How Luvvie, A Romance Novel & A Friend Helped Inspire Me to Blog Again

As I indicated in my bio, I’ve been blogging on and off for more than seven years. I have tried different names and different platforms, but for some reason, I just never kept up with it consistently, and ended up scrapping each blog after a few months. The one prior to this website, Write-Overthink-Rewrite, is the only thing that’s still up to bear witness.

So, here we go again. For the umpteenth time, welcome to my blog!

The inspirations

I have decided to wade back into the waters of the blogosphere for a number of reasons, but it all boils down to the fact that, as a creative, I realised that I needed to have a designated space for myself and my own writing in this great, big world.

Several friends and former coworkers have been encouraging me to get serious about it for years. I know I talk a lot, but I didn’t always feel I had something to say, especially in such a public forum. Also, I was managing a blog for work, so I figured I really wouldn’t be able to keep up two outlets, and the idea was shelved.

During this time, I happened upon AwesomelyLuvvie.com, THE wickedest humour blog on the planet, and I became a devotee. I’m ashamed to say I have evangelised for Luvvie far more than I have for Jesus, and watching her build and expand her brand to the point where people like Oprah Winfrey and Shonda Rhimes know her and plug her work and upcoming book has been wonderful and inspiring. Luvvie, if you ever read this, know that you are my blueprint for global domination. 🙂

Watching Luvvie’s journey has shown me the importance of creating your own space, developing your personal brand, and putting your work out there on faith that it will do what you sent it out there to do, and then some. I’m not trying to copy Luvvie – if you know her work, you know that’s impossible! I’ve just decided to take to heart some of the principles she has shared and will put them to work. It’s just prudent to have my writing in one place as something of a portfolio that may attract future jobs, even though that is not necessarily my end game.

My second inspiration was an ebook I read a few weeks ago, Like Never Before, by Melissa Tagg. The heroine, Amelia, is the editor of a small town newspaper that eventually goes belly-up. She’s spent a lot of time chasing this one story and suddenly, there is nowhere to publish it. Eventually, an opportunity comes her way that involves becoming the editor of a niche online magazine, which will not only allow her to publish her story, but give her the platform to do the kind of writing she’s really drawn to. It’s not the same thing, but I had such a powerful aha! moment that I reread that section about three times, put down my phone, grabbed pen and paper and just started making notes. Needless to say, those pages are highlighted and bookmarked for regular future reference. (And I want a job just like that. Or I’m going to create it.)

Amidst all the writing I have done, especially over the last five years, I longed to be able to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) for myself, but things never quite came together the way I wanted them to, until now.

I resigned from my last job at the end of April (I’ll write about that in further detail at some point) and I’m currently freelancing (why does that word give me hives?) Having some ‘free time,’ I’ve been able to really plan my mission and map out some ideas that I want to write about, as well as some people whose stories I want to share. Which brings me to my third source of inspiration.

Janeth is a friend I met in college, who recently self published her first book. She will be the first person I feature here. She’s also working on another great project that I’m excited about. I just love her go-getter attitude!

The background work

Once I decided to go ahead with this idea, I spent many hours researching and trying out various platforms on which to build my site, and let me tell you – it has been an adventure! The choices came down to Weebly or WordPress, even though the Squarespace interfaces are so, so gorgeous and held the most appeal for me. I almost had to ‘eenie-meenie-minie-mo’ it. WordPress is more economical (I’ve become a bit of a penny pincher), but the Weebly template I was working with was so much prettier. In the end, cheapness won out. I paid for my hosting, installed WordPress, and then got to work creating the site myself.

Father. In. Heaven.

I thought I was going to blow a blood vessel on several occasions as NOTHING was coming together the way I had envisioned it in my head. The themes I liked just didn’t seem to work for the configurations I wanted. I had no clue what I was doing 90 per cent of the time, so I ended up with phantom pages, my links weren’t leading to the right locations, my images were just looking wonky…it was a whole mess. At one point, I got so lost that I had to ask my hosting service to uninstall and reinstall WordPress so I could start over from scratch.

I must admit, it was a lot easier the second time around. It was still frustrating not being able to get it exactly like I wanted, but after several more 3AM bedtimes, I finally found something that works. I definitely shed a happy tear or two. I think I’ll definitely take a web design class so I can learn a new skill. It’s always good to be multi-faceted.

I also learned some valuable life lessons during the process. I tried something new. I did it myself. I had to troubleshoot and troubleshoot until I found a solution. I started over (and over, and over, and over…) and eventually, I got it. Yay, me!

What to expect

Now that I’m all set, I’ll be writing about a number of diverse topics, including spiritual and life lessons I’ve learned, funny/crazy/scary/happy/sad things I see or experience, news and social issues, sports, arts and entertainment (LUPITA!!!) and, as I indicated above, interviews and stories with my cool, awesome friends who are taking this thing called life by the horns.

If you have read my sporadic blogging before, welcome back. If you’ve just happened upon this somehow, thanks for clicking through and I hope you stick around.