Writing

There are 321 posts filed in Writing (this is page 5 of 33).

Creating a Great Online Dating Profile

One thing no one fantasizes about is writing that online dating profile, over and over again. Your name, age, looks aren’t too stressful to write about. It’s trying to come up with a pleasant, attractive and informative way of saying everything else that makes profile writing a troublesome aspect of online dating.

Consider the profile worth doing, rather than an aggravation. If you change your outlook the job is easier and can actually be fun. Think of this as an investment in your future. It’s a chance to market yourself to the people you want to meet.

When choosing a user name or login for the site take the time to come up with something you won’t dislike in another month. Don’t go for something cutesy or slutty you will be sick of and stuck with. Be creative too and not another Jenny29583 or Mark4Yu.

Write your profile in complete sentences. Check your spelling, grammar, punctuation and proofread for typos. Sloppy profiles are a turn off. This is your chance to make a first impression. If you don’t proofread and fix mistakes you give the impression of being sloppy, careless or not really interested in making a good impression (not really interested in who you meet). Who would be impressed by someone who doesn’t seem interested in meeting someone special? We each like to think we are special, in some way.

Be honest. Remember, the idea is that you will eventually meet these people. You can’t hide those extra pounds or the birthdays you’ve had forever. Just admit them upfront and be done with it. People reading profiles do look at them like a catalogue: sorting them by age, weight, non-smoking, kids, etc. because those are important to them in searching for someone. Hiding things can work against you because someone looking for you, as you really are, could pass right by because everyone is not looking for perfection. Whatever you try to hide or ignore, just be honest and it becomes a non-issue rather than a road block. None of us are perfect, we all have flaws, issues and things we aren’t real proud of. We are all imperfect.

Never include your phone number or address. Those are vulnerable to being picked up by spammers or someone looking for an ID to borrow. No one should need that much detail about you in an online profile. This should be social, not business. Exchange addresses and phone numbers when you find someone you really do want to meet face to face.

Read the ads others have written, what are they looking for and what parts of their ads appeal to you? Likely, you are looking for someone like yourself with the same general background. So, what appeals and attracts you to a profile? Use that information in making your own profile. Get a friend to give you some help with a self description. Make some notes. Take time to really think about how your profile will present you to the people you want reading it. Turn your quirks and flaws into positives. Show your good attitude.

Talk about who you are, not just how you look. What are your interests, hobbies, plans for the future? What places have you seen and hope to see later? What’s great about your life, your job/ career? When you read an ad how important are the little things like eye colour, hair colour and height? Put more effort into writing about more than your physical looks. Let people get to know you, your sense of humour, your geeky, brainy side, or your passions. Tell us about your life and the life stage you are at: kids, career, retirement, college, etc. Those are the things people will remember.

Choose a few favourite things and/or hobbies and write about why you enjoy them. Don’t try to list everything. That may make you seem too busy or scattered. Pick a few that sound good, that represent you well and may perk the interest of like minded people.

Write about yourself and then write an equal amount about who you are looking for. Try to write it with a positive spin. Don’t go on about negative things, think positive. Don’t write about what you don’t want – write about what you do want. Write proactively and avoid over used phrases like “looking for…” Or the routine list “cute, funny, smart…” Write something along the lines of “On a mission to find a partner for the upcoming ballroom dancing event in town at the end of summer.” This tells about you and who you are looking for and it’s a lot more interesting to read about something real in your life than just a list of attributes. Let the facts speak for themselves.

Also, what do you want from online dating? Something temporary, a friendship or a lifetime romance? However, don’t babble about being on a quest to find true love. Maybe that is your goal but you won’t find it reading dating profiles. It takes time to find someone you really know well enough to want something that lasts.

Don’t get too wordy and long. If you can stick to one or two paragraphs, do it! Your first sentence or two have the best chance of being read so focus there. Put your personality and the most essential information up front. A long profile looks intimidating on the page, it’s just too much information to get through and it gives the impression that you are trying too hard. You can write more about yourself once you have made the initial connection with someone.

Prepare in advance and then keep a copy of your final profile handy for posting. You can even save it as a file on your desktop so you always know just where it is. Plus, it’s handy if you have a spur of the moment blast of inspiration and want to make a change. If you have a picture available keep that on your desktop too. Post it to a free website like Flickr so you can quickly add the URL link (not every site will let you upload a file) when the opportunity arises to add a picture with your profile. Use a current photo that shows you looking relaxed and happy. Ads with photos get a lot more attention.

Good luck!

Start Your Own Tourism Business

Another home business idea for a writer is a tour guide. You can run the business from your home, in your town or city. Research the history and locations and write up the guide which you will use to tell people about the area as you give the tour.

Tourism and travel are things we think about outside of our local area. We think about going somewhere and seeing the sites, the tourist traps, finding a great place to stay, to eat and to shop. How seldom we think about the tourism and tourists in our own area, right under our noses.

In fact, you could be setting up your own small business just showing people around your town. If you have been living there awhile you already know a lot of great places. If not, you can ask other locals where they have found great places for breakfast, best place to see a movie, best place to have a great view of the town and assorted other things a tourist would be happy to know about.

So, why not turn what you know into a business, a service you can offer?

Ideas for a Tourism Business

There are more tourism businesses than the bed and breakfast, lodging or restaurants. The sort of tourism you could do on your own are guided tours of your area. You might work with a specific genre like the haunted walk tours, garden tours, historical tours, eco-tourism and you can plan an event to attract tourists to your town. Or, you might work with a gimmick such as offering a tour from a hot air balloon, a pink limousine, something a little unusual and attention getting. Once you get an idea, the next step is to see how you can make it work – research the market, your available options and skills.

When you have your idea make local contacts like the historical society (and other local groups and societies with relevance to your niche), the Chamber of Commerce and a small business support group are good places to begin looking for people who can help you, inspire you and bring business your way once you are actually in business.

When you’re Ready…

Once you have an idea which interests you enough to drive your passion to make it work, you need to get on the practical side. Start with market research. Is the service you want to provide in demand/ needed in your area, or is there an already existing business which you would have to compete with or has someone else done it and failed?

Of course, market research is part of a business plan. So that is your next step. As you work on a business plan you look at the resources you need, the resources you have and the resources you can get. It’s a good way to iron out the details and find out if your idea can stand up and work in a practical, real way.

If you still feel good about your idea at this point your next step is to check with the city you live in and find out about any bylaws, regulations, permits, city codes, licensing, fire safety and any other laws to be considered for a tourism business. You will also need find out about what insurance coverage you will need for a business which deals with the public and how/ when you will be responsible for the people using your service.

Work out the details of the type of service you will offer, packages, tours, group discounts, how do you handle reservations, what types of payment will you accept and so one. Work with family and friends to have a trial run of your service a few times over. This way you will see what steps you may have missed while you were planning from the inside.

How will you find business, what advertising, promotion and marketing will you do? Can you afford all the marketing ideas you dream up or do you need to get thrifty and rely on people who know you to get you word of mouth business?

While working on your business plan you would have worked out some idea for the finances and the start up costs. Before you actually offer services you need to firm up all the financial details. If you have offers of financial aid, a partner in the business or anything else you need to get started make sure it is on paper, a sure thing you can completely count on. It’s a really good idea to have more money behind you than you think you will need. The unexpected will always crop up.

Links with More Information

 

Could you Sell Your Old Books?

I have a lot of books, too many books really. It’s so hard to resist an interesting book. I find them with the new books and I like the way they smell. I find vintage, retro and just plain old books at the thrift store and the second hand book stores (one of my favourite places).

I’ve begun trying to limit buying books. I really need to because I’ve got a hoard of books, more than I have storage space for really. So, I’m sorting my books and trying to part with some – even some that I would love to read but have to be practical and realize I will (in reality) never have enough time to myself to read all these books.

People who don’t love or hoard books don’t understand the love of books. My family are not book people. They read them and forget them. Some of them seldom read anything more than the occasional street sign or grocery flyer. But, I love the non-fiction books. I want to find out more about everything. As a kid I wanted to know about everything and I wondered how long it would take me to learn it all. I estimated I’d be in my thirties by the time I was done. As a kid, that seems old but, as a kid, the world seems much smaller too. In reality, as an adult, the more I learn the more I know I have yet to learn.

So then what…? I’m taking a look into selling my books. I bought them in the first place, who better than myself to know the advantages of owning such a great and interesting book?

My Friend (Deanna) Has Written about Selling Books Online and Kindly Gave me the Interview Below

An Interview with an Experienced Book Seller

Before we begin, please introduce yourself and give us a summary with your experience as a book reviewer and seller.

I’ve been reviewing books online for over a decade, and as a result, have review copies filling my mail box weekly. (Please note, there are precautions to selling review copies; not everyone knows or respects the rules!) I’ve been selling books as well as antiques and collectibles online since 1997, I believe it was… That includes buying, and then selling, entire estates full of books. And I’ve been reading and collecting books for decades, of course.

Do you consider yourself a book collector? What do you think makes one person a book collector versus someone who reads books or someone who hoards books – where do you draw the line?

I actually believe there are several categories of bibliophiles. There are readers, those who just love to read but do not need to keep or save books or periodicals. There are the book lovers, magazine lovers, etc., who need the objects themselves. Then there are the collectors, who consider the pursuit of works as important as the keeping of them. As for hoarding, there’s the seriously negatively impacting disorder which is pathologically compulsive (which I’m not capable of addressing) and the state hoarding which many of us joke about doing. As someone who professionally writes about collecting, I’d say the true distinctions between “collecting” and “hoarding” are about the focus in the accumulation of and care of that is given to the objects themselves.

For the record, I am a book-reading, book-loving, book-collecting bibliophile!

Are there different methods of selling books online, beyond using sites like eBay?

Oh there are likely hundreds of options! It depends upon what kind of books you have, as well as your personal goals and preferences. Each site or marketplace varies as much in audience (types of buyers) as they do in their terms or conditions and fees. It’s not just a matter of what sites you like or trust, but where the buyers are for specific types of books and how much they are willing to pay. This not only affects how much money you are likely to get for your book, but how quickly you are likely to get it too. Depending on how much you sell, these sites work perfectly for keeping track of your sales. This can come in handy for when you file taxes at the beginning of the year. Depending on how much you sell, these sites work perfectly for keeping track of your sales. This can come in handy for when you file taxes at the beginning of the year.

Along with online marketplaces, there’s also just tossing up your own site, using PayPal buttons for purchasing. Blogging software, like WordPress, now offers ecommerce plugins so that you can sell online easily. Of course, those options require you driving your own traffic to get sales, but the rewards can be greater too.

Where have you found your most success as a book seller?

Matching the book for sale to the appropriate sales platform in order to get it in front of the largest group of most likely buyers is really important.That’s how you get the best prices for your items.

Do you sell books offline, in flea markets for example?

I sell a lot of books at flea markets and at good old fashioned rummage sales in my backyard too. These books tend to be more common books; think “used books” rather than “valuable books”.

I also sell a number of books at the antique stores we have booth and case space in. These tend to be antiquarian books, rare titles, and other collectible works which are perhaps not as commonly sought after but fetch higher prices.

What are the extra costs for selling books online, like shipping?

Shipping is a cost — and that includes boxes and mailers, packing tape, shipping labels (the ink and paper you print them on), and other items for packaging. There’s also fees for shipping insurance and tracking options. If you don’t consider those costs, or are charging less than you should, those amounts can really eat at any profits you may have.

And then there’s your time. There’s the time it takes to ship items, but even before you get to that, there’s a lot of time invested in properly listing books to sell. You’ll need to research each book to have an idea of its value in order to set your price or start the bidding at. You’ll need to accurately describe the book and its condition; you may need to photograph or scan the book itself. You may need to respond to questions from potential buyers. And then there’s the time spent organizing your books for sale. (You have to be able to find a title quickly to answer questions and to ship it.) This time can add up surprisingly fast.

As the saying goes, time is money. If, after you take out the fees for listing and selling at a site, you find you are only getting a dollar or something for your book, it may not be worth your time to sell books online.

Is there a danger of being ripped off by a book purchaser?

Most sites have protections for both seller and buyer. Sites like PayPal favor the buyer a lot, which means you are best off using the insurance and delivery tracking options to protect yourself. But still, even when you’ve accurately described the item and taken the shipping precautions, issues may still arise. There are fewer scammers than one fears; but there is always the element of just bad luck with a sale or shipping. Sometimes things just end up going sideways and aggravating you, if not costing you money outright.

What advice would you give to someone starting to sell their own books online?

Whether you are simply down-sizing your book collection or planning on generating income by selling books, it’s really important to know what you have. Not just in terms of the books themselves and their values, but your time constraints, skill sets (or willingness to learn), and desire to want to do the work it takes.

It can all seem overwhelming, I know! But once you have realistic ideas and expectations, the right options for you are much easier to see.

Thanks for taking the time to be interviewed. Is there anything you would like to add?

Just that most of this information applies to used or past issues of magazines and periodicals as well — and anything vintage or antique, for that matter. While a lot of the collecting shows make it sound like there’s treasure in your attic or basement, it’s not as easy as many people think it is. Learning to identify and separate the “gems” from the “junk” takes time and experience, as does the act of selling it. There is money to be made, for sure; but, as the saying goes, there’s no easy money.

And thank you so much for including me in your discussion about selling books!

How to Stop Finding Language Arts Class Boring

Become Active in Language Arts

Change your way of learning language arts. Instead of sticking your nose in a book, get out there and find yourself new challenges, active challenges.

Get into storytelling. You’re not just writing a story, focus on how to tell the story.

Find spelling competitions at your school or groups competing in the schools in your area.

Join a book club where everyone reads the same book and then talks about it. What fresh insight could you bring to the group?

Read out loud. Have you ever read aloud before? It brings a new perspective to whatever you read if you say it rather than just read it to yourself.

Learn a new word every day. Keep a note of any new words you come across and don’t already know. Look up words you have a feeling you know what they are about but you never really checked to be sure exactly what they mean before.

Try word games like Scrabble, crossword puzzles and even the simpler word circle puzzles. Hangman is one of my favourite word games but you will need a friend to play with.

Does it all Seem too Complicated?

Really listen and break it down into steps. If you were giving instructions on the topic where would you start? Think of writing it out like a recipe, or telling a younger school kid about it. Peel apart the main steps from the extra information and work on that until you begin to see how it works, how it all makes sense.

If you really don’t understand ask questions, read more about the subject from different sources or ask a friend who seems to get it.

Think you Already Know it All?

Language is a skill we use every day. It could be easy to see it as something you already know. But, how much do you really know?

Test yourself.

Look for online language arts skills in spelling, grammar, punctuation and vocabulary. If you didn’t get perfect scores you still have something to learn. If you did get a perfect score you need a test for someone at a higher level. Don’t slack off and take a test for a kid unless you are a kid, at that reading and comprehension level.

What to do if You’re Bored in Class

If the class becomes boring because you already know the material being discussed or explained then you could skip ahead in the text book, or read parts of the text which the teacher skipped in order to speed through the lesson.

If you’re still in need of something interesting, ask a question. Put some thought into your question and make sure it is relevant to the topic.

If you’re too quiet for a question, take notes. Write down your thoughts about the topic the teacher is discussing. Write down the questions you could have asked. Then find the answers yourself.

Other than that, begin planning your next assignment for the class. If you get ahead now you will have more time for something else later.

Bored or Boring?

I’ve never forgotten the old saying about people who are bored. I believe it’s mostly true. You do have to be kind of boring in order to be bored. How can you not see something interesting to try, do or think in a world so full?

However, I have had times when I did feel bored with something. When I felt I had explored every facet, every inch and every possibility. I was sure I knew the subject so well there was nothing new for me to find and explore. But, there is always another twist on an old tale. You just have to perk up your interest in finding it.

In my experience people also become bored when they find the challenge too much for them. Instead of trying to work on it they back away from it and make it simpler. But, then it become too simple and this makes it less interesting – boring.

I think this is how people really get bored. They let things become too simple, without challenges. They stop putting a real effort into learning or understanding or creating new methods or new thoughts. When there isn’t something new or challenging about what you are doing, of course you will become less interested in it.

If you exercise your imagination, create a new challenge for yourself and don’t take the easy way out – you can’t possibly get bored with anything.

 How to Get Boring Homework Done – wikiHow

How to Write, Draw, and Create in Peace Without Distractions

People often think art is created in our spare time, something we do as hobby. Writers and artists in books and movies seem to work this way just fine. The facts are different. An artist needs time to work in peace, without distractions. Sometimes the artist has to battle themselves and outside distractions.

Having focus isn’t enough. There are times when you want to work on something creative and everyone and everything seems to keep getting in the way, distracting you. You can ignore some of the distractions, but that’s sometimes not practical or very polite. It’s a better idea to have another way to deal with the distractions and give yourself the time you need to work.

How to Disconnect Yourself

In order to really get out from under the regular distractions you need to disconnect yourself from the world for a short time. Try different ideas and see which works for you. Adapt as necessary.

Turn off the electronics, don’t check email or let the phone ring. If you can’t get away from checking email and surfing online, don’t use the computer. Shut it down and write longhand, draw on paper instead. Just until you get yourself in the habit of starting work when you open the laptop or start up the desktop. Don’t let the Internet distract you.

Put a message on your phone to let people know this is your scheduled time to work and you will phone them back when you are available again. Offer a second contact for any emergencies, make sure you emphasize this is an emergency contact only.

Pull yourself away from it all before you get started. Take a walk outside. Get dressed. Grab a shower. Anything simple which gets your mind off your daily routine so you can sit down with a fresh mind set. You might even write or draw out of doors, weather permitting. Plan a picnic in a park, the backyard, even sitting in your car in a parking lot somewhere.

Alternate between being focused and stepping away from your work. It’s pretty amazing how much more you want to create when you hold yourself back from getting started. Take a ten minute break from it, whether you want to or not. Wait 5 minutes to get back to it. Time it so you don’t just go right back to work.

Exercise your brain’s ability to disconnect. Work in a busy area where there are plenty of distractions, noises, people, lights on and off, etc. Push yourself to find your focus and use your passion for the work to disconnect from everything – push all those outside influences out of your mind and bring yourself and your work into focus.

Dealing with Family and Friends

Instead of fighting and pushing and getting frustrated – talk to family and friends and make sure they know you need time to create. If you set a scheduled time (and stick to it) then they can do the same. It may take time for them to learn your schedule and understand how serious you are about it. But, be patient, don’t get too angry. Get them on your side rather than making it a battle or a tug of war.

Plan to do something with friends and family at a different time – give them a real date and time when you can commit to giving them your full attention.

Of course, not all family are able to give you the time you need. Parents with children will not be able to make themselves completely unavailable. But, you can hire a babysitter and then stay home to work rather than going out anywhere. You can get family to help with the children, trade time with other people who have children and would like to exchange babysitting. Take the children out somewhere they can play with only a little supervision and find yourself a table to work at. (An indoor playground is a good choice).

Battle Disorganization

One big distraction you face when you want to create is yourself and the environment you have created around you. Is your workspace a cluttered mess? Do you have all the tools you need set out so they are easy to find and use? Do you have a plan for what you want to accomplish that day?

Being disorganized is a big set back when it comes to avoiding distractions. If your mind is busy or upset or angry about having too much clutter around you – it will be difficult to set your mind to the work you want to be doing. Even if you think the chaos isn’t bothering you – clean it up and see how much different it is to work in a tidy space instead. For one thing, you will be able to find everything you need and not have to move stuff around in order to get the tools you need where you need them to be.

Having a plan for your day gives you a goal to work towards. Having a goal is a great way to avoid being distracted by smaller stuff.

Look After Yourself

One big distraction you can work on is being too tired. You can’t do much about health beyond getting enough sleep, eating right and exercising. But, you can do those things.

It’s much harder to work when you are tired and barely able to keep your eyes open and your mind on what’s in front of you. If you really need to, take a ten minute nap. Set your alarm to wake yourself up in ten minutes. Sometimes this works really well. But, if you really are exhausted just take the time off from your work and get the sleep you need.

 

The Letter L is Me

Do you have a token, something you keep around to inspire you when you need a quick boost while writing? I found this letter L today. It’s shiny and pretty. Keeping something with my initial reminds me that I am a somebody. A somebody who can do things, accomplish things and finish things too. We all need a boost at times. But, there isn’t always someone else around we can count on to be there in the moment, every moment we may need them. So, find your own little ways to keep yourself focused, driven and creatively feeling good.

28 Ideas to Avoid Blog Burnout: Keep it Fresh

Ideas to Save You from Blogging Burn Out

Burnout happens when we have too much to do, too much we are trying to do and we lose that time we need to recharge our own batteries. The best way to help yourself is to bring back the creative impulse and inspiration which you started out with. Also, to realize you have limits and can’t do everything all the time.

  • Set priorities. Decide what you really want to work on and what you can set aside or just don’t have the time and energy to work on.
  • Focus on what you get back (in return) from the work you are doing. What gives you the most satisfaction, or a decent pay in money? Limit anything that doesn’t give you something back and get rid of things that are just draining you.
  • Take a break, a real break. Some bloggers are working more than full time hours, every day of the week. No wonder they get burnt out.
  • Put time into offline activities. Not only do you recharge your batteries with a change of scenery but you will pick up all kinds of ideas and new topics to write about.
  • Change of format. If you tend to work with mainly text make a change and work with images. Create a post with hand drawn doodles or a digital photograph you took yourself.
  • Treat yourself to a new blog layout. Put your sidebar on the other side of the blog. It sounds simple and silly but you see your site in a new way with one small change.
  • Go for a bigger blog change and create a new header. Put your own face on it.
  • Give yourself a new blog theme, even a paid/ premium theme if you can spare the cost.
  • Rework all your categories and/ tags. Whittle them down to just a few. Free yourself from category and tag clutter.
  • Consider discontinuing extra blogs if you have more than one. Or, start a spin-off blog to post extra content to but give yourself an easy posting schedule.
  • Use scheduled posts so you can keep a few posts ready to publish those days you want to get away from the computer.
  • Exchange guest posts with another blogger you trust to deliver great content.
  • Brainstorm for new topic and side theme ideas relevant to your blog. Stay focused but combine ideas to create something new.
  • Use online forums and email lists to keep in touch with others who share your interests and will (more than likely) give you new and fresh ideas to write about.
  • Plan a series of posts on a theme. Give yourself a bigger project which gives you a goal to work towards.
  • Writers often keep an idea journal, a way to store ideas at the time you have them.
  • Get to bed at a regular time, keep a schedule you can live with.
  • Come up with a new plan for promoting your blog. Be your own PR person – don’t think like a blogger or SEO guru.
  • If you have a tight posting schedule, reconsider. Write a longer post with more information, something you actually feel is worth the time you take to write it. Give yourself quality to sign your name to rather than quantity.
  • Let yourself have the occasional personal day, and don’t feel you owe anyone an explanation.
  • Review other blogs. What are other bloggers doing right or what could they improve on. Offer them your thoughts, in a constructive feedback way.
  • Pick someone relevant and interesting to interview for your blog.
  • Look over your blog stats, what are the type of posts people are reading? Could you find a new area to branch out into from your blog statistics?
  • Change your blogging style to try get more comments and feedback from readers. Find out what works for other bloggers who get a lot of comments.
  • Don’t try to be perfect. You can always come back to a post and rewrite it, revise it, add to it or link to it as your original thoughts on the topic when you write a new post.
  • Write several short blog posts. Just share a quick idea or thought and don’t put a lot of time into elaborating on it.
  • Follow readers who comment in your blog. See what they are writing about and leave them comments too.
  • Take a day to immerse yourself in the topic you blog about. Use Google search, your local library, and any other sources for information and grab every nugget of new information you can.

 

Know What Type of Blogger you Are

Figure out what type of blogger you are and work with it.

Are you blogging to create something, to be informative, or do you want to find fame and fortune?

Know what you want to get out of blogging and go back to that. Don’t try to change who you are to suit your blog.

Write a mission statement for your blog and keep that in mind when you make decisions about what you will post and why you will post it. This also works for other aspects of your blog such as the format you use, the amount and type of ads you will run, the layout of the blog and how much navigation and social networking you will use.

More Resources

Could you be a Full-Time Lead Writer?

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DashBurst – a social media magazine, design agency and technology startup – is looking to add a full-time writer to its staff.

Since launching our blog two months ago, DashBurst is now one of the top 50,000 sites on the web with a rapidly growing community of over 250,000 subscribers. DashBurst is a go-to source online for the latest in social media, business, marketing, technology, web culture, humor, art and design.

We’re looking for an experienced writer knowledgeable in these and similar fields. We feature breaking news as well as exciting videos, photos, guides, infographics, presentations and more. Take a look at our blog and topic categories to get a better idea of what DashBurst is about.

Caution: What you’re about to read is not for the faint of heart, and anyone who can’t handle this need not apply…

  • Do you write for some big time magazine? Good for you. You can stop here… We’re not looking to hire writers away from plush jobs, we’re trying to train new ones.
  • You’re required to work your ass off at this firm. 40+ hours/week writing 2 to 4 articles per day.
  • Working knowledge of English, WordPress, Photoshop, PowerPoint, HTML, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pinterest, Apple, Android, Microsoft, Skype and other current technology is needed.

What you’ll get:

1) Ok, first three months at the firm are as a trainee. You will make $150 dollars/week.*
2) After that, if you pass the test of successfully running the blog on your own for a day, you will get a full-time offer to join DashBurst, salary commensurate with your experience, including equity in the company where the sky is the limit.
3) Every article you write for DashBurst will get massive exposure, building your portfolio and personal audience.

via DashBurst is Looking to Hire a Full-Time Lead Writer.

Lost My Writing Passion

Refresh your energy for writing your same old blogging project.

I have lost count of my freelance writing years but I know I started writing online in 1998, or 1997 if you count the personal online diary. Over this time I have had many highs and lows. There have been periods where I lost my passion, or the enthusiasm wore thin. It’s normal.

There will always be great energy and passion for a new project. As time goes on and you explore the ideas you wanted to explore the energy slows down and you begin to sink into the project. It’s not that you stop caring but you start using a different energy. You find yourself using a staying power sort of energy.

It’s a great time to refresh your enthusiasm. You might find something new, you might be impulsive and make a change or you might close down the project. If you really want to. But, that’s a shame when there are other options.

Look for inspiration in sites for writers.

Update: November, 2021. Sites for writers come and go. The links I had here from 2013, are gone.

Seven Ways to Love Blogging Again

You can find a new side interest, generate new ideas, combine ideas and so on until you have given your self a revamped project to work with. For instance a fashion blogger could write about lingerie instead of trying to fill the niche for all women’s fashion. Or, the same fashion blogger could include pet fashion which matches or compliments their owner’s fashion choices.

Change something of the administration and inner workings of your blog/ site. Try something other than Blogger or WordPress. (Did you even know there are other choices?)

Add a new element. Try building a web directory with your links instead of leaving them in the standard blogroll. Try Link Library, a free plugin which works with WordPress. There are other ways to create a directory of links but this is the best of those I have experimented with. Of course you can use the tags, labels and categories with your blog to create a directory within each post.

A web directory isn’t for everyone. Your strong point may be social networking and being social in general. Start doing more with Twitter, Facebook and look for forums and online groups in your niche or a related topic. Be social, get outside your box and bring new ideas and perspective back when you start writing your blog again.

Try a new blogging/ writing format. Become a content curator – link to great content you find in your niche, write enough to explain why you are linking to it and don’t forget to give credit to the original writer. This could even be a weekly thing, like a round up post. List links and posts you’ve read during the week as a weekend (or which ever day you choose) blog post.

Learn a new skill. Start drawing your own images to add as illustrations for your posts. Or try another art form like your own digital photos, ASCII art and all kinds of alter art such as collage. Anything you can turn into an image file and add to your blog will work.

Take a break, temporarily. Don’t write for a week, not even a list of post ideas. Hold out on yourself. This gives your passion time to rebuild.

My own experience as a lost, blocked and downtrodden writer.

I’ve been writing my current, main blog since 2004. It began as part of another site, now gone. I kept it going on my own. Having a schedule helps me with self-discipline. Though I was making weekly posts at first, I stepped up and went daily a couple of years ago. The schedule is good, the discipline is good too but… having a tighter posting schedule accelerates burnout.

So, in the years I’ve been publishing, editing and writing online I have had writer’s block and burnout more than a handful of times. I pull myself out each time. I will this time too. One or more of the ideas I’ve written about above worked for me. After all, I’m still here, writing, editing and publishing online.

Slipstream Poetry

Slipstream poetry has been referred to as the, “fiction of strangeness”. Slipstream poetry crosses boundaries and leaves you feeling very odd, but in a good way. Most slipstream poetry contains some form of a science fiction or fantasy theme. The term ‘slipstream’ was coined by Bruce Sterling back in 1989, but it’s really starting to gain popularity now.

via What Is Slipstream Poetry.

The Slipstream Poetry Group (UK)