My deepest gratitude goes to the amazing Olde Punk at RamJet Poetry for nominating my blog for The Blogger Recognition Award.  If you are not following him, I recommend that you do. His writing is gorgeous and really explores the human condition: life, death, love and loss.  Good stuff.  We also share an obsession with redheads, but I won’t get into that here.

OK, so these are the rules to follow when you accept this award.

1) Write a post to display your award.

2) Give a brief story of how your blog started.

3) Give two pieces of advice for new bloggers.

4) Thank the person that nominated you and link to his or her blog.

5) Nominate 15 other bloggers.

How My Blog Got Started

I wrote a lot in my teens and early 20’s but then I went to graduate school, got married, had kids, and writing took a back seat.  Gradually over the last few years, I started writing increasingly long and rambling Facebook posts tying together my personal experience with what was happening in the world around me.  These posts started to get really good feedback both on my personal homepage as well as in several Mount Holyoke College Alumnae private group pages.   Several people suggested that I start a blog, but I really didn’t take the suggestion very seriously.  I had not been a serious writer in decades and who would want to read what I had to say?

On October 8, 2016, I wrote a personal essay entitled What Every Woman Knows in a very emotional moment.  Suddenly, an overwhelming amount of people were asking me to make it publicly available for sharing.  So I thought “why not?” and started my blog that day.  The rest, as they say, is history

Advice for new bloggers

First piece of advice: Find your Tribe. The WP culture was a complete mystery to me when I first started.  I instinctively started looking for other writers who wrote things I enjoyed reading and started following them.  I then paid attention to who they were following and started to follow them too.  Soon I was reading lots of great writing and started to like posts and comment on them.  This helped me build relationships and led to people checking out and following my blog.

I also wrote a fan letter to the Sudden Denouement  Literary Collective.  This was totally out of character for me but I was completely blown away by the site—both the cool vibe and the quality of the content.  This led to me entering and winning their Divergent writing contest and becoming one of their contributing writers.  Not only is it an honor, it is one of the most amazing groups of human beings that I have ever encountered.

My second piece of advice is:  Respond to comments.  I try the best that I can to respond to everyone who comments on my writing, even if it is just to thank them for their time.  One of the most meaningful things that has happened for me on WordPress is people letting me know that my words resonated with them or inspired them.  Best feeling ever.

Nominate 15 Bloggers

These are just some of the amazing bloggers that I read and interact with on a regular basis.  Give them some love.

https://yassy66.wordpress.com/

https://phoebemd.com/

https://justruminating.blog/

https://livingbythemoonlight.wordpress.com/

https://nesiesplace.wordpress.com/

https://christophermcgeownwriting.wordpress.com/

https://giannaiannucci.com/

https://aakritikuntal.wordpress.com/

https://saynotoclowns.wordpress.com/

https://pleasureandsacrifice.wordpress.com/

https://thedarkestfairytale.com/

https://skinnyandsingle.ca/

https://vidursahdev.wordpress.com/

https://shawnbird.com/

https://lifesfinewhine.wordpress.com/