Cate Russell-Cole's Blog, page 16
March 4, 2014
Build Your Writing Muscles
“After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colors of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer’s breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer: perhaps more.” Jasper Fforde
How reading engages our imaginations and assists creativity: “Hear the voices, smell the smells, feel the textures… see the colours… without drudgery.”
Still sick, so comments are off. Sorry. We see the Specialist next week. My best to you all. Cate
Filed under: Writing Resources Tagged: books, creativity, growth, ideas, inspiration, writer, writing, Writing Rocket Fuel
March 3, 2014
Health Related Changes to the Blog
As many of you know, I suffer from migraines (very complex situation.) I’ve had a bad run over the last two weeks and I am deteriorating. Long term, this means comments have been switched off, posts will only come out twice a week and the Memoir Project has been discontinued. I just can’t use the computer. It’s pure agony.
Thank God I blog ahead on good days!
Some auto share posts from the best sources out there alway come through my Twitter stream, so that will stay active. You will still have resources to raid and inspiration to ponder. Posts will still come out. This has been a problem for a few years, so we don’t expect an immediate improvement.
My very best to you all.
Cate
Filed under: Writing Resources
A Writer’s Narcotic “Holiday…” Don’t Try This At Home!
… this is not fun. My very sincere apologies to my Triberr and social media colleagues and pals for not passing on your posts. As many of you know, I suffer from migraines (very complex situation.) I’ve had a bad run over the last two weeks and just can’t cope with Triberr, social media and blog comments right now. I am too drugged on morphine to focus or be enthusiastic, I just want to sleep.
Some auto share posts from the best sources out there alway come through my Twitter stream, so that will stay active. You will still have resources to raid and inspiration to ponder. Posts will still come out on this blog, (there is a great one on successful book promotion coming out Friday,) but comments are switched off until we see what my awesome DrJ recommends. Fortuitously, we already had an appointment booked with him next week…
My very best to you all.
Cate
Filed under: Writing Resources
March 2, 2014
Words with Old World Class!
I am still offline sick, so here is a continuation of a popular post series from last year. Comments are switched off, sorry. Last year I put up a few posts of out of use words sourced from an old Australian dictionary, circa 1900. They give an insight into why some words fall out of usage and how much society has changed focus.
Here is another list of older words to inspire and prompt you to write. If you’d like a challenge, put together a story or paragraph using at least four of the words.
AEsculapian: beloning to a medical man; word origin is a god of medicine. (Roman Mythology. The god of medicine and healing.) This is interesting as the modern definition is: relating to medicine or physicians. It is an adjective: archaic.
Smirch: to cloud, to smear, to dusk, to soil.
Civet: a strong musky perfume that comes from the Civet-cat.Presuppose: to take for granted.
Theopneustic: given by or due to the inspiration of God / God-inspired.
Ratiocinate: to reason or argue. ( Ratiocinative: argumentative.)
Wastel: a round cake made from fine flour.
Mensuration: act, process or the art of measuring. (That is an art? Ok then…)
Zoophilist: a lover of animals. (Don’t take that in an amorous sense.)
Demogorgon: a terrible god capable of the most vindictive action.
This blog post by Cate Russell-Cole is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You are free to share and adapt it.
Filed under: Writing Resources Tagged: author, creativity, dictionary, fiction, idea, inspiration, uncommon, morning pages, old world, practice, prompt, resource, skill development, Words, writer, writing, writing practice
February 27, 2014
Micro-Blogging: An Idea to Experiment With
In the 1930s, broadcast radio introduced an entirely new form of storytelling; today, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter are changing the scene again. Andrew Fitzgerald takes a look at the (aptly) short but fascinating history of new forms of creative experimentation in fiction and storytelling.
By the way, I’ve been struggling through a lengthy migraine. I am taking some recovery time off, so comments are switched off for this post. I’ll be back in a few days. Cheers everyone!
Filed under: "Dose of Inspiration" Video, Blog Building and Promotion, Blog Taming Month: Feb 2014 Tagged: Andrew Fitzgerald, challenge, fiction, ideas, inspiration, microblogging, series, social media, story telling, success, TED Talks, Twitter, writer, writing
February 25, 2014
Hitting the Bullseye: The Power of Life #Writing : #Memoir
Note from Cate with sincere apologies to Sharon Lippincott, the author of this post : I’ve been struggling through a lengthy migraine. I am taking some recovery time off, so comments are switched off for this post. I’ll be back in a few days. Cheers everyone!
For most of my life I’ve thought of my father as a background person in my life. He was always around, eating dinner with the family every night, taking us on picnic and camping trips, and occasionally directing my sister and me to clean up the kitchen on nights my mother may not have bothered. He was handy to have around for help on math homework in high school.
But he was not much of a conversationalist, and much of our interaction took place through the filter of my mother. For example, she would tell me, “Your father doesn’t like thus and such,” or “Your father thinks you should do this or that.”
As I wrote The Albuquerque Years, I recalled all sort of things I did with my daddy as a very young girl. I “helped” him irrigate and tend the garden. I watched as he killed chickens for Sunday dinner. I rode in the basket of his bicycle to get fruit from the stand up the road. I rode on his shoulders. I learned how to take pictures. I tricked him with a fake yoyo on April Fool’s Day. I regretted that these memories of direct involvement seemed to taper off as I grew older.
A few minutes ago I began skimming a free pdf version of Paulo Coelho’s book The Way of the Bow that I downloaded from his website. As I read the description on page nine of Tetsuya stringing his bow, I recalled the long-forgotten yellow bows and arrows my father gave my sister and me when I was nine or ten. I don’t remember the occasion, but I do remember spending hours and hours over a period of years trying to perfect my aim.
With that memory dozens more came pouring forth, and suddenly I’m suffused with the most delightful realization that although he may not have shown it openly, he always loved me more than I would have imagined. I never doubted that — I was just not fully aware of the extent of it. This memory hit a bullseye in my heart! I’m simply aglow with gratitude and joy.
Image from Open Clipart sources.
I doubt I ever would have stumbled across this discovery if I hadn’t spent so much time writing and thinking deeply about various memories. Individual stories were a good way to start this process, and I’m finding that going on to the next step of integrating those vignettes into a more comprehensive overview is deepening the results and insights.
When I first began what I now recognize as the practice of life writing, I had no idea that it would be come a lifelong pursuit. I thought I could just write a few stories — maybe even one hundred — and be done with it. I can no longer count the number of stories I’ve written, but the last time I did, the total exceeded seven hundred, and I’ve just begun to write. Now I realize that the longer I stick with it, the deeper I write and see, and the happier and more peaceful I feel. The positive effects reach every corner of my life, and I can’t imagine not spending time at least several days a week on this ongoing exploration.
Write now: make a list of memories of happy times spent with a special person in your life. Use this to write a paragraph or two or longer story about each memory, or as journal prompts.
This post is Copyright Sharon Lippincott 2009. All Rights Reserved Internationally
Filed under: Posts by Sharon Lippincott, The Memoir Project, Writing Resources Tagged: author, autobiography, ideas, inspiration, life story, memoir, resource, Sharon Lippincott, writer
February 23, 2014
Blogging Survival: Get Ahead
Click to go to post.
With blogs, there are times when you have to hit the pause switch for the sake of sanity. But how? Around Thanksgiving last year, a fellow blogger put up a post asking, “should you blog through the holidays?” It was interesting to read how many people said yes, said no… or said no and then gave into temptation and pressure and blogged anyway! There are weeks when my husband has to refer to our family photos to remember what I look like, as I can’t be separated from the computer.
There is one technique which I have been using for the past two years to save my sanity and cater for those disruptions life puts in your way: scheduling. Writing ahead, even by a week or two, saves last minute “what will I post” panic attacks; stops multiple posts being sent out on one day; ensures you DO have time to go back and edit that dodgy bit you’re unsure about and gives you planning space. As I work in WordPress, here is how you do it.
While you are editing your post, on your right you will see the Publish box. On a new post it will come up as Publish Immediately. Click on Edit and you get this box where you can control exactly when your post will come out. The post I am writing now was written on the 2nd December last year. I am not bragging. As a migraine sufferer, I lose too many days on heavy painkillers and being forced into scheduling has been a great bonus! It does improve the quality of your blog as you have time to think.
If, like me, you are in an inconvenient time zone, scheduling also allows you to post in the zone where you get the best readership. With Twitter, Facebook, Triberr and Networked Blogs automatically sending out new post promotion live, I get the luxury of being asleep when my posts go out: between 1am and 2am my time. It’s bliss! No racing around multiple social media to spread the word. I love it! Use that Publicize feature and pre-hashtag post promo… it works.
Also be aware: I ran a weekly series in 2013 which I planned ahead, then added other periodic features plus my usual write-ahead posts. When I reached 100 scheduled posts, WordPress sent me an email saying STOP! They need you to save posts as drafts if there are a large number.
Keeping a blog running is a mammoth task: particularly if you like to post more than a few times per week. To stay productive you need to take time out. Like any muscle in your body, creativity needs to be rested so you can refresh. Without that you run out of ideas, enthusiasm and your blog becomes a major pain! Try scheduling as a painkiller. You have earned your time off and it will save you agony!
This article / blog post is Copyright Cate Russell-Cole 2014. All rights are reserved Internationally. You may not reproduce it in any form, in part of whole, without Cate’s prior written permission. That includes usage in forms such as print, audio and digital imaging including pdf, jpg, png etc. A fee may be requested for re-using her work if it is for a commercial venture.
Link sharing and Pinterest pins are most welcome as long as Cate is the attributed Author.
Filed under: Author First Aid, Blog Building and Promotion, Blog Taming Month: Feb 2014 Tagged: blogging, challenge, creativity, exhaustion, problem solving, promotion, publicize, schedule, stress management, writer, writing
February 20, 2014
Services Which Make Your Blog Easy to Follow
If you want to promote your site, you need as many options as possible: join by email, allow WordPress and Blogger Follow buttons, utilise your RSS feed… everything you can get your hands on. The more ways you have to connect, the more followers you will get.
Every blog needs a RSS feed. If you don’t know what your site feed is, try RSS include. ~ If you have a WordPress blog, your RSS is simply: or http://yoursitename.com/feed/
Blog Frog: http://theblogfrog.com/Bloglovin
Feedly: http://feedly.com/index.html#welcome
Google Friend Connect, or if now retired by Google when you read this, Adding Followers Gadget in Blogger. Friend Connect was still working for me on other’s sites in January 2014.
Networked Blogs
This is very simple plugin which adds the WordPress.Com follow button which appears on every WordPress.Com blog, at the right bottom corner to WordPress.ORG Sites. The Plugin also has a built in subscription management system which makes it something more than just a plugin. http://wordpress.org/plugins/follow/
You can follow by RSS using Addthis. http://www.addthis.com/social-plugins/follow-toolsSubscribe2 Email Following Plugin for WordPress blogs.
Don’t forget to ensure you regularly share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Pinterest, Instagram, She Writes, Linked In and other services you use, so that your followers are notified of new posts. Many of these tasks can be automated via plug ins and widgets.
If you know of other online services that allow you to follow blogs, please let me know so I can add them to this list.
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This blog post by Cate Russell-Cole is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You are free to share and adapt it.
Filed under: Blog Building and Promotion, Blog Taming Month: Feb 2014 Tagged: blog, Blog Frog, Blog Lovin, blogger, blogging, Email Followers, Feedly, followers, Following, Gaining More Followers, Google Friend Connect, Networked Blogs, Plug-in, Reader-friendly, RSS Feed, social media, Widget, wordpress
February 19, 2014
Surviving BIG Blogging Mistakes
Sometimes we goof. We put up dead links, make spellling misteaks, or publicly make ourselves look as credible as Jar Jar Binks. “Yoosa should follow me now, okeeday?” *shudder* If you have made a grand faux pas, how do you recover?
That is the problem I have been pondering for the last week, as after placing too many promotional posts together, I have consistently lost 60% of my blog traffic. Damn! I wrote a reactive post, then thankfully had the sense to delete it. I realised that those who had walked away, would not be here to read my “ooops, my bad, I will ease up” rant. Instead, I have modified the posts to something much softer… but my ego hurts!
Recovery from a blooper will not come by force. The answer isn’t in storming out red-faced either. You have to “get back on the horse, unless you have to go to the hospital.” I am going to continue on as usual. The best blog posts are still pulling in “normal traffic,” so there is hope in that. Maybe my lost readers will forgive me? First, I have to forgive myself for being so dense! No matter how stats orientated we become, it is not the end of the world.
Maybe there are other reasons for a traffic drop I have not considered?
Maybe it’s not solely MY fault?
Image via Flickr Creative Commons, courtesy of Sally Jean. Is there a chiropractor in the house?
If you are a sensitive, shy soul, as many of us writers are, when things go wrong, the first person we blame is ourselves. Life is a trial and error process. Creativity has hurdles we jump and get bruised on… and hurdles where we jump, then thrive off the elation of success. Growth comes from knowing there will be dark with the light and accepting that. Berating yourself won’t fix anything, you will just feel worse. Chalk it up as what doesn’t work and stay on that horse!
It comes down to patience, having the guts to try again and not just being greedy for success.
Speaking of success, Kristen Lamb’s blog has the most heartening post on author earnings and what will make you successful. It’s a must-read. In short, it takes patience, professionalism, quality online interaction and a backlist of work to set up a base on – and it occurs over multiple years, not fast. Remember: patience, patience, patience! When we are too eager to become an overnight success, we also become too eager to label ourselves as an instant failure.
Stay faithful to your dreams.
Those of you who are in it for the long haul, are the ones who will succeed.
This blog post by Cate Russell-Cole is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You are free to share and adapt it.
Image is from my Bitstrips account.
Filed under: Blog Building and Promotion, Blog Taming Month: Feb 2014 Tagged: author, blog, blogging, challenge, conflict, creativity, encouragement, goals, growth, Indie publishing, inspiration, marketing, problem solving, promotion, success, writer, writing 
February 18, 2014
Six Word Memoirs
When people think of memoir or autobiography, they often think of long, weighty works. There are many approaches to capturing various times in your life. One is the six word memoir.
It may be harder than you think! Try it. In six words, write about where you are now in your life.
Filed under: The Memoir Project Tagged: autobiography, challenge, ideas, inspiration, life story, memoir, writer, writing
