How To Blog Every Day For a Year



This month I am striving to publish a meaningful blog post every day for 30 days over at The Writeous Babe Project. I’ve never been able to pull this off in the past so I must admit that I’m a bit nervous, especially since I’m leading this #bloglikecrazy challenge.
But then I look at bloggers like Jen West of The Jen West Quest and I’m reminded that anything is possible.
Jen West blogged every day not just for a month and not just for a season, but for nearly two years!
She started her blog simply as an accountability tool to lose weight.  “I was in desperate need to find motivation and excitement in the process of such a mundane task,” West said.
But in the process of losing weight, West gained an intense love for blogging, which she discussed with me recently and offered great advice for those of us ready to #bloglikecrazy. 


Jen West
Photo by Angela Karen
You blogged every day for over a year. Was this something you set out to do or did it just happen?
When I first started my blog, I committed 100% to blogging every single day until I lost every pound that I wanted to lose.  Four and a half months later when I achieved my goal of losing 47 pounds, I decided that I still loved to write on a daily basis.  I continued on to blog every day for almost 650 days.


How did you manage to do this? How did you find time to blog daily? Did you have a certain time of day in which you would write?


I found that with a daily commitment, writing in the mornings made it much easier to knock out.  My brain is at its best when I first wake up.  Plus, it’s a great feeling to know that you’ve finished it as you go on throughout your day instead of rushing through it later on.  I also gave myself an hour a day to write, edit and post.  Having a time cap made me concentrate better.




Did you ever face writer’s block?

Yes, I faced writer’s block often.  I would have really “on” weeks where I could write with ease, then others I would really struggle with content.  I found that the days I struggled, though, were the days

I had the best posts.  I forced myself to dig deep, because it wasn’t an option to skip.  When I get stuck I ask myself questions like, how am I feeling right now and why? What are my current goals and dreams?

What are my plans?  Where am I in life and what’s in the future? What do I love?  You can always find things to write about when you have passion and are in touch with yourself.


I remember when you decided to stop posting daily you mentioned on your blog that it was actually difficult for you not to post as often. Why was that?

When I stopped writing every day it felt like a big chapter of my life was closing.  I actually still wonder what it would be like if I had continued on.  But here’s the thing: I can always start it back up again.  I will never stop writing in my blog. The daily part was just an exercise in discipline more than anything else.  I write for myself, and I should do it as much as I want to.  I’m at a similar place with exercise in my life, it is no longer about a schedule, but for an experience.

And at the end of our interview West reminded me of something that we can not only apply to blogging but anything meaningful and healthy that we do for ourselves: “You will never regret it once it’s done.  It might be a challenge in the beginning, in the middle and in the end, but damn if you won’t feel good once you’re done. Blogging is a confidence booster, and most importantly a reminder that you are worth the time and effort!”

Build Your Tribe (and Your Resume) With Twitter

Twitter escultura de arena
Photo by Rosaura Ochoa
Image via Flickr/Creative Commons

Believe it or not, there are still people who don’t understand the purpose of social media. Some people still think social networking sites are just a high-tech form of teenage gossip and a colossal waste of time. These people couldn’t be more wrong.

For writers, social media could be the key to landing your next freelance gig. For example, the editor for one of the websites I write for found me through LinkedIn. And last year I had the opportunity to write a few articles for my one of my favorite online magazines because of Twitter. I began following one of the site’s editors on Twitter and whenever she would post articles and encouraging words that really resonated with me I would let her know by replying to her tweets and she graciously responded. Then one day I decided to ask her, through Twitter, about writing for her publication. She sent me her email address (which I’d tried finding in the past to no avail) and I sent her a few story pitches. A week later my byline was on the site. 

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Through Twitter you can not only find writing gigs, but also other writing gals! I have met so many ambitious, creative, and forward-thinking women writers in Birmingham thanks to social media. I was inspired to write this post because of a coffee date I had last week with a new friend who goes by the Twitter handle @see_clair_write. 

We met a few weeks ago at a panel discussion on the future of journalism, but we truly have Twitter to thank for our connection. This event was thrown by people who actually do understand social media, and the organizers encouraged attendees to tweet questions and comments during the talk. Those tweets were projected onto a screen at the front of the room and used to help guide the conversation. Not only did @see_clair_write catch my eye because of her awesome Twitter handle, but I was intrigued by and agreed with her insightful tweets. So I retweeted a few of her posts. Then I saw she retweeted a few of mine. 

When the panel discussion ended I leapt from my chair on a mission: I had to find this @see_clair_write. Evidently, she had the same idea and we walked straight to each other. (This is why you need a photo on your Twitter account, people. If you still have that stupid egg as your avatar please fix that right now. Go on. I’ll wait…)

Clair and I exchanged information and last week sat in Urban Standard coffee house for hours talking about writing and so much more. 

This is surely the beginning of a beautiful friendship and we owe it all to you, Twitter! 


Crossposted at The Writeous Babe Project. 

A Tribute to Edith Ward and the Birmingham Public Library

Reading Room
Image via Flickr/Creative Commons

A copy of To Kill a Mockingbird signed by Harper Lee. Dr. Martin Luther King’s signature on the warden’s docket from his 1963 arrest in Birmingham. A scrapbook compiled by Edith Ward, a Birmingham woman born in 1883.

These are the things I had the pleasure and honor of seeing yesterday afternoon thanks to the Birmingham Public Library.

I am a member of the new Young Professionals Board of the Birmingham Public Library and yesterday during our first meeting we were given a tour of the Central Downtown Library’s Southern History Collection, which includes rare books to which only 10 people in the library have access, and the Archives Department, which preserves documents, photographs and manuscripts on Birmingham and Jefferson County history.

I was so excited I left the library shaking.

Yes, I’m a nerd.

But I have a confession. Even though I was about to faint when I saw Lee’s and King’s signatures I was most amazed by those scrapbooks of Edith Ward. The paper dolls she collected as a child, the letters from boyfriends she received as a teen, and other items like a dance card, clippings of her favorite poems, and playbills from theater performances she attended all offered this slice of life not found in most high school history books. And even though I know that as a black person my life would have been nothing like hers had I been alive in the late 1800s, as a woman it was still fascinating to see how other women of that time lived.

For example, we had the chance to see a restored photo of Edith with her bike. She loved this bike, or her “wheel” as she called it, and wrote about it often in her diaries. For Edith and other young women of that time period their bikes represented freedom. A girl might hop on her bike and ride from the Southside all the way to Bessemer. These bikes were such a big deal that local ministers began preaching against the evils of the bicycle, claiming they had girls going wild.

I could have stayed in the basement of the library all day learning about Edith’s life.

But I left there realizing two things: the importance of city libraries and the importance of documenting your life.

These pieces of history I had the opportunity to see yesterday would be gone, lost forever, if not for the restoration and preservation efforts of libraries. And there would be no pieces of history to preserve if not for the people who took the time to document their lives.

One might think something as simple as keeping a scrapbook is inconsequential and unimportant, but those who think that are wrong. Sharing your life isn’t just about you; it’s about representing your generation for the generations to come. So whether it’s through a scrapbook, a journal, a book, or  a blog — tell your story.

Crossposted at The Writeous Babe Project. 

Let’s Blog Like Crazy!

I'm not a player, I just blog a lot
Image by J. Money via Flickr/Creative Commons


Since I’m a writer, blogger and feminist it should come as no surprise that Julie & Julia is one of my favorite films. I watched this great Nora Ephron movie Friday night and by the end my enthusiasm for blogging was renewed. 

I started thinking about Julie Powell and other bloggers who have been wildly popular and landed book deals because of their websites. The one thing these writers seem to have in common is that they were willing to do something crazy. Naysayers may call it a gimmick, and perhaps for some it is just that. But when I think about Julie Powell and women like Rachel Bertsche, author of the blog and book MWF Seeking BFF, they were all willing to do something that took courage and discipline, whether that was cooking 524 Julia Child recipes in 365 days or going on fifty-two friend-dates, one per week for a year, in hopes of meeting a new Best Friend Forever.

And so I present a challenge.

November can be a lonely month for us creative non-fiction writers because in November many of our ambitious fiction writer pals are busy with National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo.

So I thought, what if we bloggers had a project of our own for the month of November.

Inspired by Tarayi Jones’ #writelikecrazy, in which she encouraged writers to write every day for a month, I’ve decided to launch #bloglikecrazy for the month of November.

Here’s the #bloglikecrazy challenge: publish a meaningful blog post every single day in November. That’s 30 posts in 30 days. 

I’ve tried to do this several times before and failed miserably. But I figure I’d be a bit more motivated if I’m actually leading this endeavor over at my blog The Writeous Babe Project.

So are you with me?

Project #bloglikecrazy will begin Nov. 1. 

Also, if you’d like you can sign up for me to send you writing prompts throughout November to help get those creative juices flowing. Just email me at javacia@gmail.com with #bloglikecrazy in the subject line and in the body of the email simply say “I want prompts so I can #bloglikecrazy!”

So does this mean that after blogging for 30 days you’ll get a book deal? Probably not. But at the end of November you will be more dedicated to your blog and it’s dedication that will help you make your writing dreams come true. 

So let’s blog like crazy!


Girl Crush: Carrie Rollwagen

Carrie Rollwagen
Photo Credit:  
 A few weeks ago I took the hubster to one of my favorite local coffee shops — Church Street Coffee and Books — and while we were there I had to make a confession.“I have a total girl crush on the owner of this shop,” I leaned over and whispered to him after we had settled at a table nestled in the corner of the shop’s newly opened Reading Room.By the time you’ve finished this post you will have fallen for for Carrie Rollwagen too.In January, 2011, Cal Morris called Carrie with the idea to open an independent coffee shop and bookstore in a space where a Starbucks had stood for the past 10 years. After months of planning, they did just that.

But Carrie is also a woman who loves words. She’s a former copyeditor for The Birmingham Post-Herald, copywriter at Southern Progress and Willow House, and a prolific blogger. So another huge part of Church Street Coffee & Books is its blog, which features book reviews and other musings on storytelling and literature.


What do you hope your shop will offer Birmingham? What void do you believe it’s filling?

“Filling a void” is an appropriate phrase, because that’s exactly what Church Street Coffee & Books did — our shop was a Starbucks for ten years, and the neighborhood was very upset when they decided to vacate. Cal, my business partner, was manager of the Starbucks, so he knew there was a need and a market for a coffee shop in our spot. He also knew that many Mountain Brook residents were still upset over the loss of their bookstore –Jonathan Benton, Bookseller — a few years ago. It was Cal’s idea to open a new shop in the space. He called on me to help because I’d managed Jonathan Benton and worked as a barista. Also, we’ve been friends for years, we work together really well, and we share a desire to create a store that serves the community instead of ourselves.

One of the things I love about your blog is that you always have such high-quality content. I’m impressed you find the time to do this considering you are a small business owner and you read all the time. Any time management tips for those of us trying to balance jobs with blogging and reading?
I think the trick to writing a solid blog is to practice, and to chose a subject that you’re passionate about. I do have a background in journalism, which was really helpful in teaching me to meet deadlines. And I worked for several years as a copywriter — writing ad copy is great practice, because it teaches you to communicate effectively and quickly to a fairly hostile audience. I really try to have daily content on my blog, but when I can’t come up with something, I’d rather skip a day than use a filler post. Of course, for PostScript, our store blog about books, I’m not the only writer — my team of writers helps me quite a bit.

As far as finding time for reading, everyone asks how Cal and I have time to read, and the fact is, we don’t have time to read. You have to make time to read. For both of us, that’s usually when we have five or ten minutes here and there — you really get through a book much more quickly than you’d think, just by reading a bit at a time. I need the escape into the world of story just as much as I need writing; so not reading isn’t really that much of an option for me.

Tell us a little bit about what you’re reading right now?

I read a lot of new fiction, especially since we opened the shop. I just finished Where’d You Go Bernadette, which is smart, funny, and a quick read — I loved it. The Sisters Brothers is one of my favorite books right now. It’s a dark comedy, and it reminded me a lot of Catch 22. I also just re-read and enjoyed Stephen King’s On Writing. I’d like to read something seasonally spooky, like maybe some Edgar Allan Poe or The Last Werewolf. And I just started Mr. Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore, which raises some interesting questions about e-books versus paper books.

You once mentioned on your blog that Amazon is a “story-destroying behemoth” which I found interesting. While I can certainly see how Amazon hurts independent bookstores, some would say that Amazon is encouraging storytelling because it offers people more opportunities to get published. Can you talk a bit about why you believe Amazon can be harmful to storytelling?

I’m glad you asked about Amazon. I’m pretty vehement about Amazon, and a lot of people think that’s only because it’s a competitor, but that’s not true. Starbucks is a competitor, but I don’t have any problem with them as a company. But Amazon has made a business strategy of trying to squeeze profits out of the book industry without contributing to it creatively. They sell books for less than they’re worth, even lose money on them, in order to undercut competitors and put us and publishers out of business. They’re trying to get a monopoly on book selling and on publishing, and I think having one entity — whether it’s Amazon, government, or any physical bookstore — in charge of the publishing and distribution of stories and ideas is terrifying. Also, they’ve captured the market on digital publishing and made a device that will only display books purchased from them — it’s as if, when Apple made the iPod, they’d designed it so it would only play songs bought from Apple, and you could never buy an album from a local shop, or from a live show, or from the artists themselves. That kind of control isn’t good for competition, for artists, or for consumers.

A lot of people see Amazon’s self-publishing arm as separate, or as a positive entity, because it gives writers a chance to self-publish. But it’s really hard for me to understand why any writer would put their work into the hands of a company that has a business strategy so opposed to artistic expression and freedom of readership. I’m not against Amazon because I’m a bookseller — I’m against Amazon because I’m a writer and a reader, and I became a bookseller again so I’d be in a better position to try to fight what they’re doing. I don’t know if I’m making a difference or not, but I’m trying.

Can you speak a bit on the importance of supporting small businesses?

There are lots of reasons to support small businesses, but I think the one that shocks most people is the impact local businesses have on the economy. For every $10 you spend at an independent shop, anywhere from $4 to $7 goes back into your local economy. Spend the same amount at a big box store, and that number is just $1 to $4. That money creates jobs, fixes schools, pays off debt. We’re so concerned about the economy, but we’re willing to sell ourselves short by buying from corporations, which I just don’t get. Shopping small probably won’t result in discounts, but your spending will mean something. Instead of buying more for less money, just buy less in the first place. The economy will benefit, and, if my experience with Shop Small is any indication, your life will be fuller and richer (both literally and figuratively) as well.

*Crossposted at The Writeous Babe Project.