Sunday, Blogging Sunday!

Flickr image credit Robert Hensley

Can you hear Bono belting it out? Sunday, blogging Sunday! There’s nothing bloody about it. Every Sunday is blogging day for me. But it’s not like I sit down on Sunday and think, “Hmmmm. What will I blog about today?” I blog on Sundays, but it takes me all week to collect my thoughts. In Ralph Fletcher’s book “A Writer’s Notebook: Unlocking the Writer Within You” , Ralph shares these tips for getting started:

Use your notebook to breathe in the world around you. You can write about:

1) What amazes/surprises/anger you

2) What you wonder about

3) What you notice

4) "Seed Ideas" or "Triggers" to generate stories or poems

5) Small details that intrigue you

6) Snatches of talk you overhear

7) Memories

8) Lists

9) Photos, articles, ticket stubs or other artifacts

10) Your own sketches, drawings or doodles

11) Quotes or inspiring passages from books or poems

I have several “notebooks”, and I almost always write in  my composition book as I read, especially when I read professional books. But my go-to notebook is a Google Doc and my go-to strategy is writing from a list. All week long, blog posts are running through my mind. Each week, I start a Google Doc and jot ideas down, paste links to interesting and inspiring articles, and I collect pictures and video. If I’m not using my own images, I use the Creative Commons image search engine at http://search.creativecommons.org/ to be sure the images I use are appropriate for use on my blog. And I always try to credit the source. Flickr is my favorite because the site generates HTML that cites and links back to my source.

Blogging on Sundays is a labor of love. I’m not sure if anyone really needs to read my posts, but I know that I need to write them. I love to write, even though it’s hard sometimes. I maintain three different blogs, each with a different audience. My Sparkly Star Staff Stuff blog serves as a weekly memo and update for the teachers at my school, while Star Academy News is my new blog designed to communicate important events and information for my K-3 school. And Lead.Learn.Sparkle is my personal/professional blog-- the place I post reflections about reading, learning, and leading. Each is different. Each challenges me as a writer.

Flickr image credit chillitpv

Not everything I write is amazing. I’ll never forget Edna Shoemaker and the day she said, “Sometimes you have to write a truckload of crap to get a teacup of beauty.”

It’s true.

But the more I write, the more confident I feel. I look forward to Sundays. Sunday, blogging Sunday!