31 Days to Build a Better Blog: Hey Darren, It's My Turn

Day 11. I've been very dutiful, giving Darren's name to the world (and you know how much this means to him :), but it's time to turn my attention elsewhere.

I'm hoping he will forgive me, because it's my blog after all. And, besides, I suspect he may not be posting about me today, so I'm going to need to do it myself.

Here's the deal. We're supposed to come up with 10 post ideas, and this is how we're supposed to do it:

1. Put our last five posts in a circle, well, five circles. Start the square dance music.

2. Extend our circles by making them dosey doe with more circles.

3. Extend again, if we dare. (Let's not hurt ourselves. I know all this stretching can be a bit of a challenge.)

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, I've made a little picture (see below). Actually, I used to teach this technique to my English classes. It's called "doing a word web" and is a simple brainstorming technique.

But I like the idea of the square dance music. It seems more cheery than getting all sticky in a web. Also, as you will see, I used little rectangles (and I put them in a lumpy circle, otherwise fondly known as kind-of-an-oval. :) Oh, and I didn't put my last five posts. I put my next one book.

I also did 12 instead of 10, not because I'm an overachiever (okay, that I am, but that's not why I did it; I did it because my book has 12 chapters).



What is my square-rectangle-dance-circle brainstorming web about?

I realized that it might be nice to do a companion book to my new book. Something kind of devotional, or bible study leaderish, that provides passages from the Old Testament, Psalms, and the life of Christ. I'm toying with the idea of releasing this companion book as a free download e-book. Or maybe I'll charge a dollar.

Who knows. But it occurred to me that I might want to begin sharing my ideas over at Love Notes to Yahweh, since that's my spiritual practice blog.

Anyway, Darren, no worries, I'll talk about you again soon. :)

RELATED POSTS
LL's Day 1: Bambi in the Database, Day 2: The Dalai Lama Effect, Day 3: Darren Rowse, Please Link to Me, Day 4: Oprah, I Wanna Be Like You, Day 5: Email a Blog Reader, Day 6: Shakespeare and Company's Top 24 Blog Tips, Day 7: How Do I Love Thee, Let Me Link the Ways, Day 8: Entertaining Aliens, Day 9: Meet Me at the Mother Ship, Day 10: My Dog Ate Darren Rowse's Google Alerts
ProBlogger's Come Up With 10 Post Ideas
Paul's 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Project

COMING MONDAY
Darren Gets on the Scale, a companion to ProBlogger's Make An Editorial Calendar.


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<a href="http://greeninventionscentral.blogspot.com"><img width="130" alt="31 Days to Better Blogging" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3613/4568523904_86defc4913_m.jpg" /></a>

Someone Else's Dog, photo by L.L. Barkat.

Spring Metro and Snow

Slowly but surely I'm mining my secret place journals, to find just the perfect bits for God in the Yard. Of course that means much will be left behind, tucked silently into pages, out of view. So I thought, why not... why not set them here, on this little table, a tiny centerpiece over which you and I can sip tea.

March 20, 2007

I am amazed by the squirrels, how they chase and tumble and travel the "squirrel metro" across this little woods, in five seconds flat. The metro is a lacework of branches on which they skip and scurry. One squirrel has been upside down for a few minutes, eating knobbly parts of the tree. Is he eating the tree? The air is cold; my bottom is cold— the snow searing straight through my sled. But the sun is hot. How is it I never noticed this aspect of spring before? The terrible tension of hot and cold on a single day.

Water drips with a constancy and sounds oddly like the crackle of fire. I think that cleansing by water is strange indeed if it is actually a purging fire.

Two feathers blow softly in the snow. I move them and think absently that my Sara will see them when she comes out. She does, as I suspected she might. They are a treasure passed on.

Sip. Smile. Sigh.


Feathers in the Snow Photo, by L.L. Barkat.