Category: General Topics

8 Things to Do Before Publishing Your Next Blog Post

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Below are some great links from This Mama Learns Blog to help us become better bloggers! I discovered her on Pinterest yesterday and her blog is super cute! I love the way she has branded her colors and incorporated her images all professional and fun looking. Below are articles I found helpful. Enjoy:

8 Things to Do Before Publishing Your Next Blog Post

You’re running behind on your newly acquired content schedule.

You dash out the last few lines of your next post in a flurry of activity, half an hour after you should have been in bed.

Then you hit Publish.

*yawn* Time for bed.

Okay, you know there are a few things you probably should’ve done first, but you can do it later right?

Umm…

What just happened here? This hypothetical blogger (ok, ok… it was me), just put an arbitrary schedule before producing quality content.

Not cool.

Keep Reading http://thismamalearns.com/8-things-to-do-before-publishing-your-next-blog-post?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=SocialWarfare

5 Secrets to Help You Look Like A Pro Blogger (even if you only started, like, yesterday)

No one likes looking like they were born yesterday, right? First impressions count, so when people visit your blog, you want to have your best foot forward.

I made my first blog in 2011. It was about tween fashion (it seemed like a good idea at the time), it was eyes-bleedingly cyan and I think I used Comic Sans. Sounds like a candidate for ugliest website of the year!

Luckily, times have changed and the overall standard of new blogs has greatly improved.

But there are still a few mistakes that new bloggers make that give themselves away. Here are 5 things you can implement on your blog right now to make you look like a pro.

Keep Reading http://thismamalearns.com/how-to-look-pro-blogger

How to Launch Your Blog with a Bang

Ever launched a blog expecting to make a big splash but… nothing happened?

You were sending post after post out into the ether. No readers (not even your mom), no comments, no shares.  Why?

It wasn’t that your content wasn’t good.

And it wasn’t that you weren’t blogging frequently enough.  You were working your fingers to bone every day getting out another post.

Maybe you were even employing a bit of SEO and churning out awkward blog headlines like How to choosing a domain name (did I do that? oops!)

It doesn’t have to be this way. You can launch a successful blog and have readers from day 1.

Keep Reading http://thismamalearns.com/launch-your-blog-with-a-bang

Beginner Bloggers Guide to Networking

Are you holding back from networking with other bloggers because you feel like your blog just isn’t ‘good enough’?

Have you joined a few Facebook groups (like I told you about in this post), but been too shy to speak up because you’re afraid you’ll get laughed at for not knowing the secret blogger handshake?

Do you read blogging tips about how to get more traffic and think YEAH I need to do that, but secretly you’re terrified to have people actually read your blog?

Let me let you in on a little secret:

I’ve SO been there.

Keep Reading http://thismamalearns.com/beginner-bloggers-guide-to-networking

8 Ways to Avoid Stress

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  1. Take some time to sit quietly and appreciate everything that you have. Happiness is not in having more physical wealth but having less wants.
  1. Stop trying to change things that are beyond your control. Sometimes stress comes from not being able to alter those things outside of our control but trying to anyway. Stop that. You’re just going against the grain and you’re not going to win.
  1. Forgive yourself. If you make a mistake, get back up and forgive the less mature version of yourself who made it. Peace cannot exist around you if it does not first exist inside of you.
  1. Forgive those who hurt you the most. After you forgive yourself, forgive others. Instead of seeing what they did to cause you hurt, try and see them through the eyes of mercy. Sometimes people have been hurt and they pass that hurt on, try to see that. Look at them with the eyes of love instead of revenge. Excess pain is just baggage and in the words of Toni Morrison, “If you wanna fly, you gotta give up the stuff that weighs you down.”
  1. Learn to create balance in your life. Being busy is no excuse for surrendering your peace. We like to use the “I’m too busy” for everything but it just ends up being an excuse. Take breaks. Go on vacation. Date. Take some time to actually smell the flowers. In the words of Lena Horne, “It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.”
  1. In times of pressure, seek to be calm and centered instead of frustrated and angry. The calm person is the most productive person and makes the best decisions. Quick story. When I returned from a road trip last month, I thought I lost my USB or better yet, left it in Chicago, a 13 hour away drive from home. Upon realization that I’d lost the drive with all of my files and manuscript revisions (which I’d unwisely not saved anywhere else), I was actually too tired to worry about it! I literally put my worrying off. My exact words were, “I don’t have the energy to worry about this right now.” I didn’t even look for the drive. A few days went by and I knew that at some point I had to try and find it. Those things on that drive were very important after all. On the third or fourth day, I sat down in my chair and searched the place I last remembered it and found it. Just like that. By choosing to be calm and not worry instead of frenzied and out of control, I was capable of thinking clearly about where I’d last had it. I also learned a very valuable lesson. In remembering everything has a purpose, I understood that I should never save important files in just one spot.
  1. Don’t compare yourself to others, it’s the easiest way to fail. It is also the easiest way to cling to your fears. Sometimes you can be so sure something is for you until you look at how others are doing it, saying it, or have done or said it. Own what you know to be true and perfect being you. People don’t want to see how you can do something the same as others are doing it. They wanna see how you can do it differently.
  1. Speaking of comparisons, be true to yourself. Stop worrying about being accepted by others. This too can cause unnecessary stresses. Don’t dilute your light for something superficial. The light bulb may shine bright now, but it is in no comparison to the sun.

Meet a Book Reviewer

Wow, I’m truly honored! Special thank you to Linda for introducing me!

Linda G. Hill's avatar

I’m writing this quick post to introduce you all to Yecheilyah Ysrayl, a book review blogger, author, and all-round nice gal here on WordPress. It’s not just because she reviewed my novelette, All Good Stories, and gave it 5 stars, I’m writing about her because she gives great (and helpful) reviews. In a market so full, it’s hard to choose what to read, isn’t it? We really need reviews these days that go beyond the minimalistic, “I liked it,” to know what we’re investing our money in. Because money doesn’t grow on trees. Neither do books anymore, for that matter. (Sorry for the cheesy joke, I’ve been watching too much Stephen Colbert.)

If you’d like to check out Yecheilyah’s reviews, you can find a great example by clicking here. (Spoiler alert: it’s mine. It’s a really fantastic review!)

And even more importantly, if you’d like her to review YOUR…

View original post 51 more words

7 Tips for Making Time to Write

Great tips on making time to write.

Yesterday, even though I was tuned into the blog, I didn’t do much of anything outside of revise my novel! I’m excited at how the true story is unfolding (the one you don’t usually see under the first draft) and felt really accomplished afterward. I was busy, sure, and there were a million and one things to do but I made time.

The point: The greatest investment you can make with your writing is not money, it is time.

Your Peace

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The only time anything negative possesses power over us is when we weaken ourselves. Indeed, darkness will be there lets face it, just as the sun rises it also sets. Still, light prevails and if you’re looking closely enough you’ll see that sometimes growth comes from knowing tomorrow’s peace begins with today. Everything is energy and as positive energy is higher than negative energy, a stress-free life begins with operating outside of that negative space. As such one can then use and control the positivity and live with daily productivity, growth and advancement. To control energy. It means that you have the power to change everything around you, for every situation that wishes to show its face today also has a solution. If we’re willing to look close enough we can see the purpose. Yes, its hard but beneath the surface is a purpose and that purpose is to cultivate something in you. If we choose to look close enough, we can discover what that is. If we choose to endure. If we choose light even when it’s lonely. Even when it’s difficult, and even when it’s painful. If we choose to command our peace to be still.

From Grammarly to WordRake: A Review of 6 Automatic Editing Tools

Writers check it out! Excellent editing tools for those self edits. Use them to edit your manuscript or blog post. But, as the article states,remember:

“An automatic editing tool doesn’t replace a human editor. Because language rules and elements of a good story can be so flexible, human eyes will always be superior to the rigidity of automatic tools.”

Why Black Girls Need Diverse Books

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“Storylines with Black female main characters’ supplement in-school experiences where the stories of Black people are often misrepresented or excluded from the classroom curriculum. Stories with Black main characters fill in where classroom curricula leave gaps. In addition, narratives with people of color at the forefront introduce readers to new vocabulary words, customs, people, and places that they otherwise might not have learned about.”

http://educationpost.org/why-black-girls-need-diverse-books/

‘Queen Sugar’ Author Wants More Diverse Stories About Black People

“As I started to write Queen Sugar, especially in the late ‘90s … all of these great diverse stories that I had grown up on and was inspired by, started to disappear. All of a sudden you saw a very, very narrow portrayal of the African-American experience on the bookshelf. All of a sudden the only thing you saw were titles like The Bitch Is Back or Stackin’ Paper, and there’d be a picture of a woman, scantily clad, on the hood of a car.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/queen-sugar-natalie-baszile-interview_us_57d337dfe4b06a74c9f4e712

Popular Indie Book Publisher Launches Campaign to Prove That Diversity in Publishing Matters

Rosarium Publishing was founded in 2013 by scifi/fiction writer Bill Campbell with one goal: to bring true diversity to publishing so that the high-quality books and comics the company produces actually reflect the fascinating, multicultural world we truly live in today.

https://www.newswire.com/news/popular-indie-book-publisher-launches-campaign-to-prove-that-diversity-9870669

50 Books That Every African American Should Read

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/03/50-books-that-every-african-american-should-read_n_1647614.html

“Huffington Post BlackVoices has compiled an extensive book list, featuring a range of genres including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, science-fiction and the autobiography.

From Ralph Ellison to Jesmyn Ward, many of the authors have been heralded with national awards in the United States. Others, such as Zadie Smith and Tsitsi Dangarembga, have broken literary ground abroad in countries such as Zimbabwe, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Uganda. Stemming back to 1789 with Olaudah Equiano’s “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano,” these 50 titles have heavily contributed to contemporary narratives about the black experience across the globe.”

13 Books That Every African-American Should Have in His/Her Home

“Oftentimes, rich literary treasures are not associated with writers of African descent, but objective evidence has shown and continues to denote that some of the world’s finest books have evolved from the minds of black authors. Whether fiction or non-fiction, these writings have been important not only as poignant reflections of reality, but also as interesting opportunities for cross-cultural understanding.”

http://madamenoire.com/108532/13-important-african-american-books-that-you-should-have-in-your-home/