Communati.com

Ahem! A bit of trumpet blowing. Some of you have been following my development of Get Paid To Write Online.

I was checking on progress today and I found that when I searched for ‘get paid to write’ (without the quotes) on Yahoo UK my new blog is the first listing to appear. It’s number three on Google and the Blogcatalog community page is number 10 on MSN Live.

Not bad going for a new blog. It’s only a month since I set it up. The blog also does well on all the social communities, with a healthy number of visitors and members.

You know it is time guys - yup…technorati time. Time to tag your blogs into your technorati account. If you don’t have one….you need it. Then, you get to put an inane little post here with a link for the spiders to hunt down.

Technorati Profile

If you don’t use www.technorati.com to increase hits. You should have it. I never thought it worked for me… then I realized that I only had one blog listed (shame)

Like Blog Catalog, technorati is good for checking out who tags you, so you can tag them. I am all for supporting other bloggers, 50/50. I’ll tag you if you tag me. Or, if I see that you are a tagger, I’ll tag you to see if you will tag me. Of course, I’ve also done the email thing - you tag these ten articles and I’ll send you 10 to tag.

Of course - if you are not a pro blogger than I just left you wondering if someone spiked your coffee. It does make sense. Think of the net as a big popularity contest. Those with the most tags win.

My novel in progress (which has been in progress for years now) contains scenes that I don’t want to face. So I avoid them for weeks, finding excuses to do everything else but turn to the chapters where they occur in the book.

While this novel is another mythic journey story, it’s much more real world than The Sun Singer. It also contrains more grit.

Now I’m sitting here looking at the first line of a chapter near the end of the book about a sexual assault. It must read true, not as pornography, not as a list over-the-top Harlequin-romance-style euphemisms, not like a fact-based news story, but emotionally accurate. It can’t be melodrama, though, nor the overly graphic kind of stuff I don’t like to read.

I’ve written about a third of this chapter 10 times. I’m not happy. The tone is wrong. I’m too close or too far away from the event, it’s getting too long, the mythic connotations are getting in the way of the actual chain of events and vice versa.

So, I put it aside and spend time working on posts and comments for blogs; or I tinker in other chapters. Or I work on other writing.

But this chapter sits here, waiting…

If the grass weren’t wet from last night’s rain, I would be outside mowing the yard. As it is, I am typing this post instead of working on the book.

If you’re a writer, do you ever come across scenes that you have to write, scenes you don’t really want to explore under floodlights close up enough to get them right?

I am currently at Mount Rainier National Park. The little country hotel I am staying at has wireless internet, and I just happen to have my laptop.

My husband is climbing the Mount Rainier - he hired a guide service and will be on the mountain for three nights. So, I am sitting here waiting for breakfast, and I’ve decided to blog.

I have a hike planned today. We have a membership at trails.com but I’ve decided to hike the Skyline trail around the base of the mountain. I’ve been hiking every day since I’ve arrived (4 days ago) and my muscles are a little sore. I took a little tumble on the hike I took two days ago and have a bandaid on my palm, a giant scrape on my leg, a bruise on my knee, and a strange pain by my ankle.

So naturally, I chose a strenuous 5.5 mile loop around the base of the mountain with beautiful views. I did it last year. He summitted last year as well.

I ask myself, why am I working? Well, I guess it’s because I like it. I don’t have any deadlines, my husband is on an expedition, and being in this natural setting actually makes me want to write more, not less.

My husband is a musician. He’s been playing the guitar for 20 years and plays anything from classical to jazz to rock guitar solos.

He has a website that offers guitar lessons in the form of articles and tutorials. (www.guitar-dreams.com).

He’s been wanting to get on the first page of google for a while so I introduced him to Squidoo. We reserved a lens with the keywords “free guitar lessons” in the URL. (www.squidoo.com/free-guitarlessons)

Because of Squidoo, his website went from being on the 4th page or so to the top of the 2nd page in a little over a week for the keywords “free guitar lessons”. And it is still rising.

The trick is to make sure you update it every day or every other day. The updates don’t have to be dramatic. Sometimes, we just add or delete a sentence or a few words.

My lens (www.squidoo.com/make-money-writing) has earned me about $70 in affiliate commissions and is listed as number 633 in overall rank for all the lenses. It has spent some time on the front page of google for the keywords “make money writing” which return a lot of results.

Come by Muze’s Musings and find out about New York Times bestselling author Jane Green and her book - Second Chance. Find out how she juggles 4 young children and a successful writing career. Click here to learn more -

http://muzesmusings.blogspot.com/.

Nikki

Nikki Leigh – Fiction Author – www.nikkileigh.com
Book Promo 101 – www.nikkileigh.com/book_promo_101.htm
“Coastal Suspense with a Touch of Romance”

What happened? It Monday just a couple of days ago it seems. And now we are back at Monday again. I have too many Monday’s in my life and not enough Friday’s. That’s just a natural fact.

It will be a great week. I will make it happen. I have much on top and in store so I have to get going and make sure I do a great job.

Heres the deal for me this week and I am ready to hit the road running.

It’s my early week at work. So I will go and open up for the survey crews. I love going early and getting there when no one else is around. I will have to help out doing a few things with the crews to get them ready for there work day. This is fun and the guys and I get along really well.

I have to write several articles for the magazine. I need to get on the ball. I will have to write or do research at lunch and pretty much any free time I get. I will be fine though. I already have some good research and I will continue to do so until it’s time to write, write, write.

At the end of the week, Friday, my whole family from Louisiana is coming and they are also bringing my twin great nephews, who live in Oklahoma. The whole bunch is coming. It is going to be great. It’s not often we all wind up together in one place.

So that’s how my week will stack up. I am ready for it.

We will have pretty normal weather for this time of year, but it will be just a tad cooler than normal. Our rain chances will be normal for this time of year.

That’s it for now. I will write more later!!

Researching creativity caused us to think about the people that start their adult careers when they are children. Curt Cobain (of Nirvana) was writing songs and illustrating cartoons with the realism of an accomplished adult artist when he was eight-years-old. Another example of this is Taylor Swift
http://img.gactv.com/GAC/2006/08/07/taylorswiftsingle_e.jpg
who started writing songs when she was eleven years old and was working as a songwriter when she was an experienced fifteen years old.
Taylor Swifts song Teardrops On My Guitar has reached number one after 39 weeks on the charts.
It’s a story about her true love story about not finding love in high school, which is probably the experience of 99% of high school students in America.
http://img.gactv.com/GAC/2006/07/19/tswift3_h_j.jpg
Starting to write songs when she didn’t know anything about the form (assuming that she listened to songs on the radio and followed their patterns) Taylor Swift was unafraid of making mistakes and just let the lyrics flow; that is, she was unrestrained by “knowing the rules of songwriting,” pure, unrestrained conceptualization leading to the realization of a completed song.
Taylor Swift writes songs about what she knows. Because she is eighteen years old she is relating her experiences as a teenager becoming a young woman and dealing with adult emotions; so we are guessing that most of her CD Albums are purchased by young women, an audience that can sustain a career during a time of drastic change in the music industry.
http://img.gactv.com/GAC/2006/07/19/tswift6_v_p.jpg
Taylor Swift can be heard, no special “Media Player” needs to be downloaded, Click
http://www.purevolume.com/taylorswiftfan

Another young lady we admire for her nofear creativity is Nef Jones of the Jones Bones Band with Jimi K. Bones, co-writer and lead guitarist, that can be heard, no special “Media Player” needs to be downloaded:
http://www.myspace.com/jonesbonesband
Photos from Great American Country- GAC Copyright 2006-07 GAC

If you take a quick stroll down the aisles of any bookstore, you will find a vast array of selections penned by “experts,” and if you are easily swayed, could believe that without their sage advice, we would surely be unable to function. I am dazzled at the folks who are making a small fortune writing detailed instructions on how to live, and the masses of people who race to read these publications.

For the price of a family sized pizza with the works, you can pick up a glossy hardcover that will advise you on everything from how to save money (maybe stop spending it on advice books?) to how to, I’m completely serious, give advice. An advice book about giving advice — the author must have read the book about how to get money from fools.

There is one on how to deal with the difficult people in your life. I haven’t cracked it open to sneak a peek, but from my personal experience I would say that no matter what your relationship with the difficult person may be, you’ve got two choices. Suck it up and deal with it or move on and rid yourself of them. Fifteen words to a workable solution, but somehow this particular writer jotted down 249 pages on the topic and then convinced a publisher to mass produce the words. Admittedly, that one was on clearance and wouldn’t cost as much as the pizza, but was still pricier than a burger and fries.

While browsing recently, I came across a hardcover about how to live an ethical, honorable, honest life. Someone has to tell us how to do that? Now I am really afraid.
Some of the selections make sense to me. How to fix an air conditioner, make your own soap, build a bookshelf or change your oil — all things with specific procedures, things that we are not born already knowing that we may have a desire to learn. Fine. But an entire literary work about why, where, and how to hug?

Some subjects take up more shelf space than others. An abundance of titles are available about relationships — how to get into one, how to stay in one, how to know if it’s going badly and how to get out of one. After flipping through a few of these, especially the ones on recognizing the signs of a harmful relationship, I am no longer wondering where Jerry Springer gets his guests. Apparently, there are those of us who need to be told that if your spouse hits you, cheats on you, calls you names or ignores you, you may not have chosen the right person to grow old with. Who would have known?

Parenting is another popular subject. From pregnancy, to preschool to pre-law, if you want to know how to raise the perfect kid, someone, somewhere, has undoubtedly written a checklist for you to follow. There is a lot of conflicting advice out there and I think that if you read too many of these and try to put all that advice into action, you just may turn out to be one of those wishy-washy, pushover parents who needs to seek out yet more advice books on how to let your kids know that when you say something, you are serious. That’s one treadmill I’d just as soon stay away from.

So, after much thought — okay, a couple of minutes of thought — I decided that I could write one of these. Heck, anybody could write one, but my plan is to write one that covers it all. One book, one great life. And, I could keep the price low, too, let’s say, enough for coffee and a sweet roll. Not bad. Aw, let’s just print it here, and you can have it for free. So, let’s go . . .

• Saving money: Spend less than you earn and put the rest into the bank.
• Relationships (applies to all): Be fair, be kind, and don’t expect more of anyone else than you expect of yourself.
• Parenting: Be fair, be kind, and be in charge. As the years go by, let them test their wings and as long as they do well, let them go a little further. Never be afraid to clip those wings back if they show you they aren’t ready. Your kids may not always like you — get over it. If you remain fair and kind, they will respect you, and after they are grown, they’ll like you again.
• Aging gracefully: Wrinkles and gray hair mean that you are lucky. Many people are not blessed with enough years on this earth to get old. Be grateful. Anyway, there are few things more beautiful than faces that reflect years of living.

That should do it. If you are so inclined, I’d love a pecan danish and a cup of decaf.

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