WRITERS BLOCK

If your like me, a complete beginner at blogging and unless you have something your passionate about to write about ,you may experience writers block.

Writers block can be a hair tearing, nail biting experience for some, it is a very frustrating feeling to have. The way I deal with it is just to step back from the problem and do something else, something different and relaxing.

While I was cuising through the web the other day, I came across a delightful article on how to have constant content for your blog. So with no further ad-do read on further.


How to have a Constant Stream of Blogging Ideas
Writing Content 44 comments
This post on generating blogging ideas was contributed by Graham Jones from grahamjones.co.uk.
Most bloggers give up after a short while; even though there are millions of blogs online, few are updated regularly and most have been abandoned. The difference between success and failure in blogging is often down to persistence. But, when I speak at meetings about blogging, people often come up to me afterwards and say “Ah, yes, that’s all very well, but I run out of ideas after a while, so I can’t blog regularly”. So, how can you be sure of coming up with a constant stream of blogging ideas? How can you be certain that when you open your blogging software you will always have something to write?

If you think about your daily newspaper it does not have a choice. The number of pages is set by the amount of advertising space they sell. Each day, though, has varying amounts of news - some days, very little happens. But it would be no good the journalists filling up the first few pages and then printing a notice on all the others saying “if we’d been able to think of anything to write we would have put it here”. No matter how little is going on around them and no matter how much space they have to fill, newspapers simply have to fill the space allocated to them - plus they simply MUST do it before a specified time. The only way they can achieve this is to have a system.

Develop a blogging planning system
The first step in a journalistic system for blogging is having a plan for each month. Set up a spreadsheet, a table in a word processor, or a calendar on your desk - it doesn’t matter how you do this, but you need a monthly plan. On that plan you need to mark out the days you will definitely blog. This might be every day, just the weekdays, the weekends, every Wednesday - whatever works for you and your audience. Now you have a visual plan of what’s needed you can start filling in the blanks.

Journalists have two kinds of stories - diary stories and “off-diary” stories. Diary stories are those things you know will definitely happen - such as events, meetings, press conferences and so on. There are endless directories of events online and you will know of specific events on particular days in your industry. Mark your diary with these events as “diary items” you know you can write about. Also, look for anniversaries and specific days that could trigger a blog - this might be Thanksgiving Day, or Mother’s Day, or whatever can provide you with something to write about.

Diary stories should give you a reasonable number of days with topics already allocated to them over the coming weeks and months. Now you need to fill in the gaps. The way journalists do this is to have regular “slots”. So Monday might be health stories, Tuesdays could be business, Wednesdays are for politics -and so on. For your specialism, you need to come up with several general topic headings that you could write about. All you then do is slot these into the gaps between the diary stories.

Filling in your blogging plan
Once you have allocated particular diary stories to specific days and topic ideas to the other days, now you have to start being more specific about those “off diary” stories. All you have in your planning diary for these at the moment is the title of a topic. You could still be facing a blank screen if you don’t do any more planning. Here’s what to do.

Get a folder that has as many sections in it as you have topics. Now, subscribe to RSS feeds on those topics, or printed magazines, newsletters - anything that has info on those subjects. When you see something interesting - at any time - simply print it out, or tear it from the magazine and slot it into the appropriate section of your folder. Then forget it.

Writing your blog without having to think
You will now be in a position to always be able to write something for your blog. Simply look at your planning calendar and see the topic or diary item you need to write about. If it’s a diary item, you will already have a good idea as to what you are going to be saying or commenting on. If it’s an “off diary” topic, simply open your folder at the appropriate section, pull out all the papers in there and you will have a load of ideas that will trigger what you want to say.
Using a system like this enables newspapers and magazines to guarantee they will fill all their pages. You can adopt a similar system so that you will always have something to write about and will never face a blank screen wondering what on earth to say.
Read more of Graham’s work at grahamjones.co.uk

I know this may have been cheeky using this as the guts for my post. but I was suffering from writers block myself, plus the fact my step-daughter has just sold her place and had to moveout in a hurry, so there has been no time really to think about anything to write. So when I read this article I thought that this could be a good way to organise myself , so no matter what is going on around me I will always be able to write something.

O.D.

MY THOUGHTS ON RELIGEON

I recently received a message from someone about buddism and religeon and this is what I replied with,

I'm not anti religeon but I feel that religeon is but mans yearning to put a label on things that he/she cannot explain, as mankind abhors not to have an explanation for all things.It quite possibly started way back when man was still living in caves and a inquisitive youngster found out the power of the question WHY . And the adults got tired of the constant WHY and attributed everything they could'nt explain to a mysterious higher power.WHO KNOWS?:

Now I wrote that because time and time again people say that the bible is proof of gods existence, but I ask you this question-Who wrote the bible?- Answer--MAN.

And it was man who decided what was selected to be in the bible, so who's to say that it wasn't an ancient conjob that exploded in ways the perpetrator didn't imagine.

And as for the earlier religeons, who knows maybe it all started as I pointed out in my earlier statement.

The big question is WHO KNOWS? and really do we want to know. Mankind is happy to use religeon as a crutch and an excuse to kill albeit an excuse to exercise control over their fellow man.

But in saying all of this, I do know the power that faith can have for some people just to get through their day to day lives.But what gets up my nose is the people that abuse that faith to their own ends and the people that try to stuff their own version down your throut.When they try that on me I just ask them for proof and 100% of them say that the bible is the proof,so I ask them who wrote the bible and their only answer is MAN, so I ask you where is the proof that any religeon is true.

O.D.

PS. Any comments or veiws are welcome.

EMAIL ENHANCEMENTS

Just came across a neat site that allows you to enhance your emails.As per usual you get a basic version for free.
If you want more you have to pay for it, their prices are quite reasonable but at the moment i have opted for the basic version. It downloads fairly fast and the set up procedure is simple.
With the basic setup you get animations and basic ecards,backgrounds[I'm still waiting to hear from my mother if the music travels with the email or not].

One downside I found when I downloaded it was that it installs a homepage on your browser as the default, but it didn't take much to change back.

So if you are interested just click on this link- www.incredimail.com and check it out for yourself, all I ask is that you let me know what you think of it in the comments box or email me as per top of page- thanks

THE BIG O.E.

Just a little quick note.
This might prove interesting to some of those intending to head down under for their big overseas experience.
Many moons ago[don't ask me how many-too many] I travelled to aussie intending to travel across the continent and then jump off from the western side to continue my travels and end up in the old country[England].
But as the saying go'es, THE PLANS OF BOTH MICE AND MEN OFT GO ASTRAY. I was intending to stay only 6mths, but ended up staying for six years.

What happened you ask, well I needed to boost my funds so I got a job, but it was no ordinary job.

I happened to be in Mackey, Nth Qld, and I went into the local job centre to see what was on offer, there were job's going just up the coast at Bowen picking tomato's, but when I got there the job's had dryed up due to the weather and the tomato's were rotting in the feilds , so I hightailed it back to Mackey as there was another oppertunity of a job there.

So I found myself walking onto the Mackey showgrounds and I asked the first person I came across if there was any jobs going and was directed to a large caravan and to ask for a bloke called Blue[he had red hair -hence the name].

Needless to say that was it, I ended staying for longer than intended and never made it to England.

What has this to do with someone heading downunder you may be thinking, well during my time working in sideshow alley at A&P shows & carnivals , I met alot of people that were on their O.E.s and decided to work their way around aussie.

The showgrounds allow you to do just that, just sign up as a fulltime worker or partime to allow you to do other things as well.

The lifestyle is laid back and we had a lot of fun and I consider it among the best years of my life.The work can be hard and the hours long but once you are accepted I found that it can be like a second family, so much so that my boss became my best freind and was my bestman at my wedding [ that's another story].

So I reccomend if you are looking for something different to do on your OE find out when and where a show is happening in the area you are going, walk onto the show grounds a couple of day's before the show starts, ask the first person you see and just see what happens, you may just enjoy it as much as me.

O.D.