The Muffin | Cathy C. Hall Writes

Because I come from a radio background of news and public service, I’m fine with talking to strangers.

(And trust me. There are a lot of strange people in the world. And before you think I’m being all judgey, I’m including myself in that category.)

So as a writer, I don’t have a problem getting up in front of strangers and talking about myself or a book that includes one of my stories. But I totally get that many writers struggle with this part of the writing business. And I expect many in the publishing business get it, too. But that doesn’t mean that writers will get a pass in that department.

It means that once you’re an author, you must be prepared to talk about your book. That’s the topic I addressed over at the Muffin today: “Talking About Your Book. You Can Do It!” So zip over there and give it a read for tips on getting comfortable talking to strangers.

‘Cause like I said–lots of strange people in the world. But hey, strange folks read. A lot. (Or so I’ve heard.)

So I was thinking about the 2015 goals for Cathy the Writer, and honestly, they’re the same goals every year: write, read, market, stay on top of business. And I pretty much follow those goals every day. (Well, maybe not Sunday–a writer girl’s got to have one day off, right?)

So then I remembered that I’d written a post over at The Muffin on this very topic. I called the post, “Just for Today, For the Writer.” And I figured I’d just print that out and slap it on the wall of my office with all the other stuff I like to keep foremost in my wee little brain. But it’s a lot of words, y’all.

So I abbreviated the post to one page. But since I sit at my laptop with my reading glasses on when I’m writing, the print of anything up on my wall has to be somewhat large so that I can read it. Which even the abbreviated post was not.

What to do? What to do? I know, says I, I’ll put it on my blog so I can click on it and read it whenever I need to get going on goals! (Plus, I can share it with the writer world.) All I need, says I, is to slap the title on an image.

Which is the kinda long story that gets you–at last!– to the site I used to put text on an image (for free!) and save the image to use on my blog. I used Quozio; I got the quick scoop from this post from Raven. I tried a few of the sites mentioned, and managed to waste all kinds of time, until I eventually ended up with the cool image, now a widget, over there to your right.

Gosh, I love Fun Fridays.