Social Media and Creative Writing

If I go to WalMart looking for soap, I walk in the front door and scan the scene for the cosmetics department. Then I look for a sign pointing out the aisle where soap might be and make a beeline for it. You won’t see me browsing; I don’t have time and I don’t like [...]

After the last child reached for the golden ring and descended from painted wooden horses, after the music stopped playing and the world stopped spinning, the shops closed their doors and the crowds returned home, and Damien Fry waited alone.
A hundred lights swayed in branches overhead where glistening rain slipped past to beat his shoulders [...]

Last week I hung a bird feeder in my backyard, but didn’t realize there would be a social media lesson involved.
The first parallel might be obvious. I hung the bird feeder up and hoped a few birds would come, much like we might build a blog or another website and hope for a few visitors. [...]

Once upon a time there lived three Billy goat brothers. They were considered forward-thinking marketers and each had developed extensive opt-in email lists.
One sunny day the smallest of the three Billy goats set out to market his wares and started crossing a small wooden bridge. When the small goat was half was across, an ugly [...]

On one hand, James Baldwin’s short story “Going to Meet the Man” seems fairly straight forward. A deputy sheriff in the changing south remembers his family taking him to the lynching of a black man with the same air of excitement someone might experience on a family picnic. The details are both gruesome and [...]

James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room” is a poignant take on self contempt and personal deception. David is a young man who not only attempts to deceive himself, but deceives others along the way. In today’s world of trite pop psychology we tend to focus on the harm we cause ourselves through self-deception, but Baldwin’s story points [...]

A flat tire doesn’t roll very well, although it’s an easy fix. But what do you do when your blog doesn’t seem to be rolling the way you want it to?
Take this quiz to find out which areas of your blog need your attention.
What is your level of fulfillment (not the amount of time you’re [...]

One of the first methods many bloggers approach to monetize their sites is selling space for banner ads. However, studies show visitors have become blind to banner advertisements. In “Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings” Jakob Nielsen reports:
The most prominent result from the new eye-tracking studies is not actually new. We simply confirmed for the [...]

Change is inevitable and at some point you’ll want to make changes beyond your blog theme SEO tweaks . You might want to change the width of a column, the size of a font, a color, or a graphic here and there, but editing WordPress themes can be like working in the dark. WordPress creates [...]

While you’re waiting for your blog to make it big and your monetization plan to really kick in, you might be looking for other ways to earn cash. One skill you’re developing by blogging is very marketable in the online world. Blogging exercises our writing skills.If you can write, you can earn money. Contrary to [...]