Saturday Stumblings - Randomness from the Writerly World

Happy Saturday folks! It's a gorgeous day here in my part of the world. As I rub the sleep from my eyes and chug down a pot, ok two pots of coffee, I send up a silent plea to let me stay upright and not actually trip over my own feet.

I'm in the process of gathering and jotting down ideas for future posts for this blog. I let it languish long enough and want this blog to be fun as well as more interactive for the readers. Over the weekend I'll be busy typing away. I hope to have a weekly feature or two that y'all can look forward to.

In case you haven't heard, big changes are going on in the writerly world this week. Bright Hub has just announced the end of their writer program, summarily dumping writers and editors alike except for a very few. The worst part is along with this announcement, they informed writers they'll no longer receive page view payments as of December 15th. I know quite a few writers who wrote for them and think BH hit everyone with a low blow. The fact they *might* return some articles while hanging onto others and not pay for them is lower than low! In the words of a fellow writer....they pulled a Mahalo on their writers. Way to go BH, NOT!

Yahoo! formerly Associated Content (AC), formerly Yahoo! Contributor's Network (YCN) has now officially become Yahoo! Voices. *phew* Enough with the name changes people. With the change in name, they retired AC forever. I for one will miss that. I think it's safe to say I won't be the only one who will always think of it as AC. There are new submission guidelines in place too, but, at least to me, the changes aren't really anything "new." What I do disagree with is retroactively applying new guidelines to content written under totally different rules. Some writers have literally thousands of articles published. There's no freaking way they're going to go through all of them with an eye on whether or not it meets new guidelines. I think it's crap.

Last bit of news, which really isn't news at all, is about DS, or DMS, Demand Studios, Demand Media, whatever they want to call themselves. They pulled the rug out from under many writers and those who worked in the titling department were blindsided with an email informing them they no longer had a job doing titling work. Fellow writer Amy Brantley over at Freelancin' for $1000 a Week made her thoughts on this move by DS. Read all about it here.

Some writers have no titles or they see titles but don't feel qualified to write them. I'm with that group myself. The "home" titles I won't even attempt to touch. I won't be responsible for the death and dismemberment sure to ensue telling someone how to build a barn or tractor. :-p

Oh....just one more site I got word about was Wisegeek. They're also not going to produce anymore, or very little, content and are letting the majority of writers go as well.

Take a deep breath everyone and let's evaluate where we're at and where there is left to go. We are writers, hear us roar! We'll survive.

Freelance Friday: Ode to M

It's Freelance Friday once again. This week is Ode to the letter M for the A to Z Challenge. We have movies, making things, medication and an mmmm mmmm good snack.

Our first freelancer is Rodney Southern. You'll never meet a more down to earth guy, who's devoted to his wife and twin daughters. His writing takes us into the realm of horror movies. He tells us how to set the mood for a scary night in Setting the Mood for the Perfect Horror Movie Night. If you like your horror without gore, then check out the Top Five Horror Movies Without Gore. He then takes some of us down memory lane with Five Classic Monsters That Need a Remake. I like his ideas, I think you will too.

Rodney Southern has been with YCN since July 2007, writing on topics such as sports, parenting, news, pets and his faith. Check out his blog, Rodney Southern Says full of real life stories and humor.

Next up in our talented freelancer department is Linda Ann Nickerson. Her contribution to "M" day begins with Menstrual Migraines: 5 Ways I Managed the Monthly Mayhem. If you are someone who experiences them or love someone who does, give Linda's tips a try. From a woman who knows her horses, read about the proper way to mount these wonderful beasts in 10 Steps to Mounting a Horse from the Ground.  I'm glad to know I did all the right things when mounting my horse oh so long ago. Finally, control the drooling, she gives us Make Milky Way Brownies from Leftover Halloween Candy. It combines my two favorite things, brownies and Milky Way candy bars. I'm almost drooling at the thought of chomping down on one...or a few of these.

Linda joined up at YCN in March 2007 and has written on such subjects as news, horses, saving money, pets and seasonal content just for starters. Check out her blogs, Nickers and Ink, The Mane Point, Practically at Home for a little bit of everything starting with poetry, humor, horses and home and garden.

Moving along, we stop by Marie Anne St. Jean's  writings and found, Make Your Own Beads from Household Items. Some I've seen and done myself, others I have got to try. Buttons, buttons everywhere and not one on a shirt. Check out Easy Craft and Decorating Ideas to Make with Buttons. Just in time for Easter, find out what to do with all those hard boiled eggs when the holiday is over in What to Make from Leftover Hard Boiled Eggs After Easter. June 2008

Marie Anne, also known by those who love her as MA. She's a multi-faceted, talented woman who don't take stuff from nobody. She began writing at YCN in June 2008. For some fun reading, check out  Marie Anne's Missives, Write, Wrong or Indifferent, In the Garden With Sow-n-Sow and Every Day Crochet. She also has an Etsy store, MACrochet, where she sells her crocheted baby blankets and dishcloths.

Last on our list today is Lynn Pritchett. Understand how medications treat migraines and their effectiveness in treating them in, Top 5 Migraine Treatments and Medications. If it's closing in on prom time like it is here in Florida, this may save you a boatload of money getting your kids to prom in style. Give Save Money on Prom Expenses: Prom Dress to Limo. A terrific personal story about a mistake turned into a triumph with a little help from friends is found in Best Mistake I Ever Made.

Lynn joined YCN in June 2006. She was among the first I met when I joined YCN, which was AC back then. She's absolutely the sweetest person ever and I love her to death! Give her profile a glance and you'll see topics on health and wellness, places to go, music and a bit of everything else.

Inventing Your Writerly Self: Who Are You?

I didn't think much about a writerly self growing up, heck, didn't really thing about "serious" writing till a couple of years ago. See, I've always loved to write...and read, a lot. My whole life has been spent in pursuit of language and words, putting them together to create a tapestry. I wove words together to help heal wounds, as tributes, to be silly, or just dream. The picture upon the tapestry reflected parts of me.

Two years ago when I stumbled across AC, I saw a chance to expand my tapestry. It also made me think about my writerly self. Who was I? Some people have a niche, some are generalists, others do both. Inventing your writerly self is a process you may or may not give any thought to at all. I'm a thinker, a planner, an organizer, so in typical fashion, inventing my writerly self required some thought.

I began with health related content because of the chronic pain condition I have. That led to my next favorite subject of home remedies and other health problems. I wanted to be more than a health writer, so I did some parenting type articles. Being a mom to four kids and one grandson helps me come up with ideas for those.

I love crafting, which led to crafting articles. Sometimes crafting and decorating cross, so I ended up with multi-dimensional articles. I have one pagan article, but have plans for more one day, as well as genealogy subjects for YCN. I have two fur babies who own me and let them each write their own article and the one I wrote on Maine Coons. Over at DS, I stuck with the health articles, then started writing gardening type, with a few craft articles thrown in and a few genealogy too.

At this point, two years later, I'm still inventing my writerly self. I'm a crafter, genealogist, gardner (only virtually...I murder anything that grows in real life. I did garden with my grandma growing up, just don't do it on my own.), health, parent, pet owner and proud pagan. I am a generalist who can write to specific niche topics with ease due to my life experiences.

There's other dimensions to me as a writer that I have yet to explore, but it's not as if I have any limits on what I can do either. I've seen people ask many times about how to get article ideas or rely on assignments at YCN in order to write something. Everyone should take some time to find out what they like to do to begin inventing their writerly selves. Go on, getting crackin' and make a list! I bet you'll start coming up with ideas for articles before you get too far.

Freelance Friday

It's that time of the week again...Freelance Friday! Sorry it's so late, things got really hectic here all of a sudden. I bet you thought I forgot didn't ya? Not to worry, this week's four awesome, writerly type people cover a wide variety of topics in their writing, not to mention they're really awesome people too.

Kristen Wilkerson

Kristen is uber nice as well as being a great writer. I hope the kids she has taught, is teaching, realize how lucky they are to have her as a teacher. On the writerly side of life, Kristen joined YCN in April of 2009. Kristen's YCN profile lists topics such as education, technology related to teaching, interesting places to check out such as battle fields, exhibitions and vacations, and beautiful pictures to look at.

Over at Examiner she is the America in Photos Examiner and the Lansing Interfaith Examiner. I love her photos and for people like me who can't get out there to see the world, Kristen lets me travel through her photos. You won't want to stop looking at them once you get started, so set aside time to take a look at the pictures.

As the Lansing Interfaith Examiner, she covers holidays, helping the homeless and churches from just about every faith including Christian, Lutheran, Catholic and even New Age beliefs.

At Teacher Tidbits, Kristen is one of the educational experts, along with other writers from YCN/AC that give lots of teaching tips and ideas for teachers of all grades.

Juniper Russo is a single mom taking on the writing world. She's funny, smart and nice, if you stay on her good side that is. ;-) She joined the YCN crew in September 2008. Take a cruise through Juniper's profile and you'll find topics that include parenting, natural remedies and products, pregnancy, animals, and more you don't want to miss.

Outside of YCN, she keeps busy with three interesting and fun sites. My favorite is A Family Like Yours. It's a great place for kids to learn about wildlife, the structure of their families, the diversity among them and how similar our families can be compared to that of wildlife. I wish my kids were still little. If your thing is aquarium fish, check out Fish Care Profiles; Care guides for popular freshwater and saltwater aquarium fish.

I'm a sucker for a legend, so this last site of Juniper's is one I'll be visiting again to keep reading because I'm completely intrigued.  On The Truth About the Noccalula Falls Legend site, she's dug deep and lays out what's truth and what's fiction surround the legend of a Cherokee woman. Being part Cherokee, I gotta know!

Donna Thacker is an amazingly strong woman, though she may not feel like one, nor even think of herself that way. She's down to earth and always there with a kind word. Pop on over to Donna's profile, she joined YCN in January 2008, to read about natural remedies, cars, motorcycles, pets and more. You can also find her over at Helium writing about pets & animals, home & garden, and little bit of everything listed in her creative writing articles.

Our last writer of the day is Rose Kitchen, who never slows down and makes me tired just reading about how much she does. She inspires a lot of people to live and write to the fullest. Rose was one of the first people I met at YCN. She joined the site in December 2007. Listed on Rose's YCN profile are hundreds of articles on health, Ohio sports content, education and much more. I love reading her health articles because she makes them easy to understand instead of slapping you with medicalese. That's rare coming from a LPN heading for a Registered Nursing degree. I promise you'll love her articles.

Take a gander at her Bright Hub profile packed with articles covering health, PC gaming, education and other fun subjects. You won't regret it!

Saturday Stumblings - Randomness From the Writerly World

I'm stumbling around this Saturday afternoon not because of a hangover from drinking too much, but because I haven't had my coffee! That's right, you might want to back away slowly before running as if the hounds are on your heels. Oh wait, come back here. I promise not to bite. I'd like you to read these words I'm pouring onto the virtual page before you run.

Saturday is good for stumbles and for lots of randomness from the writerly world in general. It's not the whole writerly world of course, just my little section of it. It's ok, I'll try not to unleash too much craziness just because I haven't had my coffee yet. Let's get to the randomness.

YCN/AC is torturing us all by making us wait until April 1st before notifying the...who knows how many writers, if they managed to get accepted into one or more of the subcategories they applied to. I had just been accepted into the Featured Contributor program, received my very first assignments and WHAM! Two weeks later they yank it away laughing their silly heads off as I sobbed at the unfairness of it all. Alright, maybe that's a bit dramatic, but still. *whines a little* I can only hope the new program is better and will equal more money. One of my writerly goals this year is to become less dependent on DS, not more so.

Speaking of DS, certain categories it appears got a raise. I write articles for the eHow Home and Garden section only and the value of my titles went up. I feared it was a mistake and would be yanked away, but here it is a week, a little more?, and nope, still there. That kind of, sort of, makes up for what YCN did to me. Even though it's a little more money, I still want to make enough money outside DS to shore up the bottom line.

Did someone say bottom? Oh stop it, I'm not going to talk about butts on my blog. Well, I might talk about butts only as they pertain to freelance writers. For instance, we all have one. Being a freelance writer means said butts really get a good work out, or rather lack of a workout. I better stop now. Save that for another post on freelance writers, exercise or lack thereof. What was my original point? *thinks* Bottom....bottom of the barrel, no. Bottom of the tub of butter, no. Ah well, I focused on butts and forgot what I was going to write. So goes my total spastic muse this morning.

I hope this flow of words flows right through the rest of the day. I'd like to get out of this week of hell and non-productiveness. I'm tired of trying to pull words out of my head that aren't there. My muse needs to quit goofing off and get back to work. I know several writerly people whose muse's have also taken off or are on drugs that need to straighten up so we can get back to what we do best....write!

Freelance Friday

I was working on some articles earlier and pondering what I'd do for today's blog post. Inspiration struck as I was commenting in a group on Facebook. Gotta love ideas that strike out of the blue like that. So, Freelance Friday is born!

Each Friday I'll choose four fellow writers and highlight their blogs and profiles on different sites. You may or may not already know them. If you don't, you'll find some new reading material and decide to follow their work and/or blogs. If you know someone, or you yourself, who wants to be featured, send me an email, subject line: Freelance Friday to kbfreelancing@yahoo.com. Include links to writing profiles around the web and blogs. Without further ado, let's me today's fantastic freelancers.

First up is John Myers. He joined the Yahoo! Contributor Network/Associated Content in June 2007. John's YCN profile is filled with articles on music, recipes, honest, heartfelt stories about his life and those of his students, as well as a story series, The Misadventures of Johnny Driver, which debuted in August 2009 and now has it's own site, The Misadventures of Johnny Driver blog, and much more. He never fails to entertain. John has a blog, John's World, detailing the happenings in his life personal and writing wise, along with the ever present music in his song for the day posts. You can also find his work on Examiner as the Long Island Gay Issues Examiner and the Long Island City Guide Examiner. I'm sure you'll come to love John as a writer and as a person as much as I do.

Next up is Langley Cornwell. Langley is also a YCN/AC writer who joined about the same time I did, March 2009. On Langley's YCN profile you'll find content related to health, pets, news, local and many more informative articles to read. Visit her List My 5 profile for a variety of informative and not so serious subjects such as Ways to Recognize a Leprechaun along with quotes, music and food. Stop by her brand new blog Langley Writes to get to know the person behind the words.

Sherri Thornhill is an all around nice person as well as being a great writer. According to Sherri's YCN profile she's a retired police officer and joined the site in April 2009. From tattoos, to Texas happenings, opinion, news and music, she keeps us entertained and informed. Sherri Thornhill Freelance is her new site, the go to place if you'd like to hire her for projects. Sherri is also found on Examiner as the Kaufman County Crime Examiner and the Generation X Examiner. If you haven't given her articles a read, what are you waiting for?

Last, but certainly not least is Saoirse O'Mara. I met her on Facebook and she is a very funny, smart woman. She wandered onto a post of mine one night to find herself caught in the middle of a stuffed animal fight, which she gleefully joined in on after I lobbed the first stuffie at her as she laughed on the sidelines. Check out Saoirse's profile over at Bright Hub where she writes on topics such as language, health, gaming, business, storage solutions and much more. Her Language Love blog is entertaining as well as informative. I enjoy learning new things everyday. Saoirse mixes humor in her writing life blog, at Saoirse's Crazy World. Pay a visit to her Cafe Press store Poetry of Dreams to find beautiful, scenic pictures on mugs, mouse pads, journals, magnets and other merchandise.

There you have it for today folks. Four brilliantly talented writers that I'm glad to know.

Motivated Monday

Monday, the day of the week everyone hates the most. It doesn't matter if your job is inside or outside the house. Monday just seems to creep in determined to start things off on the wrong foot and leave you looking something like this....

Singer cat, flaivoloka/sxc.hu

I know, it's a really cute picture and that alone should be sufficiently motivating. I need more motivation besides a cute kitty though, so let's kick up the writerly motivation machine with some articles by fellow writers on keeping up motivation while writing and a few other hints and tips that might help.

Try using Lyn Lomasi's suggestion of goal lists to stay motivated. In Using Goal Lists to Stay on Task in Freelance Writing, she tells us the type of goal lists and the best place to keep them so they're most effective at keeping our Monday motivation going.

Another by Lyn, Freelance Writing Tips: Maximize Productivity and Inspiration Through Timing, she gives us tips for motivating ourselves through those times when the muse deserts us and we can't seem to get any words typed onto virtual paper.

Jaipi Sixbear shares her wisdom in Online Article Writers Tips - Exit the Pity Party. When your day just seems to be a big ball of, "I wanna rip my hair out and scream," (doesn't this sound just like Monday?) find out ways to move your writerly behind and get producing.

Another great article by Jaipi, Online Article Writers Tips - Share Your Goals, helps all us writerly types swing our focus out of the singular bubble we are in. Reach out to one or more people and find some motivation in sharing your goals to keep you going through the Monday blahs.

If you, or someone you know, has written articles on how to stay motivated as a writer, drop me a line at kbfreelancing@yahoo.com, subject line Motivated Monday Articles. I'll hang on to them for use in future Motivated Monday blog postings.