Blogging

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted anything and it feels really weird because I had been on a roll publishing something everyday. But alas years of neglecting my body has caught up with me. No one can sustain themselves on all night binges and running non-stop for the twenty years. So I must slow down and smell the roses as it were.

Ironically my problems began about the same time Marc Orchant passed away (please visit the site for a donation link). I didn’t know Marc personally but knew him him online. It was very sobering to know he wasn’t much older than myself. This has been a personal wake up call. The past week or so I’ve tried to remove myself from stressful situations, reduce my work load and move a little slower. My doctor has put me on a good healthy routine and says my future is up to me.

I appreciate all the well wishes I’ve received, but I am doing fine. I may not be as vocal as I’ve been in the past but I’m still here.

I also wanted to apologize to those who have not been able to get to my site over the past week. Not sure what happened but I think I finally got it all ironed out yesterday. Feedburner also removed all of my RSS subscribers, just when I was trying to increase them. Anyway, if you can, please reconnect to my RSS feed, it should be working now.

Salt Lake City and they surrounding areas received a welcome guest yesterday, snow. The first storm dropped some white stuff a few days earlier but it melted just as fast. But not this time. It snowed for at least 24 hours.

This is the good stuff. The stuff Utah is famous for; powder. I took a few more photos around the outside of my house. Take a look.

During the month of November I tried to tackle two writing projects at the same time. I knew I would be blogging so joining the National Blog Posting Month group would be pretty easy. The other project I was attempting was National Novel Writing Month. Arguably the most difficult task to complete in 30 days. So here’s how I did:

I managed to write 40 blog posts in the month of November. Those 40 posts garnered 38 comments. Not quiet 1 per post but hey at least someone is reading what I write.

I managed to write 2893 words of my 50,000 word novel. I had reached about 9000 words when I realized the story was going no where and I needed to start over. I know, that was a stupid idea but the story was making no sense and it wouldn’t have made a difference. I wanted something that you could read rather than just a bunch of words on paper. So while I didn’t write a complete Novel I started one that I hope will end up in as a book one day.

I wrote a flash fiction story for a fellow writer to review. It needs a lot of work, in fact I will re-write the whole thing. Flash fiction is difficult to write. A complete story in under 1000 words. That doesn’t give you much room for fluff. But I like what flash fiction teaches; to be concise and to the point. I did learned you can write very creative fiction in a small amount of words.

So in summary I had a pretty good writing month. My goal has been to increase the number of words I write both in blog posts and stories. I haven’t even counted the number of words all of my blog posts have captured, but it’s over 80,000, close enough for a Novel all by itself.

This month I’m focusing on these areas:

• A few series I want to write on digital photography and Lifestreaming.
• Social Media sites like Facebook and Ning. If you’ve never checked out Ning you need too. It’s incredible. I love the layout and the community building. Ning has a strong platform and is pushing the new OpenSocial platform.
• OpenSocial and Android (mobile API)
• New Media posts that coincide with PodCampSLC.

So December ought to be fun. What are you doing this month?

Here are some great links I came across from the previous week:

• Russell Beattie writes eBooks need more contrast to take off
• Chris Brogan says Passion Drives Personal Brand
• Pam at Escape from Cubical Nation asks Do you have to have an interesting life to use Twitter?
• 52 Novels asks Could something like TechStars work for novelists? (I am so on board with this idea)
• Mark Cuban writes Do Blog Comments Have Value?
• Zen Habits writes Obsessive- Compulsive’s Guide: Top 12 Organizing Tips, Plus Resources

A good friend sends out a weekly email about improving sales skills. One of the reasons I like reading his advise are the questions he asks at the end. Most of the time they are interpersonal questions. But today, her wrote this:

Educating the world is not your job. Go find some smart people and do some business with them.

Several years ago a mentor told me this “If you want to be making a million dollars a year, why aren’t you surrounding yourself with people who are?” The point I think he was trying to make, and the one my friend is trying to make, is surround yourself with smart people who are winners. We learn from example. That is how we learned to talk, to walk, eat, pretty much everything we do we learned from watching someone first.

Take inventory of where you are. Who you are associating with. Are these people helping you reach your goals? Can they? Are you helping those around you reach their goals? Can you?

My suggestion is to have a well rounded set of friends and associates. Make sure everyone is positive and supportive. Those who aren’t need to be removed from your life. If you aren’t positive or supportive, change your attitude, change your friends, change your path.
Describe the kind of person who makes your life better.