a productive pen

Seeking Balance

Trying to balance a moonlighting writing gig alongside a regular 9-5, raising three children alone and trying to squeeze in a social life has been kicking my butt lately. I have a distinct vision of the kind of lifestyle I would like to have, but the present moment is so far removed from that vision I’m not sure how I will ever get there.
Writing is my passion and I love it, but by the time I get home from work, wrangle the girls homework assignments whilst preparing dinner and trying to keep the house in some semblance of order, serve and eat dinner, and then clean up afterwards this mamma is thoroughly exhausted. After I have gotten them into the bed and I crack open the laptop in a vain attempt to get some writing done it’s not long before my forehead begins to hit the keyboard. I’m really feeling this quote by Joseph Conrad:

“You must squeeze out of yourself every sensation, every thought, every image, — mercilessly, without reserve and without remorse: you must search the darkest corners of your heart, the most remote recesses of your brain, — you must search them for the image, for the glamour, for the right expression. And you must do it sincerely, at any cost: you must do it so that at the end of your day’s work you should feel exhausted, emptied of every sensation and every thought, with a blank mind and an aching heart, with the notion that there is nothing, — nothing left in you.” — Joseph Conrad

This quote virtually crackles with my exact feelings about the writing process. I love the fact that its like opening a vein and I do it sincerely–when I can. So, I persevere, trying to keep up with the small amount of work that I have and wondering how I will be able to make that big leap to writing full time.

Qassia. . .Come to Mamma

I found Qassia and I’m trying it out and seeing how effective it is. It’s basically another directory which is free to join where you can create backlinks for your blog and generate Adsense income. Qassia gives you credit for adding ‘intel,’ which is basically short snippets of info that will be useful to someone. You can also get credit for rating the intel that other users submit. For each new bit of intel that you add, you get a backlink for your blog. It’s pretty easy and seems promising, so I’m going to test it out. You will basically be getting paid to promote your site. How nifty is that? If you want to give it a try, sign up through my profile page.

‘Speed Blogging’ Boosts Blogging Productivity

I’ve been struggling with finding a balance between getting writing projects completed and keeping this blog fresh. I enjoy blogging, but until it begins to generate some revenue for me, it’s challenging to put a lot of time into it. Then, I guess if I put more time into it maybe it would generate more cash. Hmmm.

Anyway, I was blog surfing on the weekend and I came across the term ’speed blogging.’ I found Lorelle’s Wordpress blog post on the topic, and it made a lot of sense to me.

From what I have gleaned, speed blogging is simply adding many quick blog entries throughout the day. Phil Whitehouse describes speed blogging as a post that’s 20 words or less, and written without spell checking and may or may not contain an image.

Speed blogging is not appropriate for every blog, or every topic, but it might be a way to crank out some fresh posts on a regular basis.

Freelance Writing Blog Highlight

Happy New Year greetings to all of my readers. Today while in the process of doing some research I came across a wonderful freelance writing blog that caught my eye, so I’m sharing it here. I found her site because it wa featured on the Women on Writing web site.

Yuwanda Black writes the Inkwell Editorial blog which is just chock full of resources designed to help freelance writers increase their income.

Her site includes a blog, lots of success stories about freelance writers who have found success, resources for freelancing abroad, the best and worst jobs and a selection of career and business development ebooks.

Keep on writing.

Simpleology Offers Free Blogging Training

I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

The best blogging techniques.
How to get traffic to your blog.
How to turn your blog into money.

I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.

The Morning Coach for Daily Personal Development Mojo

Personal development has been a part of my life for the better part of my adulthood. I have noticed, however that sometimes I will buy a book with the greatest intentions of reading it and assimilating all of the good ideas that it contains, but after a few chapters I may set it aside and then life takes over and I don’t get to finish reading it. I know that consistency is an important element in assimilating new practices into my life, and I often wished that there was a way that I could gain exposure to content and ideas about personal growth, health and fitness and spiritual principals on a daily basis. Well, let me tell you that I have found just the thing.

While browsing through itunes a few months ago I discovered a podcast called the Morning Coach. It began with JB Glossinger doing a 15 minute daily morning podcast on personal development, finance, health and spirituality. Now JB has added Don Sheldon who podcasts on the weekends and Paul Letterman who talks about health. It’s a great podcast with useful content that will have an impact on your life. You will get lots of great tips and ideas, feel the positive energy and motivation to continue to consistently take action towards your goals.

So, if a daily dose of postive vibes and practical knowledge sounds good to you, check out the morning coach and subscribe to the podcast. The web site also has lots of useful content, and you can meet and interact with other listeners in the forums.

Posthumous Inspiration from Mother Teresa

First, as I write this I will say that I am not a Catholic. I was raised in a Protestant, Christian home and my family attended an A.M.E. church. I did attend Catholic school as a young girl until the time when my parents took my siblings and me out of school so that my mom could home-school us. As a young, inquisitive child I was very observant about faith and religion and I wondered why for instance if there was only one God, why were there so many churches, and so many different kinds of churches. I observed that we read the Bible in our church, but when I looked at the Bibles in my Catholic school they were quite different. Why, when my Bible said that it was a sin to worship graven images, was there statues all over the sanctuary at St. Raphael’s Church and none in the sanctuary of St. Paul A.M.E. church where I grew up. To top it all off, one of my teachers, who was a nun made the mistake of pitying me because I was going to burn in hell because I was not a Catholic. (It didn’t help that we were the only Black children in this Irish Catholic School in Massachusetts in the late 70’s) This thought worried me to no end until I brought it up to my mother. She marched herself down to my school and read the riot act to Sister Christopher. I was mortified with embarrassment as I saw my mother threatening the poor nun that if she ever said anything of the sort again to me that she would make sure that she was not allowed to teach at this school again.

While I’ve had my issues with the Catholic Church, I admired the nuns and the priests who took vows to give up a normal life and to dedicate themselves to the service of Jesus. Later in life when I learned about the sexual abuse of children by priests this really shocked my sensibilities. I am not sure when I became aware of the life of Mother Teresa, and her work with the poorest of the poor in India, but from the first time I learned about who she was and the Missionaries of Charity, I have loved and admired her from afar. I thought fondly of this little woman as embodying all of the virtues that I aspired to, but failed to attain. I came across one of her quotations and I have used it in the signature file for my personal email because I feel that it captures what I admire most about her, which is her insatiable capacity for unconditional love: “I have learned the paradox that if I love until it hurts there is no more hurt only more love.”

When her personal writings were released earlier this year in the form of the book, “Come Be My Light” I began to read about the life of this great woman and became inspired anew. This book contains some of her personal letters and writings and it sheds light on her spiritual journey. The book also covers the secret years of desolation when she felt separated from God. I have not yet finished reading this book, but already it has inspired my heart to find ways to act on my faith and to find ways in my life to, “bring joy to the suffering heart of Jesus,” as she spent her life doing.

Often times I look on my life and I wonder if I am squandering the gifts that God has blessed me with. Am I giving my utmost for His highest? I don’t think so. At this time of year we often begin to reflect inward and take an assessment of what has been accomplished over the course of the year and then begin to plan for what we will do in the new year ahead. Since we are given our lives one moment at a time, I hope to do a better job of making the most of every moment and to live in a way that would please God. I will never live a life such as that of Saint Teresa, but her selfless sacrifice, her love of the poor and her ability to bring joy to the suffering heart of Jesus will continue to inspire me for as long as I am on this earth to be a better woman, mother, sister, daughter, aunt, niece, friend, wife and lover of Jesus in all of His disguises.

Associated Content: My Experience So Far

I have been writing and submitting articles to Associated Content for about a month or so, and I wanted to share my experiences with you. First let me tell you that if you are looking for a way to make some quick money with your writing online, then you should check this out.

Associated Content pays its Content Producers to write articles, create videos, and audios, on whatever topic they like. You do not need to be a professional writer, but if you are one, your AC Content Producer’s page is a great way to market your skills and find paying gigs. (hint, hint)

The amount that they will pay for written articles varies from as low as $3 to upwards of $20. I’ve not been offered more than $10 for an article yet, however, every article that I have submitted has earned more money than previous articles.

While I don’t think I’d rely on Associated Content for my full time income, it is a great way to earn some quick money with your writing online without an enormous amount of effort.

Tips:

-Write. Submit. Repeat.
-Write about things that people are searching for already

-Pay attention to keyword density

-Socially Bookmark your articles to increase your page views

-Network with other content producers

-Keep on writing!

View my Content Producer’s Page:
(You can take a peek at some of my work in the widget on the sidebar)

Thirty Day Challenge Comes to an End

Today is the final day of the Thirty Day Challenge. It was so much fun and I learned so much. I did not, however, meet the goal of the challenge which was to earn $10 in 30 days online using free Internet Marketing tactics. I do feel like I have gained valuable knowledge and tools from this experience so that I know that I can continue on and eventually end up with a successful cluster of sites.

A great thing that I have gained is some new online friends. Early on in the challenge we were broken up into teams. I am in an awesome team and we are going to continue to stick together now that the challenge is over so that we can network, share ideas and resources and encourage one another’s continued success.

mmo blog has a great list of 30DC action items on his blog, Ed is going to leave the content up and he will continue to encourage those of us who are late bloomers.

Thankfully, my web content producing efforts continue to be successful. I did some marketing last week and found some new clients, so I’m feeling confident about the way my practice is slowly growing.

So, as always, keep on writing.

Where My Niches At?

Today is Day 7 in the world of the 30 Day Challenge. Today is the day when we will be analyzing the seven niche keywords that we chose earlier in the challenge. Today’s assignment is to take those keywords and use http://freekeyword.wordtracker.com and Google to check and see how many searches each day a keyword phrase receives, and how much competition each keyword has. Whew! This was tedious work, but I can see how it’s going to pay off and it will give me the data I need to narrow down my seven choices. In fact, I have already sent at least one of my niches off to hang out on the “reserve bench” because there is just far too much competition for that keyword phrase.

So, I’m hanging in there with the 30 Day Challenge. I am learning how to use stumbledupon, I’m muddling through facebook, and twitter is next on my list. I am all caught up with my Day 7 tasks, and I’m eager to see what juicy topics we delve into tomorrow.

In my Freelance Writing practice, I am learning about article marketing. Tonight I listened to a teleseminar by Jeff Herring, aka, ‘The Article Guy.‘ It was all about how to be more productive as an article writer, and how when your article volume increases, so does your web site’s traffic, subscribers, and ultimately profits. So, go check out Jeff’s site. It’s jammed full of great resources and he does these teleseminars each week where he gives away useful content and even a bit of coaching as well.

Now I’m off to write an article from an idea that I plucked from listening to him tonight.

Keep on writing.