Tag Archives: writing

Writing can be hard to do

You know when I’m having a tough time if I spend a few post a week doing some self-loathing about my inability to write. It’s odd that I’ll be able to spend a paragraph or two writing about how it’s difficult to write and then when I try to begin typing something with worthy content, nothing seems to come out. I’ve been thinking about going back and reading my old post and maybe editing and reposting some of the writing I thought was really good. I’d love to hear if there are any highlight post in my readers opinions…
Also, I’m thinking of sort of scheduling in writing time and trying more experimental writing. I’d love to try my hand at fiction, I’d imagine it’d be good for stirring my imagination and challenging my current writing style. Who knows, any good writers out there got any tips?

Well, my hands are moving fast enough to try and spew out some post I’ve been wanting to write for a while, so hopefully you’ll see some decent content this week.

Why go to college when you can blog instead?

Let me start by saying that I did go to college and now I blog and after trying both I’m not completely convinced that one is better then the other.
College has all it’s pros like room and board, smart people all around you, and other stuff. But, it also has it’s cons like that big fat bill after graduation, grades, and smart people all around you.

Blogging on the other hand has very little cons that I can see. I like to read, listen, or watch stuff. I also like researching topics I’m interested in. When I was in college a teacher told me what to read, listen, watch or research, now I choose it on my own. In college I had deadlines, MLA, grades and smart people to worry about. When I blog about these things I just have the motivation that a good handful of people are interested in what I have to say, and if anything they’ll provide me with postive and constructive feedback on what I wrote. I work at my own pace (which is maybe to slow at times) and I get to choose my own style, which I can always go back and tweak later.

In both situations I’m learning and growing. I’d certainly opt for blogging if I could just convince them to give me one of those fancy pieces of paper at the end of four years.

I love your comments! (and you silent readers)

I stepped back and thought about it and I realized there have been a lot more comments on my blog lately. A number of them have been simple and encouraging “amens” to what I wrote. I absolutely love those comments because they encourage me to continue writing and they let me know my writing is benefiting others besides myself.
A handful of other comments have been very insightful for me, sharing more information I might not have known about a particular topic and helping me to grow in a great many ways. Thank you so much for those, I have grown a great dal from your knowledge and wisdom.
Finally, there are some comments that seem sort of competely unrelated to what I write in my post. Some of these are mean personal attacks (sometimes they disappear), others are just unrelated. I enjoy these too. I also like that my blog has at times has become a forum for others to carry on discussions. I’m glad this can be a place for that.

All of this was simply to say thank you. I appreciate your time and I love your comments. Please continue to let me know how I can serve you.

p.s. a great way to acknowledge my appreciation of you would be to drop a quick comment below…

Technical difficulties: Precondition Failed

So, the truth is I have not been too busy to write. Honestly I think letting myself go a day or two without writing got me out of the groove. I suddenly started thinking about what people would think about what I was writing, and if I was really a good enough writer to be doing this regularly.
I think I’m over it now.

But, excuse number to is this thing called Precondition Failed. Each time I mustered up the confidence to write I’d try to login and my own blog wouldn’t let me on cause it thought I was a robot (computer running through sites just to spam). I still can’t figure out why it did that.

Anyways, I was wondering if this happened to any of my regular readers as well? If so I’ll be sure to look into it. If not I’ll just go on about my business and start posting regularly again like I should have been all along.

Looking forward to this week…

Again, a rather un-profound post.
It looks to be another busy week ahead, so I want to prepare you for the disappointment and heartache you might feel from not hearing more from me as far as thoughtful commentary on life goes.

Here’s some of the short, but hopefully interesting post you can be expecting this week:

  • Notes on the book To Own a Dragon and/or Colossians Remixed
  • Notes on applying GTD (getting things done) to my work and life
  • Notes on how to be a better teacher and motivator
  • sweet advertisements I’ve seen recently
  • commentary on life

That’s about all from these parts.

April 9th, Weekly Update podcast

The latest and greatest from Trying to Follow, now in podcast form. This 15 minute update fills you in on this week’s blog post and let’s you know if you want to spend time checking more of it out.


or download here.

For quick links to the stories:

And please leave your comments on the post, or if you like to talk leave a voicemail:
(775) 370-6924

I want to write a book

One of my goals since High School was that I wanted to write a book before I finished college. I think I saw the popularity of I Kissed Dating Goodbye and thought, “I can write something like that” (not content, but quality).
My College Diploma came in the mail last summer officially calling an end to my college days and permanently marking that goal is “Incomplete.” If sulked in the defeat enough, and now it’s time for me to get up and try again. I want to write a book.
I think the longest papers I’ve ever written were 13 pages each (one in high school, one in college). The idea of writing something that qualifies as a “book” is intimidating to me. At the same time, blogging has helped me to see that it is very possible. My guess is if I just took everything that I have currently written on this blog it would make a decent sized book. If I can learn how to remain focused and have a clear goal in mind I think I can accomplish this.

A few things I would ask:

  1. Please give me a lot of feedback on my writing, I appreciate people’s thoughts and encouragement.
  2. If you have any advice or guides on how to go about this I’d love to hear it.
  3. I’m wondering if self-publishing or finding a publisher is the way to go, any ideas?

my thoughts on the site currently

I’ve gone a good three months without spending too much time boring you with self-evaluation of how the site is going and things of that nature, so now the time has come again. Here is a list of things I’d like to share in no particular order.

  • Last month we were averaging well over 100 page views a day and nearly that many unique visitors. This is a definite increase and sign of new readership. Also, there are about 20+ current subscribers via email and RSS (according to feedburner) which is also a great increase.
  • According to my new stats tracker these are most popular posts this month:
    Most Popular Pages (by visits)
      Blog Page/Post Visits Comments
      Jesus and Immigrants: The Gosp… 108 0
      Journal of Christian Nursing I… 92 6
      5 Steps to Record a Skype Call… 78 1
      About ariah fine. 77 0
      free-will vs. predestination: … 57 2
  • As you can see my “About Ariah Fine” Page is one of the most popular, which made me realize I should probably spruce it up a little bit. I’ve added a few things but there’ll be more to come.
  • For the one or two people who don’t visit the site (use rss or email) I’ve added a little audio intro message on the sidebar, a myStatus section, a feature article spot, and one or two other things.
  • We officially have a Podcast Hotline that you can call and leave messages on (or if your interested, call and I’ll podcast with you). I’d LOVE to get some messages from those folks that read my blog, but I don’t know you at all. Please call and leave a message (don’t worry I won’t answer): (775) 370-6924 [first person to leave a message get’s a free t-shirt]
  • You’d be impressed by some of the google searches that this site shows up on the front page for:
    tniv
    “geez magazine” Chicago
    Justice Clothing
    Radiant Magazine
    stores with sweatshops
    would take nothing for my journey now, maya angelou summaries
  • I think I’m getting ready to fix up the top banner on here to something more personal and significant.
  • Comments on my post have been lacking, which makes me anxious to try and write something fairly controversial. any ideas?
  • I’m unsure whether people are currently enjoying the one post a day thing, or if you would rather I write more?

That’s all I can think of at the moment, but I’m sure there is more that’ll come later.

Tech Friday: Bookmarklets are so cool

You’ve all used and become quite familiar with “bookmarks,” but I’d like to introduce you to some tools that will rock your world: Bookmarklets. They are like Piglet is to pigs, similar in nature, but smarter, talking and half dressed.

The best way to explain bookmarklet’s is to just show you some of my favorites. They function just like bookmarks, but they are more like an arsenal of tools cause they do cool things. If you like one, just drag the link into your toolbar. Here are my current can’t do without bookmarklets.

  1. Library Look-up: This is nice little bookmarklet that makes it easy to browse Amazon looking at books and with one click see if it’s in your local (for Nashville folks) library. It pulls the ISBN number from the site and checks in the library catalog. (If you live someplace other then Nashville you can find or make your own here.)
  2. %5cn’+pjwTitle+’%5cn

    %5cn’+gS5aUb+’%5cn

    %3c/textarea%3e

    ‘);void(close()) }”>QUOTE: This one is essential for you frequent bloggers. I tweaked a similar bookmarklet so it works specifically for WordPress

    html and it also has “From [title of the page your quoting from with hyperlink]” above the quote. Making quoting easy.

  3. imageshack. It keeps you from hogging other people’s bandwidth to show pictures. (Please don’t use this for ill)
  4. TinyURL: Takes the huge long url of the site your looking at and makes it into a TinyURL in one click, saves the cutting and pasting time.

Those are the ones I use regularly. If your looking for more you can find many at bookmarklets.com

50 Facts that should Change the world.

This seems to be book review weekend for me.

50 Facts That Should Change the World is one of the best “social awareness raising” compilations that I have seen in a long time. Jessica Williams does an amazing job of writing concise and thorough chapters on important issues you might not know about. Each article contains a ton of notes that you can reference if your interested in learning more about the issue, and there are usually practical tips on how you can get involved in making a difference in that issue.

What issues might you not have heard about:

  • THERE ARE 27 MILLION SLAVES IN THE WORLD TODAY
  • CARS KILL TWO PEOPLE EVERY MINUTE
  • MORE THAN 70% OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION HAVE NEVER HEARD A DIAL TONE
  • There are 47 more that will challenge you and convict you. I would highly recommend picking this book up from your library or bookstore and commiting to read one chapter a day or a week. It’ll be well worth your time and I don’t think you will ever be the same.

    I’ve wanted for quite a while, to help put together a book similar to this. I’m still working on it and gathering interested writers. The final product would be somewhat similar to what Williams has put together except that there would be more personal accounts and an appeal to taking action that is directed specifically to Christians. Ideally we would create pamphlets about the different issues and encourage churches to put them at their information tables. If your interested in this project please email me.

    Christianity Today Review of 50 Facts…

    50 Facts Video