a website & community for women who write & blog
July is a month that fills me with energy, an energy that urges me to work hard and play harder. As a teacher, I seek to soak up and savor the final weeks of summer break and have as much fun as possible. As a writerpreneur, I’m pushed to hustle hard to grow my writing career and my business before school starts. I’m convinced I can do both.
Here are my writing, blogging, and personal goals for July 2018 and how I plan to have fun.
What do you want?
This question keeps coming up.
It’s come up in sessions with my therapist, in chats with my best friends, and even in Bible studies I’ve been reading on the YouVersion app.
And I’ve realized that I honestly don’t know the answer. I’m no longer sure of what I want for my career as a writer, blogger, or teacher. Or maybe I do know what I want but I’m afraid I don’t deserve it.
Whatever the case may be, my #1 goal for June is to rewrite my vision statement for my life. I’ll start with a simple prompt: It is the year 2023 and I am so proud of the life I have created. And from there I’ll let my imagination go wild.
But I am not just a dreamer. I am a doer, too. Here are my 4 action-oriented goals for June:
When I returned to my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama in 2009 to teach I immediately knew I wanted to surround myself with creative women who write. For two years I searched for a networking group for women writers that would welcome bloggers, poets, journalists, and creative nonfiction writers (all hats I’d worn at some point in my writing life), but to no avail. Finally, in 2011 I decided to start one of my own and See Jane Write was born. My little writing group is now an award-winning business and website. I am so proud of what I’ve built over the past 7 years, but if I had to do it all again there are some things I would do differently. Here are some confessions about my See Jane Write journey.
Danielle LaPorte once said, “Find your tribe and love them hard.” I live by this motto because I believe it’s the key to a fulfilling personal life and even a successful professional life. But sometimes we find ourselves in situations where we can’t seem to find our tribe.
That’s exactly what happened to me when I moved back to my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama in 2009. I began searching for a group for female writers and bloggers. I found groups for aspiring novelists, but I specialize in non-fiction. I found groups for journalists, but, even though I’d spent years working for newspapers, I didn’t fit in with these groups either because some of their members scoffed at blogging, which has been a passion of mine since 2007.
After two years of searching for my tribe, in 2011 I decided to build my own. On March 24, 2011, I launched See Jane Write, a networking group for women who write and blog. Seven years later See Jane Write is now an award-winning business and has members across the country. But my goal is that no matter how much See Jane Write grows, it never stops being a community and it never stops being my tribe.
If you’re seeking to build your own tribe, if you’re seeking to build a sense of community around your blog, book, brand or passion project, I believe you need five things: 1) an idea that ignites 2) an event that excites 3) an invitation that intrigues 4) a meeting that sparks a movement and 5) a forum that forges friendships.
“Like so many good things, this story starts with tacos.”
That was the first line of the talk I gave on the TEDxBirmingham stage on March 24, 2018, which also happened to be the 7th anniversary of See Jane Write.
(You can watch my talk here!)