I’m noticing a trend here. I seem to find myself writing here whenever I reach a roadblock in my SEO writing attempts — which happens way too often than I’m comfortable with. Who knew it would be so hard to write a couple of articles given specific keywords? It’s even harder because the subject matters aren’t exactly in my wheelhouse. Heehee, that was the first time I’ve used that phrase; I keep hearing it on shows like American Idol and The Voice. It’s a pretty tingly expression…and I probably didn’t make any sense right there.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to stimulate my writing juices in different ways: munching on the forbidden-but-oh-so-tempting Lay’s Sour Cream and Onion chips; jumping/running on our ancient trampoline; disturbing our husky, Coffee, as he sleeps peacefully in my parents’ room; even flailing and gyrating in my seat to the tune of Harlem Shake. Yeah, not a nice visual, LOL.

After nearly a month of this SEO gig, I’ve boned up on things that I never before thought to research about, and discovered things that alternately amazed and amused me. VoIP? 3d printing? MWC and SXSW? Boxer visiting his Twitter troll? Technology and social media’s both growing by leaps and bounds, much too quickly to keep track of. Now, I can sympathize better with my mom when she says that our generation’s so different. It’s mind-boggling to try to imagine how the world will work years from now.

It’s not just the SEO articles that I’m hitting stop-and-go on. There’s also the novella I’ve been working on, plus the final requirements for my Creative Writing class. Thankfully, the latter’s going pretty well. I’ve already finished the first (and second, and third, ’cause I keep tweaking it) draft of my short story, and I’m rather proud of it. We’ll be workshopping it soon–and it’s only recently that I found out that ‘workshopping’ is a valid verb! It’s actually an ultra-condensed version of the novel I started on during last year’s NaNoWriMo, but with some adjustments to the characters/events. I’m excited to post it here after I’ve submitted it for class.

And for the last bit of randomness, I just discovered Scrivener! I’ve been trying it out for my novella, and so far, so good. I haven’t been able to explore all its features yet, but I’m finding the character profiles and synopsis notecards helpful. If only it had some kind of tool to stimulate my creative juices or to generate ideas. I think there are other programs for it, only I’m too lazy to scour the web for them.

Anyway, back to agonizing over work responsibilities. If you’ve got any suggestions for me, whether it’s a topic to write about that’s related to business, social media or technology, or a writing productivity app to check out, I’ll be forever grateful 🙂 ‘Til my next roadblock (and I swear to myself, I’ll continue my Cambodia chronicles next week)…