Month: March 2016

My writing week in not so many words and a few pictures.

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Hello,

Over the past week, I have been more focused on studying for my exam at the beginning of April than anything else, which has affected my writing output. I’ve said to myself each day that I would come home from work write and finish my latest short story but I haven’t. I’ve come home, exercised, eaten, studied, and then gone to bed. Not the worst cycle I’ve ever been in but it does not include my own writing so it’s close.

I have managed to do a small amount and moved the story along but it is not enough. The story, about the earth being taken over by giant rock worms and a young couple’s efforts to stop them, does move along nicely when I’m writing it but the ‘when I’m writing it’ part is in short supply. I have a chilled out weekend planned so I aim to get more of the story written then. If studying doesn’t stop me that is.

With weekends in mind, off the back of the blogging 101 course I took throughout February I joined a group Bloggers meetup, which has many members who took the same course and want to keep in contact and help each other out. Inside this wonderful group there lies a challenge. The challenge is to include a link to the site to spread the word and carry on the challenge within a post that details something I did over the weekend. Well, firstly here’s the link https://bloggersmeetup.wordpress.com/2016/03/11/weekend-wanderings/. And secondly, last weekend I was in Manchester, UK and I was walking along Market Street in the City Centre when I came upon the most show off-y, egotistical man I have ever seen. The picture below details how full of himself he is. I’m joking, though. It was a pretty impressive site. See for yourself.

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Look at his smiling face. Rubbing his skill and happiness in my face! I am usually happy anyway but not this level happy. He has literally go up to another level.

And here’s another picture I took on my way from work last Friday. Thought it were mildly amusing.

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That’s all from me. Hope you all have a good weekend and get everything done that you want to do.

Goodbye!

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What is my next step? Which way will I go?

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fork_road1b

Hello,

Having spent the best part of last month doing the exceptionally useful ‘Blogging 101’ course driven by Michelle W and WordPress.com, I find myself looking at my blog in a different light. I have always liked the direction I have chosen to take my little corner of the universe in but I can see that improvement is needed.

One of the assignments of the course was to create a writing prompt, which I have done and posted on 24 February https://johnrsermon.com/2016/02/24/my-first-attempt-at-awriting-prompt/ and my own response to it as posted on 25 February https://johnrsermon.com/2016/02/25/my-first-writing-prompt-and-my-response/. I enjoyed the whole process and this has started to make me think I should make a regular feature. Do what you love and all that. This led me to think that I could use a monthly or even weekly feature to try and focus my blog as sometimes I struggle for things to write. A writing prompt seems like a good idea but I might try some others first before settling one.

Along with this, other assignments looked at changing the style and content of the blog behind the scenes. This struck a chord as I had not changed anything about my blog up until that point for at least six months. I realised that what I wanted from my blog was for it to be catchy and hopefully grab new reader’s attention. This led to me changing the title from ‘johnrsermon’ to ‘Read.Write.Discuss.Repeat.’ The inspiration for this title was just breaking down what I wanted to do with my blog. I like to read and want to read other authors work. I love to write and talk about the process. And then do it all over again. And being a big wrestling fan I took more inspiration from a quote used on one of WWE wrestler Brock Lesnar’s t-shirt’s ‘Eat.Sleep.Break the Streak’ that in turn came from a FatBoy Slim & Riva Starr song. Google all of the last sentence if you have no idea what I’m jabbering on about.

Further assignments looked at commenting on other people’s work and engaging more with my peer group. This is something that I want to do more of and I’m trying to take as bigger steps as possible to do so. So far, I have gained 10 followers throughout this process alone. It’s such a simple and wise thing to do that it showed me how distracted and lacking in focus I had become with my blog. Here to the future and change for the better!

With all this and more in mind, I have been asking myself, which way will I go?

I don’t know but like having options and regaining my focus!

Have a good week. Bye!