A Daily Life

I enjoy using prompts for finding ideas to write in my blogs and journals, as well for my daily devotions and even conversation starters. One of the prompts I’ve been enjoying each month has been the joy dares from Ann Voskamp, author of the book “One Thousand Gifts”.  I’ve shared in different posts how I’ve […]

The A to Z Challenge for 2012 starts today.  The goal is to blog a different letter of the alphabet (sequentially) in the month of April.  You can use a unifying theme or not.  You chose the word.  It’s that simple. Over 1600 people have signed up to participate!  It’s a great way to make new […]

Ollin Morales, at Courage 2 Create, had a great post titled, “11 Ways To Get Over Feeling Guilty About Following Your Passion“.  I found it to contain valuable advice and when I contacted Olin, he granted me permission to publish it in its entirety. Ollin posts about creativity, writing technique and inspirational topics.  If you haven’t […]

Looking for a challenge to celebrate women’s achievements?  Paige at The Authentic Me has a challenge going, inviting her readers to “remember the contributions of notable and ordinary women“.  I’ve already posted links to stories about my grandmothers & great-grandmother, whose ordinary lives shaped the generations after them. Here’s what Paige is inviting you to […]

In hindsight, I’ve done challenges prior to last year’s daily blogging and photography.  I did a daily challenge when I was seriously into my needlepoint.  I improved my skill, learned new techniques, and made new friends just like with my blogging. I also did a daily challenge putting together a family history book, coordinating and organizing […]

I’ve been experimenting with a piece of software for writers called “Scrivener“.  It’s got a number of advantages over Microsoft Word for writing a book and I think it will make my process less frustrating.  At the bottom I also have a brief discussion about backing up your hard drive. There are several things I […]

Ollin Morales, over at Courage 2 Create, has a great blog for writer’s and creative people.  He recently had a post in which he explained why he doesn’t think writer’s should use prompts.  It’s worth checking out.  To sum up, his reasons are: It only works because it’s acting as a mirror to what is […]

Today’s guest post is by Chris Donner at Chris Donner, Mystery Writer.   One of the really great things about Chris’s blog is that along the left side she has chapters to her mystery book that is in progress. A few weeks ago, Chris did a review of “A Writer’s Book of Days: A Spirited Companion […]

Embedding a YouTube video into your blog isn’t difficult to do, but I find the instructions from the WordPress support forum to be difficult to follow.  It’s really not that hard.  There are two ways to do it: Using the “upload / insert”, choose “from URL”.  Then choose “Audio, Video, or Other File” and copy […]

One of the perpetual struggles for bloggers, writers, parents, spouses, and everyone else is finding enough time.  Amy Lynn Andrews, from Blogging With Amy, has solid ideas and techniques in her book, Tell Your Time: How to Manage Your Schedule So You Can Live Free.  The book only has 30 pages, making it a fast […]

One of the frustrating things about blogging, doing a daily challenge, or any other kind of a hobby is finding the time to do it.  For me, an additional problem is not be miserably tired so I can actually enjoy the process of doing something creative. The author, Iris Murdoch, once said: But for most of […]

Today’s guest blogger is Cee Neuner, who posts over at Cee’s Life Photography Blog.  Cee coordinates a fun projected called, “Share Your World“, as a way for bloggers to get to know each other better.  I’ll let Cee describe it herself: About Share Your World I discovered Jesse Jaca’s blog and saw they had a Getting to […]

Today’s guest post is reposted from JudithB at I choose how I will spend the rest of my life.  Although this isn’t the type of information I usually seek for this blog, I found her review of this book to be fascinating about the history of the Oxford English Dictionary.  Since words are near and dear to the […]

Comment moderation is a way to prevent spam in your comments, as well as stop trolls who want to leave off-topic inflammatory comments. Pingbacks are a way of tracking when someone has linked to one of your posts, reblogged it, or when you have created a link to one of your own posts.  It’s also a way […]

Peggy Hostetler, author of the blog The Simple Woman, has a powerful set of questions to help diarists and bloggers record their life at the present moment in time.  You consider things such as what you are doing, thinking and wearing.  It asks about your plans for the rest of the week and invites you to […]

When I did my daily photo challenge in 2011, I read a piece of advice that said to take field trips for the purpose of looking for photos. I was pleasantly surprised to see how this helped my blog writing as well for the same reasons as it helped my photography – it gave me something to […]

I enjoy leaving comments, seeing the comments of others, and the replies from the blogger.  Sometimes though, it becomes more than I expected.  Instead of petering out after several days, the comments go on and on, and I’m no longer interested in my mail box filling up with them. It’s possible to stop following a […]