By a Nose...

I get stuck on blog topics quite often. Sometimes I get a topic in mind, start writing it, realize it’s not what I want to be writing about, and wander back to my WIP. Sometimes there’s a vague tickle in my head about a topic, but when I start writing it, it doesn’t come out nearly as interesting as it sounded going in. With a blog centered around farming and writing, you’d think I’d have plenty of fodder. I usually do, however, sometimes that fodder is rather hard won. Like the hay this year.

So this time, after listening to a webinar with Peter Shankman, www.shankman.com and of HARO, www.helpareporterout.com, I decided that rather than whine about nothing to write about, (taking my own writing advice as well,) I’d keep it positive. The news is so depressing and negative lately that we can all do with a little positive in our lives. And since one of my special superwriter skills is keeping the mood upbeat and making people laugh, when I’m having a bad day, I should try to make someone else’s a little cheerier. A little overzealous cheerleader, I know, but what did being happy ever hurt anyone?

So today’s happy moment is brought to you by slugs. Did you know slugs have four noses? Crazy. I wonder if they smell sweet, sour, bitter, and salty with each individual nose, the way the human tongue tastes different tastes with different parts of the tongue. Even if they don’t, I wonder if the female slugs sit around talking about the size the noses, you know, and the male slugs whistle at the “noses” on her.

And if you fit a slug having four noses into a piece of writing today, you get a cookie. :-p

Cow Facts and Kryptonite

On average, 350 squirts are needed from milking a cow to make a gallon of milk.

No wonder our hands cramp, lol.

Heard a really interesting webinar yesterday with Peter Shankman from HARO as the key speaker. For those of you not familiar with HARO, it’s Help A Reporter Out, an email that comes three times daily with listings from reporters all over looking for experts, laypeople, quotes, ect on various topics. Pretty fun. Anyway, the webinar covered “How Self-Promotion Will Change the World.” Pretty big claim. But after listening to the discussion, it makes perfect sense. If you help others more than you help yourself, it’s not self-promotion. It’s getting others to do your self-promoting for you because they like your product or brand. And building a brand or product with an unselfish, positive image these days is far more ambitious and effective than just ranting on your soapbox collection of social media sites.

You can find Peter Shankman at http://shankman.com/ or on twitter under skydiver. You can sign up for HARO at http://www.helpareporter.com/.

What was most surprising about the webinar and positive self-promotion is that the idea actually has some root in Buddhism, at least from what I can connect to what I read in “The Art of Happiness” by the Dalai Lama. Being happy and bringing happiness both involve doing for others and doing outside of yourself. We are a very me-centric culture. What if we thought about others before ourselves and spent more time analyzing how our branding, how our self-promotion, could help others rather than glorify us? What kind of a world would that be?

Probably still one where I think it’s cool that a cow can sleep standing up. :p Again, facts courtesy of http://www.funshun.com/amazing-facts/cow-animal-facts2.html. Happy day all, and fingers crossed for upcoming interviews!