Gets More Challenging the More I Write

I'm not ready to give up on writing yet, but finding titles to write about in Demand Studios is getting more and more challenging.  Most of the requested titles involve technical, computer, or auto repair.  When I find one in crafts, it's so ambiguous it's impossible to decide what the person wants to know.  One title I found today was "How to Wind the Bobbin on an Old Singer".  I've already written one article on "Winding the Bobbin on a Singer Treadle Machine".  How old is old?  Do they want instructions on winding a bobbin for a treadle machine? or an old electric?  And anyway, how hard can winding a bobbin be? 

I guess if you've wound bobbins on various machines from Singer treadle to White, Phaff, and many more brand sewing machines for 60 years it may just seem to be easy.  Maybe I'm just in the mood to rant today.

I'm still working on learning to write for SEO, but just about the time I think I've got it down and my articles, blogs, etc. seem to be picking up quickly in Google rankings, they start bombing. 

OK.  So I'm keeping busy making beaded jewelry patterns.  I put them up for sale at Bead Patterns Boutique and The Beadcoop using the name The Bead Doodler.  Of course it helps to write the description for SEO, but I let the site owners write and promote the sites. 

Interlocking Knit

What's interlocking knit got to do with writing? I was skimming article titles for Demand Studios yesterday and came across "Interlocking Knit Instructions". I was taken back 35 or so years in memory. My Mother didn't learn to knit until she was 60 and she seemed to be in a race against time to learn every stitch available. She learned what she called Double Knit. The way she worked it was to carry one thread in each hand, work the right thread English knitting style and work the left thread in Continental knitting style. This intrigued me because in Continental knitting you pick the thread much as you do in crochet and it was easier for me than throwing the thread as in English knitting.

We sat for an afternoon knitting and I knit my sons reversible ski caps with their initials on them. I've tried several times since then to work the interlocking knit stitch, but I kept coming out with a stockinette stitch on one side and a garter stitch on the other. Granted it was a double knit, but not what Mama had taught me.

I decided to claim that title and went to work researching looking for instructions and information. Information proved to be sparse, but I found a couple of sites that jogged my memory, so I went digging through my craft materials for knitting needles and yarn.

To my dismay I found that I had given all my knitting needles to my daughter except a pair of double point size 1's and a stray size 8 that didn't have a mate. To make matters worse, the only yarn I had was worsted weight.

I was determined to work a sample of double knit because no matter how well I research it, if I can't actually do it my article won't be coherent. So here I sit with a pair of size 1 knitting needles and two very similar colors of worsted weight yarn, working a double knit hot pad. Surprisingly it's working out well enough to see that it is actually working. Yay! I have a hot pad with stockinette stitch on both sides and reverse designs on each side. Now I can sit down and write the article.

Where Oh Where Did My Muse Go

Well, it happened again. My writer's muse visited me this morning. I was half way through an article on herbs for container gardening when I heard a light but persistent knock at my door signaling the arrival of my four-year-old grand daughter from next door. I think when I opened the door for her my writer's muse escaped! So here I sit with a half finished article and a blank mind.

I haven't been able to find any titles that I can write about on Demand Media this month, but have been able to write a couple to publish to fireHow. I'm also in the process of learning to navigate the new Women Who Write Online site. The site offers much more than Ning did, but I'm getting old and adapting to change is difficult even when I welcome it.

We had a nice rain. . .accompanied by not-so-nice wind yesterday so I'd thought I would get out and do some yard work today. I had cataract surgery last tuesday and all's well, my eye has given me no discomfort what so ever, but when I opened the door to go outside, the cool air irritated my other eye, the one I had the surgery on last July. I shut the door and decided I'd do yard work another day. Fortunately I'm retired, so I don't have to wait until the weekend to get out. I just have to choose a day that's not too hot, not too cold, and not too windy. Uh Oh. I live in West Texas. We don't have many days like that. I've tried wearing goggles, but they fog up in about 5 minutes so that's out. I used to scold my son for using the weed eater without the goggles. Now I know why he does it.

Time Flies-Update on My Writing

Oh my goodness! I can't believe it's been nearly four months since I updated this blog. I got so busy making beaded jewelry patterns and trying to write articles that blogging about writing just never got done.

Life has changed quite a bit since my last post. I still haven't mastered writing 10 articles to promote a product and actually getting that strategy to work, but writing is becoming much easier.

When e How shut down their publishing platform, I received a notice from Demand Studios that I was already approved to write how to articles because I was an accomplished writer on e How.

I have to say that the format is much more demanding. I have to think about how I word things. Everything must be in passive voice. I never realized how much I mixed active and passive until I started trying to write exclusively in passive voice. Sometimes it really is a challenge for me, but I'm improving.

The good (or maybe it's bad) thing about Demand Studios is that they pay up front per article. Good because I'm getting money every week, but bad because there is no residual income.

I've started writing how to articles on FireHow and have looked into writing for Break, but I'm still shuddering over having to write a resume for Break. I don't know why that makes me cringe so. I guess because when I retired I thought I was through with all that.

I was invited to join Women Who Write Online several months ago. Friendly people there and lots of good information. Most of the members are willing to share their writing and promoting expertise with those less accomplished.

New Year's Eve Musing

What Will The New Year Bring

A few suggestions for setting and meeting goals to improve your life.

What are you looking forward to in the new year?  Have you made new year’s resolutions?  For many people, based on past experience,  the idea of making a new year’s resolution is just setting yourself up for failure.

Content Source: Bukisa - What Will The New Year Bring

Where Has the Time Gone?

Oh my! Where has the time gone. It's been nearly two months since I posted here. Well lets see, there was all that flurry of activity making 22 beaded ornaments for my grand children and great grand children, and since I was making new designs there was the time it took to make the patterns, then of course as the patterns were made I just had to upload them to BeadPatternsBoutique.com and The BeadCoop.com to share them with others (and make a few dollars in the process). Then the "beadin' bug" got hold of me and I made some earring patterns and uploaded them also. . . so I haven't been doing much writing except for pattern instructions.

Today I got an e mail saying I'd been nominated for Giant Squid on Squidoo. ???How'd that happen? I only have 12 lenses. The deadline for applying for Giant Squid is December 31 and you have to have 50 lenses to qualify. Not gonna happen. Still it's a great honor knowing the lenses I do have are worthy of the recognition. Maybe next year.

My mind is already shifting from bead mode to writing and I have general outlines in my head for a couple of beading related lenses and one health related one. Now to just get them to stop spinning around in my brain so I can focus on one. For right now though, I've got to clear a place and set up my Christmas tree or my grand daughter will be over here accusing me of being depressed. Can't have that. I'm just cold! The extra physical activity should relieve that!

Rambling

I haven't been posting much to blogs or writing much the past little while. The beads seem to have taken over again. I'm almost finished with the nearly two dozen ornaments needed for my grand children and great grand children.

Even when I don't post every day I read this blog, Drums In the Deep. It's not just a journey into blindness but an insight into the life and struggles with beliefs of a young family. It makes me cry with sadness (I was young once and remember) but at the end there's always a scripture and even though the journey isn't ended, each story has a silver lining and makes me cry with joy that young people can see their creator through all the troubles.

More Ezine Information

I've learned that you can only have one account in Ezinearticles.com, but you can have multiple authors under that account. You can use variations on your name such as adding your middle initial etc. You're also allowed to have up to three author information boxes per author on a basic account, so that give you a wide range of websites and blogs you can promote with your articles.

By creating different authors, you can write on multiple topics and your followers can easily find your ezine articles by author instead of having to sort through topics that don't relate to what they're searching for.

Hmm, could this be the reason my writer's muse stepped back for a while? To allow me to learn this before I submitted my next set of articles, which aren't related to the first set?

Where'd My Muse Go?

I woke up about 5 o'clock this morning to an unfamiliar roar. Finally managed to rouse myself out of a sound sleep and realized it was pouring rain. It sounds extremely loud on the tin roof of my mobile home.

It was cold enough that I decided to turn on the furnace. Thinking I'd turned the pilot light out, I opened the front of the furnace to relight it. Huh! I didn't turn it off after all. I started to replace the front of the furnace and managed to drive a splinter of very old paneling into the back of the middle finger of my right hand. Of course it just crumbled when I tried to pull it out. Of all the "modern" remedies and treatments I have on hand, my first and final decision was to go with a method that probably hasn't been used widely since the early 20th century-salted bacon fat. I just cut off a piece of bacon fat and saturated it with salt and attached it to my finger with a bandaid. I'll see in about eight hours if it works like I remember it working for my parents.

I think my writer's muse has been overcome by the beader bug. I've managed to finish four bead patterns this past week including working up three of them. I've put three Christmas ornaments up on The BeadCoop and am preparing to take pictures of the fourth pattern, a brick stitch bracelet. Hopefully I will have that pattern up by days end.

I received an invitation to join Artbead.com blogging for beads program. I've submitted my bead order and hopefully will have some pretties to show on my Beaddoodler blog soon.

I'll be back to writing soon I hope, but my writing is probably going to consist of blogging and making bead patterns for now. Gotta take advantage of the holiday market.

Expert Author??

Wow! I'm stoked, I'm blown away, I'm flattered. What can I say? After nearly three weeks, one article-just one mind you-has been accepted by Ezinearticles.com. For that I got "expert author". Does that mean I'm a real writer? Or just that I can follow the roools. The rules are simple. All you've got to do is read them! First there's the simple common sense ones. DON'T USE ALL CAPS, spell and grammar check your work. Read it out loud or have someone else read it to be sure it "flows" and you didn't leave out a word or use the same word over and over and Don't Plagiarizer.

Then there are the other rules, make the articles between 250 and 400 words. This is not the place to publish one line zingers or a novel. That's about it. Ezine sends out newsletters with tips on how to make your articles better, give you ideas of how to organize your articles etc. It's a really neat place to write for and gets you some publicity and back links to your websites.

Did I mention I'm stoked?

I have three more articles in queue to be published, but they've been overloaded this past month.

Reflection

I think I overdid it last month with all the writing and studying. I haven't accomplished much this month. Well maybe I have. I've averaged writing at least one article or blog post per day, but now I feel like I've hit a brick wall or maybe I've run into a scatter ray, you know one of those sci fi gadgets that scatter your thoughts so that you can't fully grasp one before another one takes its place.

On Arian's Change Secrets today the question was asked "what did you want to be when you grew up". I thought and thought and all I could think of was I wanted to be grown up. Nothing else, just grown up. I'm the youngest of three children and always felt inadequate, or ignorant of just plain stupid. I'm 68 years old now, all my immediate family is gone except my brother and I still feel inadequate around him. Hmm I wonder if I ever did grow up. Why does it matter so much that I don't think the way he does, my priorities aren't the same as his? With my childrens' fathers family and my friends I have always been accepted for what I am. No expectations.

Maybe that's the whole problem. I look a little like my Mother and a lot like my Grandma, so people either expected me to act like them, or were determined I wouldn't grow up to be like them. My family seemed to try to cram me into a mold of the "perfect daughter". I'll never be perfect in anybody else's mind and I'm happy to be me. . .except when I'm around my brother. Why is that? Another puzzling question for which I have no answer.

Importance of Authoritative Backlinks

Over the past few days the 30 day challenge has been focusing on creating authoritative back links. To do this we're told to find forums on the topic of our website and participate. Of course they must be forums that allow a signature line so we can "pimp" our website. We've also learned that it's best if these forums are .gov or .edu sites as they carry more weight with google search engine. Another great backlink is DMOZ. It's the only article directory that is edited by human eyes before a site is listed so it ranks very high with google as an authority.

I have a lot of work to do on my Container Herb Gardening site before it's ready to submit to DMOZ. Not a great deal of information on it yet. Only 2 pages.

I have a hard time focusing on one subject. After 6 or 8 articles on a subject my mind goes blank, but then I can come back to it later and add more information. I'm getting a little bit better since I learned to drain my brain. Once drained I can fill it up again, or at least sort out what's already in there.

I went off chasing another wild hair at the end of last week and have created a second website Guide to Delicious Healthy Eating and have written some articles for it. I've got to quit skipping steps if I intend to establish myself.

Time to go. I've taken on one more responsibility. My 4 year old grand daughter started school this year and her mother also started back to school. Nana gets to play with little Jennie for a while after school 4 days a week. That oughtta' get my creative juices flowing. Nothing like the wonder of a child's mind to spark an old one.

Learning to Empty My Brain

I'd no sooner posted my last post than I received an e mail message from an internet marketer. I went to read the article she'd written and it was about having so much information in your brain that it literally hurt to try to sort it out. So she proceeded to create a visual image of "draining" you brain, then said in effect, quit trying so hard.

I had reached an impasse on my Container Herb Gardening marketing and proceeded to follow her advise. Today I found a product I wanted to sell and have written 3 of the 10 articles she recommended that are related to my chosen item. I guess draining my brain really did help, but right now my eyes feel like somebody is poking their fingers into them so I'm going to quit for the day. I'll let you know if this little experiment works or not. It'll probably take a couple of weeks or months.

Keyword Confusion

Once again my brain is suffering information overload. I'm still kind of following the 30 day challenge, but Market Samurai kept freezing my computer, so I had to quit using it. Still there's much information to be learned on the days I can bear to listen to the droning uuuuhhs and drawn out words or try to understand the British accents. No offense intended to the British, but I'm a Southern USA person and I have a hard time with it.

I've found several other websites. One of them is 30 minute back links by Michelle MacPhearson. It's a video where she shows exactly how to research key words and keep refining them until you find one that you can be competitive in. About the time she was getting to how to establish back links my browser shut down! I don't know if this is a test to see how persistent I can be or if I'm just not ready to learn this key word business yet. I have learned quite a bit from various places and have rewritten several of my articles. They seem to be doing a little better, but I've still not hit the jackpot.

I finished what I could remember of the things I'd heard about my Mother's side of the family history and sent it to my daughter who is keeping up with and researching our genealogy. She was very appreciative since my mother died before she was old enough to remember her. Now I'm working on my Father's side. I have to put a disclaimer on all his stories because he was such a grand spinner of yarns I never knew what was true and what was a yarn based on a smidgen fact. I'm glad she asked me to do this. I find myself smiling or outright laughing at some of the memories. It feels good.

I'm finished for the day. Now for a long soak in the tub. Maybe everything I read and heard today will miraculously come together and make sense in the steam.

Intricacies of The Human Brain

As I've continued to watch 30 day challenge videos, study web page optimization on my own and write as much family history as I can remember, I've been amazed by the intricacies of the human brain.

For instance, did you know the brain doesn't store memories chronologically, or categorically? NO. It stores them by association. I've known this for a long time, but it's one of the little facts that I've remembered as I've been studying and writing. As I was studying the free SEO training at Web CEO, there were some little tidbits of information that I knew, but couldn't associate with anything else I knew. As I studied I kept thinking "OH that's how that works. . .and this is how I could use it!" If I can't see where something I'm studying is related to what I want to do at the moment, it just gets lost and my brain eventually files it in the misc. file til there's something to associate it with.

The same thing happened with the family history my daughter asked me to write. I sat down to write what I thought would be a couple of pages of short sentences about the stories passed down from previous generations. I've got five pages now and I'm still not finished. As I write one story, I remember something in my lifetime that I haven't thought of in years, and I know if I don't write that down right now It will escape and may not be remembered again for years, but what I remember of my lifetime is associated with what was happening in my life at the time I heard the story told. So what I've written of the family history so far is a rambling dissertation that will have to be sorted out and arranged chronologically later.

And now I'm not only rambling, I'm writing run on sentences and that's not good. Time to get off here and eat some lunch.

Catching Up

I haven't been on the computer for very long for several days. My eye's been giving me fits (recent cataract surgery)and I just can't look at the screen very long.

I tried to keep up with the 30 day challenge videos, but they didn't update until today. There's a great new way to post your updates to all your social networking sites, blogs etc. It's called posterous. All you do is e mail your site url and description to them and set your account up to tell it where to post all your new updates.

I also learned about Google Read. It's a great way to gather information and review it to get ideas for new articles, or you can post other articles directly to your blog using posterous. That way if you don't have time to write a blog post, your blog still has new content. Of course you leave in all the links to the original site.

I've been looking over Hub pages. That was one of the places that was suggested to post articles relating to your website and of course put links to your website, but I wanted to surf around the site myself before I followed the advise given in the 30 day challenge video. There's a lot of ways to monetize your Hub, and I see no reason to forgo that. I've nearly got everything together to post an article there.

I received a new writing challenge today. My youngest daughter is the family genealogist. She has managed to find facts and data concerning our family back several generations, but asked me to write out some stories my parents told about growing up. They were few and far between, and mostly negative stories about how their parents raised them, but my daughter feels that they will be priceless additions as insight into they way life on the frontier was, and how it affected some people. I will try to write them as objectively as possible.

No, they won't be made public. They will contain the real names of my family and will be for family records only, at least for another generation or two.

It's been a long day and I haven't accomplished much, but I'm ready to get off the computer for now. Dr. visit today revealed the eye is healing as it should, but it's still bothering me some.

What? No Bloopers Today?

Today was fairly simple. I didn't get anything done on 30 day challenge yesterday. I watched the videos today about checking your stats in Market Samurai and publishing an article from Market Samurai to your website, then submitting it to Traffic Bug, all very streamlined and time saving? I didn't make any bloopers, but Market Samurai kept freezing up on me, so I wrote my next page "Herb Gardens" for my website and uploaded it manually. Traffic Bug is still ignoring me, so I'm not getting a lot of traffic.

I checked my Google analytics account and found that while most of my traffic was coming from the articles I've submitted else where, and this blog I am beginning to get a small amount of traffic from google.

I went back to the 30 day challenge site and watched today's videos. Nothing new there. LOL They were about how to create a blogger blog and link to your website. I honestly don't know how she managed to make the first video 13 minutes long. Setting up blogger is the easiest thing I've ever done and I've set up 5 blogs on blogger so far.

Somewhere in the midst of all this I went off chasing a wild hare, you know, that subject that just pops into your head out of the blue and you know you've just got to write an article on it. I pulled some articles for research, added some of my own knowledge, then decided I'd better check eHow to see how many articles on the subject were already there. OK, so one blooper, check first before you write the article. Anyway while I was checking every way I could possibly think to phrase the title and finding they were already taken, firefox decided to freeze my computer. Uh. . .two bloopers? I didn't save my article. I can only stand so much in one day. Good night all.

Could I Possibly Make Any More Mistakes on. . .

such simple directions? I got my article, "Planning Your Container Herb Garden"for Scribd written today. I went back and watched the video just to make sure I remembered all the key steps to get it uploaded and published. OOOPS. First mistake. I'd typed my article in Word Perfect which doesn't save as a .doc file, so I had to copy and paste it into Google Docs. Then I linked my keywords to my site, saved it as a Word document and uploaded it. One of the links didn't work! It had a typo in it. I went back and corrected the Google Doc, and saved it as text which of course didn't upload. I think all in all I deleted that document 3 times before I got it into Scribd as a readable document with clickable links. I spent a lot of time doing something that shouldn't have taken but a few minutes because I was so nervous and wanted it done perfect. I don't know why new sites and programs put me in such a tizzy. I got it done anyway. I haven't gotten one written for Ezine Articles yet.

I watched today's video and a light bulb came on. Today's lesson is about making Squidoo lenses which I've been doing for quite a while now. I have an RSS feed module in most of my lenses, but I only had excerpts from my blogs showing. Google likes new content and updated sites, so by putting your RSS feed showing your latest blog entry in your Squidoo lens, you have fresh content every time you write a blog! Talk about automation! What an a haa! moment. Especially since my lenses all relate to one of my blogs or another.

Well I'm not quite so uptight today as I was yesterday. Maybe I'll go watch TV and pet my cat for a while before I go to bed tonight.

Information Overload!

I've finally caught up watching all the videos on the 30 day challenge, and now I'm brain dead. Or maybe just experiencing information overload. I realized I've been going at this challenge as if it were a sprint instead of a marathon. Gotta slow down and process all the information I've gained so far.

Still no luck getting into Traffic Bug, and my domain is still parked, but I have realized that my efforts can be enhanced manually without the technology, just not as quickly. I was greatly encouraged to find that my site was indexed by Google in less than a week. I've had some articles take two to three weeks. To see if your site has been indexed you just type "site:the exact name of your URL" in the Google search box. If the site hasn't been indexed you'll get a "no sites matching your search" message. If it has you'll get a "1 site found" message.

Today I learned of a couple of sites to submit an article about your website. They are Scribd and EZine Articles. Full instructions for signing up and getting the most "bang for your buck" were given. One thing that stands out in my mind is that in signing up for Scribd you should use your website name as your user name to give you one more reference to your site. The articles you write for these sites must be original and if you copy and paste anything it must be in quotation marks and the author must be credited.

Both of these sites screen new articles manually before they're published, so it can take from 2 to 10 days before it goes live. Of course, no plagiarism or even copying and pasting from your own articles on other sites is allowed. This must be original content relating to your site. Be sure to read the TOS and FAQ before submitting articles to make sure they fall within acceptable parameters.

I know my subject matter forward and backward, so I thought I'd just sit down and whip out a couple of articles. I opened the word processor program and my brain went totally blank. I searched through the recesses of my mind, but found only a labyrinth of hallways with locked doors on either side. My sense of direction is weak to nonexistent so I got lost. Fortunately my faithful old cat found me and led me out with a meow, a purrrr, and a head butt to the chin. . .she was hungry!

Then is when I knew I had to slow down. I don't know how much I'll get done tomorrow. I'm mentally exhausted. I didn't realize I was taking this so seriously. I just wanted to learn something and that's not usually a great big problem.

Is Fate Trying To Tell Me Something?

I began watching the videos for day 8 of the 30 day challenge and was really excited about another kewl widget we get to use free for a 40 day trial if we're members of 30 day challenge. It's called traffic bug and it automatically submits your site to all the main search engines and article directories. I was really enthused about using this new toy, so I went to the site as directed and signed up. The video said it should take 3 to 5 minutes to get the confirmation e mail and then you could configure your traffic bug.

Well, that was about 7 hours ago and I still haven't received a confirmation e mail. I went back and registered again, thinking maybe I didn't really push the button. . .just thought I did. I was told I'd already registered and had to wait for the confirmation e mail and if I didn't receive it after 24 hours I could register again.

I did learn a little more about how the search engines rank your page and what it takes to get ranked, along with some ideas to manually submit a site to different places that will provide backlinks to it. The day wasn't a total waste, but I'm disappointed.

I worked a little on my weebly site (see yesterday's post)and started an herb gardening blog on it. I'll expand the site little by little as time and inspiration permits. One little word about Weebly if you're thinking of using it, if you ever open it in the site editor, you have to publish it again whether you change anything or not. If you don't you'll get a message that says this site hasn't been published. If it's your site publish it. Hmmm I guess today wasn't a total bust. I did learn a few things.

For now I'm getting off the computer and going back to the beads. I need comfort activity!