Write on the World has a whole new look!

If you come here often, you were probably in for a bit of a jolt when you stopped by today. I’m teaching a WordPress blogging class right now at my local community college, and I got a little jealous when I saw the fresh, clean templates my students were using as they built their blog sites yesterday. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but I finally decided it was time to update my blog site. It’s still a work in progress, but you have to start somewhere!

Now available on Kindle: Four Fast Steps to Making Money with your Blog

“Four Fast Steps to Making Money with your Blog” is now available on Kindle for only 99 cents!

My new eBook, Four Fast Steps to Making Money with your Blog, is now available on Kindle for only 99 cents! Here’s a description:

Everyone wants to make money blogging, but few people understand how to do it on purpose. Sometimes it seems like it’s a matter of dumb luck, and few of us are that lucky. While becoming an overnight blogging sensation does take a certain amount of luck, it is possible to learn how to purposely generate extra income with your blog, with no luck required. If you take the time to learn the necessary steps and put in the work, you will make money with your blog. How much money depends on you.

Don’t sit around twiddling your thumbs waiting for Lady Luck to choose you next. Instead, follow these four fast steps to guaranteed blogging success. You can have your blog up and running in as little as a few days. You can also begin to generate revenue within days of starting your blog. All it takes is a little patience and perseverance. Soon you will be well on your way to earning steady income with your blog!

Here’s another boring blog post for you

While digging through some old blog posts the other day, I came across this boring blog post that I published back in 2013. (You’ll notice that a famous blogger, Jenny the Bloggess, commented on my post. This is still one of the highlights of my life.) My office space has changed quite a bit since then, so I thought I’d give you an update. This is where most of my blogging magic is currently happening:

My laptop is 5 years old. I’m crossing my fingers that it doesn’t soon go the way of my desktop computer.

I still have my gigantic desk and the same old desktop computer. Unfortunately, my 6-year-old desktop computer is currently doing this:

What now?

This looks like a nice place for an adventure. | Kungsleden hiking trail, in Swedish Lappland, just over the Teusa lake, south of Kebnekaise. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So now, I’ve finished all of my annotated bibliography entries and have written all of my required papers this semester except for that one huge final that just won’t fit into a blog post. It’s a relief, but today I’m panicking a little because… NOW WHAT WILL I PUT ON MY BLOG?!

Sorry, I didn’t mean to yell.

On one hand, repurposing content is awesome because you can kill your proverbial two birds with one pen. You gotta write a paper anyway, so why not post it to your blog too, right? On the other hand, my annotated bib entries have been admittedly dry at times. (I find them interesting, but do my readers?) The truth is, they haven’t received a huge amount of traffic compared to some of my older posts.

Been there, done that, got a cat

I am sharing this instead of writing a blog post because today I just don’t care.

Writer’s Journal | On fighting mice and terrorism

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Noon o’clock

I suppose if I’m going to do this, I should at least attempt to write something worthwhile rather than just rambling on about whatever random nonsense crosses my mind while I’m sitting here digesting my lunch and waiting for it to be time to go back to the office.


Embed from Getty Images


But what to write about? It is so hard to get back into the blogging habit once you have fallen out of it. Maybe I could blog about current events. Something controversial that will attract readers who will argue with each other in the comments section.

Let’s see.

What to do when you are bored with blogging

I took this picture at my parents’ house a couple of weeks ago. This photo has nothing to do with anything. I just felt like sharing it.

I haven’t been blogging much lately. I’m kinda bored with it. I love writing, but I’m a little bored with writing about writing. How much more can I say about it at the moment?

It’s funny, I’ve been seeing a lot of this particular type of blog post in the past couple of weeks. It seems like a lot of bloggers are just bored with where their blogs are going and are making a resolution not to be so boring in the new year. If all of these bloggers are bored with blogging, I wonder how many of our followers are bored with following us? How many people are actually reading all of these blogs?

I follow several blogs myself. I try to keep up with reading most of them, but there are only a couple that I make sure I read as soon as a new post comes out. I read a lot of writing blogs for my own self-edification, but the ones I read because I want to are the ones that are simply entertaining without trying to teach me anything.

What’s in a (my) name?

My ex-husband’s father’s girlfriend took this picture of me recently. Do I look like an Amanda or a Mandy to you?

When my mom was pregnant with me, she wanted to name me Mandy. I think this was around the time Barry Manilow’s song, Mandy came out. My dad said there was no way he was naming his kid Mandy. So they settled for Amanda, which happens to also be a family name.

Then I was born, and my dad was the first person to call me Mandy rather than Amanda. The nickname stuck, and I have been Mandy my whole life to everyone but my grandmothers, some schoolteachers, and an ex-boyfriend who insisted on calling me Amanda despite the fact that it irritated the hell out of me (only special people get to call me Amanda, and he just wasn’t that special.)

When I set up my online portfolio and blog a couple of years ago, I set it up using the name Mandy because that’s what everyone calls me. Now that I am seriously considering actually getting something published, I think I want to publish under the more formal name, Amanda L. Webster.

Here’s the problem:

Author Amanda Martin discusses her Daily Blog Challenge

Amanda Martin is the author of Two Hundred Steps Home.

Today, I’d like to introduce you to author, Amanda Martin, from the WriterMummy blog. Amanda is the author of Two-Hundred Steps Home, as well as the following guest blog post. Thanks, Amanda, for sharing your blog with us and for helping to lighten my blog load while I’m writing my Master’s thesis this semester!

Guest Post

The lovely Mandy has let me come to talk about my Daily Blog Challenge on my WriterMummy blog. Thank you Mandy! It’s always nice to get a change of scene.

I decided late in 2012 – on 30th or 31st December – that 2013 needed structure. My husband was made redundant (or laid-off, as one would say in the U.S.) in October and both my kids are still preschool age, so we lurch from day to day with virtually no plan. My ambition for 2013 is to have a novel accepted by an agent and/or self-published via Smashwords, and I hoped forcing myself to write every day would help motivate me. So I had the (crazy) idea to join Post-a-Day 2013.

Do you wanna write a guest post for my blog?

Do I look busy to you? Nah, it’s nothing. Really.

I’m teaching six courses this semester and writing a thesis. So yeah, I’m a little busy right now. I want to keep my blog going too, so I’m wondering: Would any of my writer friends and readers be interested in writing a guest blog post or two this semester?

I’m a starving artist (well, not literally, I just stuffed myself on Chinese food at dinner tonight,) so I can’t afford to pay you. But, if I publish your guest post on my blog, you’ll get a by-line and a link to your blog from mine. So, that’s something, right?

Anyway, if you’re interested,