Off-Beat Inspiration

This week's theme is off-beat inspiration. Word and writing prompts are common inspiration, but there are other, unexpected ways to open yourself up to imagination and creativity. This week I'll share three websites that spark my writing.

Your Love Story

Fellow blogger and friend, Brandi over at Finding a Path for Me, is running a Valentine's Day giveaway.

What's Your Love Story?

Even if you don't have a love story to share, you can enter the giveaway by friending Brandi on social media. Follow her all over the place; Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Plus she's lots of fun. Who wouldn't want to follow her?!

It ends February 16th, so get over there and participate. There are two gift cards to be awarded!

Behind the Scenes: Blogging Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned

It may be very soon in my writing/blogging journey to talk about the lessons I've learned, but I always seem to jump in with both feet - the wrong way. So, that would be me jumping in sideways? With arms and legs wide like a skydiver? You get the idea. I do it wrong. That means my lessons come early. I may jump in like a flying squirrel on crack, but I'm quick to understand when I'm running into problems. I'm self-aware, and 'doing it wrong' is a pretty common occurrence.

Behind the Scenes: Blogging Affiliates

**Blogging Affiliates**

Behind the scenes, I've tried to monetize my blog. It's what you do with a blog, right? Bloggers write because they love it. They share meaningful posts full of information for their readers because they want to become an authority on their topic. At the end of the day, bloggers would like to make a little bit of money for providing valuable information.

Power of the Thriller by Robert Sells

My first ever book promotion blog... thing. Robert Sells is here today talking about thrillers. I'm thrilled to welcome him! I know. That was pretty bad, but it's a compulsion. I can't help myself.

The Power of the Thriller

“I’ll be back.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s line from the iconic thriller, The Terminator. The movie was directed by another icon, James Cameron. The Terminator had all the essential ingredients: good acting, action packed, clever concept, but… it didn’t make sense. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the movie. It remains one of my favorites. However, when I left the theater after seeing it for the first time, I wondered about one minor inconsistency.

Behind the Scenes: Blogging Niche

**Blogging Niche**

This week's theme will take you behind the scenes of blogging. There's nothing truly earth shattering. I want to start a conversation about the whole blogging process. I'd like to talk to all of you about the whole mystery of it. Oh. It's not a mystery to you? Well, it's a mystery to me!

Friday Imagination Prompt

Here's my story based on the prompts from Wednesday.

Five Writing Prompts to Give Your Imagination a Kick in the Pants

Sticking with the theme of imagination this week, I want to talk about ideas and my idea file. That's where I keep all my ideas, obviously! There's almost always a random, stray topic in that file, but I don't always want to write what's there. It doesn't inspire me.

When I'm uninspired by my idea file, I have to find the inspiration someplace else. Writer's often call this type of thing writer's block. Basically, they're uninspired. The uninspired writer stares at the blank page, and the blank page stares back. Finally, it begins to mock them. They become frustrated. It's a cycle. You're bleh about writing, nothing resonates, the blank page mocks you, which makes you bleh about writing. (Yes. Bleh is a real word. I don't care what the red squiggle says!) I don't have the perfect solution for all writers. I only have the solution that works for me.

Word Prompts!

The Monkey House

This is an off-topic and off-day post. If anyone remembers, I struggled with a cover for my short story Marking Time. I've never been completely happy with the one I settled on when I started uploading the story to JukePop Serials.

Let Your Imagination out of its Chains

Since themes worked so well for me over the course of the 31-day blogging challenge last month, I'm sticking with it until the wheels fall off.