If you haven’t tried even one of my previous suggestions, I don’t know what to tell you. We’re on day five and it’s my last chance to find a method of inspiration to help you write your daily blog. You probably don’t want to know that I am not pulling my hair out with this assignment because I have trained my brain to just write what needs to be written. I also am here to tell you that writing gets easier with each little accomplishment, aka published blog entry. And, you have to begin building trust within yourself about your writing abilities and ideas.

Perhaps you have great ideas and lots of content but have some fear about your grammar and spelling. Sorry, that’s not a proper excuse! –aren’t you using MS Word or some other word processor with spelling and grammar checks before cutting and pasting your text into your unique blog entry? Look into your excuses…they are disguising the real reason you aren’t writing with ease.

Here’s tip number 5: Look to yourself first. In writing they always say that you should a.) write about what you know best and b.) write about what you are passionate about. If health is your topic of passion, add your personal health to the equation and see where it lands you. Inspirations for writing are alive and well within you. Let your first lesson in health for yourself be a guidepost for you. Tell people what it is about health knowledge that is the inspiration for writing your daily blog. If it isn’t clear to your readers, it probably isn’t your deepest passion and it probably isn’t the topic you know the most about. If this is the case, revisit your heart and mind and hit the restart button.

Side note: If you have tried one of my techniques for gaining inspiration for writing and it worked, please share your experience in the comment section. Thank you!

Here’s my fourth tip of the week to get you going so put your seatbelt on! Get in your car, truck, RV, bike or on a bus and head towards your health food store. We’re using health as the subject this week and I am taking you to your favorite store that pertains to your topic for inspiration for writing your blog.

You can take your readers on a tour of your health food store that you personally shop in and help them understand your approach to better health. As you go down the aisles, look for different things that would spur you on to write about them. Does a particular product make you healthier than others? Are the ingredients in your favorite product superior than others? What do you know about how your health food store is organized? Can you introduce your reader to one of the workers at your health food store in your neighborhood? My point is that you can share with us, your readers, your personal shopping journey and make us feel like it was our journey to our favorite health food store and perhaps by doing so, we will learn how to better shop for supplements or foods and be healthier.

Fresh Fruits and Vegetables at a Market in Allepey, Kerala, India

On the way to and from your health food store that you buy your stuff from, I guarantee you that you will see and hear many things that will be of interest to your readers. What you think about and buy in your health food store will astound them. What about this: what would your ideal health food store look like? What would the customer service be like? Would the staff be any different? Share your ideas!

If an A to Z list and bibliomancy don’t quite create inspirations for writing, you can always try the YouTube Method for inspiring great blog writing. That’s right! Open up a new browser page and bring up YouTube. Since we are using health as the topic example, if you simply type in that word up comes…half a million plus examples! Now, don’t get overwhelmed, simply refine your search with a single word or short phrase. Let’s try homeopathy for teething. Four video examples came up for review. How easy was that?

Inspiration for writing comes in many forms. Could you write a review of the 4 videos we just saw on homeopathy for teething? What if you had your own experience with this subject and could tell that story or make a video testimony about it. Consider how easy it would be to make a short video and summarize the essence of the video in two short paragraphs? What about a short story using photos and text on the subject of homeopathic remedies for teething babies.

Baby Yokel - Dem aren't no front teeth on dis 4 month old...it's dem little ole homeopathic teething tablets.

Let your experience guide you. YouTube is loaded with videos on health that will get your heart and mind racing. There is enough content on YouTube alone that will take you through a lifetime of writing on the subject of health alone. You can also create a table of information on YouTube videos for health that other people could use as a guide or rating system. What if you reviewed each video in a category so that people could easily access the top ten videos of health? You’d be their hero!

If an A to Z list sounds too predictable –as in people might notice that you are writing alphabetically, you can always mix it up. Who said you have to start with “A” anyways? You really ought to go with the one that makes you passionate and excited to begin and not stop writing. “Take the easy throws”, that’s what my ultimate Frisbee coach always said to us; it was another way of saying “keep it simple”.

The second technique I will share with you to unlock your brain and get you writing again and often is something I call “Bibliomancy”. Bibliomancy is the use of books in divination. Simply open a book, hopefully a book that is on your topic, and start reading the paragraph that catches your eye. Using health as an example, I just so happen to have a copy of “Eat Fat, Lose Fat” by Dr. Mary Enig, PhD and Sally Fallon, President of the Weston A. Price Foundation sitting next to me. I randomly opened it to Chapter 7 on page 134 and it is talking about “Health Recovery”. I read on and find it is very exciting and it is beginning to create multiple inspirations for writing that could easily span a whole month!

Take some notes, then discard your notes so that your inspiration for writing comes from your heart and mind with just the essence of what you learned. The point is to get inspired, not report on what the author of the book you picked up wrote; although, if you do quote from the book, be sure to cite it properly.

Happy blogging!

So you need some inspiration for writing. Who doesn’t?

Well, I have just the thing! This A-Z technique I am about to teach you can carry you through every month since there are 5 blogging days a week (22 to 23 days a month on average) –and 26 letters in the English alphabet. That gives you three or four letters that you can opt out of using, such as Q, X, Y and maybe Z.

Step 1 – Open up a new document in MS Word or whatever word processing software tool you use and make an A-to-Z list.

Save it as, for example, “December2009_AZList.”

Using the premise that you are writing a blog about health, fill in a topic or subject that you know about that starts with the letter “A”.  Continue down the list of letters writing one or two words next to each letter. Here’s a partial list to show you how easy this could be:

A – Vitamin A
B – Vitamin B
C – Cholesterol, the good and bad news, or myths about
D – Vitamin D
E – Eructations…eh, excuse me, I mean burps
F – Freckles and your face
G – Gout
H – Homeopathy, happiness, health, heart, hemoglobin, hair, HIV, halitosis, hormones

Step 2 – Open up your adword tool, such as Google’s and type in a short phase with your first topic, in this example, Vitamin A. The tool will respond with a list of popular search phrases that ought to give you some amazing inspiration for writing on your first topic. Remember to write on topics that have a search volume between 200 and 500. Here’s a sampling of the results Vitamin A gave me.

excessive vitamin A = 480 to 320 (current month and last month respectively)
fruits with Vitamin A = 390 to 320
foods containing vitamin A = 590 to 720 (a bit high but close enough to include in your text)
RDA of vitamin A = unknown to 210 (results are not calculated due to insufficient data and last months report)

Step 3 – Get busy with this latest inspiration for writing a blog entry! Your vitamin A blog entry has practically been written for you at this point…just remember to use one of those keyword phrases in your title, repeat your title and bold it in the body area, and use the keyword phrase in your 250+ word blog entry several times.

Storm Over Antigua, W.I., oil on canvas

Joking aside, oil painting mediums are used to thin oil paint, make blending oil paint easier, make them more spreadable on the canvas, slow or speed up the drying time, create a nice liquid like consistency for painting your signature, glaze a canvas and more. “Medium” is really just the vehicle that holds the color or pigment.

Here’s my favorite recipe for mixing a linseed oil medium that will meet your most basic needs with a couple variations: Mix together in a glass jar and keep sealed with an air tight lid when not in use.

Basic traditional formula: 1 part linseed oil to 1 part turpenine.
To dry faster: 1 part linseed to 2 parts turpentine. (Tip: Use in high humidity situations).
To dry slower: 2 parts linseed oil to 1 part turpentine. (Tip: Use in extremely dry climate).

Substitutions:
If you don’t like the smell of turpentine –an extract from an oily, exotic hardwood tree and extremely traditional in the oil painting medium formula, you can use odorless turpenoid or mineral spirits both of which are petroleum distillates. White spirits are not highly recommended since it can degrade the product over time.

Linseed oil medium tends to have a very slight yellowing effect over time. If you do not wish for this to occur use Poppy oil but keep in mind that it is even slower to dry than linseed oil medium. Walnut Oil is a fine substitute but may tinge your whites a bit yellow over time.

Stand oil can be used as a substitute for linseed and it will be slower to mix and slower to dry, too. Consider mixing twice as much turpentine to it and let it sit for 24-48 hours so that the turpentine can dissolve the stand oil properly before using it. Stand oil medium will help your paint dry without cracking, your paint will be stronger but it can take forever to dry. The reward of patience is patience…

Up Next… “My Opinion on Oil Painting Varnishes”

Conch Shell, oils on canvas

“First, do you know what you are going to paint?”
If the answer is “no” you should not go shopping because there is no way you can buy the most perfect canvas for your first (or next) painting.  Talk about putting the cart before the horse!

The most important aspect to buying a canvas, for oil painting your first picture, is that you understand that the inner vision of your first oil painting is chemically and energetically imprinted on every cell of your body. There exists in the artist’s body a strange and beautiful dynamic tension –that even the artist is totally unaware of until the painting is completed and signed. The best way I can explain this tension is to perhaps coarsely defined it as ”the inner knowing or knowledge of the finished product, which exists in time and space as a completed painting, that the artist has become aware of at a subconscious level.” What I translate this into and tell every art student is this:

“Trust in your initial and heartfelt choice of a canvas size for oil painting your first painting. Let your body tell you when you have the right size picked out. Expect a feeling of happiness or perhaps a sense of relief –a feeling of contentment and peace that the right canvas is before you and you know in your heart, mind and body that your selected image will fit on the canvas.”

When you go to buy a canvas for an oil painting you benefit from having your picture with you in the art supply store. You can hold it up in front of you while you place various canvases on the floor or shelf before you and explore your size options. If nothing grabs you or the shape or size you want is not there go to the next art supply store. When in doubt, do without.

There is only one other rule I remind people about that the really zealous students forget about; In general, the canvas must fit in your car or truck. Other than that, go for it! Get the canvas of your dreams! Your first oil painting might be a masterpiece…you never know! And most of all, don’t be shy that your inner wisdom picked a big canvas for the first painting effort.

I bought a larger truck inpart to tow boats but mostly to accommodate hauling my larger paintings around. What I forgot about was having enough wall space to hang them while they await their new owners. I suppose I could just store them in the back of the truck!

Do you have a “canvas for oil painting” story that other artists would find amusing?

My First Oil Painting - Age 11

For more than ten years I taught beginning oil painting in Cupertino, CA in a community center setting that became a sort of open studio for more advanced painters who wanted to escape Silicon Valley and paint in a quiet setting with like minded folk.

The first lesson always begins with a talk about oil painting art supplies. I reveal what is needed and why…I even delve deep into the differences between water color versus oil painting brushes and use diagrams to help people remember the names of certain brushes. There is a good bit of info I share and then we discuss how to select an image to paint. This is the most important lesson of all. The idea behind this is so critical that if you get it wrong, you will never be a successful painter.

Since this class is about me guiding the students to a completed image on canvas, I ask that each person select a photo or magazine image to work from. The reasons for this are simple:

1. I can’t read minds. If someone has something in their mind’s eye, I can’t see it and help them when they get stuck.
2. I can point out details that they missed. I can hide part of the image to reveal contrast, isolate color, find parallel lines or horizon lines with a ruler on the image and more…
3. Most beginners are looking to relax in a beginning oil painting class, not get stressed out from having to paint a live model or work from a still life before them.
4. If for some reason they finish the class and their painting is still unfinished and they choose to work at home alone, they have the photo or image to work from.

Now that we have established some basics, I’ll give you my number one rule about what to oil paint on your first blank canvas: anything you want as long as it comes from your heart.

I reassure all beginning oil painting students that as long as it comes from the heart they won’t lose their motivation to get past their obstacles when stuck and they will long to complete their inner vision and be persistent.

So, if you are contemplating what to paint whether you are a new, beginning oil painting student or an old hand with the brush, return to this simple rule and you will always find your brush returning to the canvas to finish what you started.

As a beginning oil painting student myself, I picked the Grand Tetons because I had recently been there and loved it. I always found Nature to be my retreat. I was a little put off by my instructors insistence that I do the painting in Raw Umber and Titanium White to learn from, and that’s another blog post!

Next up…”How to Select A Canvas.”

Creative writers are generally at one end of the spectrum while technical writers are at the other. It’s somewhat like using artists and engineers to create a spectrum. It’s not to say that an engineer couldn’t be an artist of any sort, far from it as I have known and taught several engineers how to oil paint, but for the sake of this blog entry, let’s just look at creative writing and how you need it to help your blog be fresh and engaging and perhaps remove some “blog writer’s block”.

Straight out of Wikipedia.org is this creative writing definition:

Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems. Writing for the screen and stage, screenwriting and playwriting respectively, typically have their own programs of study, but fit under the creative writing category as well.

All right, maybe that wasn’t very helpful and I suggest you read the rest of their page as it is loaded with the “dreams and imaginings of youth” and “English Literature departments” and so forth.  The main idea of the above definition is to show how wide a net can be cast on the subject of creative writing. Where do you fit in? I’m definitely fiction and non-fiction, novels, short stories and play- and screenwriting although I have yet to be formally published. (Psssst! I’ll be blogging in the future about my self-publishing experiences).

Even if your blog is technical, creative writing can round out the dry material with juicy comments and you can use humor to lighten the boring material and make you more memorable. After all, people return to blogs that have short stories that are well crafted, engaging –perhaps entertaining and/or contain useful information. (Creative writing can even be done without words by using images only –and that I would call story boarding which could only be created by a mind that has strong creative writing skills and great storytelling abilities. Check out Squidoo for some cool storyboarding if you are looking for something to write about or be inspired by.)

Most people who blog are approaching their website content from the “creative writing blog” standpoint without realizing it. It is important that you become aware of this so that you can constantly seize fresh material with zeal and write new posts with urgency.

If you find you experience writer’s block, do not worry! Just remembering that you are a creative writer is all you need to get you in the spirit of things. Try these 7 tips the next time you get stuck: (Remember to keep your answers short and positive, not sassy and negative)

1.) Read a creative writing definition or two on the web or in a dictionary.
2.) Write down the ways that you are a creative writer.
3.) Write about why you think you are stuck, even if you think it isn’t productive.
4.) Write about the purpose of your blog.
5.) Write about how it feels to have to forgive the reason why you think you are stuck even if this makes you angry. This generally will clear the block.  If you think you can’t do this step, write about how it will feel to be stuck with the feeling of writer’s block forever.
6.) Write this affirmation down and say it out loud as a test of your willingness to forge ahead: “I allow myself to have and enjoy all good things.” (I’ll be curious…did you sigh? Yawn? Feel emotions come up when you said this? That’s the best sign that the block is releasing!)
7.) Remember that “all things exist in time and space” and that the blog entry that you desire already exists and is waiting for you to remember it. Perhaps when you think about this concept, you can simply express gratitude that you know this little known fact and reclaim some peace of mind.

My own creative writing definition is this:

Creative Writing allows me to have permission to write what I feel, what I think, what I want, what I need, what I love or hate; at any time, any place, with or without anyone present –or any thing; and, it is okay to use any words or images in any sentence or paragraph without grammar, spelling, punctuation or writing rules, other mind trips or head games to stop me. I believe I have a gift for creative writing because I have Irish genes in me. I think the storytelling gene is part and parcel to the DNA package. 

All my creative best…

BONUS POINTS: What’s your creative writing definition? –or how do you solve writer’s block?

Once your site submission has been received a DMOZ editor will review your submission for inclusion in the directory. If it gets accepted into the Open Directory –and that may take anywhere from 2 weeks to several months for your site to be listed on partner sites which use the Open Directory data, such as AOL Search, AltaVista, HotBot, Google, Lycos, Netscape Search, etc. –all due to the fact that each of these search engines has their own agenda for checking with DMOZ.

And unless you paid the fee Yahoo! wanted to wring out of you to speed up submission wait time, you better take a chill pill or two. Their entry page warns you that their submission page is on “overwhelm”. Since I’m a bit on the cheapside, I rolled the dice and crossed my left fingers while clicking the submit button with my right hand without paying. (I was submitting my TallForeheads site to their Health Directory: Genetic Diseases and suggesting they make a category for Down syndrome). Only time will tell if they accepted me or not. If they did, I can be found at Su Casa’s in La Jolla at happy hour with a celebatory Margarita in hand. If they didn’t, and I am having some blog-shock from my website for children with Down syndrome being rejected by Yahoo (or DMOZ) I still might be found at Su Casa but I’ll be rethinking my online marketing strategy.