National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) 2015

So, on a whim, I decided to sign up for NaNoWriMo. For those who don’t know, NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month is exactly what it sounds like – a whole month of novel writing. For the whole of November, participants (attempt to) work on a 50,000-word novel.

YEP, IMMA TRY TO WRITE A FRIGGIN’ NOVEL THIS MONTH, FOLKS.

Holy buffoonery, Batman.

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It’s World Teachers Day! [Infographic]

Photo from Death to the Stock Photo

The quote by Sidney Hook (an American philosopher) above says, “Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system.” That’s so true, isn’t it? We may not remember anything or too much of what we learned in school, but we’re sure to remember at least one teacher who made a difference in our lives, even if it was just in a small way.

October 5 is World Teachers Day. It is also the culmination of National Teachers Month (which runs from September 5 to October 5) here in the Philippines. To celebrate, here’s an infographic dedicated to educators around the world and aimed at reminding everyone how important teachers are. :)

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Creative Marketing? Whut?

Photo from Death to the Stock Photo

This post is a part of the Double Your Followers blog tour to spread the word about April Bowles-Olin’s upcoming CreativeLive course. Does hearing the word ‘marketing’ make your armpits start to drip with anxiety? Are you terrified of sounding salesy or like you have the personality of a dead blowfish? If so, come join me and 2,500+ entrepreneurs who’re taking April’s latest CreativeLive course, Double Your Followers with Creative Marketing. You can RSVP and watch for FREE. Yep, free. High fives, wildflowers, wine samples. Who doesn’t love free?

As part of the blog tour, I’m supposed to blog about one of these topics: a) What I’d love to learn from April’s upcoming course, Double Your Followers with Creative Marketing b) My biggest marketing struggle(s), or c) My most successful marketing strategy to date (examples: hosting an Instagram challenge or guest posting on a popular blog) and why I think it worked so well.

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International Literacy Day [Infographic]

International Literacy Day

Did you know that 756 million people, aged 15 and older, from around the world can’t read or write? Of that number, 115 million are between the ages of 15 and 24, and two-thirds of them are women. That’s bad. :(

To celebrate International Literacy Day and help raise awareness of literacy and its importance to the world, Grammarly put together this infographic of the latest stats on literacy.

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Guest Post: Important Investments that Can Help Freelancers Boost their Business

These days, it’s not just enough that you have a typewriter and impeccable grammar in order to become successful in freelance writing. At some point in our career, we need to invest on things in order to grow.

And when it comes to investing, the first thing that you need to learn is that it is a continuous and ever-changing process. It is just like filling your car with gasoline. Yes, the petrol that you poured can take you to faraway places, but you need to refill your tank again after sometime. You need to learn a new writing skill in order to satiate your readers, and you might even need to upgrade some of your gadgets. In this post, you’ll learn about the essential things that freelancers should invest in to boost their craft and their business.

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How Writing Has Positively Influenced My Life

There’s a contest about this topic over at Positive Writer. Fat chance I’ll win because the number of entries to these contests is ridiculous, but this is a good writing exercise and we must practice our writing, mustn’t we, precious? Plus the dude with the glasses in the photo above has convinced me it’s worth a try. Thank you, dude with glasses. Look at him, he’s got a light bulb on his finger.

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The stack of books on my header photo is a stack of lies.

Today I would like to ramble about reading. Rather, about NOT reading any damn book at the moment. I apologize in advance for the utter uselessness of this post.

With the exception of The Hunger Games, I have not read any of the books featured on my blog header image. WTF, right? Lies, all lies! Haha. Well, these books have been on my ‘to be read’ shelf for a while now. In case the titles aren’t really visible, these are what’s on that stack of lies books:

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31 Days of Books to Movies

I like books and I like movies and I’m not one to make a big fuss when books are made into movies. I like seeing the differences between a book and its film adaptation. Sometimes I like the book more and sometimes I like the movie version more. It’s not that big of a deal for me when a movie (or the book for that matter) fails miserably to meet expectations. Sure, I get disappointed but I try to be cool and be all “my hair don’t care” about it. Honestly, it’s much easier to move on from a bad movie than when a movie turns out to be just as epic (or more) than the book or the other way around! Now, epic things like that stay with me for a long time. You know what I mean. ;)

So, for the next 31 Days, it’s all going to be about books and their movie adaptations. Every. Single. Day. Hopefully. That’s the plan. I hope I don’t miss a day. Yayyyy..

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Rambling about my topic for the 31 Days challenge in October

You can probably guess from the accompanying image what that topic is, but let me just regale you with how I came to that decision.

For the past couple of days I’ve been racking my brain for a topic that I can write about for 31 Days in October.

I went to the 31 Days site, checked out some of the topics that people wrote about last year, and found some really good starting points like lists, letters, favorite things, movies, books, and many other cool topics.

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