All posts tagged: writing

My top five tips for getting 500 WordPress blog Followers

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This significant milestone just happened: 500 Followers (it’s actually zoomed up to 525 already 😃). It feels great, of course, as well as humbling, and thrilling. Thank you all! What delights me the most, by far, are the comments; I can’t believe how engaged, generous, funny, observant, and honest everyone is; thank you again. I love that we all share our experiences and stories here; it feels like a genuine community or tribe. Bless you. As I wandered round in a happy glow, with the screenshot of my official ‘500 Followers’ notification on my phone, I remembered the old days of having only 50 or so readers, back in 2015, before I decided to take this whole blogging thing more seriously in February 2016. What tips could I have given myself? What could I have read, and put into immediate practice? Here they are: Take the time to be genuine; to really ‘be yourself’. This means articulating your opinion, in both posts, and your replies to comments. Actually answer comments! I have un-followed nearly a dozen …

Hello Pinterest. Goodbye Pinterest.

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BLOGGING TIPS-  About a month ago, I met with a ‘blogging expert.’ I’ve really enjoyed the last 9 months of taking this blog more seriously, which to me meant posting and commenting regularly. So I thought I’d check in to make sure I wasn’t making any terribly dumb mistakes. I’ve absolutely loved getting more readers, and more importantly, such fabulous interactions and comments from my ‘tribe’. For you all feel like my tribe out there. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve deleted followers who suddenly appear, and have no perceived connection, input, profile pic, or even actual blog! I’m not interested in fake ‘numbers’ (and as an aside, my dear reader ‘T’ over at No Love for Fatties who started to check her own followers deleted over 100- we had a cyber laugh about that!) JOINING MORE SOCIAL MEDIA-  Anyway, along with 10 scrawled pages of tips and hints (which cost me $120/hr, half of which I can’t decipher now), I was told I HAD to join Twitter and Pinterest, to increase my reach. OK. Done. …

Blog tales for the Over 50s with positive ageing, dating & relationships

400 Followers at last, so good. But why?

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I made it. I’ve been hovering at around 395 Followers for a couple of months, partly because I delete new suspicious ones. Do you ever? Why would a 30yr old Indian IT guy who’s never engaged with bone&silver suddenly follow me? Or a twenty-something Moroccan personal trainer? I’m not interested in fake. So anyone who follows me gets a curious drive-by, if I’ve never had any Likes or Comments before. [Whaddya mean I’m a control-freak? Shucks, thanks for the compliment]. Anyway, I wanna ask YOU why? Why do you read my posts? Which ones are your favourites? I mainly blog about a few topics: My hilarious & smart teenage son (short n sweet, I love these, especially as I don’t really have to do much) Relationships/Attachment theory/long distance romance updates (one of my best friends says she likes these the least, and just deletes the email. I still love her) GPMs: Generalised Personal Musings (politics/social commentary/introspection) Health/food/dance stuff Creative writing (I’ve not done so many of these lately but am hoping they’re going to return) Travel, …

Passing through the Pillars of Doubt, as they whisper

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Writers & readers Obviously, we’re all writers here. And readers. Some of us are new bloggers, others have multiple thousands of Followers, free e-book downloads available, and perhaps speaking engagements on the Writers Festival circuit. I’d love all those things, I’ll admit it. In fact, I want them. I do. I’d enjoy them, I’m fairly sure I’d be good at them, plus I love to travel and meet new people. So why am I not there yet? I’m 51; I’m leaving it all a bit late huh? Well here come 3 clear reasons… What keeps us from the success we want? Now regular readers of this blog know I’m a theatre performer and dancer. Not as in ‘Look-at-me-up-on-stage-doing-pirouettes’, but as in ‘I have to go worship on the dance floor to the goddesses and gods of Life, Love, Passion, and Release, using my sweat, tears, heart, body, mind and soul’– just your average free ‘n’ wild 5Rhythms dance class attitude. Last weekend I did an Intensive: Friday eve, Sat 1-7, Sun 11-5. Lotsa dancing. I can’t …

Thank you! Here’s cake for my 100 Followers! :~D

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Yup, I just reached that sweet baby milestone, and want to honour all of you who’ve taken the time to read even one Post. I’ve always wanted to be a ‘writer’, ever since I worked out how to make a word on a piece of paper (I remember the moment; it was of course c-a-t). I felt like I’d made magic, and sometimes still do. When I write or read something poignant or visceral, I’m so grateful for my blessed life, where I can make Art in peace and safety, with a roof over my head and food in my belly. I’m going to donate $100 today to The Indigenous Literary Foundation here in Australia, whose mission is to provide language-appropriate books and reading classes to disadvantaged Aboriginal children in remote areas. I’m also going to eat a piece of cake. If I could share it with all of you, I would. Thank you so much for your support and love, gabrielle xxxxx

Episode 6: The first sighting

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As some of you know, our first actual date was in Melbourne, just before Xmas, after 11 weeks of writing and drawing. That’s a lot of energy we’d both invested. We’d chatted, smiled, laughed, expressed, disagreed, argued, apologized, made up, dreamed, revealed, asked and answered, even gotten teary, all by email, text, and a couple of postal things. No phone calls. No Skype. We’d each had multiple profile pics up though, and had actually texted a few pics back and forth (‘me with cat/me with dog’) so both knew the other was basically physically attractive (yeah, neither of us is completely crazy that foolish that brave enough to blind date!) The day of our meeting dawned fine, not too hot (I admit I’d sacrificed a couple of virgin goats to the weather goddesses to ensure it wasn’t a 40 degree day). I had a favourite and comfortable outfit to wear (very important). We’d been in the same city for a couple of days before our 12 noon appointment under the main Flinders St train station …