four men accompanying her and, sure enough, each one was carrying a suitcase...

She extended a long, well rounded arm covered in silky, red, purple and green, part of a flowing cape encircled heavily in dancing Majenta fringe. I stood there in awe, as she flamboyantly glided through the doorway, motioning to her walking suitcases to follow her...


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This is an excerpt from Operatic Divas and Naked Irishmen: an innkeeper's tale (a work in progress)

If you take the time to read the following except, I would really appreciate any feedback you can give me. I'm just about ready to submit the memoir to an editor for a third and final edit. Thanks...........Nancy

Thanks for all the feedback. It was very helpful. I have removed the excerpt
in order to re-write:  Chapter 16, Jasonspeak