Friday, July 17, 2009

In Search of the Writing Life

I am indeed in search of the writing life.

Lately I have felt a strong pull towards writing more often, more regularly and more thoroughly. In order to get closer to this, I took a few action steps:

-I started blogging at the Summer Writing Inspiration Movement . The idea behind it is to create weekly goals and be supported (and held accountable, I hope!) by others in the group.

-I signed up for the SARK Juicy Journaling program, as well as this Get Paid to Write: Become a Freelance Writer e-course, which begins on August 10th.

-I purchased a few books on freelance writing: My So-Called Freelance Life, Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer: How to Win Top Writing Assignments, and The Street Smart Writer.

One of my other goals is to write longer and more focused entries here in this blog. So tell me, dear readers, what would you like to see appear on Everyday Revelry? What do you want to know more about or talk about with other like-minded souls? I have a few ideas brewing and there are things I love to write and talk about (ie yoga, nutrition, exercise, Latin America, cooking, books, writing, creativity, travel, etc.), but I also would love to know more about what you all are interested in too!

And I *love* this vintage typewriter (or visible writing machine, apparently) poster!


{Image credit: moni cam}

6 comments:

Unknown said...

After two+ years of blogging, I have come to the conclusion that blogging should reflect your interests and be a balance of discipline and spontaneity. I am actually writing a post on this for soon as I have had several new bloggers ask me for advice - so this has been on my mind :)

One thing to think about is to pick a couple of posts from all the things that interest you, write them, and see how you enjoy writing them and also the kind of response you get from people. If you love writing about it, that's the most important thing, but if you are not sure, write a post, enjoy it and people love it, thats a reason to continue writing as well.

As you know I had a lot of trepidation a bout writing on my detox diet, but the response has been such that I am a whole lot more motivated to share my experience. And writing about it has been more fun since (I have been drafting post ideas here and there this week) because there's less unknown.

:) And yay on SWIM and Sark and your class in August :) Where is is offered?

Unknown said...

PS - every single topic you mentioned would interest me :)

Lauren said...

Thank you for posting this comment! I often feel like I am blogging into a void. I have no idea how in-depth to get or what might be interesting or not. I've tried to separate the professional side of me (the Latin America stuff) from the personal (yoga, writing, nutrition, etc) for the most part but there are definitely times when they overlap. I am never sure how much to share.

The freelance course is a guided e-course, so it's done primarily via email (I think) and maybe other long distance contact with the instructor.

Unknown said...

My pleasure - some thoughts:

1. Sometimes finding topics you like is all about seeing what sticks - whether for you (ie you enjoy writing it) and for your readers (ie you get more comments etc).

2. Professional versus personal - I would actually stick to your personal interests over professional interests. It sounds like you feed your professional interests through blogging in another forum and your work and your grad program. Also, focusing on teh personal may be in some ways both easier and more challenging to write (just a thought).

Finally probably dont have this issue, but I would have a lot of problems from my job (not to mention future jobs) if I had an online record of my thoughts on what is going in my professional world. I dont even post my thoughts on securities law (what I do incidentally) on my private FB forum - and believe me I have lot sof thoughts and there is constant coverage on these issues in the mainstream press right now. But in my case, I never know when something I feel the need to comment on may become a problem with a client.

KK said...

These are great comments from both of you - would you consider bringing these issues up on SWIM? I'm certainly dealing with these sorts of questions, but I'm sure the rest of the SWIMmers would benefit from this conversation as well!

Vienna said...

Hi Lauren. I absolutely love your blog. I used to read you in The Latinamericanist and I am very looking forward to follow you in Everyday Revelry.
Welcome to SWIM, too.
I feel very identified with some of the questions you pose here and City Girl has provided us with really good thoughts! Thanks to both! I agree with Kiki, it would be interesting to discuss all this points at SWIM. :)