Elizabeth Tai's Blog, page 23

Returning: Holding out for hope

"Elizabeth, we're here!"

"Just a minute!" I yelled as I tossed the last romance novels from my shelves into my armoire. Done, I shut the door, took a deep breath, plastered a smile on my face and headed to the door to greet my church friends.

Welcome to Pretense-ville.

PALE GHOST

You'd think I would know better about donning a mask after my Doing and Shifting years, but I told myself, see, this time I'm aware of how screwed up religious conformity can be!

Hah!

After spending so many years being an...

Five things I wish I knew before I built my author website

Every writer should have a website, preferably one that bears your name. Not only do you give people a one-stop centre to discover and interact with you, it's a great way to build your personal brand.

I've made a few mistakes when I began building my space on the Internet. And some of the mistakes cost me a lot of time and money!

Here are five things I wish I knew before I built my author's website - may you learn from them:

Get a domain name from a domain name Registrar not your web host

Your d...

Unravelling: when faith falls apart

(This is Part 4 of My Shifting Faith series, where I deconstruct my faith journey using the framework provided by Kathy Escobar in her book Faith Shifts.)

A few years before my faith began Unravelling, I had a strange dream where I was giving birth. But it wasn't a joyous occasion. I was afraid of the pain but most of all, of being alone while I had the baby.

The dream ended, but somehow I knew it was one of Those dreams. You know, the dream where your mind somehow touched God's, and He was tr...

Yes, you can blog without a niche!

Want to start blogging? Figure out your niche first.

So goes the popular advice, anyway.

Well, I say toss that much-touted advice out of the window.

I've been blogging off and on since 1999. In the baby days of blogging, posts were more like online journals; it was all about sharing experiences and stories.

In the 21st century, the whole scene seemed invaded by marketers. (Yes, I'm bitter about that.) Now it's all about what you can get from blogging: fame, money or 'brand'.

So it's not surprisin...

Shifting: When it hurts to attend church

I stared wide-eyed at the door to my toilet cubicle, wondering what I should do.

I could hear women whispering outside.

"There has to be someone inside," said one. "It can only be locked from within."

"Oh dear ... do you think someone killed herself in there?"

My mouth fell open. I looked up at the window above me, wondering how it would look if I crawled out of the bathroom from that window. I imagined Fire and Rescue trying to get me down, coaxing me not to kill myself. And then I would become...

How I made writing fun again

I was 19 when I lost my sense of fun. With my writing, that is.

There I was in the college library, thumbing through the science fiction story I was working on. I felt a kind of pride as I flicked through the rough, brown pages. The story was raw, was most certainly not done, but I felt the world coming to life....

Then, suddenly, the pages were ripped from my hands.

It was Ben (not his real name), my English Literature classmate.

I waited expectantly as he read the story, I think I even held my...

Doing: Being Miss Good Christian

Ah, Doing. The third stage of Fusing. (Do read Part I: Believing & Part II: Learning, if you haven't). This is the stage where Kathy Escobar of Faith Shift said that a believer begins to actively serve, volunteer and participate.

And this is the time when the demands of the institutional church really started to mess me up.

After a few years of not giving up on God, my family and I came to a peaceful understanding about my faith, and I began the first few heady years being the best Christian g...

Why I quit my job to move to Australia

One of my favourite things to do in Oz was to stand on the beach and let the waves wash over my feet. I would imagine all my burdens washing away.

I wrote this post in 2012, just a few weeks before I moved to Australia. Some time in 2014, my website (the Wordpress version, that is) was hacked and this particular post ended up having nearly 500 comment spam. Instead ofdeleting every single one of them, I thought the better way was to repost it.

As something extra, I'm also adding a commentary...

Learning: The war on culture, family and tradition

There are three stages in the "Fusing" stage of faith, said Kathy Escobar in her book, Faith Shift. The first, Believing, where I accidentally became a Christian by saying a bunch of words, passed by without much fanfare. It was the Learning stage that was the most tumultous for me.

Because I was utterly unprepared to be thrust into a war between culture, family and tradition.

I was 18. I should be thinking about boybands, for heaven's sakes.

Culture clash

When my family discovered what I had do...

Why I moved from Wordpress to Squarespace

It was a pleasant chat until my friend said: "I thought I should let you know that when I google up your website, there's a note on the search that says, "This site may be hacked."

I groaned out loud.

ERRORS, HACKS AND GOOGLE WARNINGS

I have dealt with many errors and hacks over the years, but lately it has become an almost monthly affair. Early in 2014 or so, my blog was flooded with thousands of comment spam. The iPage support team said they couldn't help me. The only way out of it was to del...