The Refusal
Adrian was becoming impatient.
“Why hasn’t she rung?†he muttered.
He paced the floor. He tidied the magazine rack for the third time. He swept the kitchen floor again. He readjusted the flower arrangement.
The telephone rang.
“At last!†he shouted. “Hello, is that you dear?â€
“Yes,†she said.
“Well?â€
“Sorry. I won’t marry you.â€
All rights reserved.
Copyright 2006 Trevor W. Hampel
Read more of my short fiction here.
Creativity is not a topic I have specifically written about on this blog. I’ve just been reading the post on the blog YourCre8tivity about writing and creativity. The writer has written a post about ways of stopping creativity.
The article is called 5 Ways to Block Your Creativity and it is in 2 parts:
I particularly liked the last two suggestions:
- Keep your life in balance.
– Spending all your time at work or playing video games narrows your field of reference. A balanced lifestyle gives you a wider palatte to draw your inspiration from and ensures that you have the energy to follow up on those inspirations.- Follow your own vision.
– Your best creative efforts will coincide with the things you care most about. That’s when energy, desire and effort are all harnessed together.
I find life throws me out of balance on far too often, and coping with the disappointments, the trials, the challenges and the demands of others can sometimes take so much energy that the creative juices run dry.
Furthermore, on reading this article I realise that I have not read through my vision statement for more than six months. I need the energy supplied by my vision to reinvigorate me, as well as keeping me on track, always aiming for the goals I have set myself.
One of the problems facing most bloggers is getting readers to access the archives sections of the blog. As bloggers, we might spend many hours researching, thinking, planning and then writing our posts. Once the post hits the internet, it sits there on our front page for a few hours or perhaps days, and then the post sinks down the page before disappearing into the archives of the blog. Depending on the profile of your blog, that post you agonised over may have a dozen or so readers or a few hundred if you are lucky.
What to do about it?
Related Posts
One of the techniques I use is to include a related posts listing at the end of the post. This directs readers to other posts I have made on the same topic. This seems quite an effective strategy because many visitors to this blog are reading multiple pages and not just the latest post.
Series of articles
Another technique I use is to write a numbered series of posts. These are on a theme or in a particular genre. For example, I am regularly posting some of my short fiction. These are numbered and also all of them are listed on a page in the navigation section, drawing readers’ attention to previous posts. Another series I am writing I have called “Writing Hints.” As these are posted the links draw the readers to other pages. In my birding blog I have written a series called “How to be a Birder.” Again, this is a numbered series which I hope will draw readers into the archives to read more.
Internal Linking
Another technique to use is internal linking. I used this technique in the above paragraph, linking key words (eg short fiction) and categories in this blog to other sections of the blog. (Note: In the previous paragraph I also used external linking to another of my blogs. The crossover between my blogs shows up as a strength in my statistics.)
Related article:
The motivation for this article comes from Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger. Darren has a long and very useful article on all the different techniques he uses to encourage readers to read in depth within his blogs. The article can be found here:
The Group Writing Project being conducted by Darren Rowse on ProBlogger has finished. A record 301 entries have been submitted.
Bloggers were asked to submit a list on a topic of their choice. I haven’t had a chance to read many of them yet but the few I have looked at are very interesting and well worth investigating. Over coming days I might even get enough time to feature here on this blog a few of those that impress me.
My submission is called Sixteen Scintillating Short Story Starters.
The full list of 301 submissions can be found here.
Raindrops and sunshine
Cause colours to go sliding
Across the grey clouds.
All rights reserved.
Copyright 2006 Trevor W. Hampel.
If you would like to read more of my poetry click here.