January 24, 2019 · 1:00 am

Hopeful Science Fiction: Astraea

Last June I blogged about my desire to read more hopeful science fiction. Since then I’ve talked about Woman on the Edge of Time, The Lovely Bones and Semiosis. Today I’m back with another recommendation for hopeful sci-fi, and this time it’s a film! 

If you have recommendations for future instalments of this series, I’d sure like to hear them. Leave a comment below or send me message about it on Twitter.

Astraea

Film poster for Astraea. Image on poster is drawing of main character that also doubles as a map. Astraea is a 2016 film that is set in a slightly futuristic version of what used to be the United States. The main character, Astraea, is a young girl living in what’s left of human society after an epidemic killed off a huge percentage of the population. She’s convinced that their brother and grandmother are still alive, and tries to convince her older half-brother, Matthew, to travel around North America in search of them.

Unlike a lot of post-apocalyptic societies, this one is pretty peaceful world. The human population is so small that it’s rare to run across another person in general, much less one who might have bad intentions.

I’ve reviewed several science fiction and fantasy movies for this site so far. This is the first truly hopeful one I’ve come across, so I thought I’d add it to the Hopeful Science Fiction reading (and now watching) list instead of writing a regular review for it.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find photos of all of the characters like I normally do. This was an Indie film, so I’m guessing their fan base wasn’t large enough for them to have the resources or time to commit to such a thing.  I was able to find photos of the two main characters, though, which is the most important thing.

Nerea Duhart as Astraea

Astraea is the protagonist, a teenage girl who may or may not have telepathic abilities. By the time she and her brother begin travelling to find their parents, there are very few living people left in North America. They spend the majority of their time with no company other than each other.

Scotty Crowe (left) as Matthew

Matthew is Astraea’s older brother. He is fiercely protective of his little sister. While he has doubts about whether or not their journey to find possible surviving relatives is a smart idea, he’s determined to travel with her and keep both of them safe.

Dan O’Brien as James

James is one of the few survivors of this plague that Astraea and Matthew met while travelling.After a tense misunderstanding during their first meeting, James and his wife, Callie, agree to give Astraea and Matthew food and shelter over the winter.

There Is Goodness In Our World

The first thing that struck me about this film was how ordinary life was for the characters despite the fact that they were technically living in a post-apocalyptic world. Their days were filled with going on food runs at the nearest grocery store, doing the occasional bit of hunting, keeping the fireplace burning, and finding ways to amuse themselves when those basic chores were finished. Their story happened during the winter, so their to-do lists were much shorter than they would be if the characters also needed to plant a garden or preserve food.

Honestly, I actually found the storytelling a little slow at times. It felt a lot like how real life unfolds. Most days are fairly ordinary and peaceful. Occasionally, someone might get into an accident, have an argument, or need medical treatment, but that is by the exception to the rule and it is always punctuated by other people doing everything they can to help.

This isn’t to say that the characters lived in perfect harmony all of the time. They had disagreements like any group of people living together are bound to do, but that was as far as the conflict went. Unlike violent shows like The Walking Dead, there were no roving bands of humans waiting to hurt the innocent folks they met on the road. The survivors were simply trying to stay alive through the winter.

Speaking of innocence, I was pleasantly surprised by how well all of the adults in Astraea’s life were able to protect her. She was seen as the child she was, and there was always someone around to make sure she had a nutritious meal to eat and a safe place to sleep. That isn’t common in this genre at all, and I found it refreshing. It wasn’t until I’d finished the scene that I looked up her name and realized that it is also the name of the Greek goddess of innocence. I’m sure the filmmakers did that on purpose. It was a wonderful reference that I’m glad I took the time to google.

Grief and Hope

All of the characters in this story lost people they loved in and shortly after the epidemic, so there were references to their deaths sprinkled in with the happier scenes. I appreciated the fact that the storytellers mixed these emotions together. There is hope after grief. You can miss someone who died recently or a long time ago and still find a reason to believe that tomorrow will be a brighter day.

In my quest to find hopeful science fiction, I keep circling back to stories that acknowledge the pain people experience during the course of a lifetime. There’s something immensely appealing to me about this sturdy kind of hope that thrives in difficult circumstances.

If you feel the same way, I highly recommend checking out this film.

 

Astraea is available on iTunes and Amazon Prime Video.

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January 23, 2019 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Favourite Things to Do in the Winter

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Part of the reason why I’m so intrigued by this week’s prompt is that winter is my least favourite season of them all. Y’all, I have to admit that I do get a little grumpy by the end of it when it feels like we’re never going to have a warm, sunny day again, and this is coming from someone who actually lives in one of the less snowy parts of Canada!

I can’t imagine what it would be like to live somewhere like the Yukon Territories where “winter” weather essentially begins in late September and lasts until May or June.

Luckily, there are fun things to do when the weather outside is frightful. This is what i’ll be keeping myself busy with over the next few months until the temperatures rise again in April.

Filling Out Adult Coloring Books. There’s something so meditative about them.

Watching Netflix. See also: documentaries (especially if they’re about NASA or nature), goofy comedies like Fuller House, and ghost stories.

Catching Up on My To-Read List. There are so many books out there I’ve been meaning to read. Let’s see how many of them I can actually finish before the weather warms up.

Studying Spanish. Enough said there. Learning a new language is so good for your brain, and it gives you a lot of sympathy for people who are learning English as their second language, too!

Braving the Cold. I do occasionally enjoy going out in the cold and watching the snow fall for a little while. It makes me grateful for the warm, indoor places where I spend most of my time.

How about all of you?

 

 

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January 22, 2019 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Meant to Read in 2018 But Didn’t Get To

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Does something count as a TBR list if it’s simply a list of library books you haven’t gotten around to requesting yet? If so, today’s post is going to be a simple one! I’ve been meaning to read all of these books, but I haven’t actually requested them from my local library yet due to the incredibly long wait times for them.

Hopefully, those times will be reduced in 2019. This is a real grab-bag of genres, styles, and topics because that’s exactly what my reading habits are like in general.

1) Heart–A History by Sandeep Jauhar

If you ask me, the history of how humans slowly figured out more and more effective medical treatments for various ailments is a fascinating one. This book spends a lot of time showing how doctors came to understand the heart well enough to perform serious operations like heart transplants.

2) Fierce Fairytales: Poems and Stories to Stir Your Soul by Nikita Gill

Possibly feminist (or at least more modern) retellings of what were originally pretty stereotypical fairy tales? Sign me up!

3) The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias by Dolly Chugh

This book is so relevant to our current age it’s not even funny. I can’t wait to read it.

4) Anger Is a Gift: A Novel by Mark Oshiro

People are almost certainly going to compare this to Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give, but I’m going to do my best to avoid that. It sounds like it will have a unique spin on the topics of racism and police brutality.

5) The Cowkeeper’s Wish: A Genealogical Journey by Tracy Kasaboski

Genealogy is such an interesting topic. My family knows a decent amount about who our ancestors were and what they were doing over the last couple hundred years. I love seeing other families get that same opportunity, too. There’s something really cool about knowing basic things like what a great-great-great grandparent’s occupations was, how many children they had, and where they were born.

6) The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

I absolutely loved the Netflix series based on this book! It’s going to be a lot of fun to see how the original differed from it. My fingers are crossed that more time will be spent explaining the backstories of the various ghosts since many of them weren’t given much screen time in season one of this show.

7) This Is the Way the World Ends: How Droughts and Die-offs, Heat Waves and Hurricanes Are Converging on America by Jeff Nesbit

Obviously, I hope our collective future is much brighter and more hopeful than this. It’s still good to know what the less optimistic predictions are as well.

8) Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited by Elyse Schein

Oh, this is heartbreaking. I can’t imagine separating twins on purpose simply to see how similar or dissimilar they might be if they were raised by different adoptive families and had no knowledge of each other. The best way to learn from the past is to study what happened, though.

9)  The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

So many of you lovely Top Ten Tuesday bloggers have mentioned this book that I simply must read it for myself.

10) The Sisters of the Winter Wood by Rena Rossner

Once again, a lot of Top Ten Tuesday bloggers have talked about this story. If everyone is gushing about it, it just might be amazing! Either way, I must find out for myself once the wait list for it is less than eighty years. (I’m joking….mostly. It is pretty long, though).

How many of these books have you read or do you hope to read?

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January 21, 2019 · 1:00 am

Blogging Advice: Finding and Using Visual Images for Your Site

Welcome back to my series on blogging that Ruth Feiertag asked me to write late last year. This is the third instalment, and today we’re talking about the important of including visual images in your posts. (There are  links to the first two instalments at the bottom of this post).

I’m going to be spend the vast majority of my time talking about the two specific types of visual images that I’ve seen used most often in the blogging world: photos and videos.

If you can master these two options, you’ll go a long way in attracting and retaining new readers.

Why Including Visual Aides In Your Work Is So Important

How quickly did it take for you to notice the picture of the sliced citrus fruits I included in the beginning of this post? My attention was immediately drawn to the pink slice. I wondered if it was a dyed piece of lemon or if it was supposed to be part of a small grapefruit instead.

A  well-chosen picture or video is eye-catching. Ideally, it will encourage the reader to ask questions about what it is they’re seeing and experience your post in ways that wouldn’t be as likely if they were only staring at words on a page.

Does this mean that every single post you share must be filled with images? No, not necessarily. You might only find one picture or video that is at all relevant to your subject matter. Sometimes you might not find anything at all! There are times when the topic I’ve talked about doesn’t have many good stock image photos that match it.  This brings me to my next point…

Make Sure Your Visual Aides Are Relevant

If you’re writing a post about whipping up a batch of your top-secret chili recipe, it wouldn’t make any sense to include a photo of elephants alongside the ingredient list.

In my opinion, it’s better to publish something that doesn’t contain any pictures at all than to shoehorn in images or videos that don’t actually fit the topic of conversation. This is something I’ve been guilty of in the past, and I know it has confused at least one of my readers.

Do your best to avoid my mistake. Take as much time as you can to find pictures or videos that match the topic you’re discussing.

Obey the Copyright Laws

Honestly, this shouldn’t even need to be said, but be sure to research and obey the copyright laws for your country. I’ve heard of multiple bloggers who were sued for using photographs and other creative works without permission. If you have any doubts about whether or not you’re allowed to use a specific work, find something else to fill that space instead or leave it blank.

Where to Find Free Stock Photos

Assuming you don’t know the photographer or creator personally and haven’t received special permission to use their work, here are some of the labels you’ll want to look for when searching for photographs that you’ll be able to use for free on your site.

Look for Public Domain and Creative Commons Licenses

As a general rule of thumb, the copyright on most photos and other works will expire 70 years after the artist’s death. Do not assume that every photo published after that date is free to use, however! Each country has their own laws on this topic, and sometimes those laws vary based on when the artist died. Always double-check what the rules are in your country before using any visual aides.

It is also possible for an artist to forfeit their copyright claims if they wish. This means that you can use their work for personal or commercial reasons without needing to seek permission first or pay for the rights to use that photo.

Public domain photos can be used for commercial and personal purposes. You don’t have to credit the photographer or provide a link to the site where you found it for this type of photograph.

A Creative Commons License is a little more complicated. In general, photos that have this license can be used for free if you follow the rules the creator made for them. For example, they might ask you to provide a link back to their personal site, include the Creative Commons logo,  email them for permission first, and/or take some other step  to indicate that you are not the owner of this photo and you do have permission to use it.

There are many free stock photo sites out there. Pexels is my favorite site for public domain photos due to their huge selection and high-quality images.  Wikimedia Commons has a smaller and more historical selection of photos that are mixture of public domain and creative commons licenses.

Finally, anyone who writes about TV shows or films should always check the IMDB page for the program they’re reviewing or discussing. There are often set photos, film posters, and previews on them that can be used in your review!

I highly recommend all of these sites. No registration is required for any of them, and you are free to use as few or as many photos and other items from them as you wish. In all of my years of including pictures in my posts, I still haven’t run out of possibilities from these sites. They’re all updated regularly with relevant and interesting content.

Sometimes I’ve also found wonderful stock photos by googling “public domain X photos,” where X stands for whatever topic it is I’m blogging about today. Be careful about double-checking the license for pictures if you go this route, though!

Since I haven’t needed to sign up for any paid stock photo sites so far, I won’t give recommendations for or against any particular companies. I try to only give advice on topics I’m experienced in.

Where to Find Videos

The copyright for videos is both easier and more difficult than it can be for photos since so many videos out there were either intentionally created to be shared or may have been stolen from the original creator. On the positive side, I am seeing people becoming more diligent about finding the original sources for videos (and forms of art not relevant to today’s post like comic strips) than they were even a year ago.

If I can’t verify who originally created a video or if the creator’s identity is disputed, I don’t share it. I work hard on my writing, and it’s only fair to give proper credit to other authors and artists, too.

The vast majority of the time, the videos I share come from one of two sources because of how (relatively) easy it is to track down creators on them: Youtube and Vimeo. The other nice thing about them are their share buttons. If a specific video has that option disabled, it’s a sign that the creator doesn’t actually want you putting it on other sites.

To repeat myself for a third and final time, don’t take my word on whether or not you can share something. I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t have the copyright laws from every single country on Earth memorized. Always do your due diligence and err on the side of caution if you’re not sure what the rules are.

This has been a long post. To thank you for reading it, I’ll share one of my all-time favourite Youtube videos with you. As anyone who knows me has probably already guessed, it is rabbit themed!

Cute Bunny Jumping Competition 

Additional, non-rabbit-related reading:

15 Things I’ve Learned From 15 Years of Blogging

Blogging Advice: How to Begin Blogging

Blogging Advice: Brainstorming and Idea Management

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January 17, 2019 · 1:00 am

Don’t Make a Sound: A Review of A Quiet Place

Earlier this year, I blogged about my to-watch list of science fiction and fantasy films. Since then, I’ve been periodically reviewing certain films that I enjoyed and thought you all might like, too. Previous instalments in this series include Into the Forest, Annihilation, Coco, Winchester, and The Little Stranger.

Content warning: death of a dog and death of a child. I will not be mentioning those portions of the story in my post today, and this will otherwise be a spoiler-free review. 

A Quiet Place is an American post-apocalyptic thriller that was released on March 9, 2018.  It’s set in a near-future version of Earth in which sightless monsters have taken over the entire planet. Where these creatures came from is unknown, and their skin is so thick that it cannot be pierced by bullets. The only way to being detected by them is by remaining perfectly quiet twenty-four hours a day.

The opening scene of this story happens 89 days after this apocalyptic event began, and it follows the Abbott family as they attempt to survive on their own. One of the children in this family has become ill, so they must travel into town to find medicine for him while avoiding all of the monsters who may be wandering nearby.

Interestingly enough, there are very few characters in this film. The vast majority of humans and large animals have been killed by the monsters, so the Abbott family must rely on their own skills and common sense in order to survive without any hope of finding help elsewhere.

I will be writing the character section in the present form. It’s a trick I discovered while working on a previous review, and I do it to avoid giving away any spoilers about the fates of the characters I write about.

*Yes, I know I said I was done watching horror flicks. Let’s round that down to 98% done watching this genre since I keep finding (fairly) non-gory horror movies that tickle my fancy.

The Characters

Emily Blunt as Evelyn Abbott

Evelyn is Lee’s wife and the mother of their children. Her desire to protect her family is strong, and she expresses it in practical ways like making sure they have food, medical supplies, and clean clothing. She struggles with guilt over decisions she’s made in the past and anxiety about what will happen to her loved ones in the future.

John Krasinski as Lee Abbott

Lee is Evelyn’s husband and the father of their children. He is determined to find a way to reach out to other survivors and keep everyone safe, and he spends a great deal of time gathering as much information as he can about the monsters and their whereabouts. Sometimes this urge gets in the way of more urgent and practical needs, but he does always have the best of intentions.

Millicent Simmonds as Regan Abbott

Regan is the oldest Abbot child. She is about twelve years old, quite intelligent, and has begun to question whether she should be listening to everything her parents tell her to do.

Noah Jupe as Marcus Abbott

Marcus, the Abbott’s middle child, is about eight years old. He shares his mother’s anxious personality and is reluctant to do anything that he perceives to be dangerous.

Cade Woodward (bottom right) as Beau Abbott

Beau, the youngest Abbott, is a curious and imaginative four-year-old. As a preschooler, he’s too young to understand the danger everyone is in and relies on his parents and older siblings for guidance and protection.

My Review

There are certain portions of the plot and character development that I have to leave out out of this review in order to avoid sharing spoilers with you. Needless to say, there is a lot more going on in the story than you might originally assume. Since I didn’t know anything about it when I first began watching it, I was pleasantly surprised by these plot twists. I hope you will be, too!

One of the things I found most unusual about this tale was how little dialogue it had. The monsters had ultra-sensitive hearing, so even a quiet conversation would be noisy enough to draw their deadly attention. I was impressed by all of the non-verbal cues the filmmakers included in the script in order to keep the audience clued in to what was happening to the Abbott family. This is definitely something you’ll want to pay close attention to while watching. Multi-tasking is not a good idea here! So much information is shared with the audience through the characters’ body language, events happening in the background, or the strategic placement of certain items in specific scenes.

While there were a small handful of scenes that briefly involved the sight of blood or serious injuries, this was not a gory film. Nearly all of the horror elements involved the characters’ reactions to the unknown and how they’d had to adapt to a world where speaking or any other types of noise was enough to ensure your quick and certain death.

The relationships between all five Abbotts were interesting. There were times when two or more of them had disagreements and had to convey those feelings primarily through any means other than speaking. This lead to some scenes that I thought were particularly well done, especially when it came to Regan’s desire to have more independence now that she was getting older. How do you parent a smart, willful kid who thinks she has everything figured out while living in an apocalypse? It definitely isn’t easy!

I would have liked to see less foreshadowing, especially since not all of the foreshadowing actually turned out to be accurate. It was a little jarring to me as a viewer to get so many hints about how things might end only to find out that they were misleading.  With that being said, this is still something I’d recommend to anyone who likes horror, survival flicks, or science fiction films about scary creatures.

This premise of this story was solid. It would have been just fine with some foreshadowing and more time spent building up the tension as the Abbott family attempted to build a new life for themselves.

By far my favourite part of this film was the ending. There were so many false starts along the way that I didn’t make any assumptions about how everything would turn out until the credits rolled. I loved the fact that the filmmakers kept us all guessing until the end.

A Quiet Place is available on Netflix.

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January 16, 2019 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: What I Would Do With a Million Dollars

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Welcome to all of my new readers! There have been a lot of you lately. If you’d like to join in with the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge, the link above will give you the list of topics for the rest of this year.

My response to this week’s prompt is going to be much shorter than it was last week.

What would I do with a million dollars? I’d immediately invest it in mutual funds, bonds, or some other type of investment that was reasonably certain to pay off.

Becoming wealthy wouldn’t be a goal.  Rather, I’d want to cultivate as much free time as possible. With a steady and modest source of income, I could then spend my days doing projects that truly interested me without thinking about how to pay for them.

First, I’d return to university and take some courses. Don’t ask me what my major would be. I don’t know yet! It would be wonderful to explore various avenues and find out what most interests me, though.

While attending school, I’d try to work or volunteer in something related to my major a few hours a week. It would be really interesting to combine my love of literature with some sort of volunteer or paid work after that, although I’d be very open to other possibilities, too.

The nice  thing about studying when you have a guaranteed, lifelong source of income is that you don’t have to have it all figured out right away. You can take your time and build something truly incredible.

Once I was mostly* finished studying, I’d want to begin teaching other people the stuff I’d learned in individual or small group settings. Since I would already have a steady income to rely on, I could charge them based on their income and give away plenty of free lessons to people who truly couldn’t afford to pay anything. There’s something really interesting to me about figuring out the best way to show someone how to master a new task, and I love socializing one-on-one or in small groups. Those are both things I could do for many years without growing bored of them.

* I won’t completely stop studying new things for as long as I’m alive. I love learning new stuff!

How about all of you?

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January 15, 2019 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: New-to-Me Authors I Read in 2018

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

To be honest with all of you, at first I wasn’t sure if I should participate in this week’s prompt. I spend so much time reading new titles from authors I discovered years ago that I wasn’t positive I’d be able to come up with enough people to fill out all ten spots on this list.

Then I remember all of the short stories I read in the average year. My favourite genre has always been science fiction, and my favourite kind of sci-fi  to read is the short stuff. There’s something immensely satisfying about seeing how much world- and charcter-building an author can squeeze into a few dozen pages…or less!

Not only will you get to read my thoughts on today’s list as usual, you’ll also be able to check out the stories that first introduced me to these authors for free if any of them grab your attention. How cool is that?

1. Author: Sara Norja

What I Read from Them: Birch Daughter 

Why I Loved It: The main character’s mother was turned into a tree before the first scene began. If that’s not the makings of a must-read, I don’t know what is!

2. Author: A.C. Buchanan

What I Read from Them: Girls Who Do Not Drown 

Why I Loved It: So many stories are written about young women dying in ghastly ways. I adored the fact that this steadfastly refused to be one of them.

3. Author: Shiv Ramdas

What I Read from Them: Guardian

Why I Loved It: For something that took only a couple of minutes to read, this sure did pack an emotional punch at the end. That’s all I can say without giving you all spoilers.

4. Author: Adam R. Shannon

What I Read from Them: On the Day You Spend Forever With Your Dog

Why I Loved It: So many of us have outlived beloved pets. Imagine what it would be like to be reunited with them again in this lifetime…or maybe even forever. If the death of animals is a trigger for you, you might want to skip this even though it’s not really meant to be a tearjerker.

5. Author: Kathryn Kania

What I Read from Them: Tablecloth

Why I Loved It: In the very first scene, a mischievous (and possibly magical) cat shows up in the main character’s life and refuses to leave. That was such a cat-like thing to do that I couldn’t help but to keep reading.

6. Author: Chesya Burke

What I Read from Them: For Sale: Fantasy Coffins (Ababuo Need Not Apply)

Why I Loved It: The unique title was what grabbed my attention at first. I stuck around because of how kind the main character was despite – or maybe because of? –  the fact that people feared her.

7. Author: Beth Goder

What I Read from Them: How to Identify an Alien Shark

Why I Loved It: Now I know exactly how to identify an alien shark. Ha! Also, I love the idea of an alien invasion happening in our oceans because the invaders were an aquatic species.

8. Author: Alexandra Rowland

What I Read from Them: Love in Every Stitch

Why I Loved It: Sewing isn’t as easy as it might first appear to be, and even the most ornate handmade articles are rarely respected enough to be thought of as art. It’s nice to see stitches get the attention they deserve even if they aren’t quite the same sort of stitch you’d use to patch up a hole in a jacket or sew on a button.

9. Author:  Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali

What I Read from Them: Talking to Cancer 

Why I Loved It: I know I’ve wished I could talk to cancer before. It’s a truly awful disease that has prematurely ended far too many lives. The thought of actually convincing it to go away like the main character did in the first scene is too good to be true.

10. Author: Kristi DeMeester

What I Read from Them: With Lips Sewn Shut 

Why I Loved It: The metaphor in it was outstanding. Oh, there’s so much more I want to say about it, but everything I can think of will give you unforgivable spoilers for why lips are sewn shut in this universe.

Who else loves short stories? I’m hoping at least a few Top Ten Tuesday bloggers will say yes to this question!

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January 14, 2019 · 1:00 am

Blogging Advice: Brainstorming and Idea Management

Welcome back to my series on blogging advice. There were a few reader questions in the first instalment, How to Begin Blogging, about the actual process of creating a blog, so I thought I’d take a moment to briefly address that. I’ll share a link to that post at the end of this one for anyone who would like to read or reread it.

I was originally planning to write a full post about the process of creating a new blog, but the official instructions for setting up new WordPress sites were so clear and easy to follow that I decided to link to them instead. There’s no use in reinventing the wheel when it already exists!

If you’re interested in setting up a tumblr account, check out this tutorial.

If you’re interested in setting up a medium account, go read this post.

Now to move on to what I think is one of the most exciting portions of blogging: brainstorming ideas and creating new posts.

Brainstorming

Today I’m going to assume that you’ve chosen a few topics for your blog. It’s perfectly acceptable if you’re still not entirely sure what all of them will be as long as you’ve made up your mind about at least one of the things you’re planning to write about. Other ideas might come to you as you explore the topic(s) that first came to mind.

Before you write a single word, do as much brainstorming and research as possible. Approach your topic from every single angle you can possibly imagine regardless of how likely it is that you might actually blog about them.

For example, if I were going to start a new site about rabbits, my favourite animal, my list would include lots of typical posts about what to feed them, how to teach them tricks, or when to call a veterinarian if they became ill. Mixed in with those ideas would also be potentially quirkier ideas on this topic like:

  • Famous Stories, Myths, and Folklore About Rabbits
  • Should You Date Someone Your Rabbit Hates?
  • How Rabbit Care Has Evolved Over the Last X Years
  • Human Foods Rabbits Should (or Should Never) Eat
  • Is It Dangerous for Rabbits to Chew on Christmas Trees?
  • What Rabbits Think of Fireworks
  • How to Respond to People Who Joke About Eating Your Pet Rabbit
  • Should You Take Your Rabbit on Vacation?
  • Keeping Rabbits Safe at the Beach/Mountains/etc.
  • Types of Music Rabbits Do (or Don’t) Like
  • Halloween Costumes for Rabbits
  • How to Befriend a Shy Rabbit
  • What Will Rabbits Look Like After Another Million Years of Evolution?
  • What Do Rabbits Really Think of Humans?
  • Where to Find Your Rabbit When He’s Hiding Somewhere in the House and Won’t Come Out
  • Help! My Rabbit Just Ate a Chicken Nugget!*

Yes, some of these titles might sound a little like clickbait, and I certainly wouldn’t use everything that popped into my mind as I was writing. The point of brainstorming is to come up with as many possibilities as you can without worrying about whether any or all of them are actually useful at this point. Instead, follow every single rabbit trail – pun intended – as far as it will go and see what you come up with.

*This was a real conversation I read on Reddit a while ago. The bunny in question suffered no ill-effects from his snack, although no one could figure out why a fluffy little herbivore would want to eat a chicken nugget in the first place. Maybe he or she saw a commercial for their favourite fast food restaurant or something? Ha!

Managing Ideas

Keep Track of Everything

Once you’ve come up with a preliminary list of ideas for your site, it’s time to figure out what to do with them until you decide whether or when to use them.

I highly recommend holding onto every idea that has the slightest chance of being used. There’s a file on my computer filled with potential ideas that I’ve been referencing, taking inspiration from, and adding new possibilities to for years now. It’s an invaluable source of information for me on those days when I have a blogging deadline looming and no clue what to write for that post.

Some of the bloggers I’ve met prefer to write their ideas down in a notebook instead. However you decide to do it, make sure your list is somewhere safe and accessible.

The Sorting and Grouping Process

Once you’ve made your list and checked it twice, start sorting your ideas out into various groups. For example, I’d pick out all of the holiday-themed prompts in my hypothetical brainstorming list above and start tentatively assigning them publication dates on or near those actual events.

  • Should You Date Someone Your Rabbit Hates? (February 14)
  • Can You Take Your Rabbit on Vacation? (June 10)
  • What Rabbits Think of Fireworks (July 2)
  • Keeping Rabbits Safe at the Beach/Mountains/etc. (August 1)
  • Halloween Costumes for Rabbits (October 20)
  • Is It Dangerous for Rabbits to Chew on Christmas Trees? (December 8)

If you only want to publish one new post a week, you’ve just knocked out six of the fifty-two posts you’ll need for the entire year. That’s more than 10% of your goal! In addition, someone who knew rabbits well well could easily come up with another half-dozen topics that are tailored to specific times of the year if they put their minds to it.

It might also be interesting to pick a broad theme like food and spend a few consecutive posts talking about what rabbits should eat daily, occasionally, or never. I might then round off that series with a short and funny anecdote about a rabbit who couldn’t resist the lure of a chicken nugget before talking about the warning signs that your pet bunny has eaten something dangerous and when he or she might need to be medically treated for it.

There’s something fascinating about seeing how many different ideas one brainstorming session can create.

Mixing It Up

With that being said, I’d also recommend mixing up your posting schedule in general. If your last few posts were about heavy topics, it might be time for something lighthearted. Something that clocked in at several thousand words might be best followed by a shorter post if your subject matter allowed for it.

Work Ahead When Possible

The beautiful thing about planning at least some of your posts out in advance like this is that it allows you to work ahead. If you know you’ll be on vacation or recovering from an elective medical procedure at a specific time and already have an inkling of what you might want to say then, why not get those posts written well ahead of time?

When possible, I also like to have a few posts sitting in my queue that could be published at any time of the year. This comes in handy for everything from power outages to illnesses that can make it hard to write new content on a deadline occasionally.

Series, Responses, and Other Renewable Writing Resources

This is where series, response posts, and other renewable writing resources come in quite handy.

To continue with today’s theme, if you’ve already written one post about games to play with domesticated rabbits, you might be able to come up with several more suggestions on keeping rabbits entertained, fit, and mentally stimulated that would work beautifully as a follow-up to the original.

Response posts are another favourite of mine. Occasionally, one of the bloggers I follow writes something that I have the uncontrollable urge to respond to with a post of my own. Not only is this a great way to generate new ideas, linking to the original will give that blogger some new traffic and may encourage them to alert their readers about your post, too.

The possibilities here are nearly endless. They can also include contests, year-end reviews of your most popular posts, blog hops, contests, interviews with people in your field, and so much more. I encourage you to try many different types of posts as you feel out what your audience is interested in and, of course, what it is you actually want to write about.

How do you all come up with fresh content for your sites?

The next instalment in this series will be discussing how to find and photos and other visual aides in your posts, so stay tuned!

Additional reading:

Blogging Advice: How to Begin Blogging

15 Things I’ve Learned From 15 Years of Blogging

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January 10, 2019 · 1:00 am

Intuition, Mindfulness, and the Alarm Bell In My Brain

This is the story of something that happened to me last year. It won’t take long to tell, but it’s important.

I met someone at a social event who was friendly, funny, and charming at first glance. They seemed like exactly the sort of person anyone would want to spend time with.

They’re hiding something, my intuition said quietly a few minutes after we’d met.

This was the first time I’d laid eyes on them, and I knew nothing about them other than the basic details they’d shared about their life and interests. They thought carefully before they spoke, and every word that came out of their mouth sparkled.

They’re sugarcoating the truth, my intuition said in a slightly louder tone.

I had no proof to back up these feelings. I’d literally just met this person. They were full of smiles and kind words for everyone around them. There was nothing about their words or actions that should have alarmed me. It was a perfectly ordinary get-together in every way you could imagine.

They’re lying about something. This wasn’t a question. It was a declarative statement I had no proof for but still kept circling back around to.

I felt uneasy around them for reasons that are hard to put into words. There was something about them that was slightly off-kilter no matter which way I looked at it, and that made me nervous. When I was younger, I might have brushed off this warning and decided to find out more about this person for myself.  These days, I listen and take heed.

The beautiful thing about mindfulness is how it can focus your attention on what really matters in situations such as these. Something wasn’t lining up in the things they said about their life.  I didn’t and still don’t know exactly what they were being evasive about, but my mind was still enough to listen to those thoughts when they popped up and take action quickly when they refused to go away.

No, I do not think I’m clairvoyant or have any other abilities that defy scientific explanation.  If anything, I believe that my mind picked up on subtle but important discrepancies between their verbal and non-verbal cues that might have shown they weren’t being totally honest about the things they shared about their life.

But I do think that my mindfulness habits helped me to realize there was something off about this person sooner than I might have in a different timeline. The beautiful thing about learning how to quiet your mind is that it makes the rare feelings that refuse to be ignored much more noticeable than they might have otherwise been.

 

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January 9, 2019 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Books That Need a Prequel

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Welcome to the very first Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge! Today’s topic is books that need a prequel. I hope my readers will click the link above and see how everyone else responded to this prompt, too.

Lately, I’ve been discovering prequels to all sorts of books that I spent ages wishing would have such a thing, so this post won’t be as long as it would be if I’d written it a year or two ago. For example, I recently read Sarah McCoy’s “Marilla of Green Gables,”  a prequel to L.M. Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gables.” Last year I read “Caroline: Little House, Revisited” by Sarah Miller and saw Laura Ingalls Wilder’s early childhood from her mother’s point of view. (If you liked those series and haven’t already read the prequels to them, I highly recommend checking them out. They were both excellent reads).

Those experiences give me hope that everything I discuss today has a chance of actually having a prequel written for it someday. My fingers are crossed that this will happen.

Stephen King’s “Pet Sematary.”

For anyone who doesn’t already know the premise of this book, it was about a young family who unknowingly moved next door to a cemetery that brought anyone who was buried in it back to life. The trouble was, the people and animals who were reanimated in it weren’t their usual selves after that experience. They came back violent…or worse.

There were so many unanswered questions about this graveyard and the folks who had used it. Admittedly, I’m probably way more cautious about unexplained phenomenon than many people, but when I read this I really wondered why the people who knew about how dangerous it was didn’t work harder to warn newcomers and, I don’t know, prevent anything from being buried there. Did the cemetery somehow negatively influence your critical thinking and survival skills, too? I want answers!

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series

What I’d love to see J.K. Rowling do is go back to when ancient wizards and witches first realized that they had special powers. Wouldn’t it be cool to see how wizarding society was first formed back when the general human population was much smaller than it currently is today?

Maybe it would be set in Africa tens of thousands of years ago when all of our ancestors still lived there. Then again, maybe magical characters in that universe didn’t actually have the resources to live separately from muggles until we invented agriculture and cities and could support much larger populations. What do you all think?

Robert Kirkman’s “The Walking Dead” graphic novels

I haven’t been keeping up with the latest issues of these graphic novels, but from what I’ve read the creator has no interest in explaining how the walkers (what we would call zombies) in this universe came to be or how they took over the world so quickly while Rick Grimes, the main character, was in a coma for a few weeks after an accident.

This is something I’ve thought about a lot over the years, so not having answers for it vexes me. It sure seems like more people would have realized early on that walker bites would turn you into a walker, too.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

I’d sure like to know what Mr and Mrs. March’s childhoods were like, how they met, and what it was like for them to have four daughters in five years. That many babies in such a short period of time is a lot of work! I have a relative who had a similar age spread for their children, but they raised their brood with all of the benefits of modern society like disposable diapers, antibiotics, and kid-friendly TV programs for when one of the parents needed a few minutes to relax.

Room by Emma Donoghue 

 I’d sure love to read a prequel to this book told from the perspective of someone who knew why the antagonist kidnapped and imprisoned the main character’s mother for so many years in the first place. This wasn’t something that was addressed in Room since the narrator was a young, innocent kid who didn’t realize how bizarre his life was, but it is something I’ve wondered about ever since I finished reading it.

How about you? Which books do you want prequels for?

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