Writing

The Best Time To Post Your Blog Articles

Garth Beyer

Is immediately.

You aren’t the best blogger, neither am I, no one is. Even if you post 5,000 articles in two years, you can still be better, learn more and grow further. You learn by doing, by putting yourself (in this case, your article) out there. Post your blog articles immediately so you are forced to work on more to post and thus can continue growing and learning quicker.

Even more importantly, you need to be producing a lot more articles than you think. There needs to be enough ideas and stories to populate your blog without the need to schedule one a day for the next 2 months.

After all, how could you do that to your readers? How can you deprive them of valuable information, how can you make them wait for something that could change their lives, of something that somebody may need now, not 2 months from now.

The days in which you could become popular with one single post are over. Before, you could follow your audience closely enough to know exactly when to post a particular piece of information. Now, you post as much as you can because there is always someone somewhere looking for the answer you have.

 

Stay Positive & Your Readers Don’t Need To Wait For You, They Will Search For The Answer Somewhere Else. Will You Have Your Article Posted First?

Garth E. Beyer

The Difference Between Being Smart and Bullshitting A Paper

Garth Beyer

I have written a substantial amount of papers and reports throughout my educational career. The majority of which were written the night before or the day it was due. My reasoning is explained here. Besides implementing the Pareto principle, doing things near the last-minute is one of my talents. I work very well under stress.

As a result for producing A+ papers right before they were due, I was labeled the King of Bullshitting Papers.

The title is far from accurate so it’s time people understand the different types of smart people that school churns out.  I am one of three types of scholars. Can you pick which one you are most like?

1. The Valedictorian: Reads the entire book, takes notes, reviews the book again and then writes the report.

2. The Bullshitter: Reads a review of the book online and adds unrelated information into the report as a filler.

3.The Unnoticed Genius: Scans the entire book and takes the most important parts and writes a report based on the important factors, previously learned content and personal experience.

If you are a Valedictorian, you are the best at following orders, listening to directions, and having zero creativity. The Bullshitter of course, may not even read a review of the book. It’s likely that the bullshitter just reads the back of the book or only the introduction. The last type of smart person is the one most wrongly assumed as being the Bullshitter. The Unnoticed Genius takes the core of both the Valedictorian and the Bullshitter, squishes them together and with a bit of creativity, forms art.

Understand that knowing an idea and elaborating on it quickly, based off of both research and experience, is not bullshitting. Trying to act like you know the idea and pretending you are expert enough to elaborate on it – that is bullshitting.

 

Stay Positive & Remember Who You Mistakenly Call King Of Bullshitting, They’re The Ones Who Are Going Far In Life

Garth E. Beyer

 

Stomp The Prompts And Eggshells! Out-Of-The-Box Writing Prompts and Lessons –

Garth Beyer

It’s winter time in Madison, Wisconsin. It is actually snowing right now and we are supposed to get up to 5 inches. I figured this would be a perfect time to post my writing prompts I created just for you. Regardless if you are living where its snowing, I hope you have some time to do some free writing. Below you will find 15 writing prompts and one bonus prompt that I will respond to. Following the prompts I will give you suggestions on how to successfully write prompts. As much as it is a free writing technique, there are requirements and lessons to learn. It took me a lot of cruddy free writing stories to learn and I am more than happy to share them with you. Without further ado,

15 writing prompts, just for you by Garth E. Beyer: Because getting prompts elsewhere just is not good enough!

  • The tornado sirens are blaring and you are waiting by the window patiently to see if there is actually a tornado nearby. You see a woman screaming and pointing behind her as she runs toward your house. Why do you think she is screaming? What do you?
  • You felt adventurous this morning so you are at the local park which is basically like being in the woods. Not realizing how far off the trail you have gotten, you become stuck between a wolf and the edge of the cliff with raging waters steadily streaming down below. What are your thoughts and actions?
  • A large burly man has you thrown over his shoulder. Since you are not in view of the direction he is heading, all you see is desert land behind him. What do you think is ahead of him? Where is he taking you?
  • You are a bird for a day. What do you do? Where do you go?
  • You have just won the $1000 a week for life lottery. How do you celebrate? What are your plans for the money?
  • Your school field trip leaves you stuck in the hot air balloon with the prissiest girl in your class. How do you survive the 2 hour hot air balloon ride while the fuel slowly runs out?
  • Write a detailed description of where you believe wind comes from.
  • You must use a color in every sentence while describing the beginning, growth, and end of the life of your favorite fruit.
  • Free write with the sole focus of stars. It may be stars on a flag, or the sky, as long as the subject remains on stars.
  • Write in detail of your dream vacation. Where is it? What do you do? How would you describe it to a family member upon return?
  • List different types of hugs a person can give and the significance or subconscious meaning behind each.
  • You are on a roof of a building with your friends and they are pressuring you to jump across to the roof of the adjacent building. What is running through your mind? Do you jump?
  • You have just been in a terrible biking accident down a hill. You are telling your friend the narrative starting from the beginning of your day to how you ended up in the hospital bed.
  • The city has dubbed you head of college applications “Admissions Officer”. Revise and Rewrite the acceptance letter to your liking to be given to all accepted college applicants.
  • You have an assignment for Garth. You need to come up with fifteen writing prompts. Do you obey and write the writing prompts? If so, what are they? If not, why not? (Post them in comments section for me and others)

Toastmasters Bonus Prompt

My bonus prompt is not one I made up like those above. I got it from attending Toastmasters the other night during Table Topics. I was the first to volunteer (always am) to go up and pick a folded piece of paper with the prompt. “Theme: your personal best, real or imagined… Making dinner for a picky eater”. The Table Topics Master focused on positivity and the point of the Topic was to focus on the best parts of an experience, no matter how disastrous it may have been.

When I read my prompt I quickly thought of a cursed friend when she was vegetarian. It was her birthday and I tricked her by telling her that I had to stop back at my house to get my money. How could I purchase her sweet things at the mall if I had no money? To her surprise I had the house pitch black…except for the candles. I had the dining room set up with a table cloth, candles, silverware and wine glasses. After pulling the chair out for her, I came back from the kitchen and surprised her with a huge dish of vegetarian lasagna. She had been begging me to make a dinner for her. I am not the best cook, but beg and you shall receive. I found a lasagna recipe online, but really ended up grabbing whatever ingredients I thought would go good in it. While it turned out to look a bit more like goulash, she loved it. As much as she has begged me to make it for her again, I refuse. I consider that day to be my personal best at making a dinner for a picky eater. I would not want to ruin it.

Yes this was impromptu speaking and I edited it a bit for posting it here. But I didn’t want you to be the only one writing prompts! It’s like having a personal fitness trainer that doesn’t lift weights with you. It just cannot be.

I Prompt You To Learn These Lessons About Writing Prompts Promptly

1. Writing from a prompt is supposed to break you away from your normal writing techniques. I suggest practicing writing with your left hand before you start a prompt, flipping open a dictionary and taking some random words out to use in your writing, and doing your best to not use your memories – use your imagination.

2. I broke up with my prompt and got the better half. Writing from prompts are not meant to flow. You are not writing an essay (unless stated otherwise in the prompt hehe). Be brief and concise in each idea you come up with for the prompt, break them up and find a way to connect them later. The greatest stories from prompts happen when miraculous ideas are dubstepped on paper and get the reader using all parts of their brain to connect them.

3. If you decide to crumple up your paper, you know you are in the right direction – as long as you uncrumple it and keep writing. You have to let yourself fail when writing from a prompt, only then can you figure out the message you really want to get across in the prompt.

4. Having writers block when trying to write a prompt? Others will tell you to force it and push through. They are wrong, never do this when writing from a prompt. What they are asking you to do is break your barrier and find the flow. As stated in number 2, that is not what you want. Grab another prompt that you can actually start and be creative.

5. Really do have fun with it. So many freewriters focus on making their story really important and try to send a message or lesson in their writing from a prompt. Yet again, they are trying to shape what they write, do not do this. If a lesson or theme is supposed to be shared from the prompt, then it will be. The main focus should be to make your writing quirky, unique, and out-of-the-box.

6. Lastly, I want to provide you with one great resource that I found on Squidoo (Created by Seth Godin, one of my heroes). Check out this Writing Prompt Lens

Stay Positive and Egg-on Those Prompts

Garth E. Beyer

A Writer’s Crashing “Train of Thought” and Why It’s Excellent

Garth Beyer

Disturbing or interrupting a Writer while at work is one of the best, worst acts you could perform.

The reason why most, if not all writers dislike being disturbed is due to the lack of brain capacity. I do not mean that their brains can’t handle being interrupted and filled with information, I mean that they do not leave a void open for the disturbances. Then again, why should a writer do that?

Sure, getting interrupted when you are sitting down to start writing, or when you are hitting a little writers block is not a bad thing, it may even give you a mental jump start. But why is it such a sin to interrupt a writer while he is “in the zone” or making final touches or just giving birth to a fantastic surreal book idea? Why is it me and maybe a select few other writers who praise the moments of interruption during these power-writing and focused work moments?

Enter Clover (The Cat)

I have a lot to be grateful for Clover. She is one of the reasons I finish writing blog posts instead of only writing ideas to expand on later. From the picture above, you can tell how cute she is, so when she lays on my lap while I write, I can’t do anything but write. Who would want to disturb such an adorable creature. — And so I write.

On the other hand, she often makes me lose my temper because she interrupts my writing. I don’t have a problem with the moments she jumps up on my lap and lays quietly and sleeps. What I hate is when she jumps up and doesn’t land perfectly, slides off, all the while digging her claws into my legs. Even if you don’t have a cat,  I know you can feel the pain as a writer. It’s the same when someone interrupts you when you are in a hotspot of writing; rather than having claws scraped down your leg, they are scraped down your mind, breaking the frequency of thoughts. (Unfortunately I get to feel both: scraping on my legs and my mind)

Writing is Personal History

Whether it’s a cat digging its nails into your flesh, a person shouting your name repeatedly, someone who has the tv or radio blaring, or the fridge that is making too much noise, you (a writer) need to leave a vacant mental space for these interruptions. Not so you can deal with them and move on, but so you can absorb the experience and transfer it into your writing.

Everything writers write comes from the past. It comes from some thought, some memory, some action taken, some sight seen, something in the past. Next time you read an article try to discover what had happened that made the writer want to write about it. Commonly it involves a personal experience. Some writers go on about a life changing event that happened to them, while other writers write about a small experience that made a world of difference.

The greatest writers can take any experience and write something worth reading about it.

And here we are. I have just taken the annoyingly disturbing occurrence of Clover digging her nails into my legs after a failed attempt at jumping on my lap, and created something worthy for writers to read. What does all of this have to show you?

A Non-Stop Writers Attitude

Here are reasons to appreciate all disturbances while you are writing.

1 It forces you (the writer) to re-read the last one or two sentences you wrote, thus focusing in on making sure you are writing in the direction you want

2 Allowing your brain to get out of the writing frequency for a moment or two, you now re-surged it with power and most likely PREVENTED a writer’s block period from occurring

3 You have just been universally sparked with a new memory to work into your writing

4 Which is more important? Continuing an idea that you have COMPLETE CONTROL over  in your writing and that you can go back to anytime OR giving someone else the satisfaction of your attention? (Most often, when you don’t give someone what they want – your attention – you are going to piss them off and it’s just going to spoil your day, am I right?)

If you are in or going into the lifestyle of writing, you need to have a Non-Stop Writers Attitude.

For a true writer, there are never interruptions, there are never periods that you are not writing and there are certainly never other things that deserve your focus more than the paper or document your writing or typing on. To become a truly successful writer you need to have the mind-set of the above principles, understand them, and implement them at every opportunity. (As a Writer, that is always)

Stay Positive and Mind-Void Interruptions, Rather than Avoid

Garth E. Beyer

Who Writes for Writers?

Garth Beyer

A writer is someone who writes. Or is it?

Eliot Rose seems to express it as something much more than someone who simply writes.

It is sort of obvious the difference between a Writer and someone who writes. What I want to know is who writes for writers?

Every career in the world has someone writing on them. The politicians have journalists swarming over them like they just battered their bee hive. Even small home improvement business’s have writers discussing their products in articles and people online blogging about their experience at the business and videos of their products. (More often funny than promotional) Even the common person has people writing for them, that is how we get both non-fiction and fiction books. I ask again, who writes for writers?

The answer slightly touched my mind as I was reading blogs at ProBlogger which is mainly a collection of guest posts. Guest posts?

Many blogs use guest posts instead of interviews. The blog will let someone who they think has something worthy to say and relates to their niche to write a post for their blog. This is best promoted when the guest blogger is someone of extreme significance and is well-known. The ability to impact readers works just the same for someone who simply has an interest in what the blog naturally discusses.

Then I was wondering how negatively effective it is to have a guest post that has nothing to do with your niche. Sparingly, it could throw people off track, inspire a new idea, change perspectives, and simply remind people why they come to your blog. Of course the guest blog would be different than what your niche is, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still be something your passionate about. (Ex. Your niche blog is Public Speaking. You also have a passion for exercise but never blog about it. Guest blogger comes and writes a blog on fitness.) Now you get a chance to create a connection between fitness and public speaking. Let’s see how good you really are as a Writer. Proving that you can make those sort of connections interesting would attract all the more writers.

Now instead of attracting readers who have an interest in Public speaking, you now attract readers who’s niche is fitness but have a passion for public speaking. Viewers go up. Well I gave my answer for the question, “Who writes for the writers?”     What’s your answer?

Stay Positive and Go Out And Write For Other Writers Too (someone has to)

Garth E. Beyer

“Two is better than One. Especially when Two can multiply your followers”

I am looking for Guest Bloggers that write about life lessons. You can email me at TheGarthBox@gmail.com