Day 3/5: Inspirations for writing your daily blog
Inspirations for Writing Your Daily Blog
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!
Day 2/5: Inspirations for writing your daily blog
Inspirations for Writing Your Daily Blog
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!
- “Eat Fat, Lose Fat” by Dr. Mary Enig, PhD and Sally Fallon
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!
Day 1/5: Inspirations for writing your daily blog
Inspiration For Writing Your Daily Blog
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: Read more
12/12/09 – A crash course in social media network marketing and more
Just a quick heads up since the event is two days away. I am loving what I am learning from Scott Magers who is one of the founders of both PitchIn.com and iDuplicate.com –both of which will be launching in Q1 of 2010. Well…all this slightly cynical girl from Silicon Valley, with a background in traditional marketing, can say is “wow, wow, wow!!!”
Believe me, their credibility is quite high. I’ve personally met half of the people presenting and am looking forward to hearing from the others. These people have proved their success on the web ($600M in online sales in 7 years).
It’s really been an extremely relevant, highly informative and practical undertaking for today’s market. Personally, I am using their info to power blog on 2 sites and plan to add two more for my art work and another for travel and food stuff. My webstats are climbing dramatically on this recently launched site and I haven’t even told anyone about this –just as a test in obscurity and using their success formula. My weekly stats show that I have surpassed my previous month, and it can only get better once I get through my really long checklist of things I need to do to build my subscriber base. I can’t wait! This has been the “shot in the arm” I have been hoping for in my career. I’ll confess, things were getting a bit dull.
If you don’t have a clue about which way to turn in today’s online marketspace, or need to optimize your web presence, or want to start from scratch with today’s hottest know how, this special one day Internet money-making training in Irvine on 12/12/09 will put you in power mode. This is an excellent crash course in social media marketing (using a website with blog+Facebook+Twitter+dozens more social sites+Search Engine Optimization help+how to use affiliate marketers to help you sell your biz: products and services) for today’s business professional. Reinvent yourself!
Please feel free to forward this to people you think might be interested in improving their business presence on the web or learning how to get a website up the right way for todays market.
Feel free to ask me any questions you might have in the comment section.
Hope to see you there!
Linen canvas versus cotton canvas for oil painting
Canvas for oil paints comes in three different fabrics: linen duck, cotton duck and cotton+synthethic blend duck canvas. All are generally primed with a whiteacrylic gesso which is fine for oil paints since it follows the rule of “fat over lean” –acrylic gesso is lean. (More on this in another post).
If you want to create gallery quality work, linen canvas, per the traditionalists, is the way to go. The most superior quality linen canvas comes out of Belgium where it has been cultivated specifically for the art market. Linen duck canvas is made from the flax plant which has been woven into fabric. These fibers are long in nature and tend to have a stronger tensile strength to them than the shorter cotton fibers. Linen can be twisted into a fine, tight strand and woven into a canvas duck that is extremely durable and fine textured. The finer the linen, the finer the texture of linen canvas and the more expensive. However, linen, with its natural slubs is often sought after for its texture in a painting and a rough fabric texture is often a desirable trait in a canvas.
Linen canvas is somewhat difficult to stretch because it doesn’t yield to the stretcher bars the way canvas does. Nature imbued this fiber with some interesting characteristics: it is more resilient to moisture because of inherent oils –yet primes easily; handles contractions due to hot and cold atmosphere changes; and is resistant to various types of decay. The stiffness of the fabric is what makes it desirable as a painting support and its durability –or longevity over the years excites art collectors.
Linen canvases are often hand oiled or painted with a lead based oil paint as a primer to create a super smooth finish for Realism-style portrait work. This alone can raise the price.
Cotton duck canvas, on the other hand, is made from cotton fibers which are shorter than linen and come from, surprise! the cotton plant. Cotton can be woven to any degree of fineness, but it will always be less expensive than linen due to its availability, ease of growing, harvesting and manufacturing. Also, cotton reaches its limit when it comes to larger paintings: it can’t support the weight of itself and the paint combined. This is where the competition shines. Cotton canvas can be made be just as durable as linen and go the distance, so don’t feel bad if the price of linen makes it a bit more cost prohibitive. Cotton is just fine for all your painting needs until you reach canvas sizes exceeding 6′ in either direction. Heavy cotton duck canvas can be fine for larger size canvases, but consult with the experts to make sure that it won’t fail you on the first day of your art show!
