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This is a personal Challenge to write 500 words a day. Join me on my Journey. |
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The Challenge: Write 500 words every day for a year.
Can I do it? Join me and find out! |
30 - Day Blogging Challenge (June/Unofficial Month) Today's prompt by sunnystarr ' 'Springtime Fever' Ahh, spring has come again and this year I have decided to wage war. My brother moved away two years ago and prior to his leaving he used to keep my front and back yards in order. Over the past two years I'm very sad to say, Nature in all her fanged glory has done her best to retake my little plot of land, and I've done my best to ignore the entire mess. I'm not kidding when I tell you we had weeds taller than people in our back yard last year. This spring, an army of dandy lions bred wildly in my front yard, leaving a mini ocean of sun-shine bobbing heads to mock me every time I glanced out the window. So, after two long years of ignoring the problem, I have taken up arms (and shovels, rakes, lawn seed, and gloves) and have declared my yard once again a part of civilization! Okay'so my mom did most of the fighting. By the time I got her to help, the grass was easily 10 inches long, and it took her going over the same line twice each to cut it all down. However, I did cut down all the little trees along one fence that had grown up between the chain links courtesy of the evil minded squirrels who keep planting them. I know this is a subject that has been talked about in my blog before, but you have to understand. At heart, I am a house creature. My perfect world involves year round air/heating and is far removed from outside and all the scary stuff that lives there. I know it sounds silly, but that's just what I grew into. I'm like a reverse hermit. My passion is lying on my couch with my laptop writing, and not going anywhere where I might be attacked by spiders, ants, bees or wasps. Not kidding, I am terrified of bees. Yes, I know that in most cases they won't hurt me. But this isn't a logic thing, it's a phobia thing. No matter how many times I am told, or tell my self they won't hurt me, it doesn't matter. It's the same sort of thing people afraid of heights feel when they are in a perfectly safe place, but it happens to be far off the ground. For reasons I can't explain, bees like to try and land on me. This has happened more than once, and I end up running away and looking quite silly doing so. I am an adult. Picture this: work is finished and you head out of the building to get into your car and leave when you see a fully grown woman running in circles around her car because a bee is chasing her. Yep ' that's me. The evil thing chased me around my car three times while my coworkers watched and laughed. Well this blog turned out more rant than talking about the prompt, but in conclusion 'Springtime fever' means batten down the hatches and hide from the hoard of newly born insects that have come into existence just to plague me. Word Count: 537 |
30 - Day Blogging Challenge (June/Unofficial Month) Prompt by Fivesixer   - What are the unspoken rules of blogging. I think this is a question that I will tackle from a different angle. I'm new to blogging. Starting last month, I took up a challenge posted on another site to write 500 words a day in a blog. Prior to taking up that challenge, I'd never blogged before, nor had I read anyone else's blog. So, in truth, I'm flying blind. I barely know the written rules of blogging, let alone the unwritten ones. By posing this question, you've gotten me thinking. I'm like a new chief who's never gone to culinary school and doesn't know all those little things like never pair fish with cheese. I'm sure I'll make some grand fops, but there's also a chance I'll stumble onto something great simply because I had no idea that 'Oh my gosh! That just isn't done in blogs!' This is my first experience with a blogging contest, and I'm sure I will learn through exposure to others blogs, but for now I'm flying blind and trusting everything will work out.  The above is for my 30-Day blog, the rest is for my self-imposed goal of writing 500 words a day in my blog. Feel free to ignore the following rambling. Today is another dentist day. *Cringes* That'll be at 3:30. I'm done working for the day, so once I've finished this blog I'm headed outside to begin my yard work. Have any of you tried the contest "Invalid Item"  ? It is opening up again on June 15. If you want a real challenge when it comes to character development, I offer you this. I've participated twice now, and both times were both an amazing and draining experience. Unlike many participants, I develop a brand new character, along with an entirely new plot line, and then throw them into the fire of the Gauntlet to be forged. The results have been pretty good, and sometimes groan worthy. Some things worked well, and others bombed. In fact, the ending of my first attempt lost me the prize! I gave it too violent a twist, but the rabbit I chased into the woods was still fun, and I didn't mind the loss because I went with the end I wanted to write instead of the one that probably would have gotten me in. Alright, today I'm going to begin building my character. I need to find a good character sheet, dust it off, and give birth to someone new. While I'm out in the yard, I'll be thinking of him. I've decided on male, and I think his first name will be Austin. I'm leaning towards a young teen in a high school setting. I think the plot will revolve around him realizing he's gay and how that affects his life. So far, that's all I've got. Those little tidbits were decided last night while I was trying to fall asleep, like almost all my best writing ideas do. I don't know how many brilliant ideas have been lost by my not getting up to write them down. But, if I got up every time, I would never get any sleep! Sigh, I wonder why they can't just wait until I'm in front of the laptop to appear? Word Count: 557 |
30 - Day Blogging Challenge (June/Unofficial Month) Prompt by Prosperous Snow celebrating  ' Dare day! Considering the name of my blog, it is only fitting that I accept the Dare for "The Challenge" . Looking through the different challenges for each day, I'm rather excited. They will get me around writing.com, and will keep me involved with all the different things going on. Plus, I could get another MB!  The above is for my 30-Day blog, the rest is for my self-imposed goal of writing 500 words a day in my blog. Feel free to ignore the following rambling. I've gotten quite a bit done today so far. Oh, yesterday I finished off my restaurant letter and got it submitted. Now I'm just waiting for feedback to see how good it was. I'm still not satisfied with the headline, but I think the rest was pretty good. On writing.com I've gotten myself into even more fun stuff. I finished up my tasks for "a very Wodehouse challenge" . That was a great activity. Though it was first come first serve, I got the first spot because kiyasama is an author I follow. I enjoyed the challenge, and will hopefully earn another MB. Right now I'm working on my 500 day blog, as you know since you're reading it. But, it is also my first submission for the 30-Day blogging challenge. I think I've figured out how it works. Each blogger is assigned a day, and it is their responsibility to come up with the prompt for the day. I'm not sure if that's all there is to it, or if there will be other elements added later, but I think it will go well. Once I'm done writing this, I'm going to complete the first task of the Challenge, and then pick a contest to enter. After that ' I'm going to submit the contest and entry to the June-July-August writing contest and get my review done for that. I think that's all I've got to do for writing.com today. When I'm done with all that, I think I'm going to start reading through the notes I took yesterday. I still need to visit the different websites and see what I like. I'm happy to say that all my e-mail boxes are clean and I'm fresh and ready to start next week. Last week I was able to do the lumosity games every day. That was the first week I was able to do it the full week, so I'm proud of that. The games start out pretty easy, but they get complicated fast. I recommend giving it a try if you want to sharpen your mind and memory. Not to mention being able to keep track of multiple things at once. I'm sure anyone who's played would agree that the Koi and the Trains can get downright brutal. Tomorrow is my half day at work. My mom's coming over to cut the grass and we're going to attack the garden again. I'm going to get all the bricks pulled out and start yanking the old plants. Goal: by the end of the week I want to have that area cleared and seeded with grass. Wish me luck! Word Count: 528 |
| I'm beginning to think that I should keep a tiny notebook on hand at all times for when random blogging ideas pop into my head. Every time it happens, I think 'Ah ha! That's what I'll write about today.' Then, promptly ten seconds later ' I've forgotten it. So, all day, these ideas flit through my mind, only to be lost the moment I sit down to write about them. Do all bloggers have similar problems? I really need to read some actual blogs to get an idea of what real bloggers write about. Today, I sorted out the disaster my yahoo mail account became, and I read through a number of back issues of newsletters. I had a trusty note pad next to me while I read, and now I have a page or so worth of websites I need to check out. Because of my ongoing lack of blogger knowledge, I jotted down the addresses of a few bloggers in the ad industry and will check them out sometime tonight. Some of the stuff I wrote down are things I want to buy. One down side to learning to become a copywriter is that I have to read a lot of copy. Which, in turn, opens me up to a lot of great pitches that make me itch to buy things. It turns out I have all the constitution of a wet noodle when it comes to saying no. It's probably a good thing that I'm so poor, or a lot more people would be thrilled over my new business venture. Though, it does make me fear for the day when I become successful enough to have disposable income. I will buy a great many things, I'm sure. June is starting tomorrow and I feel a bit anxious about the two long term contests I've joined. I haven't heard back from either the 30 day blogging or the June-July-August writing. It seems odd that they're both waiting for the very last minute to get thing set up, but time will tell if there's a problem or not. One of the things I wrote down is for meditation. I had two different e-mails about the many benefits of the practice, and I think I'm going to look more into it. Anxiety and stress are both bad for our health, and the sales pitch for meditation is the promise to reduce both. I liked the angle one took, which was free vacations. Of course, they were vacations into your head, but it did get me to click open the e-mail and start reading, which is always a sign of a good headline. However, it is also tricky one. I can see how it might get the click, but then get dismissed in anger when it proves that there are no free vacations to be had. Still, I have to admit that there are enumerable advertisements that do the same. So it's not all that surprising. I hope you're all having a great weekend! Word Count: 503 |
| I was at the store yesterday, and saw something that brought back good times from my childhood. It wasn't exactly the same, but same enough that I bought it. I am now the proud owner of a giant jaw breaker on a stick. I can't even remember the last time I had one of these, and I can report that they're still as awesome as they were back then. For fun, I like to go to 9gag, because they have some great posts. One of those was a picture of someone who had also purchased a giant jaw breaker, and they licked a line around the middle until it got to the center. The affect was pretty cool, so that's what I'm doing with mine. When I was a kid, I would always lick one side until I got all the way to the middle, then lick the other side until I reached the center again and then I'd have a large ring. This one will look more like an apple core, where the middle is gone, but the top and bottom remain. One of the things I forgot about this particular candy is how the start of it makes your tongue raw. Those little colored spots don't dissolve as fast as the white stuff, and they scrape against the tender skin until you can actually start bleeding from licking too much. That happened a lot as a kid, but now ' as an adult ' I know when to stop. What sort of candy did you enjoy as a child that you haven't had for a while? One of my favorites were the dots. Do any of you remember those? They were those bright colored dots on a strip of paper. Pink, yellow, blue' The colors would shift in rows of three or six, I don't remember exactly, and you'd have that one row where the colors mixed a little while they were transitioning to the new color. They didn't taste the greatest, but they were fun to pick off. The thing I think about now is all the paper that stuck to those little dots, and how much paper I ate as a child when I had them. My elder brothers favored a different kind of candy. I don't know if these are still around any more, but they were called war heads. They had a super sour outer coating and the hard candy after that was really sweet. They would make a game of seeing how long they could keep one in their mouth before they had to spit it out because of the sourness. I found a way to cheat the candy by going in the bathroom and washing the bitterness away, leaving me with just the sweet. One candy I've never really understood were the wax lips. It wasn't a candy at all, just red wax. I guess kids would chew on the wax like gum, but I never found the appeal to those. Anyway, it was fun seeing one of the old candies again and being reminded of childhood. Word Count: 513 |
| Here's a friendly warning to all of you single and married folks out there who don't have children. If you are thinking about having them, know this, they will get you sick regularly. Small children are akin to tiny buckets of disease that live in your home. My son is 3 years old, and I've been sick more in these three years than I've been in my entire life, except maybe when I was a toddler too. As you might have guessed, I woke up with a cold this morning. It doesn't feel too bad now, but my throat was killing me when I first woke up. That's how I always feel when a cold is first coming on, and after the past three years, I've become quite familiar with it. Yesterday I was exhausted, and today it is the same. At least tomorrow is Friday. Then I'll have the weekend to get a little rest. I hate being sick. Sadly, I've used up all my days for the year, so no more taking time off, be it for sickness or fun. Where I work we have what's called 'your time' instead of a system that breaks things out by sick days and vacation days. We're given a set amount of days to cover anything. I had a couple vacations this year, and that ended up wiping out my 'your time' for the year. Now, I have to soldier on whenever I don't feel well. Another kind of crappy thing about my job is what they call occurrences. If you are sick, and don't schedule the time off before hand, it is counted as an occurrence. You can only have a couple of them every few months or you get into trouble. I don't really think that's fair since you can't plan getting sick, but I guess it makes sense to them in some way. I can understand that they don't want people taking time off without scheduling it first, but I still think punishing people for getting sick is not the right way to do it. They're already being punished enough by being sick. Then there is the fact that people who don't want to get an occurrence will come into work while sick, thus getting everyone else sick too. All around, it isn't a great policy and leads to more problems and resentment than it solves. I think big companies do stuff like this a lot. They want results, but they refuse to look logically at a problem. Instead they focus on punishment, and end up turning their own employees against them. Another odd policy is with the dress code. Some of it makes sense and some of it'not so much. A great example: people can wear nice sandals, but not tennis shoes. So we are forced to look at peoples naked toes, but we can't wear comfortable foot wear. That one never made any sense to me. I would much rather have my employees wearing comfortable shoes than not. Word count: 502 |
| I've gotten about 75 percent of my restaurant letter written. It is going fairly well. The hardest part was starting. I felt a little panicked when I first started writing it, but once those first words were down, I was on a role. The part I found most difficult was the headline, and I'm still not happy with it. Once I'm don't writing it, I'll go back and see if I can't figure out a better one. When writing a headline, you have to keep the four U's in mind. Those are Urgency, Usefulness, Uniqueness, and Ultra-Specificity. In truth, the headline is the most vital part of your copy. It is the only opportunity you have to capture the reader. No matter how amazing your copy is, if you don't catch them with the headline, they will never read on. So, yeah, I need to work on it. I've signed up for the June-July-August contest. That will help keep me writing as well. I've done this contest a few times in the past, but I think I'd only finished it once. It seems like a really easy contest. You write for one of the other contests once a week for three months straight, then you review the person who submitted their work before you. Simple, right? Well, not so much. Especially not for a procrastinator like me. Eventually you get behind, and then give up. This time, I'm going to do it at the beginning of each week, instead of waiting for the weekend. Unlike the other times, I had to pay a 10k fee to participate this time. So, perhaps the cost will make me stick with it more than I did in the past. When I first started with writing.com, I was really into it, and I got in too deep. I ended up burning myself out and stopped writing. Now that I'm back, I'll be careful not to try and do too much all at once like I did last time. Ugh, I'm tired today and I don't know what to write. I would love taking a nap right now, but I still have another couple hours of work. Right now, I work full time for an insurance company. One of the nice things is that I get to work from home, so I don't have to waste time or gas going into work. But, there's always a downside to every good thing. It is a lot easier to get distracted. Sometimes, you lose your focus and attention. I need to get back on track so that I don't get into trouble. That's never fun. I've been working for the company for almost 9 years so far, but it isn't a job I love. That's one reason I'm doing the copywriting. I can't wait for the day when I will be able to quit and work full time writing. I wanted to write novels, but I've never been able to finish one. Perhaps I'll try NaNo again this year. Word Count: 502 |
| After looking at some of the other restaurant letters, I realized that they do want us to write this in a direct response form. Which makes sense, seems we are learning how to do just that. So, I didn't get the rough draft done yesterday. Instead, I embarked on my research. I found some pretty good testimonials that I'll use, and now I am trying to locate some more specifics about the restaurant's awards and achievements. Those are turning out to be tricky to track down. Before bed last night, I think I found a good hook. I'll need to do some more fishing before I decide if that's the angle I want to take with this letter or not. They told us during the reading that research is one of the most vital parts of writing great copy. It is through the research that you find those gold nuggets that will draw the reader through your copy and keep them going until the end. It is also those gold nuggets that will separate your work, from the work of others who didn't go digging. One nugget I found was that the original owners of Misty's used to put all the ingredients of their special seasoning into a big wooden barrel, and then role that barrel down the alley way to get it all mixed just right. I thought that was a pretty fun fact, so I'll see if I can work that into my copy somehow. There are plenty of customer reviews out there for me to choose from, but I've had a hard time finding professional reviews. During my research, I was rather surprised that there isn't more information out there to find about a restaurant. Sure, I can get all sorts of people's opinions, but there aren't a whole lot of facts to go on. Most of the history about the place was found on their own website. Digging through the websites is giving me plenty of experience in research, so I'm glad I didn't just stop with the information Misty's provides on their site, even if that is the most relevant so far. I want to find the best USP that I can. Well, I've put up goals on the social feed this week. I figure that will make me feel even more accountable, so I will get things done instead of slacking off. My goals are to get the rough draft of my restaurant letter complete, to write five reviews, and to do this blog every day. As the time passes, I find that it isn't as hard to write the blog daily as I thought it would be. It usually only takes me 20 to 30 minutes a day to get to the 500 word limit. If you haven't taken up the challenge, then I think you should try it. The most important thing for a would be copywriter, or any writer for that matter, to do is read every day, and write every day. Word Count: 501 |
| Starting next month, my blog will be getting more interesting. I've joined the "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS" . I'm not quite sure how it is going to work next month because June is an unofficial month. All it says about the unofficial months is that the format is likely to change drastically. So, this will be an exciting journey for us all. This will allow me to read other people's blogs too, then I can see how my blog compares to theirs. It still feels like I have no idea what I'm doing, but as long as I do it every day then I'm glad I'm getting something done. I've gotten past the block I had on the copywriting. After I finished getting through exercise 6, I was able to read all the way to the restaurant letter. Once I finish that, I will be able to move on to part 3. Before I tackle the restaurant letter, I'm going to check out what some other members have done for this letter. I'm not sure if they want us to write an actual letter to a friend, or if they're looking for a direct mail type piece with a headline and all that. I'm leaning towards a letter to a friend. Right now we're just working on being persuasive, not on all the different parts of the framework. We have gone over the different parts, and I know we need to include the four P's, which is Promise, Picture, Proof, and Push. When you're first trying to sell something, you need to give them a promise. This is where you identify what you are going to help them with, and how what you're selling is going to resolve their problem. Next is the picture, this is important. You need to bring the prospect into the ad by showing them a picture of themselves. You have to show them how wonderful their life will be if they buy your product. After that, is the Proof. When selling, you have to sell to emotion first. Then give the prospect logical reasons to support their illogical decision. That's the proof. In an ad for a vehicle, it will show a man driving by a beach, with a beautiful women, etc. That's the picture, then they give all the facts like gas mileage and whatnot, that's the proof. Last is the push. After giving the prospect the promise, showed them their wonderful new life, and given their head the proof they need to support the emotional choice - push the sale. Here, you introduce the price, and the special offers, and here is also where you add the element of haste. Buy our product now because it is in short supply. Anyway, those are the four Ps. I need to figure out how to include them into a letter to my friend trying to convince them to go to my favorite restaurant. So, I'm not sure they want us to include all that, or just try to convince our friend to go. Well, I'll figure it out, and report to you tomorrow to let you know how it went. Word Count: 520 |
| Danger has come to the high mountains in the guise of a friendly face. We thought we were safe, but we were wrong. Here's a fun game to play. I saw it on 9gag.com paired with photos. They're called two sentence horror stories. Little stories like this can be the hardest to write, because you ache to continue, to try and flesh it out. Not one word can be wasted. You have to keep your focus and can't let yourself produce bloated sentences that are hard to follow. There use to be a contest on Writing.com that was perfect for honing this skill. It was called 100 words of horror. They would give you a photograph, and in turn, you would write a 100 word story about that photo. I did a number of these, and found them invaluable for keeping myself in check. They give a high weight to every word you use, so each line, down to the word must be carefully considered. By learning this skill, you are able to hone your technique and cut the fat out of your writing. Sure, there are places where we like to wax on and on, but we must always remember that others are reading this and may grow board of what we are doing. One of the reasons I was never able to read the Lord of the Rings is the author's tendency to waste three pages describing a tree. Painting a vivid picture is good, doing it in a few words is even better. Look at this: The small red fox, whose bushy tail flicked and twisted in the heat of the August summer breeze, its white tip a flag of eye catching non-color, rose, its small nose twitching as it sniffed the multitude of scents the wind carried. Even though this paints a vivid picture, it still feels rather clunky and something you have to wade through. It would be easy to lose interest, forgetting for a minute what we are waiting for as we fight through the lines of description. How is this: The small fox's tail twitched, its haunches tensed as golden eyes spotted the unwary rabbit. The first was 42 words, the second only 15. Yet in the second I was not only able to paint the picture, I was able to get the fox into action and introduce the second character too. This is the lesson I learned when writing 100 words of horror. While it might feel nice to paint such a vivid picture about the wind and go into a great deal of detail, the truth is that you can say more with less. Your reader will supply much of the detail in their mind. You don't have to give them every hair on the fox's body because they have a good idea already of how a fox looks. There is a balance to be had, of course. If you strip it down too much, then it becomes just as boring as when you dress it up too much. Test yourselves, try to write a story in a hundred words, and see how it goes. Word Count: 524 |
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