The Shackled Muse

Ah writer’s block, an age old enemy since days of yore… Once again I find myself blocked while the muse sits ever so contentedly shackled on my shoulder, mocking me. Sure, I’ve been writing gadgety and technical articles daily, but when it comes to poetry, prose, fiction – there’s nothing.

My good friend Vicky (aka Lyrica-Lee) always says: Just Write. Whether its good or bad, when faced with writer’s block, JUST WRITE. Good sound advice.

Below you’ll find a list of writing prompts.

Those of you who know me and stalk my various online hideouts will know that this list popped up many many times before.

continue reading…

My apologies for the long long absence! I’ve been hard at work expanding my arty endeavours. I’d love to say that I designed countless jewelry pieces during my offline hours, but sadly that would be a lie. (I made a few though…)

I’ve been reading. Yes, my new book on beading techniques. More than 300 techniques, thats a lot to learn. I’ve been reading Etsy help articles; everything from taking better pictures (they really cant stress that enough…) to top seller advices and tips, to seller blog and blog sites. You name it, I read it. (applying everything I read is a different matter.) I’ve been commenting in a lot of forums to get my name out there. To be seen.

(I’ve also been reading all the Final Notices creditors like to send out when people (me) don’t pay their accounts… So, yeah,  all my online endeavours better be a success!

Its growing, thankfully. I’m $60 richer since signing up at Fiverr. Even though the Fiverr gigs are for, well, a fiver (as in $5) I’ve made some headway off the site. I contacted a potential client on Fiverr with regards to a logo he needs. He was happy enough with my work and we’ve moved negotiations and business off Fiverr, which makes the payment process go so much quicker. Also, its a really good deal. So, THANK YOU FIVERR. On a side note, I signed up at Dealerr aswell, Fiverr’s European rival. All the best will hopefully come from it.

Blog-wise I’ve been expanding too. A new domain has been registered, sadly the site is still empty. Only has a link to my Etsy store. The entire purpose of the new site is to act as my online store. Jewelry, Digital Art, Traditional Art, Hand made stuffs. You name it. Doubt I’ll add my poetry but we’ll see how that goes.

The whole etsy thing made me realize I need a stand alone shop as well. Plus a blog. So this shall solely be the blog from now, but all handmade goodies will be displayed over at The Shackled Muse Studio.

Awesome, right!

Okay… So, it’s 5:07AM I’m listening to a variety of songs on Media Player while searching for stock images online. (stock images to use for Photo Manipulation.) And I think the laptop’s glare is messing with my love’s sleep, he tried to kick me off the bed, twice…

Earlier this lovely evening I had a plan. The plan involved watching the Ghana vs Uruguay match, putting my sick boyfriend to bed and then, right, then put on some Binaural beats to stimulate my creative side while I write countless articles. (Okay, not countless, but at least 6 MyDigitalLife articles for the coming week, 4 for this site, maybe 4 or 5 for Helium and 3 for my other blogger account.)

Don’t look at me in that tone of voice, I discovered that it is possible to write all that in one go. I know your dying to find out how, and I promise I’ll cover that in my next article. Or at the very least, when I attempt to write again…

Anyway, that was plan. So, where did it all go wrong, I hear you ask.

continue reading…

When I started out with my first blog, I had no idea how categories worked. I treated them like tags. Yup, every time I typed out a new post, I just took some keywords from the post and added them to the category section. Just randomly adding them as I went along.

This is good if you work with tags. Categories is a completely different matter.

Get your categories right and your site will be more organized. If you have a widget in the sidebar that lists all your categories (and how many posts per category) the better. Now visitors to your site will be able to see which topic of interest you wrote about, and how many posts are filed under that topic/category.

continue reading…

So, you have your hosting set up, you registered a domain and you installed wordpress. (there are other options, such as drupal, but I’m only familiar with WP.)

Plug-Ins

First, lets take a look at useful plug-ins you need. You can search for them on www.wordpress.org, because there’s such a big variety to choose from

continue reading…

I am no expert. I had a website that crashed a few months ago, and I’m still in the process of building it up. I’m not a blogging fundi like Dooce, and I’m not a SEO expert like The Infopreneur. However, I enjoy what I do, and I think I’m getting better at it. 

Yes, I blog. “Real” blogging. I’m not a problogger, and I’m proud of it. Even when I make a big income from blogging I still don’t want to be known as Problogger. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: they are not bloggers, they’re just marketing strategists giving tips on how to make money from blogging.

continue reading…

This is a guest post written by James Richmond, back when he was still owner of The Info Preneur, and back when my original site was still up and running. Sites come and go, people come and go, but the information still applies. Here, he shares his tips for beating writers block

James, over to you.

Writers block or brain melt happens to everyone, even Cheryl will have writers block every now and again. It happens to everyone, but there are some simple steps to lower the frequency of this happening. I have published over 150 posts to my site in 10 weeks and I haven’t yet been stuck for things to write.

continue reading…

I did this for a competition that was running on Deviantart. The theme was twisted fairy tales.

I decided on Princess Bride for my first entry.
This "fairy tale" is pretty twisted in its own right…

continue reading…