What has been the hardest part about blogging daily?

I can honestly say that blogging daily has not been much of a challenge, but that’s because I have enjoyed the “excuse” to write every day. I also like having daily prompts to have a subject in which to write. Not knowing what to write was my biggest struggle in blogging, and since I have found several sites that offer daily prompts the biggest challenge has been overcome.

This is my second month of blogging daily, and I am considering the challenge again for the month of December. I had more of a challenge in October due to an unplanned trip out of town when David’s grandma passed away, but I was still able to work around that thanks to laptops and wireless internet. November had Thanksgiving, but I knew that was coming, so I wrote some of those posts early in case we were busy with family and friends. We were on the go most of the time, so it was handy to have those written.

I have enjoyed practicing my writing skills and getting my thoughts out in words. I have always enjoyed writing, especially my thoughts. I seem to be able to express my feelings much easier in writing than verbally. I’ve heard that’s an introvert thing because writing allows us to think about what we want to say, as well as editing before it’s official.

These last two months have also presented me with a few more writing ideas. January is National Mentoring Month, and I am a firm believer that mentoring relationships are incredibly important. I plan to write a series for the month of January on mentoring and how it has affected my lives and the lives of others. If your life has been shaped by mentoring (either as a mentor or the one being mentored), I’d love to hear your story! I’m also looking for other writers and bloggers to write a guest post that month, as well.

I’ve also considered other writing styles, like writing a short story and possibly ideas for a book. I have put these aside in the past for several reasons, but I’m beginning to feel the desire to seek them again. I have a few ideas in my head that I am working through but nothing is officially planned yet. I’m constantly inspired by the writing of others around me.

So the last day of the month brings me with so many writing ideas and plans that I don’t know what I’m going to do next. NaBloPoMo has suggested writing prompts again for the month of December, and I also found a pretty awesome blog called The Daily Post that offers a daily writing prompt, a weekly photo challenge for writing, as well as ways to expand and grow your writing. I’m pretty sure that I am going to participate in one or both of these and continue to write daily, as it’s very therapeutic for me to get the words out of my head and into some format, whether it be blogging on the internet or writing in my journal.

Would writing every day for a month be a challenge for you? What do you get out of writing? 

Has your life been shaped by a mentor or have you been a mentor to someone else? Tell me about your experiences!

Where is your favorite place to blog?

I have a laptop. Well, actually I have 3 that I have regular access to. One is my work laptop, another is an old laptop that is still hanging in there, and my main laptop is an Alienware that I bought earlier this year when I was pretty sure that my old laptop was going to crash. Without a doubt, my favorite is the Alienware. Since it’s so large, it usually stays on my desk in the bonus room (aka The Treehouse*) upstairs connected to a second monitor because I have been spoiled by working with dual monitors for the past 5 years. Every once in a while the Alienware takes a trip downstairs to hang out with me in the living room, but it rarely leaves the house. I’m not one to take my laptop to Starbucks or Panera or . I’m a home body.

With that said, I’m usually blogging upstairs while my husband is playing Xbox a few feet away.

More importantly than where my favorite place to blog is located, is when my favorite time to blog is. Usually I end up blogging in the evenings after dinner because that’s when I have the most available time. However, in the rare instances where I got up early and had time before work, is when my best writing seems to come out. I am NOT a morning person, so it actually comes to me by surprise that I can write well in the mornings. However, as the hour gets later in the evening, the less likely I want to write or write anything interesting.

Though, I have to admit that I am writing this right now in the evening. Maybe I shouldn’t have admitted to that so not to appear boring! It’s really late at night where my writing lacks a certain oomph that makes me feel accomplished.

I will also admit to writing out blogs in advance, especially the last two months when I have made a commitment to write daily, because I don’t want to get behind. It came in handy last month when there was a death in the family, and I didn’t have to stress to get my entries written. Since we’ll be traveling for Thanksgiving later this month, I’m hoping to stay ahead to be prepared for that, as well.

*The Treehouse is what we call our bonus room. It’s a term that my aunt coined when we first bought our house. The Treehouse started out being where my husband spent most of his free time, and it was set up sort of like a man cave. However, my aunt felt that it wasn’t really a man cave since it’s upstairs. Since I work from home on Fridays, we ended up putting a desk upstairs, so now I hang out in the Treehouse some evenings, too.

When and where do you prefer blogging? Are you one to write from home or gather your creativity in the library or restaurants?