Answer to your question and HIGH Part 7

Happy Wednesday,

I have to tell you, I live a GREAT life. I am blessed to live my dream as a writer and I'm getting such wonderfully sweet emails from some of you. I don't have words to tell you how much they mean to me. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

I had an interesting question from Primeprojects in the comment section of yesterday's blog. He asked me how often to blog.

Well primeprojects, and the rest of you, I can only tell you what many successful bloggers have told me. If you're not updating about 3+ times a week you're not going to get traffic. I started this blog doing Mondays-Thursdays but then decided to do all weekdays. The reason was I noticed many people coming to my blog on Fridays. That meant there were people popping over searching for content.

I also started my blog by doing the exact same thing every monday, every tuesday...Have I mentioned recently that I'm type A, laugh.

My husband had a great point about doing that. He told me that if I ALWAYS post in interview on Thursdays that people who don't like interviews won't come on Thursday. Okay, then I wasn't posting Friday-Sunday...and Monday is a bad day for my blog in general [everyone is back to work] so then my readers were really only getting content a couple of days a week and they might miss something that would really help them.

That is why you see now I just post what I've learned. And I post Monday-Friday. Every once in a while I'll bop over on a weekend if I ran across something great at another blog that I want you to see. I go in to a great deal of detail in my new Writing Career Coach Course that I'm creating. The whole thing is building a platform and I spend PAGES talking about blogs and the internet. So leading up to that release I'll be talking about much more over here on the blog to help all of you out.

Oh, and Primeprojects had a GREAT post today when I bopped over to his blog. Here is the link. Check it out and tell him hi while you're there.

http://footholds.blogspot.com/2008/01/do-you-have-smart-goals.html

Now, H.I.G.H. Part 7

Yesterday I told you that I had found this great Writer's Guild. It must have been what Columbus felt like when he saw land at the end of a long voyage. That moment when suddenly you go from despair to hope again.

Wow, it was amazing.

I would look at that page every day. Remember, by this point my successful network marketing business was falling apart around me and I was sick with "morning sickness" that went all day long.

I don't remember where we found that first bit of money to sign up for the course [at that time you could pay $250 for each of 4 sections. As soon as you paid, the next section came. They have since changed that.] The first section came in the mail in mid-late October. It was all about articles. I, like most novelists, scoffed at trudging through article writing when I was really destined to be a novelist. Why waste my time??? [Now I teach an entire class on why novelists should waste their time with articles, but that is for a different day]. I introduced myself to my new mentor in the Guild and tore in to the lessons.

OHHH I felt so alive. Here it told me how to find out where the paying markets were and gave me ways to practice my craft. It was so incredibly exciting I don't even have WORDS to tell you what it felt like. Suddenly ideas were gushing out of me all the time. I carried a tape recorder to write them down. And within 2 weeks - YES I said 2 weeks- I had my first article accepted at a local paper. It was an amazing feeling to hear that editor say "This is a great story. We'd love to publish it in our December issue. Can you send us a photo to go with it?"

There I had it, a by-line, and so quickly. I kept plugging away at my lessons through December eager to place my next article. At Christmas everyone in my family got a copy of my first published article in addition to their Christmas gift.

Then came January. It started out just fine. We found a great deal on a van [which we now needed since we were expecting our 3 and all 3 would be in car seats.] and I was six months pregnant and I'd hit a lull in my morning sickness. But my 2nd daughter, who at the time was 20 months old, was having horrible temper tantrums. She would scream and throw herself around. She'd had lots of ear infections, but this time had no fever. So I took her to the doctor but, as always happens, she was a fine, happy, child. They agreed with me that it was likely the terrible 2's starting up but, on a hunch, Dr. Scooby [that's not her real name, but that's what kids call her. I'll use it here to protect her anonymity] ordered an ultrasound and emergency X-ray. Both came back in under an hour, both fine.

She sent us home and said if she threw a fit again like that to call and I would take her to the ER. We went home a little frustrated from losing a day driving all over town, but glad it was nothing.

Two days later I'd be sitting with my husband at her bedside in the PICU [Pediatric Intensive Care Unit]

See you tomorrow.