PS This quote was tweeted in 2011 by Emma Coats, as part of Pixar’s 22 rules of storytelling. I heard it again this week in the midst of a writing course I’m taking. It was a pleasant reminder to continue to try new ideas, and not to worry so much about whether or not they actually work. 🙂
If you know me at all, you know that I am a big fan of giving time to dreaming.
The daydreaming kind of dreams.
(Not the sleeping kind – though I also am a big fan of sleep!)
Dreaming up magic takes time.
It takes a minute to take your brain from the litany of urgent thoughts to a space where you can think about what might be.
“What am I going to fix for dinner? Carpool at 3. Cupcakes for the party. Pick up a bottle of wine for dinner with friends. Don’t forget to order pictures by next Tuesday.”
Your brain is probably really full right now.
Mine too.
But a little date with yourself and your pen and a blank sheet of paper could breathe a lot of magic into your blog (and into your life) for the year ahead.
Who doesn’t want a little magic?
A little time to hope and dream.
Give yourself the gift of that time somewhere in the next week or two, before the kids are out of school or the relatives come in town or the Christmas travel starts.
Block it out on your calendar.
ONE HOUR FOR DREAMING.
When you sit down with your hour (or your half hour or whatever time you have), set a timer.
And then write these words at the top of your paper.
What would I like to see on my blog (or in my business or in my life) in the coming year?
Then just write.
Later, you can come back and circle the big ideas or the parts that are the most important to you. Later you can take the ideas and turn them into plans.
I think this season of advent is one for waiting and watching and wondering.
I’m taking some time this week to dream about what might be.
A few months ago I had the great pleasure of sitting down face to face (via Skype!) with one of my internet heroes, Alexandra Franzen.
We had no big agenda for our conversation.
Just chat + inspiration.
We covered a lot of topics.
From writing and creativity to time management and social media.
We talked about a few road blocks I was hitting in current projects and my summer long obsession with the Enneagram.
It was a delightful hour.
Here are a few things I learned from my time with Alex.
1. If you really want to have time for writing, you have to schedule it.
Like in your calendar with red ink that indicates to you and everyone else in your life that this block of time is not negotiable. If you schedule your writing hours, then the time is yours for writing.
2. You can run a successful business on the internet without maintaining a presence on social media.
Seriously.
Before I sat down with Alexandra, I had been wondering for a while if this was true. I had been experimenting for about a month with being off of social media and was trying to decide if I wanted to stay off. We talked about how there is a lot of fear mongering around making sure you keep your social media profiles constantly updated. And that it is a great tool for folks that love it.
But if like me, you have a little voice telling you that you really wish you could give it up, but you just need a little encouragement, Alexandra has got you covered.
3. Skype sessions with other creatives are a good idea.
Here’s why.
We need people to ask us the questions we don’t have to answer on a daily basis. You know, something besides, “What’s for dinner?”
We need someone to ask us the bigger dreamy kinds of questions.
And then we need that someone to hold space for us while we answer those questions.
Or to sit with us in the uncomfortable silence while we listen to our hearts long enough to answer those questions.
We see these questions all the time.
What are your biggest dreams?
What do you wish you could do?
What is holding you back?
What are you afraid of?
Methods for following your dreams and overcoming your fears are the topic of about 1008 blog posts. Weekly.
We skim those blog posts and save them and tweet them and file them away.
But often we don’t get around to saying anything out loud.
Because no one is listening.
Maybe the best Christmas gift you can give to one of your Arkansas Women Blogger Gals is an hour face to face.
Just for dreaming. And listening.
What if you gifted a creative soul in your life with these same words Alexandra sent to me the day before we sat down together?
We’ll just have a delightful conversation about words, stories, and how to make a positive difference in people’s lives, and hopefully… you’ll walk away feeling happy & inspired.
You might just make her day!
PS A big thank you to Alexandra Franzen for gifting me with an hour of her time after I did her online course Unstoppable, which I highly recommend. And also big love to Paige Ray for talking me into doing the course with her in the first place. Paige has started a podcast since we did the course and she is pretty dang Unstoppable herself!
In keeping with the this month’s theme at Arkansas Women Bloggers, I’ve been contemplating RISK.
And possibility.
Thinking about the risks I want to take in blogging and in life makes me excited!
So here are some ideas for taking a risk with your blog this month.
Because taking risks and having new ideas make blogging so much fun!
1. Write a public letter to one of your internet heroes.
Is there a blog or a column you have been reading for years? A person whose ideas you could not live without? Someone who makes you laugh. Or cry.
Write them a gushing letter full of compliments and heartfelt thanks. Then publish it on your blog.
(Bonus points if you find your hero’s address and actually snail mail the letter as well!)
2. Write exactly what your readers want.
Do you have an email newsletter? Maybe consider sending this letter out to your subscribers:
Dear beloved readers,
Will you do me a quick favor? Hit reply to this email and ask me one question you’d love to know the answer to. It can be anything!
I will use your replies as my next several blog posts.
Thanks so much for reading!
You make blogging so much more fun!
XO
Even if you only get four questions back, that’s four more blog posts/writing prompts than you had before.
You could also ask this question on Facebook if you don’t have an email newsletter.
3. Write an advice piece.
Is there a skill or hobby or craft you’ve been learning about lately? Even if you don’t feel like you’re an expert, you probably know more than I do. Tell me how to repair my wood floor. Tell me how to get started on quilting. Or how to narrow down the massive number of paint color choices for a room. How do I dress for an interview? Or start a podcast?
If you’ve been working on a project of any kind over the last few weeks, you have acquired knowledge that someone needs to know. You could be the answer to someone else’s Google search!
Putting yourself out into the world via video can feel like a HUGE risk if you have never done it before. It also can seem daunting, but a one minute video of you doing something as simple as introducing yourself can help your readers connect with your personality.
So dig out a cute outfit, set up your phone and give it a go!
We want to see your pretty face.
If you’re in a rut or looking to take a risk this month, give one of these options a try.
Or tell me other risks you are hoping to take this month! I’m super curious!
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far it is possible to go.
Last year at AWBU, the conference for Arkansas Women Bloggers, I took a lot of notes. I had a lot of conversations. I laughed a lot. I cried a little (or a lot). I hugged a lot of ladies (and a couple of fellas). And I ate a lot of food.
But after the conference.
After I flew back to Scotland from Arkansas.
After the dust settled a few weeks later…
I still had this one thought or idea floating around from keynote speaker Alli Worthington.
Her talk was called Editing Life.
She told the story of how she had to let go of running a very successful blogging conference (BlissDom) in order to start the business that she is doing (and loving) now.
She asked us to think about all the commitments we have.
And then she said,
What can you let go of that feels like a relief?
The first thing that popped into my head was Social Media.
And I breathed a little sigh of relief even at the thought.
Phew.
Yes.
I thought,
If I could stop worrying about Social Media, I would be so relieved.
However, I did not immediately stop using Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Pinterest and Instagram.
I was afraid that my blog + writing would fall into oblivion.
It’s a bit of a Catch-22. The brain space that I need for writing is often taken up by social feeds, but if I leave the streams, will anyone know that I am writing? Will anyone read it?
But I had felt the cool breeze of possibility blow by when Alli asked her question,
the hope of the relief of letting go of something I no longer wanted to do.
So I decided to do some experimenting.
I got off of Facebook in November for #NaNoWriMo.
Then I went back on in December with limited access, giving myself fifteen minutes a day.
I tried to carry that into January.
By February I was back to checking All The Things All The Time.
So for the spring I tried to scale it back and return to a daily time limit, and I tried to keep myself to the same time every day, using alarms.
I learned some things from all of these experiments.
Here’s what I learned:
I deeply struggle with time limits.
A little bit of social media interaction is still a big distraction.
My blog readership does not vary greatly because of my social media activity or lack thereof.
In May and June, I did some work for a company and part of my agreement was to provide Social Media coverage. I worked hard to keep everything updated and even to create videos from the day. But then in July I was going on vacation with my family and nothing we were doing was sponsored by anyone. (Nor for a lack of trying + asking!)
I realized that I was under no obligation whatsoever to keep up the kind of Social Media coverage I had done in May or June.
I remembered again what it would feel like to give it up. Relief.
Before we left on July 3, I deleted all the social apps off of my phone. I went radio silent for the whole month.
I went on walks with my family without thinking about what would be the most perfect pic for the Instagram frame. I played cards in the evenings. I read six books. I wrote lengthy journal entries instead of my usual fragmented phrases to later jot my memory. I went out in the evenings without even carrying a phone or a camera. One night I felt so free I did cartwheels in a giant field with my daughter. Another night I watched the sunset without taking a single photo. I bought a new set of watercolors and a sketchbook.
On August 1st, I asked myself if I wanted those apps back on my phone.
And I was almost surprised to realize that I did not. It really was a relief.
I’m still not sure I’m done for good with Social Media. I may find I need it again for a project, but for certain I will approach it a new way if I decide to re-engage.
And at the moment, I am enjoying the benefits of silencing that social buzzing in my writing life. Uninterrupted, less distracted time to write my heart out.
Friends, a year ago at AWBU, I walked away with a notebook full of ideas and thoughts.
I later narrowed those down to one idea. I let that idea sit with me and turned it into a goal that took me almost a year to even seriously consider. This journey of blogging (and life) is slow progress for me, y’all.
Listening to and connecting with other bloggers in person has been a huge gift to my growth as a blogger and a writer! I’m grateful for a place to continue to try on new hats and experiment from my tiny corner of the internet!
Can you remember something you learned at AWBU last year? Share it with me in the comments!
What are you hoping to learn this year? Are you going? You can still sign up to attend AWBU this year!
PS If it’s your first time, here’s a little helpful post I wrote this time last year for first time attendees of AWBU.
Could you give a succinct, verbal answer to that question if I was sitting across from you right now over coffee?
If not, I totally understand!
Lots of days I have trouble choosing what I want to drink or to eat.
So how am I supposed to answer such a grand question?
But the longer I blog (write, live, walk on this earth), the more I am convinced that we have to define what we want.
And then once we figure it out, we have to ask for it.
Personally, I don’t like asking for things.
I don’t like being rejected. I don’t want to be told no. Or worse, to get no reply at all.
But everything I have gotten to do in blogging has happened because I was willing to face getting a negative response to my many requests.
When I was telling the story of my journey of blogging, I mentioned this minor detail about asking for things (or pitching), but it’s worth mentioning again.
Every wonderful opportunity I have had as a blogger represents at least twenty opportunities I did not get.
Every positive response to an email represents twenty “no’s” or “no reply’s.”
You would think that now that I know that, I could go forward and ask with confidence and not worry about the inevitable rejection.
Nope.
For some people it might get easier to be told “no,” but I am one of those sensitive creatures for whom it hurts every single time. I face self-doubt and insecurity at the onset of every project and every ask.
But the flip side is that if I don’t ask, I won’t be told “yes” either.
So I keep wading back into my email inbox and asking.
If you were not afraid of being rejected, what would you ask for today?
I would really love to know! Even if it’s just to encourage you to go for it and ask. Leave it in the comments or shoot me an email if you are hesitant to share outloud. (alison@alisonchino.com)
Would you rather lie in bed with your laptop propped on your belly watching YouTube videos than write on your blog?
(Just me?)
Sometimes I feel the need to freshen things up a bit.
It’s spring! Let’s breathe some new life into those online spaces.
Here are a few ideas for blog posts that maybe you haven’t tried in a while:
1. Love Story
Y’all. Everyone loves a love story. It’s how we became enamored with The Pioneer Woman and it’s why celebrity romances are splashed on the front of magazines. So tell us YOUR love story! Oh, you don’t have one? Tell us your parents’ love story. Or your grandparents’! Or go ask the little old lady next door to tell you hers and then spill the goods for the rest of us.
2. Travel Snippet
I had coffee with a friend this week to hear about her recent weekend away and she told me a story about getting lost on a bus that was hysterical. It was really only a small part of her trip but her encounter with a stranger helping her find her way will probably be one of the memories that stays with her the longest from her weekend.
I think we all tend to blog “scrapbook style” about our travels, and it’s fun to keep track of our family vacations and memories that way but as a different approach, try sharing just a snapshot from the last trip you took.
3. Childhood Memory
When I was in fifth grade I rode my bicycle into the woods every day after school where my best friend and I had created an elaborate imaginary world in the top of the perfect climbing tree. I could probably dedicate an entire blog to my own version of Neverland.
I’m sure you have a few gems from your childhood. Happy or sad, memories make for wonderful stories.
4. Teenage Memory
Remember that one time you spent the night with a friend and she woke you up in the middle of the night to climb out the window to go meet some boys at the 7-Eleven? Yeah, tell about that one. Oh, does your mom read your blog? You might should tell her first.
5. Quirky Home Tour Photo Essay
I love seeing my friends’ houses. And there are a few things I always look for when I go in a new house. Old family photos come to mind.
Tell us a story about your every day space with a few unusual + random pictures of your favorite spots.
For example: 1. A house plant you’ve kept alive for six months. 2. The soap/cleaner/lotion/candle you can’t live without. 3. The chair your husband won’t let you get rid of. 4. The view from your kitchen window. 5. Your favorite coffee mug.
6. Do something new. Then write about it.
Take an ice skating lesson. Go on a hike to a place you’ve seen on Instagram/Facebook but have never been to before. Try a cuisine from another country. Throw a dinner party for people who’ve never been to your house before. Get up in the middle of the night just to look at the stars.
The sky is the limit. But you don’t have to go crazy. (unless you want to!) As long as the experience is new to you, you will have a story to tell that is different from your normal blogging fare.
Ok, YOUR TURN!
What ideas do you have for stories you would enjoy reading? Do share!
And if you use any of the ideas from this post or from others’ comments, I would love for you to tell me on Twitter!
PS. I’ll be telling a story soon about walking the Whisky Trail in Scotland because that’s where I am this week! I’d love for you to follow along on Instagram!
A discussion I have been having a lot lately is about the different ways that bloggers work with brands.
There are so many ways to work with brands these days, but I think the most perfect brand partnerships are born out of a mutual love between the blogger and the brand.
Since Arkansas Women Bloggers has partnerships with some amazing Arkansas brands, I thought it would be fun to share a few ways I think bloggers do well at representing brands.
So here they are: 3 Great Ways Bloggers Represent Brands
1. Tell great social media stories.
This can be hard to do, and I don’t always succeed. But when I am working on a story or a project, I really love to be able to take the time to create anticipation before an event, to provide social media at the event and then to wrap the story up afterwards.
Of course, in my field (travel), this is easier to do than in others, but with a little creativity and planning, you can tell a story about anything and tie it all together with a little hashtag love.
Here’s an example of how it can be done for a recipe on Twitter:
Monday at the store: “Throwing some brown rice from @RicelandFoods in my shopping cart today. Looking for a new healthy recipe. #ChinosEatHappy”
Wednesday afternoon: “Think I’ll go ahead and chop all the veggies for my new @RicelandFoods brown rice paella. #ChinosEatHappy”
Wednesday at dinner: Tweet a gorgeous photo of your dinner, of course.
Wednesday after dinner: It was a hit! Kids loved the @RicelandFoods dish! #ChinosEatHappy
Friday morning: Blogging that new recipe today. Watch for it! #ChinosEatHappy
Friday afternoon: Here’s the link to my new recipe using @RicelandFoods brown rice. #ChinosEatHappy
This is just a made up example, but I think it illustrates that it is more interesting to create a story than it is to just tweet the same link four or five times, and I think it gives the brand more to work with. They can choose to turn it into a conversation, and your followers can engage with the process.
Obviously, Twitter is not the only channel you can use for this. Some people do a great job on Pinterest!
2. Create content for brands that they can use on their own website or social media channels.
Photos, videos, blog posts.
Most brands need all of these things for their website. In fact, for some brands I end up doing more content for their site than I do for my own. That can be a fun way to represent a brand without tiring out your own blog readership with talking about one particular brand too much.
This is also a great way to use or re-use content that you’ve already spent the time creating.
3. Write a blog post for a brand that tells a story only you can tell.
I love it when brands understand the value of the individual story. One of my favorite brands to work with in the last year has been a company called GowithOh. They are a vacation apartment rental company and they have provided apartments for a few of my family’s city breaks around Europe.
Per our arrangement beforehand, I have included links to and photos of the apartments I have stayed in, but my blog posts for them have been about our family’s adventures in the various cities. They are stories that are specific to our family and that only we can tell. I have so appreciated the freedom to create the kind of content that is a natural fit for my blog while still representing the brand.
I think this one is especially important when ten or fifteen bloggers are representing the same event or product. When I go on a tour and write about it for a brand, I don’t want my blog post to read like the tour description. I try to enter situations looking for a smaller story or a little detail that maybe not everyone would notice. This takes me back to those three small rules of writing any story:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
– Mary Oliver
Ok, over to you.
What are some ways you think bloggers do a great job representin’?
PS. The photo for this post is from a recipe for Petit Jean Meats hot dogs that I put together a few years ago for my Mama’s birthday. It’s one of my favorites!
Do you ever get excited about writing something and then realize that it is not really a great fit for your blog?
Maybe you write a fashion blog, but you were inspired this month to do a piece on MLK Day?
Or maybe you write a blog about church, but you went to a restaurant you really loved and want the world to know about.
Maybe you have a food blog, but today you needed to record a story that came to you while you were walking the dog.
In the age of “branding” or trying to fit a “niche” in blogging, we sometimes limit ourselves to what we have determined our audience will appreciate.
But as writers, I think it’s important to allow ourselves time to write the stories that touch our hearts.
So I hope you hear me saying (shouting) out this word of permission (also for myself):
Allow yourself to give in to whatever muse strikes your fancy.
It’s invigorating.
And here are a few suggestions for what to do with a piece that doesn’t really fit on your blog.
Publish it on someone else’s blog.
Guest posting is a great way to introduce your blog to a new audience. So find a blog that your piece would be a great fit for and reach out to see if another blogger would be willing to publish it with a little bio and link back to your site.
Publish it on a news blog.
Would your post fit in a local or national new setting? Little Rock Family, Arkansas Outside, Babble or The Huffington Post? Find the contact pages on these sites and send a request to guest post. I find that people are more excited about accepting a guest blogger when the piece is already written.
Publish it on Medium.
If you don’t already have a Medium profile, well, you probably should go ahead and set one up. You can use your Twitter handle. Medium is a cross between a social media network and a blogging platform. Its simple format makes it a joy to compose on, and there are lots of users hanging out and reading over there that might not otherwise find your blog. I especially like to use Medium for long form writing. Medium readers are not scared off by a post being over 800 words.
Publish it on Arkansas Women Bloggers.
One of the reasons I started this monthly contribution to the AWB site is that I really enjoy writing about blogging. I was doing tons of research and reading about blogging, but I did not have a place to share what I had learned. This community is great place for sharing your writing about many different topics and Julie is always looking to fill up the editorial calendar, so give her a shout.
Publish it on your blog anyway.
Maybe you just can’t bear to let this piece of work go somewhere besides your own site. That’s ok. Sometimes your readers will surprise you and be enthusiastic about seeing a different side of your writing life. Last year in the middle of all my outdoorsy posts, I wrote a story about my sister that I just wanted to share for her birthday. It turned out to be one of my most read posts of the year.
Don’t publish it at all.
Sometimes I write something that I know I just need to sit on for a while. Usually this happens when I have written something I feel very passionate about. Or sometimes I find that I have recorded a memory that I just need to hold to myself. At least for the time being. Maybe a day will come later that I should release it to the world. Or maybe not. Either way, I think I will still be glad I took the time to write it down.
Sometimes I forget that the reason I started my blog is that I love to write.
And in order to keep blogging with joy, I have to keep being inspired to write.
I’m so curious!
What have you written about lately that has nothing to do with your blog?
Where else would you add to this list of places for publishing your work?
But then there’s a third kind of story to live, and it’s what I like to call:
The Grand Adventure
A grand adventure is an epic you can climb inside of. It’s a story that takes some dreaming and some planning.
It’s a story that makes you excited to get out of bed in the morning. It’s something that heightens your senses. It makes you alive to life. It’s a story that makes you want to keep blogging.
It can take a lot of different shapes but it has to be something that is uniquely you.
By that I mean that you can’t compare your grand adventure to someone else’s. Or you get in trouble.
My current grand adventure is called #48walks, and it’s part of my attempt to embrace where I live and the fact that for the most part, we walk everywhere. All the walks I’ve done this year have been leading up to longer walks, and specifically, a long walk across England that I did in September.
The Coast to Coast Trail in England is 191 miles. It sounded pretty impressive to me. I was actually kind of scared I wouldn’t be able to finish.
To me, it sounded like a Grand Adventure.
But as soon as I said that my Grand Adventure was going to be walking from the west coast of England to the east, I found out that 10000 people walk it every year. Someone actually ran it in five days. In 1991, someone ran the entire route in just under 40 hours.
I know of someone else who is going to run across the entire USA. Another blogger is currently walking across the whole world.
So if I start comparing my adventure to others, pretty soon I feel like it is no big deal that I walked across England, and I start thinking that maybe I should find something more original.
That’s when I have to stop and remember:
This is my Grand Adventure. For me it’s a story worth living and a story worth telling.
Your Grand Adventure is going to be something that makes YOUR heart beat faster. Because we’re all different.
Even though all grand adventures are not the same, all Grand Adventures seem to have some of the same elements.
So besides the fact that it EXCITES YOU, here’s how you know you’re setting out on a Grand Adventure:
A Grand Adventure involves RISK, even the risk of FAILURE.
So your adventure should have some elements that stretch you. That push you to the limit of your strength or your skill set or your mental prowess.
It is going to stretch you and there will be hard work involved.
And there could be failure. And that’s OK.
In fact it’s best to acknowledge up front that you could completely fail at your Grand Adventure.
But that doesn’t mean the adventure wasn’t worth taking.
Your grand adventure is your story arc. It’s this beautiful design that shapes your life for a season. But the point of the arc is to give us something to live through. Not necessarily attain something.
It’s the journey not the destination.
We’ve all heard that before, but when you step back and look at someone’s story it’s all this bit in the middle of the story arc that is interesting, that keeps you engaged.
And living through the journey is what changes us. Molds us. Shapes us.
You cannot ever fully prepare for A Grand Adventure.
There are unpredictable elements for which there is no preparing.
No matter how much you prepare, you never feel ready to take it on. At some point, you just go for it. This is where a blog comes in really handy in living a big story, because at some point you put it out there that this is what you are going to do, and then there’s more pressure to actually do it.
I find that it helps if you have to commit to something. Again, put things on the calendar. Meetings. Tickets. Commitments.
So you have to start.
And then in the middle of the journey all kinds of things happen that you didn’t plan. Here are some quotes from Donald Miller that I used at AWBU this year about the harder bits of a Grand Adventure:
The negative turns in a story is what makes it interesting. Don’t be discouraged by negative turns. If you understand that this is what makes it interesting, then you don’t give up when you encounter a setback. Plus the pain makes the ending more beautiful.
Here’s the truth about telling great stories with your life. It’s going to sound like a great idea and you are going to get excited about it, and then when it comes time to do the work, you’re not going to want to do it. It’s like that with writing books, and it’s like that with life. People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen. But joy costs pain.
Have you ever been in the middle of something hard and thought this: “I hate this moment but I’m going to love this memory.”
All Grand Adventures are like this. They are made up of moments you hate and moments you love. In fact, it is the mixture of the memories of both are what make the story brilliant.
So there you have it. Three Ways to Live and Tell Great Stories on your blog: The Sacred Everyday, Noteworthy Days and The Grand Adventure.
So friends, go live the story that you want to write about. Then come back and tell me all about it.
If you plan a Grand Adventure in 2015, I would LOVE to know about it. Leave me a link in the comments! Or tell me on Twitter.
