Avoiding Holiday Hangover on Your Blog

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You schedule things ahead of time, get yourself raring to go, and then you walk away from your virtual world for a while.

There’s nothing wrong with that, and I think it’s a good thing to do from time to time.
But have you noticed how you feel sort of hungover when you get back to the reality of regular blogging? It’s like Monday times ten.
Here are three of my strategies for dealing with holiday hangover on my blog:
1. Ease into posting.
This takes a variety of forms, including posting a picture or three, sharing lighthearted fare, and even scheduling a guest post.
Instead of jumping back in full-force, I find it’s better for me (just as it is with a cold swimming pool) to ease into the schedule of posting, whatever it is. I give myself permission to miss a day (or three).
2. Schedule some things BEFORE the holidays strike.
I like to have a few things in my line-up well in advance. (Note: I fail regularly at this.) Maybe it’s a “Happy {insert holiday name}” message or a quote that’s struck me recently. I might have a guest post that works well.
3. Pray. Smile. Repeat.
For those of you rolling your eyes, I know. I know! How is this a strategy? How is it helpful? Am I just desperately trying to find a third thing?
But here’s the thing: we’re all Catholic writers, and if we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing, there is prayer involved, first and foremost. Nothing–nothing–is too small for God, and I would argue that your blogging–which probably takes up a fair amount of your writing time–should be something that’s in God’s hands.
So discuss this holiday hangover business with him. Ask for his guidance. Accept the graces and ideas that come to you from him.
How about you? I’d love to hear YOUR strategies for dealing with holiday hangover on your blog!
—
When Sarah Reinhard isn’t blogging at SnoringScholar.com, she can usually be found on Twitter and Facebook. She’s in denial about the amount of reading time she doesn’t have right now and has authored a number of titles, including her latest, Welcome Risen Jesus: Lenten and Easter Reflections for Families.

"Christmas Spirits" and Food for the Poor

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by Karina Fabian

Dear friends and readers,

This winter, I have two things in my heart and on my mind: caring for those less fortunate than me (or indeed, much of the world) and my DragonEye, PI stories. For Christmas, I’m combining them and would like to share them with you.

Those of you who are “Vern Fans,” know about my dragon who works in our world as a private investigator, and his partner, Sister Grace, a mage and nun in the Faerie Catholic Church. They’ve saved the worlds and their friends in numerous stories and novels. Last year, I wrote a story for Flagship about their first Christmas together. Not only is Grace struggling with the Mundane idea of Christmas, but their home is threatened by a land developer who wants to tear down the entire neighborhood and make a mall. When the Ghosts of Christmas come to visit him, however, Vern and Grace have to solve the mystery before the Christmas Spirits become Angels of Death.

I have revised and am publishing “Christmas Spirits” as a serial story to raise funds for Food for the Poor. This is a wonderful charity that helps people in impoverished nations help themselves. It allows donators to choose their gifts–whether rice for a family for a month, school supplies, livestock, tools or even houses.

I’m asking that you please check out the story, and, if you enjoy it and want to see more, that you donate even a dollar to the cause. Also, if you enjoy the story, let your friends know. I’ll post every Tuesday and Thursday as the donations come in. Right now, we have raised enough to send a family a goat, but the donations have stopped, and we are holding at Episode Four until more come in. Vern would like to send them a cow (he is a dragon, after all), but Sister Grace and I are dreaming of raising enough to buy someone a home. Can you imagine giving a HOUSE for Christmas? Will you help?

Find the story at https://christmasspirits.karinafabian.com. You can also get to it via my website, https://fabianspace.com. Look under the Christmas dragon for the link. You can learn more about Food for the Poor at https://www.foodforthepoor.org.

Blogging for Beginners: Terms & Concepts

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First, we covered getting yourself a blog. This week, let’s talk vocabulary.

This is a starter list, so chime in if you have questions or you’re unsure about something bloggy.

Blog
Everyone says this is short for weblog. In five-plus years of blogging, though, I have never seen anyone who actually blogs refer to their site as a weblog. It’s like putting the “-” in e-mail (as opposed to writing it “email” without the hyphen). Your blog is where you write. It’s updated through RSS, so it’s changing. A blog is a kind of website. A website is not always a blog.

A blog is like a newspaper–changing frequently. A website that’s not a blog, on the other hand, is like a book, with content that’s not changing. Though you probably update your website, it doesn’t require a steady flow of new material day after day.

On a blog, you keep a frequently updated series of entries, providing news, commentary, or other content.

–Related terms:
  • Blogosphere
    The world of blogging. Is it a real word? Nah, probably not. Except that those of us who are completely entrenched in it don’t know that, so let us live in our little world of made-up words, wouldja? 🙂

  • Blog (the verb)
    The act of writing for your blog, as in “Sorry, can’t help you right now, I’m blogging!”
Post
An entry on a blog. What you are reading right now is a post.

–Related terms:
  • Category or Tag

    You have the opportunity to categorize your posts, depending on what kind of blogging software you use. I use WordPress on my personal site, so there’s a chance to use both categories and tags. This allows you to flag key words and specific content and organize yourself. For example, here on the CWG blog, I often tag my posts blogging. We have other bloggers who write about fiction.
  • Comments
    This is where the conversation takes place on blogs. Comments are the responses other people (or even the author) leave on a post.
Page
This is an unchanging portion of your blog. It’s a webpage, essentially, and it’s different from your blog feed because you don’t type a post to change it. For example, here on the CWG blog, the Blog Schedule is a page. And here I’m talking about a page within a blog, which is different than a webpage. (Confused yet? Sorry!)

–Information that belongs in a post versus on a page:
Blog posts highlight information that’s not going to be around forever. Eventually, it will be in archives (though you could link to it later, repost it, etc.). Pages, on the other hand, would contain information you want people to find and that doesn’t need to change. On my website, for example, I have a page for my speaking topics, which changes every so often but is mostly static.

Sidebar
Many blog designs have areas on the side. Those areas are called sidebars.

–Related term:
  • Blogroll
    A listing of links to other blogs, often found in a sidebar or on its own page within a blog or website.
Link
This is an example of a link. See how it’s a different color and when you hover your mouse over it you can click? That’s a link. It’s text or an image that takes you to another webpage or file.

–Related terms:
  • Backlink
    This is when someone links back to your blog or a post on your site.
  • Permalink
    Some posts have long and unwieldy links, or you’ll notice that the URL has extra junk at the end, because you were referred by somewhere else. A permalink is the permanent link for a post, one that does not change and always leads to that post.
Feed
This is what makes it possible for your blog posts to be delivered to people via email or different reader programs (i.e. Google Reader). There are a variety of feed types, such as RSS, Atom, or RDF.
Those who read your blog from a feed reader (like me!) have a different experience of your blog than those who actually visit your website. For one thing, they don’t see anything other than your post–no background, no fancy sidebars, no pretty header. Just the post. It makes it easier to take in a lot of information from blogs in one place.
If you want to know how it is for your readers, I suggest signing up for a feed reader (I like Google Reader) and subscribing to a few blogs. More details at this article, Feed 101.
—Related term:
  • RSS
    Stands for “rich site syndication” and is one type of magic that makes your blog content appear in my feed reader (I use Google Reader, but there are lots of others). RSS allows web content that’s regularly updated to be delivered to people via different methods (as opposed to them having to always check back with the actual website). If you want to learn more, here’s a great explanation of what RSS is (and it’s written in English, too).
Stats
Statistics, including how many people are viewing your site, what posts are most popular, and what color you should wear. There are a variety of different programs and add-ons for this, and we’ll cover stats in more depth in a future post in this series.

—Related term:
  • SEO
    Search engine optimization, or “how you get people to find you,” although that makes it sound more important than it is. Wait, it IS important. But it can also be distracting. Just like stats.
Further Reading:
Have I left anything out? What term or concept has you scratching your head and wondering? Ask away in the comments!
—

When Sarah Reinhard isn’t blogging at SnoringScholar.com, she can usually be found on Twitter and Facebook. She’s in denial about the amount of reading time she doesn’t have right now and has authored a number of titles, including her latest, Welcome Baby Jesus: Advent and Christmas Reflections for Families.

What you should know as a Catholic blogger

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We interrupt the Blogging for Beginners series because, well, I have sick kids and didn’t manage my time well enough to get my second installment posted.

In the meantime, here are a few must-reads for all of you Catholic bloggers:
Jen Fulwiler shares from her extensive technical web-building knowledge and makes it easy-to-understand. She also gives us all a call to action.
I took away some good tips from this, and I’m betting you will too, even if you’ve been blogging and/or writing for a million years. Who knew that including links in your text can hamper readability? I do it anyway, but I like the idea of including a summary at the end of posts with a listing of what you’ve linked to.
I don’t subscribe to some of the negativity in this, but again, I think there’s room for each of us to take away some tips about this. I heartily disagree about keeping your personality out of your blogging, but I will spare you from my line-by-line critique of this post. I include it here in part because I don’t agree with everything in it…it gives you another viewpoint, right?
And with that, I have to go break up a fight, convince a baby to quit climbing on bookshelves, and continue my novena for an end to coughing and puking…here’s hoping you have a great week!
—
When Sarah Reinhard isn’t blogging at SnoringScholar.com, she can usually be found on Twitter and Facebook. She’s in denial about the amount of reading time she doesn’t have right now and has authored a number of titles, including her latest, Welcome Baby Jesus: Advent and Christmas Reflections for Families.

Famous Self-Published Authors

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Are you a self-published author or thinking of becoming one? Well, you are in good company.

Here is a list of authors and the books they self-published:

Remembrance of Things Past, by Marcel Proust; Ulysses, by James Joyce; The Adventures of Peter Rabbit, by Beatrix Potter; The Wealthy Barber, by David Chilton; The Bridges of Madison County by Robert J. Waller; In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters; The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield; The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. (and his student E. B. White); The Joy of Cooking.

Has one of your books ever been rejected by a publisher? Again, you are in good company. Here is a list of books that were rejected by one or more publishers:

Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth – 14 times; Norman Mailer. The Naked and the Dead – 12 times; Patrick Dennis, Auntie Mame – 15 times; George Orwell – Animal Farm; Richard Bach – Jonathan Livingston Seagull – 20 times; Joseph Heller, Catch-22 – 22 times; Mary Higgins Clark, first short story – 40 times; Alex Haley (before Roots) – 200 rejections; John Grisham , A Time to Kill – 15 publishers and 30 agents; Chicken Soup for the Soul – 33 times; Dr. Seuss – 24 times; Louis L’Amour – 200 rejections; Jack London – 600 before his first story; Diary of Anne Frank.

(Thanks to Dan Poynter www.parapublishing.com)

Other famous self-published authors include:
Deepak Chopra, Gertrude Stein, Zane Grey, Upton Sinclair, Carl Sandburg, Ezra Pound, Mark Twain, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Stephen Crane, Bernard Shaw, Anais Nin, Thomas Paine, Virginia Wolff, e.e. Cummings, Edgar Allen Poe, Rudyard Kipling, Henry David Thoreau, Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, Alexandre Dumas., William E.B. DuBois, Beatrix Potter.

Do you know of any other famous self-published authors? Feel free to leave a comment below…

Ellen Gable Hrkach is the vice president of the Catholic Writers Guild. She is the award-winning author of In Name Only, a Catholic romance and now an Amazon Kindle bestseller (top 100 Religious Fiction). Her new book is Stealing Jenny which is a contemporary pro-life suspense novel. Her website is www.ellengable.com. She and her husband and five sons live in Pakenham, ON Canada.

Blogging for Beginners: Get Yourself a Blog

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You’ve decided that you want or need a blog, and now you need to wade into the waters of setting it up. This week, let’s cover how to do that.
1. Blogging Platforms
I’m going to mention the two I’ve worked with at length.

I spent many years on Blogger, and in fact, this blog is hosted on Blogger. It’s easy to use and easy to get started with. If you decide to move to another platform, it’s relatively easy to migrate your posts, but you could start and stay with Blogger, I think. It’s also tied in with Google, so there’s search engine optimization that happens automatically (or so they say).

Highly recommended for beginners and those who are technically-challenged.

WordPress has really become popular in the last couple of years, and it’s because it is a very versatile platform for websites in general. There are a lot of free templates to let you choose and customize how exactly your blog looks and a great community of helps and tips.

Highly recommended as a website solution. It will probably take a little getting used to and need you to read or watch tutorials.
  • Other Platforms

I don’t have any experience with any other blogging platforms, but TypePad always seems to make the top three lists and seems to be easy to use and to make a nice finished look. If you have other recommendations for blogging platforms, please include them in the comments!

2. Hosting and Such
Do you want to have your own website (which costs money) or just use the free service? If you want a custom website address (also known as a domain name or URL), you’ll have to spend some money for hosting.
You can register your domain name and do an installation of the full version of WordPress with both of these providers. You may also opt to have custom email (i.e. [email protected]) hosted as well.
In both of these providers, you have the option to have a “site builder,” which is a guided set-up process and helps you learn the ropes.
3. What Next?
Well, now you write! Yes, there is a bit more to it than just that, but only as much as you want there to be. You can have fancy sidebars with blogrolls and even widgets of content.
For more on this topic, take a gander at these resources I found online:
Next week, we’ll look at some terminology and jargon, so if that last paragraph has you scratching your head, never fear!
The comments are open for questions, as always, so ask away!
—
Sarah Reinhard has been blogging at SnoringScholar.com for six years and is also active on Twitter and Facebook. She’s the author of Welcome Baby Jesus: Advent and Christmas Reflections for Families.

"Just Something to Think & Pray About" on ALL SAINT"S DAY

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The topic for the first Tuesday of the month is supposed to have something to do with writing; however, my head is somewhere else. Consequently, this post goes in a different direction.

I am more or less sure that we here, at the CWG, have not had the experience of ending each day with no place to go, no food to eat and nowhere to lay our heads. This kind of day-to-day existence seems unimaginable but it is a fact of life for more than a million folks (adults and children) in America. Many ask, “Why don’t they just get a job?”, “Don’t they have family or friends?”, or maybe, “I don’t understand.”  Like it or not, these types of feelings have a tendency to generate indifference. Maybe it is just so hard to believe that a defense mechanism  triggers itself inside us to protect us from stuff that is, to us, unexplainable. I don’t know.

What I do know is this; as catholics, we are supposed to be non-judgmental  and do our best to see the face of Christ in all of our brothers and sisters (sometimes  a daunting task). Then, if possible, help them (many times you cannot) or, at the least, pray for them. Since I have been deeply involved with folks like these for a very long time I thought I would post a copy of a letter written by one of these people who was participating in a survey conducted by a group called “Urban Anthology, Inc.” To point out how this is nothing new this was written more than 10 years ago. One thing that seems to always stand out with so many of these people is their trust in God. Please remember all of these brothers and sisters of ours in your prayers, especially today on the feast of ALL SAINTS.

PATHWAYS INTO HOMELESSNESS—PERSONAL CRISIS
Date: Summer, 2000
Site: St. James
Demographics: Latino/m/30-40
I had a job and a family and things went okay. Then bad things started happening. My brother-in-law got killed in a gang fight. My sister who ain’t married got pregnant. My mother died. All of it was too much. I started drinkin’ a lot and taking drugs—all kinds of drugs—uppers, downers, heroine, crack, weed. I lost my job and my wife and kids moved in with her family. I stayed with my father for a while but we didn’t get along because he was still grieving for my mother. Then I went to my brother’s house but he didn’t want me to be using around the kids, so he kicked me out.
I been staying mainly in parks because the weather is good. I do some work for [odd job place]. I can’t do too many drugs because I ain’t got no money. But I pray and I think that God will get me back to where I was. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to be where I was. I think things happen for a reason and I will just let God lead me where I am supposed to go. I go to church every day when I’m clean and sober. Things happen for a reason, you know.
I applied for a couple of jobs, but it’s kind of hard to get one, you know, when you are homeless and don’t look too good, and you got no number they can get you at. But when the right one comes along, I will get it. I just got to take care of myself until the right time happens. In the meantime, I read the bible and go to church and get in touch with my spiritual side.

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