Originally, I was planning to give credit to the people who introduced me to these books in previous Top Ten Tuesday posts.
The problem with that plan is that a) I usually can’t remember who talked about them first, and b) most of these books have been mentioned by multiple Top Ten Tuesday bloggers before, during, and after their release dates.
Therefore, I’m giving credit to everyone has who blogged about these books.
Thank you for bringing these titles to the attention of the rest of us. You’ve enriched my TBR list and no doubt the reading lists of lots of other folks, too.
Here are some of the many books that came to my attention thanks to you.
Content warning: this post includes references to seasonal depression, people who died from Covid-19, and people who are permanently disabled from Covid-19.
I’ve been blogging for many years now. It’s been my experience that blogging can be a cyclical hobby or profession.
Sometimes bloggers have plenty of time to write and so many topics we can’t imagine how we’ll find room in our editorial calendars for everything we want to say. In other seasons of life, things change.
I Need to Rest
Not my bunny or basket, but I grok this feeling.
In some ways, it has felt like March of 2020 never ended. All of the events and trips I looked forward to when the long, dark days of winter feel never-ending were cancelled last year and they are beginning to be rapidly cancelled again this year.
To be perfectly clear, I completely understand why this is necessary for public health and safety and in no way sympathize with the anti-lockdown, anti-mask, and anti-science protestors.
Honestly, I have had a much easier experience during this pandemic than many people out there. I have safe housing, a loving marriage, plenty of food, and money to pay the bills.
Out of all of my relatives who have caught Covid-19 so far, only one distant relation has passed away from it and only one or maybe two closer relatives have what are probably permanent health effects from it.
I’m very grateful for my and our good fortune in these troubled times. So many people are dealing with much harder situations.
With that being said, I’m also bone-tired. For anyone taking notes out there, the winter blues do not mix well with pandemics at all. This combination should be avoided at all costs in both real life and fiction. I’d give it zero stars out of ten even if you have somehow personally have managed not to know anyone who caught Covid-19. It’s exhausting.
I Need to Write Fiction
My other reason for trimming back on new blog posts here is a cheerful one.I need to preserve more energy and creative juice for writing my speculative fiction stories!
It’s been several years since my last tale was published. That must change. I have pages of notes and rough drafts for future stories. All I need is the time and creative juice to bring them to life.
It is my hope that this new blogging schedule will facilitate that once my mood perks up in the spring.
Longterm readers might remember that I’ve gone through similar periods of cutting back on blogging here before. It’s something I really don’t like doing, but sometimes it’s necessary even if it makes me want to go sit in the Naughty Blogger corner for daring to change my posting schedule. LOL!
I’ll revisit this decision later on this year to see how I’m feeling and how sustainable the new blogging schedule is.
The New Blogging Schedule
My hope is to eventually return to my usual Monday – Thursday schedule, but I’m cutting out all Monday posts for now. They generally tend to take up as much writing time as two to three of my other weekly posts combined.
If you follow me on Twitter, I will continue to share several posts from my archives each Monday for #MondayBlogs. Thank goodness that past me wrote plenty of them to cycle through while current me rests.
(Some? Most?) Tuesdays – Top Ten Tuesday posts. I love the TTT community, so I’ll do my best to stay connected to it when my energy levels and other commitments allow for that.
Thursdays -speculative fiction book reviews, but probably only for short stories.
This is the hardest part of the year for me even during non-pandemic times. April is always better for my mental health, especially once I’ve had multiple long walks in the warm sunshine and my brain realizes spring truly has arrived.
If only I had a crystal ball that could tell us all exactly when this pandemic will end and life will feel more predictable again.
How has Covid-19 impacted your blogging and writing habits? How are you all feeling now that we’re over one year into this pandemic? Do you also feel guilty about changing your blogging routines?
Anyone who has followed this blog for a little while has probably noticed the content warnings that appear in some of the book and film reviews I share. I recently realized that I’ve never blogged about what I do and don’t include in my content warnings here, so let’s discuss it.
Please note that I will be briefly discussing things like rape, murder, and violence later in this post to give examples of things I use content warnings for. I will not go into detail on any these subjects, but I always warn my readers in advance when sensitive topics come up. Keep reading at your own discretion.
The Purpose of Content Warnings
The friendliest photo I could find online.
Content warnings are used to alert readers about potentially sensitive material so that they can decide for themselves if they would like to read or watch that content.
Trigger warnings are a specific type of content warnings that are used for subjects that may cause intense psychological symptoms in some cases.
The purpose of these warnings is to give people who have PTSD, anxiety, or other mental illnesses a heads up before suddenly diving into topics that may trigger flashbacks, panic attacks, or other mental health concerns for them.
Since just about anything can be a content or trigger warning for someone out there, it simply isn’t possible to forewarn everyone about anything that might be difficult for them to stumble across in a story or film.
What I Include in My Content Warnings
My goal when writing content warnings for the stuff I review here is to include topics that are widely known to be sensitive or triggering.
I generally warn my readers about the following topics:
Any form of abuse (sexual, physical, emotional, etc.) against adults, kids, or animals
Blood and gore
Descriptive medical procedures (needles, surgery, amputations, etc).
Violence
Kidnapping or abductions
Death or dying (including pets/animals)
Pregnancy or childbirth (especially if it has a tragic outcome)
Self-harm or suicide
Eating disorders
Sexism, homophobia, racism, transphobia, ableism, classism, etc.
Mental illness
There have been a few times when readers contacted me privately to ask for clarification for a content warning or to see if something not on this list was included in the book or film I’d reviewed. I’m always happy to answer those questions.
While I do have a spoiler-free review policy in general, I think it’s helpful to let folks know in advance about topics they might need to emotionally prepare for before reading or watching what I recommend here.
How Do You Handle Content Warnings?
Do you use them? Why or why not?
If you use them, what topics do you include in them?
Are you open to answering readers’ questions about the content of the stuff you review if they would like to know in advance if something not on your list was mentioned in the book, film, or other piece of media you reviewed?
I can’t wait to hear how all of you handle this topic on your sites and in your reviews.
I’ve been blogging on various sites more or less continuously since I was in college.
It started after I read a friend’s blog and realized I could do that, too.
Several of the blogs I worked on solo or as part of a group of bloggers no longer exist, but PK Stories is an exception to that.
I was a preacher’s kid growing up and spent a few years sharing amusing stories from that part of my childhood. (Please note that I’ve learned a lot about writing, blogging, and storytelling since that site was last active. It’s pretty old).
Blogging has changed quite a bit over the years. The best practices for it these days are generally thought to include picking one topic and only writing about that.
So why don’t I follow that rule? Well, there are a few reasons for that.
Content Fatigue
Actual footage of my thought processes after a couple of years of writing about the same topic every week.
I’ve learned through trial and error that I experience content fatigue on single-topic blogs after about two or three years.
It’s tricky for me to know where to go next after I’ve covered everything I want to say, especially since I dislike recycling posts or repeating myself.
Rather than building a new site from scratch every other year, I now prefer to stick to the same site and bounce around among a few different topics instead.
Kudos to those of you who can blog about the same thing for years or decades.
I admire your constancy, but my creativity eventually struggles under those circumstances.
Overlapping Interests
There may be some people on this planet whose interests all exist in well-defined bubbles that never intersect with each other, but I’m not one of them.
My fitness posts often reference science fiction or fantasy because I think about topics like Frodo’s long walk to Mordor or what it would really be like to use a Holodeck for my workouts. (Yes, I will actually write that post one of these days).
Sometimes I need to share childhood stories when I talk about the magic of Halloween so my readers will understand why it’s so important to me.
Yoga is both a workout and an exercise in mindfulness. That still blows my mind and may require a few more posts to fully explore.
So why not talk about all of the fascinating things that move between and connect these seemingly-unrelated topics?
Simple Human Curiosity
Look, would I ever tell someone else what to write about on their site? Absolutely not!
But I do quietly love it when bloggers reveal new pieces of their personal lives and interests that may or may not be related to the main topic(s) of their sites.
There’s something delightful and surprising about everyone once you get to know them well enough.
It’s amazing to learn that someone you’ve followed and interacted with for years has this whole other side to them that you’d never would have predicted whether that’s a hobby, interest, or something else entirely.
So one of the other big reasons why I jump between topics is to give my readers a better understanding of who I am as a person. Yes, half or more of my posts are about the science fiction and fantasy genres in any given month because of how passionate I am about them, but those aren’t my only interests by any means.
My hope is that by sharing these parts of myself other bloggers might be encouraged to do the same thing.
How did you all pick the topic(s) for your sites? What made you stick to one topic on your site or include multiple ones on it?
A few weeks ago, I blogged about a list of things I could give impromptu speeches on including developing a social media calendar. Several of my readers showed interest in that topic, so this is what I’ll be discussing in today’s post.
Twitter and Instagram are the social media sites I’ll be focusing on since they’re the two I use, but rest assured that much of this advice can apply to any social media account you may be managing.
Why Develop a Social Media Calendar?
Why is it important to develop a social media calendar? Well, there are a few reasons why this is a good idea.
One, posting on a schedule helps you to attract new followers and readers. For example, I know that my friend April Munday always tweets about her new weekly post on Sundays.
Two, you can write and schedule content ahead of time if you use one of the many platforms out there that were created for this purpose. While this should probably be a post of its own one day, pre-scheduling posts can come in pretty handy in case of illness, travel, or an Internet outage.
By developing a social media calendar ahead of time, you’ll still have something to say even when life reduces how much time and energy you have for coming up with new material.
8 Tips for Developing a Social Media Calendar
Tip #1 Stick to a Schedule
No, developing a social media calendar does not mean that you have to come up with something to share every hour of the day. I generally aim for three tweets set to go out per day.
If I have a post going live that day, the link to it tweeted out first thing in the morning. If not, it might be a funny story from my life or some other lighthearted conversation starter.
A little before lunchtime, I share something like a quote, link to an interesting news article, or photo.
The final tweet is always my question of the day in the afternoon.
Tip #2: Post at High Traffic Times
For Instagram and Twitter, high traffic times seem to be 8-9 am before people start work or school, lunchtime, and about 5-6 pm once they’re winding up their days.
Obviously, the precise times will vary depending on which time zone you’re in and when your followers are most active. These are only general guidelines to get you started until you’ve figured out the unique rhythms of your audience.
Tip #3: Mix It Up
Yes, consistency is important, but you don’t want to post the exact same sort of material every single day. That can get repetitive after a while.
Here are a few of the many different types of updates you could share:
Quotes
Polls
Questions
Updates
Relevant Articles
Jokes
Photos
Tip #4: Ask Open-Ended Questions
Ask “what is your favourite colour?” rather than “do you prefer purple or yellow?” It leaves room for improvisation and for answers you might never have expected to receive.
Tip #5: Keep a File of Ideas
I kid you not, I have a file of stuff to share on social media that stretches out through summer of 2021. It’s organized by month for this year and season for 2021. Some of it is season or holiday-specific. Other ideas are simply things I’ve jotted down but haven’t yet used.
Each month I look through the material that I’ve already gathered for that time period and decide what to share and when.
Tip #6: Check Idea-Generating Places Regularly
Obviously, idea-generating places are going to vary quite a bit from one person to the next depending on the topics you plan to post about.
I generally discuss sci-fi/fantasy, mindfulness, food, fitness, and all sorts of random bookish stuff, so the following sites give me plenty of material to work with:
If I find something in February that would be perfect for a Halloween post, I’ll squirrel it away in my ideas folder until then. It’s a great way to make sure I’ll have things to share weeks or months from now.
Tip #7: Engage with Your Followers
As far as more immediate ideas, talking to your followers can be a good way to come up with them.
This really should go without saying, but if someone asks a question on your site or social media page, answer it if at all possible!
Not only is it good for your brand and reputation, I’ve gotten ideas for future tweets, blog posts, and stories from interactions with folks online.
Tip #8: Keep Experimenting
One of the things I love about developing and cultivating a social media calendar is how often it can be improved upon. What worked last month might not be as effective now. There is always room to try something new and see if it works better.
If you’ve developed a social media calendar, what other tips would you give?
This event is so cool I decided to dedicate a full post to it today.
On October 31, blogger Patricia Lynne is going to be hosting a Trick-or-Treat blog hop for anyone who is looking for free, new e-books to read.
Authors, you have until October 31 to hop on over to her site and share a link to your free book or books.
Bloggers, readers, and reviewers, the full list of free e-books will be available on that site on October 31. Be sure to go check it out then if you need something new to read. The hashtag they’re using on Twitter is #trickortreatreads, so keep an eye out for that, too.
I’ve already added the link for my books. If I find any titles there that fit the theme of my blog, you may see reviews of them here in the future. A big part of the reason why I wrote this post is so that I can link back to it over the coming months to explain how I gained access to so many free books at once if this pans out as well as I hope it does.
I started blogging back in the early 2000s when most of the bloggers I knew used Blogspot. One of the things I miss the most from that era are response posts.
If you don’t know what a response post is, here’s an example of how this sort of thing works.
Finley: Here are seven reasons why Picard is the best Star Trek captain of them all.
Rory: The other dayI read Finley’s post about why Picard is the best Star Trek captain of them all. Here’s a link to their post for anyone who hasn’t read it yet. While I agree with most of their points, today I wanted to talk about why Captain Sisqo was an even better example of top-notch Star Trek leadership.
That is, Rory noticed something in Finley’s original post that made them decide to write a response to it in order to dig more deeply into the topic of which Star Trek captain is the best of them all or to explain where their opinion differed from what Finley thinks about that universe.
Just like WordPress today, some blogging platforms back then had notification systems that would let the original blogger(s) know someone had linked to their work. Other bloggers could read both of these posts and then write their own replies about which captain they thought was the best. Sometimes this sparked conversations that lasted for weeks or months and took place over many different sites as new people added in their opinions and the original participants replied again to clarify their point of view or ask a question.
I’ve seen echoes of this phenomenon on occasional Tumblr posts, but I’m not seeing it happen in the blogosphere much at all these days. If someone strongly agrees or disagrees with a post, they tend to create Twitter threads or leave a comment instead.
Comment sections and Twitter threads are fun, but I prefer blog posts for discussions like these for a few different reasons.
Longevity
It’s been my experience that responses last longer and are easier to find if they’re turned into a blog post. Few people scroll months or years back into someone else’s Twitter stream, and I’ve had experiences in the past where old comments on my various blogs disappeared with site updates.
Blog posts have a way of sticking around on the Internet for years after their publication date. Occasionally, I still find references to posts that went “viral” in the blogosphere many years ago.
In addition, one of the first things I do when I discover a new blog is to poke around their archives and see what they were talking about months or years ago. There can be posts there that I’ll then share with the people I know who are interested in comparing Star Trek captains, for example.
More In-Depth Discussions
There are many things I appreciate about social media, but it’s hard to fit complex ideas or discussions into a few 280-character tweets. The beautiful thing about the blogosphere is how much more room there is in a blog post to add subtley to your point of view.
A tweet might only have room to mention one or two things you loved about Jean Luc Picard. In a blog post, you could mention everything you admired about him, compare it to the strengths and weaknesses of other captains, and respond to someone who had complained earlier about how silly is it for him to specify every single time that he wants his Earl Grey tea to be hot when that’s something that the replicators on the Enterprise really should be able to assume based on that captain’s long history of drinking hot tea.
Any Trekkie who stumbled across this hypothetical response post could share it on social media and ignite an entirely new round of discussions on the strengths and weaknesses of all of the Star Trek captains.
Community Building
Yes, communities can and absolutely do exist on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and other social media sites.
One of the biggest differences between building an online community on social media and in the blogosphere lies in how easy it is to keep up with everyone. I’ll take a step back from my Star Trek analogy for a moment to discuss something serious that actually happened in one of my social circles recently.
Without giving away too many identifying details, a friend of mine recently went through something difficult. They talked about it on social media, but because of the time of day they shared them as well as some of the silly marketing gimmicks on that site I – along with many other friends of theirs – never saw their updates.
It wasn’t until they shared another status update talking about how lonely they felt that most of us realized something was wrong. Had this been a blog post on my RSS feed instead, I would have seen and responded to it within a day or so of it being published.
I Want to Write More Response Posts
As the saying goes, “be the change you want to see in the world.” While that phrase was originally coined to describe far more pressing issues than this one, I think I’m going to start shuffling my editorial calendar around on this blog a bit to allow for occasional response posts.
Maybe they’ll come back into fashion again if more bloggers realize just how useful they can be.If you write something thought-provoking, your post just might be the one I pick!
For those of you who have experience with them, what do you think of response posts? Are you also interested in bringing this style of blog post back?
Today’s post is going to be short and sweet. As I’ve said here before, I don’t believe in stretching out my words if a few hundred of them will suffice.
Someone found this site recently by doing a search for movies about blogging. Normally, queries like this happen because of something I blogged about in the recent or distant past.
This time I couldn’t figure out why that search led them here other than the fact that I have multiple posts about movies and blogging as two separate categories.
Sometimes the magic of Google combines unrelated words in new ways when someone searches for something that doesn’t have a lot of hits online.
The more I think about that original query, the more I agree with this person.
The first movie I remember seeing about email was You’ve Got Mail, and it came out shortly after this form of communication became more commonly used.
Blogging hasn’t gotten the same treatment so far as I can tell even though it’s been around for about twenty-five years now. This post is old, but the demographics of blogging also make me think that there are a lot of people out there who would be interested in seeing such a film. At least as of 2010, the average blogger was young and almost a third of them lived in the United States. That tends to be the same demographic that goes to the movies regularly!
This isn’t even to mention the fact that blogs exist for every niche out there. A story about bloggers who were all dealing with chronic health problems would have a completely different narrative flow on the big screen when compared to bloggers who wrote about playing poker, rescuing abandoned pets, restoring vintage cars, reviewing books, or trying to convince toddlers to eat their vegetables.
The possibilities are truly endless.
True, it probably wouldn’t be very entertaining to have an entire film about someone typing away on a laptop or tablet.
The director and screenwriters would need to show other sides of the blogging community like conventions, small group meetups, the things bloggers go through to get that perfect picture for their site, or what happens when you have a post ninety percent written, forget to save it as you work, and then your computer crashes right before you tap that save button.
Raise your hand if that’s ever happened to you!
What do you all think? Would you watch a film about bloggers?
Happy Independence Day to all of my American readers! The Fourth of July is an ordinary day here in Ontario, so I’m back to blogging about the sorts of topics I generally discuss here. If you haven’t already checked it out, why not go ask me a few questions about what it’s like to live in Canada?
Writer’s block is a topic I’ve been meaning to discuss on this site for quite a while now. I’ve had my own trouble with it in the past, up to and including brainstorming for something as simple as a blog post topic. Today I wanted to share a few techniques that I use to deal with this problem when it happens. If you have anything else to add in the comment section below, do speak up!
Balance Multiple Projects
On any given day, I’m brainstorming, writing, or reworking blog posts, my latest novel, future social media posts for myself, future social media posts for the organizations I volunteer for, book reviews, and more. If one of these writing styles isn’t working for me, I’ll switch to another one.
There is something about asking your brain to transition from one project to the next that can really get the creative juices flowing.
A tweet requires brevity while a chapter of a book might need me to dig deeply into the details of what is going on in that particular scene so that my audience will know exactly what is going on in it.
Do Something Unrelated to Writing
This is not my dog, but I wish it were.
And when I say unrelated, I mean it! Pick an activity that you enjoy but that has nothing at all do with your current projects.
Go swimming or buy a ticket to the latest summer blockbuster you’ve been meaning to watch. Fly a kite, take your dog on an adventure, or have dinner down at the local pub. Book a weekend away at local campground or check out a special event in your neighbourhood that you’ve been meaning to attend.
Do these sorts of things without any sense of guilt or expectation that they will lead you to the next plot twist in your writing. Just enjoy those hours or days away without any thought of what’s going on with your characters at the moment.
Once you get back, there’s something interesting I think you should try.
Have a Conversation with Your Characters
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to my characters. No, I generally don’t speak out loud to them, although more power to you if that works.
One visualization technique that I really like is imagining that I’ve sat down with my characters to have a cup of tea together. The conflict and tension in their storyline is nowhere near us, and we have all the time in the world to talk about what’s going on with them and how they want to react next.
Don’t ask me why this works, but I’ve found it very helpful in figuring out why I’m stuck on a particular piece and what sorts of things I should think about trying with the plot in the future.
Write Scenes Out of Order
For example, I generally find it much easier to write the middle of a story or novel than I do the beginning or ending. Beginnings need to draw the readers into the plot quickly while at the same time developing the character’s personalities and giving a good overview of what the world they inhabit is like.
As far as endings go, I always want to know what happens next no matter how long a story is or how well it fleshes everything out. This is a good thing as a reader, but as a writer it can make it tricky for me to know when to wrap things up.
Middle sections are my sweet spot, so they’re often the portion I try to work on if I get stuck. There are so many opportunities to foreshadow the ending or make more references to things I’ll put in the first few scenes when I’m writing this part.
Interestingly enough, this also works just as well for blog posts and tweets! Can you guess which section of this post I might have figured out first?
Pick a Different Genre
No, I’m not saying you need to publish what you write or that you need to start an entirely new project altogether. I’ve written plenty of scraps of things that will never see the light of day.
Here’s the thing about picking a different genre: it can often require you to use a different set of writing muscles. A romance novel is usually nothing like a poem about a rainy day. A short horror tale has a completely different feel to it then an autobiographical essay.
If you can, choose a genre that is something you’d rarely to never read, much less write.
It’s been my experience that attempting to write a hardboiled detective story is a great way for me to start coming up with ideas for the genres I actually have experience writing. No sooner does my detective stumble upon the crime scene then he or she realizes that this isn’t the only genre going on in that snippet of a tale.
What are your favourite tips for beating writer’s block?
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!
My other reason for trimming back on new blog posts here is a cheerful one.I need to preserve more energy and creative juice for writing my speculative fiction stories!
Do you use them? Why or why not?
Edited on May 13, 2020 to include two responses to this post: 
There may be some people on this planet whose interests all exist in well-defined bubbles that never intersect with each other, but I’m not one of them.
Look, would I ever tell someone else what to write about on their site? Absolutely not!
Why is it important to develop a social media calendar? Well, there are a few reasons why this is a good idea.
A little before lunchtime, I share something like a quote, link to an interesting news article, or photo.
Tip #5: Keep a File of Ideas
Tip #7: Engage with Your Followers
I started blogging back in the early 2000s when most of the bloggers I knew used Blogspot. One of the things I miss the most from that era are response posts.
There are many things I appreciate about social media, but it’s hard to fit complex ideas or discussions into a few 280-character tweets. The beautiful thing about the blogosphere is how much more room there is in a blog post to add subtley to your point of view.
Today’s post is going to be short and sweet. As I’ve 
The possibilities are truly endless.
On any given day, I’m brainstorming, writing, or reworking blog posts, my latest novel, future social media posts for myself, future social media posts for the organizations I volunteer for, book reviews, and more. If one of these writing styles isn’t working for me, I’ll switch to another one.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to my characters. No, I generally don’t speak out loud to them, although more power to you if that works.
For example, I generally find it much easier to write the middle of a story or novel than I do the beginning or ending. Beginnings need to draw the readers into the plot quickly while at the same time developing the character’s personalities and giving a good overview of what the world they inhabit is like.
No, I’m not saying you need to publish what you write or that you need to start an entirely new project altogether. I’ve written plenty of scraps of things that will never see the light of day.
Welcome back to my series on blogging that 
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.