Why I blog

I have several great friends I’ve made over my blogging time, and recently Maryanne from Mama Smiles answered a series of questions on “Why I blog,” and then challenged 3 people to answer the same questions.  If you don’t read her blog, I highly suggest checking it out, she’s always so encouraging and uplifting about her kids you can’t help but feel better about parenting after reading her blog.

What am I working on?

Well, I primarily write here on my blog.  In addition I’ve been working on a 2 year family Bible study for the past couple of years.  Now I’m done writing most of it, but I’m trying to edit and publish the lessons.  I also am toying with several different ebooks I want to write: How to teach your kids about the Bible, that’s the first one I want to work on.

How does my work differ from other writers in my genre?

I like to put a hands on spin to most of my lessons, and while there’s a lot of people doing hands on stuff for preschool.  It becomes a lot harder to find that once your kids get older.  So, I guess that’s how I’d say I’m different.

Why do I write what I do?

I am always on the lookout for good quality hands on lessons for elementary kids, it seems like there’s a lot of information out there for preschool and kindergarten, but not elementary and older, so I wanted to get as much out there as I can to help other people make their lessons fun and hands on.

How does my writing process work?

This is a grossly simplified explanation, I could probably write a whole post on each of these steps, but here goes.

1. We do an activity of some sort and I take ridiculously large amounts of pictures depending on how involved I am, sometimes I’m right in the middle of it, so the pictures are rather lacking.  Sometimes I let the kids take pictures.  Those can turn out… interesting.
2. I upload the pictures into my computer.  I try to do this every day, but sometimes that just doesn’t happen.  As I have time I go through the daily files and move them into post specific folders.  I figured out last year this makes finding stuff MUCH easier when I think “I know I have a picture of ______”.  Currently I have about 20 or so folders with various different post ideas sitting there.  Some may never see the light of day because I lose interest, or I can’t think how to work it in.  Anything I’ll have lots of posts on goes into sub-folders, so I had about 6 posts on Egypt in different folders as I worked on it last fall.
3. I like to write in Windows Livewriter, if you’ve got a windows operating system it’s a free download, and it helps me a lot.  A LOT.  Currently in my livewriter I’ve got about 5 drafts in various states of completion, and it lets me easily add in things like:

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That’s a text template, I clicked a button and it put all of that in there.  I got a lot of information on how to blog better from iBlog and from iBlog Pro (both affiliate links), and I occasionally go back to those books to get more information.  As I’ve mentioned recently my current thing to work on is my pictures, which are slowly improving.

 

So, that’s my rather long-winded answers to these questions.

I’m going to pass this on to:

Claire from Angellic Scalliwags because I would love to hear her answers and thinking, and she always gets me thinking when I read her posts.

Annette from This Simple Home because she inspires me to be a better homemaker and I love her recipes

Lindsay from Bytes of Memory because I always enjoy her posts on thankfulness and reading about her kiddo.

I tried to pick 3 very different people to pass this on to who have all taught me something, and I will admit they were also 3 people who happened to have the most recent posts in my blog reader.

 

I HOPE you enjoyed reading Why I blog, if you have a blog why do you blog?