Today is One Word Wednesday, but I have not one word today, but two author’s words to inspire a writer.
These quotes from Kipling and Michener resonate with my writer’s soul, inspire me to write.
YOUR TURN: Do you have a famous quote that speaks to you?
A Guest Blog by Chicken Wrangler Sara
Matt Damon bought his zoo on purpose, but I live in a Zoo where I never know what will arrive next.
Guinea pigs in the girls’ room.
Dachshunds everywhere.
Chickens way out there in the backyard.
Bearded dragon in the front living room behind glass.
Quail in the garage, growing up fast.
Goose eggs, hatching.
Big dogs in the back yard, where they belong.
It’s fun to live in zoo. Most of the time.
This morning Matt yelled on his way to the kitchen, “Mom, there’s a snake on my floor!”
Word must have gotten out that we have our own farm aka zoo, and all animals are welcome. Well, that’s not entirely true and someone forgot to tell the snake.
It was only a small rough earth snake and Beekeeper Brian came to the rescue.
I do wonder where it went when Brian let it loose outside.
I don’t want to hear, while fixing coffee in the morning, that there’s a snake in the kitchen.
That’s where I draw the line for living in a zoo!
Today I’m sharing word cloud generators. Word cloud programs make it easy to create your personal word clouds.
A Google search will list many. Tech&Learning offers a review of ten sites here.
I’ve selected three sites that I’ve had fun with and all three are easy to use.
Word clouds are great for promotional materials and presentations. I also create clouds to help me visualize characters and settings.
I used Wordle to create word cloud above. Wordle is the king of word cloud generators and produces awesome results with full editing capabilities. No log-in or email are required. Program allows printing, in order to save right click on Wordle picture and save as a jpeg and or make a screen print.
ABC Ya created this cloud. Final results that allow for font change, color change, and a randomized layout. Save options are in jpeg format and there are print options. It’s an easy application that kids will enjoy using.
I created the word cloud on the right with Tagxedo, a beta-released word cloud application that offers various cloud shapes. The only way I could get it to print was using Print Screen then pasting into Paint. Not a big problem because the shapes are fun.
Have fun creating your own personal word clouds. Click on the program names to link to the sites.
YOUR TURN: Can you think of ways to use word clouds?
As I promised last week, I’ve studied my email dragon and I’m suggesting six steps to tame an email dragon. 
I understand how he grew to be such consuming demon.
I’ve always had a decent volume of email. Once I published The Pendant’s Promise that decent volume increased dramatically. After all, I had a book to promote.
I started a blog, signed up for FB and Twitter, and reader sites like Shelfari and Goodreads. As my visibility online grew, it compounded incoming mail.
Type A that I am, I felt obliged to stay “on top” of these emails and be responsive to my readers and community members.
Things quickly grew out of control. Then I discovered 900 emails in my inbox, I knew, clearly, it was time to tame the dragon.
But how?
Here are the six steps I’m taking.
How much incoming email am I receiving daily? What types of messages? How urgent are these emails, really?
As I studied my avalanche of email, I concluded:
Armed with these insights, I began to take action. My first course of action was to stop email at its source.
Over time, interests and needs change. Yet I continue to subscribe to dozens of newsletters and blogs that aren’t pertain to my current activities.
Systematically, I evaluated those newsletters and blogs I receive and unsubscribed to those that no longer provided information I need or want.
The result: my volume of email shrank.
Besides news and blog emails, I also receive a ton of social-media notices. LinkedIn sends an email each day. Facebook notifies me every time someone replies to a comment I’ve left or a friend updates his or her status. Each tweet also means an email.
Each notification brings the temptation to waste time on social media sites. I’m rethinking those daily notifications. I generally visit the social sites at least once a day anyway.
Instead of opening every email and reading a bit before deciding whether to delete, I now read the subject line, and if I suspect it’s something I don’t need to read, I delete it right then.
We all have favorite blogs. I’ve come to realize I don’t necessarily need to read every post the bloggers put up.
I used to save emails automatically because they were from X blog or newsletter. No more.
For the majority of the 900 emails I had accumulated in my inbox I sorted by sender, read the subject lines, and simply deleted whole clumps of emails. Bye-bye — zap! — gone.
Immediately, I felt a 100-pound weight lift from my shoulders.
Most email programs offer an option where the user can set up rules to automatically route email to an appropriate folder. This saves time because only important emails show up in your main inbox.
I have all emails come initially into my main inbox. I employ #3 above and, if there is something I want to save in a folder for future reading, I move the email into folders I’ve created, same as I used to do when I was a Department of Army Civilian secretary.
FlyLady says, “A kitchen timer is our friend.” She’s correct!
I used to set my kitchen timer and limit my email time to fifteen minutes a.m., afternoon, and p.m. Mary Buckham’s comment suggestion on last week’s blog reminded me I needed to apply the timer again.
My goal is to spend no more than an hour a day checking email. I want to delete, file, or respond to each message and move on to writing.
Will these six steps completely de-flame my email dragon? I don’t know, but I do know applying them seems to be bringing him under my submission.
YOUR TURN: How about you? What ways do you keep email under control?
