Offerings. Coins in the Bowl. Doing Rich.

F told me a story.

I upstairs doing laundry or folding laundry or having a shower or something.

Sophie and Lola were talking Money.

Sophie announced that she was rich.

Apparently, Lola is rich too and she owned it, loudly.

So Sophie showed Lola (and F) her bowl o’ money.

Lola said that she was still richer than Sophie.

Sophie was offended. Deeply. If she had a book of grievous injuries, this slight would have been recorded.

Lola, when you say you’re richer than me, you hurt my feelings!

Lola ran upstairs…and returned with two quarters.

She put one quarter in Sophie’s bowl o’ money.

She stood in front of Sophie with downturned eyes and “I’m sorry” written right through her body.

Sophie wrapped her arms around Lola and said, “I know you’re sorry for hurting my feelings. I know you didn’t mean it.”

And Lola said, “Thank you for forgiving me, Sophie.”

—————
Money is love, or maybe we conflate the two.

We offer our coins to the bowl of forgiveness.

Women – even “independent” women – sometimes surrender their finances to their men, because that feels like “being taken care of.”

Men adorn their exoskeletons with lures of green and silver to hook lovers and partners. (So do women. Don’t ask me how I know.)

We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t know.

We spend to feel rich.

And rich is a beautiful thing, but feeling rich is a high.

Being rich, on the other hand,  cannot be bought. It is an investment. It must be lived and shared.

When I share my gifts and invest in others and myself – with time, with money, with opportunity – I’m doing rich. I am rich.

Opportunities can be purchased. Access to information, experience, and even inspiration can be purchased (just ask any ass-kicking coach or consultant or firestarter, or better yet, listen to their delighted, living-big clients who rave “life-changing!”).

But true learning and knowledge and action all comes from you. From doing it. Living it.

You’re rich when you give yourself the things you need to succeed…and then go make love to the world with them.

—————
Two announcements:

1. From now on, on Tuesdays, I write about money.
2. As of Friday, June 18, Dave Doolin and I are raising the prices for our League of Extraordinary Bloggers Sessions to $300.

(So yes, if you book and pay before then, we’ll honour the $150 offer.)

We know that $300 is still a screaming good value, because every single one of our clients so far has told us that we are wildly undercharging. ($500 is the figure that gets bandied about.)

And even at $300 we know we’re undercharging – and we’re pretty cool with that – because we’re irrationally committed to perfection. I won’t even tell you how much research we do on our clients and their sites because you would sigh and shake your head. (Unless you’re a client, in which case you’ll love us with an unholy passion.)

Basically, we care, passionately, about our people – and between the two of us, we Know Some Serious Shit about blogging.

(Even though we both have The Issues with the word blogging.)

We want you to have the best blog and business you can (umm, and so do you, right?), so we look at every single aspect of your work and your niche and tell you how to position yourself to get better and to win. Every day. Day in and day out.

and pssssst…we tell you our secrets. And we’re not even charging extra for profanity (any more).

June 15, 2010 | filed under: Money, People

14 people have we need you too.

Red Shoe Blogger: A Manifesta

http://longawaypix.com/blog/

Let’s mash up reality and assume that Dorothy wrote The Wizard of Oz and it is a memoir told through the lens of pharmaceuticals and it is to be published next year.

Dorothy has written a great book: part trippy fantasy, part freudian/jungian/wonky archetypical therapy, part love letter to friendship, and a prefeminist, feminist, post-feminist meditation on the nature and power of femininity wrapped in a trendy, little-dog-carrying, hot-shoe-wearing package.

It is Sex and the City meets Eat Love Pray meets Little Red Riding Hood, on acid. It is a journey. It is a great book. It must be read.

Dorothy knows this. She feels it right from her soul to the soles of her ruby red shoes. She can see the future: a movie. Musicals. The talk show circuit. Oprah. Much money, much love, much conversation, and a place in popular imagination.

It can be all of these things, not because she promotes the flying monkeys out of it – which she will, and absolutely should do – but because it offers a watery answer to our thirsty, questioning souls: you are the author of your own affair.

(Plus there are weird scary creatures who learn to love each other and grow as twisted, maturing moral entities and we all know that stuff sells. I hear a little book called Twilight is doing quite well these days.)

So this book should sell. It needs to sell. Dorothy wants it to sell.

Even more than that, Dorothy wants it to be read, to land, to take root, to grow, to inhabit, fertilize and animate our popular imagination.

If I was Dorothy – and I am – I would start a blog before I even started writing the book. I’d go all Seth Godin and build a tribe on Twitter. I’d find my people. I’d give them somewhere to find me. I’d get on the cluetrain. I’d Oprah. I’d firestart. I’d listen to Leo Babauta when he says he doesn’t believe in SEO. I’d make friends. I’d work the aich-ee-double-hockey-sticks out of ProBlogger and spend serious time with Outspoken Media. I’d figure out the lessons learned by our pantehon of blog gods and best-selling writers. I’d figure out the mechanics of demand and distribution and audience and I’d build it and they would come. And if they didn’t come, I’d go get them and then hug and pet and feed them because that is the purpose of promotional tricks and lassos and rodeo ponies and hoopla.

But I would only do that if, like Dorothy, I had something wizardly to offer: the journey. The passion. The learning. The love. The living. The lessons. The magic. The really, really great content. Please.

And this is what exasperates me about the ‘blogging and social media for money’ superhighway. So many times I follow the yellow brick road laid by an enterprising blogger who’s working the system – rocking the comments, manufacturing controversy, guest posting, paper-training SEO, tweeting – and when I get there and pull back the curtain…nothing. No wizard. No magic. No message. Just a lot of mechanics and whirling buttons and a robotic, soulless special effects machine.

Honestly, that’s what a lot of problogging and blogs and social media enterprises are looking like these days. It is turn-key blogging. It is execution unsparked by ideas. It is a waste of time and tweets and it won’t make you money.

Straight up: I LOVE money. I want money. I make money and you should, too. I want you and Dorothy and every other problogger out there to have as many tiny dogs – more! – as you and your minions can carry.

I just want you to make that money from selling wisdom, truth, experience, art or sparkly scarlet maryjanes (and if you are, I’m ALWAYS in the market for red shoes, so please put me on your mailing list).

I want you to make an offering. I want you to have something to offer. I want you to be a Red Shoe Blogger. I just made that up.

A Red Shoe Blogger is not blogging exclusively for money.

A Red Shoe Blogger has a mission and is animated by passion and all the tips and tricks and hacks and tools and tweets are harnessed in service of that divine, cosmic, helpful, genuine, meaningful objective.

That mission is Home.

So this is what I want from all the Red Shoe Bloggers out there: I want you to buck the system, or work the system, but know that the system is not a slot machine that will pay off if only you keep pulling that arm and never ever run out of nickels or take a pee-break.

Success is not only about the systems.

The home address of success is passion, talent (let’s be honest), creation, contribution, collaboration, conversation, and community.That is where hot sweaty abundance and cold hard cash reside (FYI, they’re totally a couple) and I wish more bloggers lived there too.

Because, after all, there’s no place like home.

___________________

Red Shoe Blogger was my first guest post for ProBlogger in October 2009 – and, as I tried to say yesterday, it is my manifesta and my mission.

Is this your mission, too?

image credit: Jennifer Longaway


May 21, 2010 | filed under: Meaning, Money, People, Purpose, Work

45 people have we need you too.

How to Get Unstuck, Part 3: You Have Everything You Need and All You Need is Love. And to Launch Something. hint hint.

The third part of getting unstuck is people.

Sometimes I have to pinch myself because my life is a reverie. My life is like a dream I dreamed when I dreamed of beautiful people.

I’m not sure that I’ve ever before had the kind of love and loyalty that I have in my life right now – and all I can say is thank God and thank Twitter and Thank God For Twitter.

There is a perception that Twitter is frivolous and we’re all talking about our last ham sandwich – and we are, and that’s ambient intimacy – but I have met incredible, inspired, talented, heartfelt and heart-full people on twitter.

People who’ve become my soul’s people, my sisterfriends, my brothers-in-arms, my mothers, my lovers, my compadres.

So I could wax lyrical about Twitter, but that’s not the point.

The point is that right now, and during the past year, every time I was stuck I have been overwhelmed by the visceral, tangible support of people who want to love me up (and do).

Just over a year ago, I had a new place, a newish job, and was newly single. Life was fine. I was going to work and taking care of my kids and running on that hamster wheel every day and it all meant…nothing.

So I started a blog and discovered another blog that rocked my world, and, dare I say it, changed my life.

Yeah, I’m talking about White Hot Truth with Danielle LaPorte. I read it obsessively. It lit me up. I learned things. I stayed motivated. This thing I was doing – writing, blogging, making meaning – seemed…

possible.

And so one fine day last June, I took a day off work and drove to Whistler for a firestarter. And on the winding highway on the way to Whistler I wrestled with my identity, my purpose, my practicality, my comfortable suburban life, and my bills. (As in: how is this cute thing I do – writing – gonna pay ‘em?)

Finally, forty-five minutes into the drive and thirty-six years into my life, I gave up the fight. I gave up the stuck.

I said, fuck it. I’m an artist.

And everything Danielle said in that firestarter was for me and everything in that firestarter affirmed that I must scrape back the bullshit and be faithful to my purpose. That I must be true to who I am.

An artist. A writer.

I got misty-eyed and emotional only moments into the session.

And when I got home, I found an e-mail from Danielle:

you are one talented writer. You’re hot shit and the Real Deal and you should be getting your ass published as widely as possible.

I cried my eyes out.

I needed that.

I needed that to keep going.

I kept going.

____________________

Now, almost a year later, writing is paying the bills. I still get stuck, though. I get stuck because I take too much on. I get stuck because I’m wed to what I should do rather than what I want to do. I get stuck because there’s something I want to offer and I’m scared to offer it. I get stuck because it is easier to start a piece or an essay or a book than it is to finish it.

And people – my mentors, peers, friends – are what un-stick me every time.

I wrote a piece about Dave Doolin last week – about how much his consulting, his website, and his book have helped me improve my blogging.

And then, a couple of days later, I wrote a piece about how I was stuck.

Within moments of posting that piece, I had a text message and then an e-mail from him. Minutes after that, we were on Skype talking to each other and he was totally in it to win it with me.

Dave and I had been making noises about writing a piece together but hadn’t actually done it…and that night Dave told me we were going to write that piece together, now.

So we did. We texted on Skype and wrote a post together using a shared Google doc. We wrote the piece from start to finish in forty-five minutes.

This was huge to me.

It was huge for three reasons.

First.
Something wasn’t quite right in my life – I was stuck – and here was my friend instantly, 100% in it with me, helping me muddle my way through it.

That kind of loyalty means everything. And this is why I love Twitter (and Dave) with an unholy passion: because I first talked to Dave on Twitter. Now he’s my friend and he’s got me when I’m stuck. Wow.

Second.
I’m not a team player (don’t tell anyone). I am a writer. I like to do things by myself. Also, I’m pretty book-smart, which means I’m still scarred from years of group-work in high school where well-meaning teachers matched me up with kids who saw me and saw an easy A. So my experience with group work (slow, and all on me) is why I don’t much care for collaborating.

Recently I’ve had people – really lovely, talented, compelling people, people I really do want to work with – approach me to collaborate on projects and I’ve turned them down simply because I thought I don’t like collaborating.

But writing this piece with Dave etched a new collaborative groove in my head. Usually it takes me two to three hours to write a piece; when we wrote together, it took forty-five minutes. It was fast and it was satisfying.

It was fast because as I was writing something, he was finishing another sentence, or editing a paragraph I had just written; or as he was writing something, I was inserting digressions into the middle of his paragraph or pulling the threads through the piece. The back-and-forth and the pace and the creation was rewarding.

So that was a clicky lightbulb moment: collaborating can feed the creative process instead of stalling it.

Third.
I was stuck last week because I had a number of pieces started and zero pieces finished. I was frustrated. I wasn’t crossing anything off my list. And the less I finished, the less I finished. Over and over. Not finishing was feeding and breeding more not finishing.

And Dave instinctively knew that what I needed to get moving, to get unstuck, was to finish something. Anything. Now.

And so we started – and finished – that piece, together.

And I was lightened. The whole week hadn’t been a waste, after all.

Good-bye, stuck. Thank you, Dave.
————————–

So that’s how Danielle LaPorte helped me get going, and keep going when I first started out, and how Dave Doolin helped me get going, and keep going, last week.

Your people will get you unstuck if you let them.
————————–
Which brings me to my Big Stuck.

For a while, I’ve had the feeling that what people want from me (and what I want to give them) is not Yet Another Boring E-book.

I’ve felt that what we need to do, together, is connect.

I’ve felt like what I have to offer is writing, and love. (And writing is just a channel through which love flows.)

I’ve wanted to offer classes and consultations about how to develop your unique writing voice, and how not to be a boring writer.

(Please, let’s not be boring bloggers. There’s so much competition for that. There’s none for being you.)

But…I Am A Copywriter. I should be doing that – not hanging out on Twitter all day and talking on Skype and answering questions by e-mail.

But that stuff – the answering questions, the helping, the loving – is what I love to do.

Recently I was telling my friend (insert mental air quotes around that, please) F that my best qualities are also my worst qualities. My best quality is that I’m a Lover which means I take care of the people around me. My worst quality is that I’m a Lover, which means I make other people’s missions my own, and sometimes more important than my own.

F said, maybe helping other people with their missions IS your mission.

Maybe he’s right. I thought the same thing just a week ago when I read Danielle LaPorte’s The FireStarter Sessions vook (video-book).

In The FireStarter Sessions, Danielle insists that you MUST do what you love. You must lead with your strengths. You must choose the things that light you up so that you can light the way for yourself, and for others.

I write and I love and even my writing is loving. The things that get me really excited are helping other people. When someone e-mails me and they have a question, or they need help, a close review, or advice, I’m all in. I’ll drop the things I should be doing to do that.

I can look at someone else’s writing and instantly, instinctively know if it needs sugar or salt or more heat. I know how to season it and cook it. I know which ingredients are missing, how to amp up the emotional contrast and tension, and what technical tricks – rhetoric, typography, poetic devices – will work.

I understand how to train your writing voice to sing. I love editing your pieces. I love talking to you about your writing and encouraging you to take risks – and I’ve done that quietly, informally, and freely for several writers and bloggers.

So that’s what I want to do, and what I’m going to do – and what the people around me have encouraged me to get unstuck enough to do.

So let’s do that.

Do you want to write more persuasive, emotional, meaningful pieces?
I’ll download to you everything I know about writing and teach you to do that.

Do you want to unlock your writing voice?
I’ve got the keys.

Do you want to know how to build (and make money from) a blog, all while juggling a job, family, and life?
I can show you how I re-framed every single obstacle in my life – full-time job, single mom, two kids under five, very little child-care or support, no money, no time – into an opportunity and out of those opportunities created a rapidly growing blog, new business and new life for myself.

Do you want to guest post for A-list blogs?
I can tell you how I did it so you can do it, too.

Do you want to blog better? Do you want to know what you’re doing right (and maybe what you’re doing wrong)?
Dave Doolin and I will review your blog – the art and the science of it – consult with you, construct a report for you, and tell you how to do it better.

And do you want it in a face-to-face class or do you want it on the phone?

Because baby, I can do it both ways.

—————–
How Not To Be a Boring Writer: The Workshop

Vancouver, Saturday July 17th, 25 spaces available, $50 per person
E-mail to reserve your space (or to organize additional dates! Hell yes, I’ll travel!)

Red Shoe Blogger

I review three of your pieces and then we work together on the phone to amp up your unique writing voice.
E-mail to book a session ($100)

League of Extraordinary Bloggers

The Art and the Science of Blogging. Blog Review, Report, and Personal Consultations with Dave Doolin and Kelly Diels.
E-mail to book your blog review ($150)

May 20, 2010 | filed under: Love, Meaning, People, Purpose, Work

41 people have we need you too.

How to Get Unstuck, Part 1: There Is No Stuck

The first part of getting unstuck is acknowledging – and recognizing – what  Lianne Raymond and Marianne Elliott told me: there is no stuck.

Progress is not linear; progress is cyclical; and part of the process is rest and winter…and stuck is winter. Stuck is not stuck.

Stuck is not a barrier you need to overcome. Stuck is not a glitch. Stuck is not a detour. Stuck is not in your way. Stuck is part of the way.

Stuck is actually part of the creative process.

You cycle up, you create great stuff, you create more, and then you need to rest.

Rest. Recharge. Winter.

So that’s the first part of getting unstuck: realizing that stuck isn’t actually stuck.

Stuck is rest. Stuck is part of the process.

And then, emotionally speaking, stuck can be a whole number of things.

Stuck can be fear.

Stuck can be a warning that you’re going somewhere you don’t want to go.

Stuck can be your own resistance and I think we all know from the Bible Star Trek that resistance is futile. Your practicality might fight your heart but your heart wants what it wants. The heart is a predator – a lonely hunter, an organ of fire, a bucking bronco. Desire will make you do what you need to do, so your practicality best saddle up and ride.

Because there’s no use fighting what you want. It wants you back. You two should totally get together.

Really, only good things happen when you cuddle up on the couch together.

I’ve written about this before: it’s best to get comfy with your fears.

And one of those fears is stuck.

But, just like Fight Club (or at least the fight club in my head: there is no fight club) there is no stuck.

May 17, 2010 | filed under: Money, People

29 people have we need you too.

A Love Letter to Dave Doolin. I mean, Blog Post Engineering.

I started blogging one year and two weeks ago (April 18, 2009).

When I started, I wanted to Just Get Started. Now.

(‘Just do it’ really is a recipe for success. I have LOTS of great ideas, but the only ones that count are the I ones I execute – and NOW is always the right time.)

And when I started, I didn’t want to figure out WordPress, I just wanted to write.

So that’s what I did. For the first six months, I used GoDaddy’s built-in blog whatchamacallit and a template. I wrote and I pressed publish. I wrote and I pressed publish. I wrote and I pressed publish.

And then I got to promoting my pieces with links on Facebook and Twitter.

So it was publish and promote. Publish and promote.

That works, but it takes a lot of muscle (and a lot of friends!) – and it does not really endear you to Google.

Google loved my name + cleavage but not much else. My search traffic was mostly imaginary.

And search engine results are pretty important for building passive traffic. It is how you maximize the impact of your magnetic words.

Some of my old pieces, for example, are pretty good, and they’ve been read by six people: me, my mother, my sisters, Heather and Monica.

(There is a profound irony here: my most fervent supporters and early day commenters get the least of me IRL because My Blog Ate My Life. I’m sorry, my loves. It will get better once I figure out how to scale my business beyond my time.

I will have to cut and paste this into an e-mail from my mom, who had to stop reading my blog when I started writing about my sex life. I’m probably more relieved than she is. I’m also relieved that my six year old does not have independent internet access. Yet.)

But, as they are, Google will probably never send good traffic my way. These post lack tags, they’re not categorized, they don’t have descriptions…and so on. After all, I wrote and pressed publish. I didn’t do any of the backend stuff to make my blog posts search engine friendly.

Mostly because I didn’t know how to.

Learning To Blog – AFTER I Started Blogging. Whatever. It worked for Me.

In October/November, when I decided to get serious about blogging, I knew WordPress was the way I’d go. But I didn’t want to figure it out. I just wanted it done for me, so I could write and press publish, write and press publish.

So kickass web developer, Amanda Farough of Violet Minded, takes care of all of that. I tell her what I want to happen. She makes it happen and sends me invoices. We’re both happier for it, and so is my blog, which now looks and feels so much more ME.

But I still wasn’t getting a lot of search engine traffic. ‘Write and press publish’ wasn’t serving me very well. I knew that all those boxes in the WordPress interface that I left empty probably had a purpose.

They do. They really do. They want to make your blog posts kiss up to Google and friends.

I sighed and said some bad words and knew I had a little lot of work ahead of me. Fortunately I have a friend who knows ’bout this stuff.

(And, not coincidentally, he’s having an “un-launch” this week.)

Wherein I Extol The Virtues of Dave Doolin’s Website in A Weekend and Blog Post Engineering

Any of you who follow my Twitter stream already know that I’m obsessed with Dave Doolin Website in a Weekend.

We’re sort of in the same business (blogging) but Dave Doolin is terrific at all the things I’m not – which is basically everything that is NOT writing and being social.

I’m good at the outward facing stuff. I like the promotion part of blogging. I could mainline Twitter. Facebook and I are going through a bit of a rough patch, but I think we’ll pull through. Guest posts? We started off slow but now I’m all in. Commenting? We’re friends with benefits.

Most of that stuff I picked up, intuitively, and then figured out the ‘rules’ thereof from ProBlogger and Copyblogger and a little prodding from Josh Hanagarne.

And sites like ProBlogger and Copyblogger are TERRIFIC for explaining the promotion and the how-to-write a blog post part of blogging – which is all the stuff I like to do and am naturally pretty good at.

Website in a Weekend covers the ins-and-outs of writing and community-building too, but I read it because Dave Doolin teaches me the stuff that is not intuitive – like how to link to a specific paragraph or section of a blog post instead of the entire piece. Or how to structure the url (slug) of your piece for maximum keyword/SEO bang. Or how to make sure your tags, categories, description, title and slug all echo each other’s keywords and get you lots of good SEO juju.

In other words, how to do all that stuff I wasn’t doing.

(As Dave says, I was basically treating WordPress like it was an online version of Microsoft Word. Write, save/publish. And that’s it.)

And this stuff – the stuff I wasn’t doing – is pretty essential.

Look Ma, RESULTS!

The way I was blogging meant that I wrote a piece, tweeted it, and it got lots of love for a day or two and then disappeared into my dusty archives – without a way to find it again. That kind of blogging is like putting a book in a library without cataloguing it. Not smart. Not find-able.

So I got Dave to teach me how to do it. I bought his book, Blog Post Engineering, and did a couple of consulting sessions with him.

And look what happened:

When I do the things that Dave taught me, personally and in Blog Post Engineering, I get search engine traffic. That means that pieces I wrote a month ago or a week ago are continually getting hits, because the search engines can find them.

That makes me really happy – because the point of all of this writing is that people read my words.

So getting the backend right – optimizing each blog post so that the search engines can find it – means that I’m extending the life and audience of each piece I write.

And I don’t have to write for search engines (which is good, because I’m an ARTIST, doncha know, and We Don’t Do That). Instead, I write what I want and then wrap it up in tags and title attributes and anchors that help search engines find it and love it up.

To me, ‘blog post engineering’ is like interior design. In interior design, you’ve got to get the envelope right: the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the light. The basics. Once you’ve got those right, everything else builds on top of that. If you’ve got peeling plaster walls, your sofa will never really look good and the room will never feel comfortable.

Blog post engineering helps me get the envelope right so that my words can find their audience, and invite them in, continually.

I’m so glad I took the time to figure it out, and that Dave (and Blog Post Engineering) helped me do that.

Which is why I tell my friends who are starting blogs (hi Cara!) and daughters of friends who are considering starting a website (hi Acacia!) to read Website in a Weekend, take Dave Doolin’s free course, and buy Blog Post Engineering.

It is not just because I’m kissing up to Dave (though there’s that, too). It is because Dave Doolin + Website in a Weekend + Blog Post Engineering, taught me stuff that made me a little smarter and my blog a lot better.

Just ask Amanda Farough, who I am pretty sure fell out of her chair when I – the queen of don’t tell me a damn thing about tech because I Don’t Wanna Know, just make it work and we’ll never speak of it except in hushed tones – e-mailed her a line of buggy code and said “someone has hacked my site; I found this”.

I might have told Dave this story in a giddy, “look at me! I’m so smart!” moment. He was very proud of me.

But I digress. Go check out Blog Post Engineering. I guarantee you’ll learn lots that will make you (and your blog) better.

And in three months, Google might love you 117% more, too.

May 5, 2010 | filed under: People, Work

24 people have we need you too.

fear is a professor

This is what I think about fear:

Fear has a function. Fear is supposed to alert you to things that might harm you. When you’re feeling scared, your reptile brain is taking care of you. That is his job.

Trying to run from fear, or suppress it, or deny it, or even overcome it is then pointless. Fear is a reptile. It will outlive your best mammalian intentions.

So this is what I think you do with fear: you treat it like a feverish, crotchety professor who secretly adores you and wants you to be better, but makes your life a misery because he marks the hell out of your essays and takes you to task in class.

You pay close attention to fear, get close to it, and then you question fear.

You get curious about it. You ask fear:

What is this? What is this about? What is true, clear and present danger, versus anxiety and worry? (Oooh! oooh! I know this one: fear is a response to a material threat in your immediate present; worry is a hypothetical threat that exists in your mind rather than your reality.) What are you trying to explain to me? What are you trying to keep me from doing? What would happen if I do it? Will this kill me? Is what is true, for you (fear), also true for me? Do you want to lock me in a box to keep me safe? Do I want to live in that box? Is my world that damn dangerous? Can my ego survive falling on my face or my ass? (YES)

And it is best to sit on the sofa and snuggle with your fear-professor while you ask these questions.

That’s also how you get straight A’s in university.

Or so I’ve heard.

___

thanks to Paddy Hare and his heartfelt series of blog posts on fear for inspiring this piece.

April 22, 2010 | filed under: Meaning, People

32 people have we need you too.

oranges and offerings

Kelly Diels: how are you?

Jasmine McAllister: I’m fine, you?

Kelly Diels: overwhelmed

Jasmine McAllister: preaching to the choir, honeybits

Kelly Diels: it is a high quality problem, I think, so I shall try to refrain from complaining

Jasmine McAllister: we all need to vent sometimes

Kelly Diels: what I need to do is structure my business more effectively. And I will. And it will be GOOD!

Jasmine McAllister: ooo, when you do, can you show me how to do it too?!

Kelly Diels: one of my clients, Erica Cosminsky, is giving a course on exactly that – about how to grow your business beyond what you can do yourself. And as I wrote her sales letter, I was entirely seduced by her content. I need to take her course.

Jasmine McAllister: I gotta try to stop trying to run several businesses at once

Kelly Diels: you need a bigger, better team, baby

Jasmine McAllister: amen sista!

Jasmine McAllister: I’m enlisting my hubby

Kelly Diels: ooooh I like your style. Should I marry so as to procure some free yet skilled labour? I could totally do that…

Jasmine McAllister: NO

Kelly Diels: …especially for the sex part. Speaking of marriage, I had my tarot cards read by my friend/genius web developer Amanda Farough last night

Jasmine McAllister: and…

Kelly Diels: it said I’m going to get married again! And have more babies!

Jasmine McAllister: Wow!!  How do you feel about that

Kelly Diels: I was delighted. I screamed out loud in happyrelief about the babies. I love being married. I love babies. I am a goddess. I need a domestic crew to worship me.

Jasmine McAllister: I feel you!

Kelly Diels: In fact, I find it terribly disconcerting that so few people recognize me for what I am. Do you have the same problem? Do people insist on treating you like a mere mortal?

Jasmine McAllister: How did you know?

Kelly Diels: I could feel it, one goddess to another. We recognize each other.

Jasmine McAllister: If only people just could step inside the roles I give them

Kelly Diels: and lay oranges and offerings at your feet, just like in the good old pre-Bronze Age days

Jasmine McAllister: EXACTLY

Kelly Diels: sing it sister-goddess… I know your pain. People expect me to pay bills and take out the trash.

Jasmine McAllister: WTF?

Kelly Diels: I KNOW. Where are my devotees? Calypso, Circe, and Hera would not be impressed. Hera would eat someone’s child in retaliation for that kind of snub.  You know how she is.

Jasmine McAllister: LOL!!

Kelly Diels: oh honey I might have to cut and paste this into WordPress and pretend this is a blog post

Jasmine McAllister: You honor me!

Kelly Diels: as the goddess you are!

Kelly Diels: Do you like the movie Bull Durham?

Jasmine McAllister: low memory count on that one

Kelly Diels: I’ve been pondering goddesses the last couple of weeks and therefore have an overwhelming desire to watch it again –  despite the fact that I don’t like Kevin Costner, or Tim Robbins, for that matter.

Jasmine McAllister: me either!!

Kelly Diels: but Susan Sarandon….

Jasmine McAllister: yes!!!!

Kelly Diels: her character in that movie, I swear to the goddess, is a goddess archetype. She is knowing, she selects, she understands life, love, sex, poetry, baseball. Men become more vital and powerful from being with her. They come into themselves by communing with the divine feminine. And there is an exchange in that movie that moves me to tears

Jasmine McAllister: which one?

Kelly Diels: this:

Crash Davis: Come on, Annie, think of something clever to say, huh? Something full of magic, religion, bullshit. Come on, dazzle me.

Annie Savoy: I want you.

Kelly Diels: and that’s it. I recognize a woman who speaks magic, religion, bullshit.

Jasmine McAllister: you know who you are

Kelly Diels: oranges and offerings, please.

April 18, 2010 | filed under: Meaning, People

26 people have we need you too.

Help! I Need Advice About Guest Posting!

I get e-mails from people all the time about the finer points of guest posting, and blogging in general.

So I thought I’d create this page, where you can ask questions in the comments and I’ll answer them.

(Or, if you need anonymity, you can e-mail me. I’ll post your question without your blog url etc)

(I may get help from other bloggers to answer them, too.)

Today’s topic:

How to Write Guest Posts (and Get Them Accepted!)

Please tell me your questions:

What do you want to know about writing guest posts for other blogs?

_____________

How Good of A Writer Do I Need to Be to Guest Post?

How Do I Figure out to Which Blog(s) I Should Offer a Guest Post?

Pitching a Guest Post: Should I Submit a Completed Piece or an Idea for a Post?

Do I Need to Have A Self-Hosted Blog In Order To Guest Post?

How do you NOT abuse a relationship with a very popular blogger?

How do you deal with evil troll commenters on your guest posts?

How do you manage the workload of maintaining your posting schedule AND guest posting, too?

What if My Writing Style/Voice is Very Different than The Blog For Which I Want to Guest Post?

_____________


Question from Maria Brophy:

How Good of A Writer Do I Need to Be to Guest Post?

I hate asking this question – shows how wet behind the ears I am – but one reason I haven’t been doing guest posts (though I want to) is I question how GOOD of a writer I have to be??!!! I mean, do I have to write some knock-your-socks off guest post for it to be worthy? And am I capable? I guess we all ask that question…..

Maria, have you read some of the blogs out there? They consist of  words strung together in something resembling sentences but that’s the extent of the art of it. Very few of bloggers are writers.

There. I said it.

So let’s put that question aside for a minute.

What I think you’re really asking is:

Where do I get the confidence and the moxy to submit my work when rejection is my nemesis?

This was MY question, too, before I started guest posting.

The answer: you just try. And if someone says no, you won’t die. Promise.

This is what I did: I made friends with other bloggers, and talked to them ‘behind the scenes’ about wanting to guest post. I asked for advice.

And then I did nothing. Because I am a fragile flower, honey, and deeply afraid that someone would say: you think you can write? For ME? hahahahahahahahahaahahaha.

Or just reject my piece. Same dif.

Finally, Josh Hanagarne e-mailed me and demanded a guest post from me, for his blog.

I can be reasonably obedient at times – when the demand coincides with my own will – and so I sent him one. He used it, every one who commented was extraordinarily kind and full of praise, and then I was hooked.

My next submission?

To ProBlogger.

Darren Rowse accepted it right away and for that kind of encouragement, I am eternally grateful.

So here’s my advice, via Nike: just do it, honey.

You’ve got a blog. You’ve got thoughts in your head. You’ve got the ability to express them in writing. You’ve got everything you need to submit a guest post.

And guess what?

You’re doing the other blogger a favour.

You’re writing hot content for them, for free.

Don’t lose sight of that.

Guest posting provides mutual benefits. You’re contributing, too.

And it doesn’t have to be A Grand Work of Art. It simply has to be clearly written, useful and provide value to the audience.

Where to start:

  • Make a list of the blogs you want to guest post on
  • Look for their guest post guidelines, if they’ve got them
  • Read all the recent guest posts and look for a theme or similarities
  • Look for The Gap: what has not been covered, but needs to be?
  • Draft your idea into a pitch and send the blogger an e-mail explaining how your idea for a guest post would be useful to their audience…

and now you’re on you’re way.

Let me know how it goes, Maria. And thanks for your question.

Kelly

_________________

Question from Ryan G:

How Do I Figure out to Which Blog(s) I Should Offer a Guest Post?

My first question is how to determine a good target to guest-blog on. My blog doesn’t have a specific niche, but a lot of the blogs I read do. How can I pick out someone and convince them that my voice can be a benefit to them and their readers?

Ryan, I’d start with the blogs you read. What do you wish they’d cover? What post would you like to read, there?

Offer to write that piece – the one you wish you could read.

How to you convince them that you’ve got something useful to say?

  • Start by reading a lot of the recent posts and some of the archives. Figure out what that blog is offering to its audience, and how you can support that mission.
  • Read the comments: what questions are people asking? What needs to be covered?
  • And then, in your pitch, (quickly) walk the blogger through the process. How do you know this piece would be useful to her audience?

Well, you know because you researched it. You know people are asking for it. You know it fits with the mission of the blog, and it is helpful and/or entertaining.

Or…you know because you’re an expert in this field. If your offline credentials help your case, use them.

But the beginning of persuasion – and that’s what we’re talking about – starts with research. Identify The Gap, and fill it.

I’m curious to see where you go with this…please do let me know!

Thanks for your question,

Kelly
__________________

Question from Jonathan Wondrusch:

Should I pre-write a Guest Post or Pitch an Idea? Do I need to know the blogger to guest post?

Should you write the post before you send it to them? Is it kosher to solicit guest posting ops if you don’t have a relationship with the blogger in question?

Jonathan, the categorical, definitive answer to your first question is…

It depends.

I generally write the piece and then send it for consideration – but this is more about me, and the way I work than about The Rules of Blogging Engagement.

I know my blocks, and pressure-to-perform is one of them. (I’m so thankful I’m not a man.) For me it is considerably less stressful to pitch a completed piece than it is to pitch an idea and then try and write it to spec.

And if the blogger says no? I just rework it, or pitch the piece to someone else, or run it on my own site.

It takes the pressure to write-on-command off of me and allows me to just be creative. I write my best stuff in flurries of inspiration. As soon as I HAVE to do something, I’m stuck.

But that’s just me. I work to work around my weaknesses.

Some bloggers like this approach: they can see what you’ve written and decide if it is for them or not. No back and forth, waiting, angsting, and so on. Just yes, or no.

Other bloggers and editors however, want to be included in the brainstorming part. They know their site and their audience; they know what subjects need to be covered; and they’d often like to share that with you. (Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, for example, says that it increases the chances that he’ll accept your guest post if you pitch an idea rather than a completed piece.)

The categorical, definitive answer to your second question is…

It depends.

I didn’t have any existing relationship with ProBlogger (other than Queen of the Lurkers) when I submitted my first piece. So you don’t necessarily need a relationship. Sometimes the quality of your work will unlock doors for you.

And sometimes it won’t. Most of my other guest posts grew out of relationships – and these organic opportunities are so much less stressful than cold-calling or cold-pitching someone. I definitely recommend it.

Start commenting on the blog, e-mail the blogger, talk to him on twitter, and just generally engage with the community and the conversation.

Sometimes guest post opportunities will emerge out of a comment you leave. I wrote a long, unwieldy comment on Dave Doolin’s intensely useful all-about-wordpress blog, Website In A Weekend, and he promptly asked me to turn it into a guest post.

Having a genuine connection to – and investment in – the blogs for which you want to guest post is an invitation waiting to happen.

Thanks for the question, Jonathan. Please let me know how your first round of guest posts turns out!

Kelly

_________________


Question from Ami Kim:

Do I Need to Have A Self-Hosted Blog In Order To Guest Post?

Do I need to be a grown up (self-hosted) to guest post? I’m feeling a little shy about having a little kid’s (hosted) blog site.

NO!

Let’s take a look at one of the URL for one of the most popular blogs that I read on an almost-daily basis:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Do you see that? TYPEPAD.

I mean, clearly Seth Godin is NOT a marketing/publishing/blogging genius after all. He uses a hosted blog.

WTF, Seth Godin?

SOMEONE TAKE HIS PURPLE COW AWAY.

So no, Ami, you don’t need a self-hosted blog to guest post. You just need to write a great guest post.

**That being said: if you’re worrying about it, and you want to have a grown-up site and not a little kids’ site

- and check out a REAL little kid’s site, Belli’s Blog of Fashion, while you’re at it. Isn’t this 11 year old fashion blogger something? Isn’t her site hot? Amanda Farough of Violet Minded created that super sassy site for her. Amanda created my site, too, so I might be a bit biased when I say that Amanda does GORGEOUS work -

then please, dahlink, get thee a self-hosted site, already. I promise it isn’t hard and in fact that it is intensely satisfying. I could write poems about the ways and intensity with which I love wordpress.

And they would be naughty.

And yes, it does – at least in my opinion – make you look more grown up and professional when you have a self-hosted site. (Don’t tell Seth Godin).

My only caveat: if you already have a lot of traffic and people linking to your pieces, you’ll need to strategize about how to carry forward/redirect all of your links from your hosted site to your new site. It can be done. It MUST be done.

And, Ami, if you’re serious about switching over to a wordpress, self-hosted blog, you can probably already guess where I’ll send you…to my friend Dave Doolin’s wildly useful, step-by-step, FREE online course in how to set up a website in a weekend using my beloved Wordpress.

(I know this is starting to look a little shrine-to-Dave-Doolin-ish but I had to do it. His Website in A Weekend is incredibly useful and thorough and I’m continually learning stuff that makes my blog more effective and sticky. In the good way.)

Thanks for the question, Ami. Hope the guest posting goes well…

oh, and if you DO launch a new, self-hosted wordpress blog, a great way to drive lots of instant traffic to it would be to…

guest post.

But I know you knew I’d say that.

Kelly

___________________

Questions from Jade Craven:

1. When you start posting on popular blogs, people start asking you to help connect them with the blogger. How do you tastefully deal with these enquiries?

2. You can’t bitchslap the trolls when you are a guest on someone elses blog. How do you deal with them?

3. As I got busier, I found it more difficult to write guest posts on blogs, despite their popularity. How do you maintain your blogging groove?

Jade, I’m swooning a little that you’re asking me these questions.

(My dearest darlingest readers, Jade Craven has written a TERRIFIC e-book on how-to-guest post, The Guest Posting Mini-Guide. I’ve read it. It is excellent. It is pink. It is comprehensive, and I recommend it. I’m an affiliate.)

(I’d also like to mention, too, that I’ll be coming out with how-to-guest post e-book, soon, and this column is my research. Jade doesn’t mind – there’s lots of room for everyone to do their own thing.)

And here are my answers to your three questions:

How do you NOT abuse a relationship with a very popular blogger?

Like you, Jade, I do get lots of e-mails asking me to hook them up with This Blogger or That Blogger.

Usually what I do is tell a little story of how I got a guest post featured on that site, or how I connected with that person. The idea is to gracefully give the person the tools they need to do the same thing, without abusing my relationship with another blogger.

Or, if I know, instantly, that these two people MUST KNOW EACH OTHER, then I do a little match-making. I send a DM or an e-mail asking The Blogger to connect with the potential Guest Poster.

BUT: this is rare, and usually only happens when I know both of these people really, really well and am sure that they should be collaborating with each other. And I ALWAYS ask permission before I start sharing personal contact details.

How do you deal with evil troll commenters on your guest posts?

Trolls. Ah, trolls.

Yesterday, as my daughters and I traversed a footbridge over a pond, my little one asked me what we should do about the trolls that may or may not be hiding under that bridge ready to scare us/eat us.

You know how trolls are. Even three year olds know how trolls are.

I told my daughters that “Don’t worry, there’s no such thing as trolls” while silently adding “except on the internet.”

Here’s how I handle trolls. I handle them by not handling them:

  • If they say something particularly egregious or offensive, I write “thank you” and trust that my saintly restraint speaks for itself.
  • Or I ignore it.
  • Or, if they’re simply mistaken about what I wrote, I gently re-frame My Message in a reply.
  • Or I content myself with a visit to their (comment-less) site and then compare their stats to mine on Alexa. Usually I win and I feel much better.
  • Or I send my friends distraught e-mails. Someone inevitably offers to kick the troll’s ass, and then I say, no, no I can handle this myself, it is no big deal, and in that moment realize: why, that’s TRUE. I must be a grown up, now.

How do you manage the workload of maintaining your posting schedule AND guest posting, too?

Actually, I don’t guest post a whole lot. I guest post at ProBlogger almost-weekly, and that’s pretty much it.

I’ll do one-offs here and there if someone I love asks me to, but I’m not muscling through a huge to-do list of guest posts owed.

I believe in The Power of The Guest Post, but I’ve been thinking really carefully about why I guest post and why people should guest post. Here are my conclusions:

  • When you’re first starting out and don’t have a lot of traffic, guest posting is your calling card. Guest posting is how you’re going to get attention and traffic and connect with new audiences. It has done WONDERS for my site. Cleavage owes its popularity to guest posting – no doubt about it.
  • But ‘traffic’ in and of itself isn’t really a goal for me. Traffic is a means to an end. I want to make a living from my writing, and having a popular blog helps me make that happen. But guest posting is a promotional activity, and now that I’ve got steady traffic, works best when I have something to promote. Right now, I don’t have any products for sale – so what am I doing with all this traffic? Why do I need more traffic? What I need is to develop some useful products and then, when I need to promote them, go chase traffic using guest posts.
  • Drilling down to managing the workload: I try to write in flurries. I like to settle in for a weekend and produce a whole bunch of pieces. That’s why I like submitting finished pieces instead of pitching ideas. Having pieces in reserve takes the pressure off and allows me to get through my daily tasks without having a nervous breakdown on a daily/weekly basis. (I’m down to a nervous breakdown every 3-4 weeks! Progress!)
  • The key to managing a demanding workload is really simple: work a lot. I do. I’m often at the computer at 6 am and still here at 11pm (or later). There’s no magic system, no cool tricks. It is just work, and lots of it.

These were really great questions, Jade. Thanks for asking them.

Kelly

___________

Question from LPC:

What if My Writing Style/Voice is Very Different than The Blog For Which I Want to Guest Post?

Kelly, this is a somewhat personal question, so I understand if you have any reluctance to answer in specific. Your writing style is quite different from Darren’s. Did you and he have any discussion in which he wanted you to sound “more like ProBlogger”? Or was he happy with your voice from the outset? In general, how do you feel about the advisability of changing one’s voice for guest posts? Thank you very much for your time.

LPC, this is a very interesting question – and it is one I asked myself, repeatedly, in December and January.

I asked my friends, too: My stuff is weird and wonderful. I rarely write lists, I purport to resist pretty much every blog rule, and most of the time I don’t even know what The Rules are. So what’s up?

So what you’re wondering – well, I was wondering too.

Let me tell you the story.

I submitted my first guest post to ProBlogger in October of 2009. Darren told me really liked the piece. I sent him another one. He liked that one too, and told me that he’d publish as many pieces as I had. I sent him three more. Then, in December, he offered me a weekly spot.

Since he offered me the gig, I assumed that he liked my wiggy, wiggly guest posts, just as they were.

Still, I’m conscious that I might be pushing the boundaries a little bit. A couple of times, I’ve sent him a quick note that says “piece is ready. It’s a bit out there…” just to tip him off that it might raise eyebrows.

But Darren’s never said anything to me about modifying my style or my voice – in fact, he’s always been really encouraging and I think that he likes that my pieces are a little wacky.

That, I suspect, is one of the great perks of having a multi-author blog like ProBlogger: you can have many different voices embroidering upon the same basic themes and experiences. It both widens and deepens the well of knowledge (and style!) to draw upon.

And maybe makes it fun, too.

And so my advice would be: let your own voice ring out.

Great question, LPC. So glad you asked it.

Kelly

April 3, 2010 | filed under: Money, People

15 people have we need you too.

I Heart Malcolm Gladwell

I’m swooning. My #1 imaginary boyfriend, Malcolm Gladwell, is in town next week. He’s speaking about the flip side of Social Media at the F5 Expo.

This is timely.

He has neither tweeted, e-mailed me, nor called me to set up a coffee date. So clearly Social Media is dead or at the very least ineffective and someone (my beloved) needs to point that out.

If you were Malcolm Gladwell, what hotel would you stay at?

I mean, hypothetically speaking, of course. It’s not like I’m going to stand in the lobby and accost him. Wearing my new corset. That would never happen.

(Mostly because I don’t know where he’s staying.)

(Yet.)

Also excellent: my future ex-husband’s interview with George Stroumboulopoulos of The Hour, especially starting at 11:03.

March 31, 2010 | filed under: People

6 people have we need you too.

Talk is Not Intimacy. The Tyranny of Words.

I am not a morning person. To me, the wee hours are like The Bad Ex: unpleasant, defensive, and best avoided.

And yet by sheer force of will and habit and the tyranny of children wee’er than the hours, I rise early.

Like 5.30 am early. The ugly early.

And lo, he said, ‘let there be caffeine’.

So I’m always astonished when my sister or a friend says something like “but I’m not a morning person like you are…”

My head swivels around, exorcist-style, to locate this saintly ‘you’. When I realize I am that you, I inevitably have a whatchutalkingaboutWillis? moment.

(I had the same reaction when my sister told me “…but I don’t enjoy dating the way you do…“)

My point (and there is one):

I’m working against my body’s impetus.

My natural inclination is to stay up late(ish) and get up around 8ish. My most productive working hours are 9-11 in the morning and 9-11 at night.

BUT.

That’s not how my life works. My kids wake at inhumane hours and five days a week there are bells that ring and expectations of attendance accompany those sounds. The other two days there are expectations of waffles or pancakes.

So I just get up, drink lots of coffee, and try to make it all knit together while eagerly anticipating the future when my children become surly teenagers who resent the sound of my breath and my presence but sleep past 7am.

Or can pour milk in their cereal unassisted.

MIRACLES. HEAVEN. SLEEP.

I digress.

Now, just as I work against my body’s natural inclination with (lack of) sleep, I do this in The Interpersonal Thing, too.

I say: I’m a talker. Words are my foreplay. Talk to me, baby.

While this is true, it is not the whole story. Often, I’m silencing one of my languages at the expense of the other.

Body is quiet so words can speak.

I remember when I realized this: it was just after I realized I was In Love, probably for the first time. We were swimming in each other. Our physical boundaries were porous. While we had astonishing, wide-ranging conversations  and enjoyed a profound intellectual tension and communion, we were connected by touch and presence and being more than with words.

At the time, I had two room-mates. One day, I came skipping into the living room and landed on the sofa, right between them. They both shifted away from me so that our bubbles remained intact.

Another time, my bestest guy friend (my first boyfriend) from high school was visiting us. He was sitting on the sofa and I sat beside him, thigh-to-thigh and leaned into him. He stiffened.

Neither of these things were calculated. They were instinctual: I was so used to being right up close with someone – my new love – that I forgot in most relationships closeness is brokered with words rather than bodies.

I remember that stiffness, the moving away, the distance, and the chatter – and I treasure relationships where spaces contract and breach is welcome.

Like with my children, to whom intimacy is touch.

Which is not to say that we don’t talk. Of course we talk. We talk a lot. My eldest daughter, Sophie, is almost six, and she tells me that her favourite part of the day is our talking-time. We read stories together and I tuck the girls into their beds in their rooms. I sit with Lola, the little one (she’s three) and we talk while I rub her back and hold her close.

Then I get into bed with Sophie, wrap my arms around her and press her cheek to mine, and we talk while I stroke her hair. She tells me every detail of her life and all the things she’s thinking about and all the dramas in class and daycare and of course Hannah Montana, who has a talking horse.

And she always sighs and says, Mama, I love our talks.

I love our talks, too.

But more is being said than could ever be told with words alone.

I’m acutely conscious that right now, in this shimmering, evancescent, temporary moment, I have my children’s permission to touch them, kiss them, cuddle them, hold them, be with them, close to them.

And that is intensely precious to me on so many levels.

Our physical bond is the foil to my overwhelmingly word-centric world. Most of the time I privilege verbs over body – so much so that I’ll despair over a man who can’t seem to connect with me with words even if he’s telling me sweet things with his actions, his body, his daily presence and unremitting tenderness. I’ll assume he’s not verbally and emotionally fluent because I’ve unlearned his language.

My language.

And I know when I started locking down my physicality and unleashing my language.

The tween years.

The exact moment when I started becoming conscious that my body could – and was – sending messages was the moment I started restraining it.

Started fencing off space.

Started closing down emotional, physical signals.

Stopped being affectionate with adults and even same-age friends.

Stopped touching people.

Started talking on the phone. For HOURS.

This is no coincidence. I know this with my body and when I’m not careful, my tongue thinks for me:

I wish we could just fuck and get it over with so I wouldn’t be so tongue-tied and shy.

Now. I do understand that some tsk-tsk-ing might be in order. I’m not necessarily advocating sex as an ice-breaker (mostly. maybe).

But what this accidental truth tells me is that intimacy is not just words.

Words are sometimes a fence, fencing, sparring, defence.

Body is my first language. We have our physical selves, our hunger for touch, and our ability to effectively communicate needs, wants and desires long before we come into words. (Just ask an infant or her exhausted parent.)

All of this is to say that naturally I’m a late-riser and a body-talker. Yet I bow to the demands of my life and get my ass out of bed early so I can talk (and write) pretty all day.

So when I read this,  astonishment, horror, recognition:

Historically, women’s sexuality and intellect have never been integrated. Women’s bodies were controlled, and their sexuality was constrained, in order to avoid their corrupting impact on men’s virtue. Femininity, associated with purity, sacrifice and frailty, was a characteristic of the morally successful woman. Her evil twin, the succubus (whore, slut, concubine, witch) was the earthy sensual, and frankly lusty woman who had traded respectability for sexual exuberance. Vigorous sexuality was the exclusive domain of men. Women have continuously sought to disentangle themselves from the patriarchal split between virtue and lust, and are still fighting this injustice. When we privilege speech and underplay the body, we collude in keeping women confined. - Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity (emphasis mine)

And that is why I write about sex.

March 29, 2010 | filed under: Mama Monda, People, Sex

32 people have we need you too.

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