5 Writing Blogs You Should Be Reading

My Fav Five!

I haven’t done a “shout out” of blogs in some time, so let me do that today with a focus on those offered by freelance writers, bloggers, journalists, and others who write for a living. I’m not going to include the usual suspects because everyone knows the A-listers. Oftentimes, the best stuff is found elsewhere; besides if you want interaction from the blogger him/herself, the smaller sites are often the best for that.

My Blog Guest – I wrote about this site’s forum last week, but have since found Ann Smarty’s related and recently launched blog. As you might guess, Ann’s topic is about guest blogging which is something I know can help raise your visibility if you choose to go down that path.

Freelance Folder – I would not have known about this site if my writing friend, Laura Spencer, from Writing Thoughts hadn’t alerted me to it. Well, it turns out that Laura is a regularly and frequent to contributor to this site which has been picking up a ton of traffic in recent months. Laura always shares stuff of interest to writers including “Mastering the Art of Client Relations.”

Carson Brackney – Several years ago I crossed paths with Carson when he ran Content Done Better, enjoying his advice which always seemed to fly in the face of conventional wisdom. Carson sold his blog and disappeared for two years as he took on a regular job, but now he is back and as caustic as ever! Carson is an advocate of content distribution sites (he runs one himself) and a slayer of elitist writers. Nuff said.

A Writer’s Word, An Editor’s Eye – I’ve referenced Lillie’s site before, but her site is worth a visit. Lillie is a writer, but she is also an editor and a darn good one at that. A couple years back I referred a friend to Lillie who needed some advice with a book. Lillie took the time to help my friend out, an invaluable and totally unexpected response from Mrs. Ammann.

4 Walls and a View – Dominique Small launched her newest site in January and has been doing very well. Instead of offering writing tips per se, Dominique uses her blog to advocate on behalf or chronicle illnesses, namely chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. By sharing her personal battle with these diseases Dominique does a wonderful job in educating people on a very personal level. She demonstrates that good writing can come forth despite life’s challenges.

Thanks for stopping by; I’ll be featuring additional favorites in the near future, but covering a different topic.

Back Online…I Hope

I’m back. At least I hope that everything sticks.

I’ve been battling with a virus which infected some of this blog’s files, a problem which caused some of admin files to forward to a blank page — the dreaded white space of death.  The problem was mostly an annoyance seen only on my end, but it began to impact visitors to this site who thought that they were getting a virus.

Dominique’s New Blog

Near as I could tell, the virus was self contained, but that doesn’t mean that your own virus detection service wasn”t going to set off it own alarm. That is exactly what happened when Dominique Small (4 Walls and a View — new blog, you have got to check this one out) discovered when she stopped by last night, then sending me a message explaining what happened.

I immediately decided to tackle the problem, which ended up taking nearly five hours to resolve. For security reasons I can’t mention the fix, but I will say that someone hacked into my account, set themselves up as an administrator, and began his work. I say “his” work because his handle alluded to his gender.

5 Fun Thrilled Hours…Not

I had to delete files, upload new files, create a new database, and do some other stuff before I determined that getting rid of my previous theme would help. Sure enough it did, which is why the theme you see on my Auto Trends blog is also being used here.

I don’t have time to find and test a new theme. I’m mentally exhausted and plan on relaxing the rest of today.

Be Back Soon

My apologies to you for this rambling post too. I wanted to alert my faithful readers about what is going on here, but I’m not up to putting too much more brain energy into what I’m writing. Thank you for your patience, I’ll follow up with a new article later this week.

Thanks again, Dominique. I’ll be checking in to your new blog very soon.