February 2019 – Words to live by

Blogs by J. Kukuruza

When it comes to blogs, have you ever thought about how many different blogs you may read? What topics they cover? Do some inspire you to want to respond? To offer a comment at the end? If so, then great! Blogs are actually as important and even more often read than op-ed offerings in a small town newspaper. If you choose to blog, they can be offered as your opinion, or about facts you have on a topic or issue–IF you blog.

There really are no restrictions when you blog. You are not confined to a word count or paragraph count because these are irrelevant in a blog. Of course, if you go on for several pages or thousands of words, you may lose your reader’s interest 🙁 Many aspiring writers appreciate the freedom blogging offers. As your blog gains an audience, there are responses or helpful criticisms from the readers, allowing you to polish and work on your writing and gain the pointers you may be seeking. Remember–the better your writing, the bigger your audience and it becomes a win/win for you and your readers /followers.

There are several advantages to blogging. Of course the first is getting your writing “out there.” You are sharing your thoughts and your voice. Another is adding your blogs to your writing resume so that when you submit your work to a publisher, that publisher sees your efforts to keep writing and getting your work before the public. Last, but certainly important, you could be read by people willing to pay you for your work. Publishers and website perusers scan blogs because they are easy to scroll through, and show what kind of writer you are. A short sample of your writing, style, and thought processes are apparent in a blog without them having to labor through a much longer work.

So how do you get started? There are several sites you can google to show you how to create and get a blog site going. A few are: wix.com and WordPress.com. Both are free and there are directions to help you get started. Another thing you can do is browse different websites that you are interested in and see if they offer you a place to post or share. This could lead to your having a blog connected to their site. There are also writer’s groups you can join that will have blog challenges or contests that you can participate in. Some may have you follow a prescribed theme while others allow creative freedom. We are participating in a blog challenge presently that was offered by Writers of Kern. It is a 26 day challenge that we write for every day for 26 days. Our fellow members read and offer comments which are usually quite helpful each day or soon after our blog is posted. There is one more we would offer that is great for challenging your writing skills called–creativecopychallenge. wordpress.com This particular challenge gives you a certain amount of words to incorporate into your writing to see if you can weave a tale with all the words given.

Blogging helps you in the ways mentioned above and also helps you use self-discipline to keep you writing. If, for instance, you are participating in a challenge, you have to submit every day for a certain amount of time. That means whether you “feel” like it or not, you have to write. For us, that is good. Self-discipline is not one of our strong suits 🙂

We hope this helps and you will use it. Writing a blog is good so you stay on top of your writing skills, get your material to an audience, and one of your random readers could wind up being your employer, paying you to do what you love.

Happy writing.

Judy Kukuruza’s book “One Body, Many Souls” can be found on Amazon at https://amzn.to/2FuA241; Their website is at https://onebodymanysouls.com/. Their blog is at https://storywritersthoughts.wordpress.com/.

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Still not quite sure about branding?

Okay – you’re still scratching your head about your brand?

You’re not alone. A lot of writers are stymied about what they should “brand” as…and some just resist the concept entirely.

If you want to write, are writing, then perhaps you should come at this from a different angle.

There are many different niches of writing. Don’t believe me? Do a search on Freelancer for jobs that include article writing/content writing/article rewriting projects and you come up with a load of interesting options, for example – I’ve put the skills in parentheses after the job title:

Create content for education, sports, entertainment and health related for a website (content writing)
Technical Product Manager eCommerce project (technical writing)
Civil Engineering Article Editing (editing, proofreading, research, technical writing)
Content for a gambling website (article rewriting, article writing, content writing, copywriting, ghostwriting)
Formal neutralarticle writing on various companies (article rewriting, article writing, content writing, ghostwriting, research)
Website content writing about tean, coffee and spices from Nepal (article writing, content writing, copywriting, ghostwriting)
Proofreader and Editor in English (article rewriting, editing, proofreading).

The list goes on and on and changes daily.

You can also check out Craigslist.org under Jobs – Writing/Editing and under Gigs – Writing, for some more ideas.

Go to job boards and search for writing, copywriting, proofreading and editing to get more ideas.

The point is, even if you don’t have a “brand” identified, if you write, you can make money writing. You just have to search for the jobs, and apply. Once you’ve had a few paying gigs, you will have a better idea of what you enjoy writing and what you can make money at by writing – then you can always revisit the “branding” question.

So go out there and WRITE!

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Part 2–Your Voice and Passion by J. Kukuruza

Your Voice and Passion may seem to be contradictory to the advice/guideline in Part 1 that tells you to limit emotionalism. But it isn’t. Honest truth. All writers should have passion for what they are writing or they probably will not write after awhile. But how to have passion as you establish your Voice? Maybe the following will help:

1. Personal experience is very often a passionate item. You remember your feelings, your sensations of what was around you, your immediate reaction to the experience. Rarely are you thinking that someday you will write the experience down–especially at the time it is happening. You cannot be asking for pity or playing to emotionalism when you are IN an experience. Acknowledge that. Record, later, what happened, and your take on it now. It can be full of passion, as an afterthought. Just distinguish between the occurring experience and the later thoughts and reactions.
2. Seek universalities. There are universal truths we are all subject to. Again, these cross all genres. Children’s fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, memoir, journalism, mysteries, suspense and horror–all will contain universal truths, embedded into the writing. Use your Voice to reach your reader and woo them to believe what you have written and become involved. An example we would like to share is this:Never having read Stephen King, but trying the novel, “The Shining,” we realized we were reading a great author when we read how the shrubs outside the hotel there in Colorado took on animal shapes and stalked the young boy living there with his insane father. Why? Because we never faltered in believing that this was not even questionable in our mind! We believed it with no hesitation. To evoke that kind of acceptance in a reader without any hesitancy on the reader’s part speaks to wonderful authorship! And passion? Oh, yes, there was passion! Fear was prevalent, suspense without question, and yet King maintained his Voice by teasing the reader along, terrified to stop reading but not wanting to go on. The Universal was fear of the unknown, the conflict of what should be done, the fervent hope the reader had for the young boy to survive.
We are not all Stephen Kings. Some may not care for him at all. But his ability to reach people and pull them into a world where Passion is everywhere, and his calm Voice leading the readers through it, is something to be envied.
3. Voice means finding your Passion. As you’re reading others’ works inspires you, pleases you, entertains you, you will see and hear passions. You will begin to hear certain voices relating these passions. Some you will quickly forget, others never. You will find some authors/writers that tug at your very soul and some you will dismiss easily because they do not interest you at all. But if the writers you read inspire you, they will enhance your passion. If that passion grows, so will your Voice. You will add to what has inspired you and then strike out more and more on your own.
4. Share your Voice. To share your Voice is the most daring of all. We all read our favorites, tell others how great we think they are and encourage them to read them, too, and at best, try to imitate the ones we consider great. But one day, you have to have the courage to not simply imitate, but speak out in your writing Voice. It is yours, not another author’s. It is your story, your screenplay, your journalism, your own suspense and horror, your children’s story. IT IS YOUR VOICE. Share it.
5. Keep writing and keep learning and keep polishing your Voice. As your write, in your Voice, you will become stronger in conveying what you want to. You will also keep learning as you see where you wandered away from your Voice. You will see what happened, figure it out, avoid it happening again. Then Polish your Voice. Nothing survives that cannot be improved upon. Adjust, adapt, but retain the original as it will always be yours.

We are passionate about a number of things, mainly because we are empathetic and have had enough experiences in life that we can relate to numerous people. We continually struggle to maintain our voice as we voice our passions via writing. We truly “let go” in our one blog-storywritersthoughts on Word Press. Keep a journal or set up a blog where you can do the same. Writing can earn you a living–and also save your soul and sanity–as is our case.

Enjoy writing!

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Mechanics Of Voice Part 1 by Judy Kukuruza

This is actually a two parter for establishing your “Voice” in your writing–learned from other writers and esteemed published professors of creative writing. We hope to help you learn as quickly as possible if you are struggling to find your “voice” in you writing.

1. Avoid cliches and being trite–a good writer is one who will avoid cliches as much as possible and use the original cliche as a jumping off point to reword, recreate some thing both trite and stale by stating the same in a creative and intriguing way. Readers become bored easily and a creative look at something everyone has heard over and over will pull them in and you are not simply repeating the same old things.
2. Try to avoid emotionally laden adjectives. Come up with new ones that can relate your passion without becoming a plea for sympathy. Few people desire to be pitied, but emotionalism may only elicit pity without the deeper thinking you, as a writer, wish to evoke. This applies to all genres. If your reader only surface reads, that same reader will pity the object, and quickly forget what you were writing about.
3. Succinctness. Make your reader work a little. Readers become more intrigued when they must think to understand what you are presenting. Sometimes it will keep a reader going on and on when the suspense is wondering what is TRULY happening that you are leaving for them to determine. You need to decide if you want an audience that wants pablum or thinking on their own.
4. Coining words is not a sin. Often, when there is no specific word to convey what you mean or want to say, to coin a word makes the reader an intimate part of your writing. It is “your word” and now they share. It is also “your unique voice.” Dare to use it.

Each of the above helps each writer to be an individual with an individual voice. Using just these 4 guidelines made us thinking writers. At first, it was hard! Especially with the trite sayings and cliches. It is a common malady and we used them just as so many do. But to have to stop and realize there could be a better, more creative way to state something helped so much. Maybe you don’t have any problems with any of the above. Congratulations! But it wasn’t until these four items were presented to us as we struggled, that we found our voice.

Hope this helps and the second part is coming about finding your voice in writing. It is PASSION.

We hope you will read it.

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