Blogger Recognition Award

I always appreciate feedback and I was happily surprised again when Carol Hopkins nominated me for the Blogger Recognition Award.  She, of course, received this herself and she deserves it.  You’ll find some wonderful reading on her blog.  Describing her blog, she says: “I write my blog to express ideas and opinions that just refuse to stay inside me.”

That’s a great reason for writing!

The Rules:

• Thank the nominator, and publish a post on your blog about receiving the Blogger Recognition Award.  Make sure to provide a link to the nominator’s blog in your post.
• Give a brief story of how your blog started.
• Give two pieces of advice to new bloggers.
• Nominate 10-15 other bloggers for this award, and inform them of their nomination.

Writing History:

My history of writing started a long time ago, before the days of blogging.  I had been reading quite a few best-selling books at the time and one day I got up and said to myself, I can write a book as good as these.  So, I set out to learn about the freelancing life.

I wrote for magazines, newspapers and journals in the ‘90s.  And since I was in the medical profession, I was writing a lot of editorials on health care, as well as publishing some original nursing research.

Some of those articles caused quite a stir and my employers set about a plan to be rid of me.  Their plan failed.  But faced with limited options to keep advancing in that profession, I ended up going to law school.  It seems my writing help spur a change in careers.

I like to say that I got mad and went to law school. 😊

And while I was in law school, I became the editor-in-chief of one of the law school journals, the one about environmental law.  Some more good experience.

I didn’t become aware of the blogging world until the 2000’s, and when my daughter was shipped out to fight in Iraq War Number 2 (Operation Iraqi Freedom) in 2004, I started my first blog, which you can imagine was quite political.  I let that one die off as I realized continuing, once again, had career implications.  Not pleasant ones.

Up until last year, I had put my writing on hold.  Until retirement arrived and I could no longer be threatened with the loss of a job for having expressed an opinion.  Even well researched and objective opinions were unwelcome by my employers.

I started my blog on WP for a few reasons.  One of the main ones was to simply get back into writing on a regular basis.  Motivation.  The blogging community expects words to read.  A little bit of external pressure helps keep the wheels moving.  Another, of course, was to hopefully get better at it.  Finally, I simply have stories I want to tell, and I hope the readers will like them.

As for Advice for Other Bloggers:

First: Write!  Just start writing stuff.  Lots of stuff.  Your first drafts don’t have to be good, but they give you something to edit, and that’s where I think a lot of the magic happens.  At least it does for me there.

The Hemmingways of the world did not produce great manuscripts every time they sat down at the keyboards.  They just sat at the keyboards a lot.

Great authors have had more rejections than published pieces, they just kept trying. That’s how you get better.  So write, write, write, write.  Even if it’s just for yourself and even if you don’t put it on your blog.

Next: Then go ahead and put it out there and listen to the feedback.  Adapt, adjust, improvise, improve.  Your going to have to get the reader’s perspective at some point and take any comments and suggestions seriously.

And I would add to this one – read.  Read, read, read, read, read.  See how other people write, and what good writing is.  It will help you expand your abilities.

Along with this, use the dictionary and the thesaurus to learn new words.  Expand your vocabulary so you’ll be able to describe things in your writing.  Remember you are painting images in the reader’s mind.  Readers don’t want dull words bouncing off their heads, they want to see, feel, hear, smell and touch what it is you’re writing about.

Nominations:

Lately, I’ve been breaking the rules on awards, just because, and I haven’t given out nominations.  So today I’ll break my own rules about not following rules and I’ll nominate a few other blogs.

No one who is nominated is bound to participate and there is no timeline for participation.

I’m going to nominate all of the blogs I mentioned in my post, “Shuffled – ‘Here’s Looking at You Kidd’.”

I Lost my Lens Cap

Victoria Ray

The Feathered Sleep

Haiku Out of Africa

Parallax

Jdubqca

To Dad With Love Poetry

Make It Ultra Psychology

Balles World

35 Chronical

Tatterhood

Waking Up on the Wrong Side of 50

Truly Madly Ordinary

Stuart Aken

Eliza Waters

High Lumen

Lucid

and,

DamnPhotoArtist.

I assure you this list does not contain all of my favorite blogs.  I’ve nominated many others for past awards.  But I have to end this piece somewhere. 🙂

In Metta