A Few Dollars Well Spent to Fix Up Your Blog

"It's a bit of a fixer-upper."

Looking to update your blog? Want it to be sleek and modern without having to learn all sorts of coding languages? Me, too.

I just created a new blog for a road trip my hubby and I are taking this summer, and to make it look as pretty on the screen as I envisioned in my head, I enlisted some very affordable help.

I purchased a template over at creativemarket.com, and for just $12, and a little patience on my part, I ended up with this sleek (still under construction) website:

http://ameliaontheroad.blogspot.com/

I'm pretty good at following directions, so I was able to get the whole thing up and running in about an hour and a half. If I were converting an existing blog, I think it would have been more time consuming, but not impossible.

I'm so happy with the results that maybe in some of my free time this summer I'll give this blog a makeover!

There are dozens of cheap and attractive templates over there. If you want a fast, affordable upgrade to your web presence, check it out!


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Photo Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomascosauce/8607146662

How to Use Audible Promotion Codes

If you've taken my advice and made our book into an audio book through ACX, you've been given audiobook codes for free downloads to give away review copies. The upside is that you can give your audiobook to people for free. The downside is that the promotion codes can actually be used for any book, so giving away the codes might not help you find reviewers. Here's a video tutorial shared with me by Becket Royce, who narrates The Latecomers Fan Club, to help you lock down those codes!

On Rejection, Investing in my Dreams, and Being Happy

https://www.flickr.com/photos/smemon/4495072850

I had something of an epiphany today in the wake of yet another rejection letter from the folks at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and it feels like an epiphany worth sharing. Here it is:

Writers are insane.

Perhaps you’re thinking, “That was your epiphany? What rock have you been living under?”

Fair enough. It’s a well known fact that writers are insane. Maybe epiphany was too strong a word. Perhaps it would be more accurate today that as I reflected on my plight as a writer who has now been rejected from Bread Loaf seven or eight times (at least), I remembered that writers are insane, and I made up my mind to opt out of certain types of writerly insanity in the future. 

Specifically, I have concluded that, for the sake of my sanity, I must opt out of paying people to tell me I’m not a good enough writer to pay them to become a better writer.

Here’s what I mean. I paid a $15 application fee, waited four months, and was then told my writing and resume did not qualify me to pay another $3,170 for a ten-day conference.

I should probably be jumping for joy that I don’t now have to pony up three thousand dollars, but like the other five-hundred or so other rejected writers (they say they accepted about 26% of applications, and that they will have nineteen workshop groups with 10 participants per groups, which suggests they had about 730 applicants), I was pretty darn dejected all day.