Memory Triggers for Writing about Childhood Illnesses

Think back to your childhood. Do you remember being sick? What remedies did your parents turn to? Was it a serious illness or the routine scrapes and tummy aches?

Write about your experience as the patient and also as the caregiver for someone who was ill. Was it your child, a parent, a spouse?

Do you remember the polio epidemics and getting the vaccine for it? Include descriptions of childhood friends being ill or family pets. Tell how the family coped with the disruption.

Did you ever pretend to be sick? Tell why you did that.

Addictive Personalities

I wonder about myself sometimes. When I try something new and it turns out well, then I want to keep working on it. Lately I’ve been trying out Squidoo. It makes a great place to promote my mother’s book. It takes some time to create each lens, but I think the topics will draw the right people over the years. The topics I’ve created include one on Tyro, Kansas and one on pet badgers. Quite varied, but both relate back to My Flint Hills Childhood.
The other topics that relate to the book are An Old-Fashioned Christmas, An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, and An Old-Fashioned Halloween. In additon, I’ve created one on Feedsack Dresses and one on the Flint Hills. Other topics from the book that might make good Squidoo lenses include Making Rag Dolls,  Being Quarantined, Bertha McGhee’s Life, Vining Genealogy, McGhee Genealogy, and School Days on the Prairie.

I need to stop for awhile and get back to editing my dad’s book. That’s the trouble with some of these websites. They are just really fun once you get past the initial learning stage. I still have a lot to learn about Squidoo and making quality lenses (webpages) there, but I’m off to a good start.

Making Lenses on Squidoo

An Old-Fashioned Christmas			9		10/28/09
An Old-Fashioned Halloween	29,629		15		10/28/09
Sugar Valley Lakes	48,366		4	$0.00	11/1/09
Cynthia Ross – Kansas Author	75,078		2	$0.00	10/29/09
It’s Turkey Day	76,452		1	$0.00	10/29/09
Meet the Author: C.J. Garriott	76,460		1	$0.00	10/25/09
Octogenarian Self-Publishes Me…	77,842		2	$0.00	10/24/09
Fabulous Florida	79,064		1	$0.00	10/28/09
Self-Publishing with Blurb	90,323		3	$0.00	10/27/09
Clyde Martin’s Family History	106,347		5	$0.00	9/23/09
Unique Christmas Trees	131,523		1	$0.00	10/31/09
Write Family Memories for Our …	137,312		2	$0.00	10/27/09
The Flint Hills of Kansas	146,999		2	$0.00	11/1/09
Children Remembering World War…	165,231		4	$0.00	11/1/09
Celtic Music

One Year Anniversary of This Blog

Well, time flies when you’re having fun. I just noticed that it was October 30, 2008 when I first posted to this blog. People were always talking about blogging and I thought, why not give it a try. Here’s some statistics on it:

Total views: 7,521

Busiest day: 933 — Sunday, August 23, 2009

Posts: 139

Comments: 58

During that time, I created two spin-off blogs for the family: (my mom and sister’s author websites to promote their books).

During this past twelve months, I’ve also:

• created 13 lenses on Squidoo
• written  almost 300 articles for the eHow website
• created 5 books using print-on-demand site Blurb, with several more underway
• posted 28 articles to the Helium website (essays and creative writing)
• added to my poems and essays on the Our Echo website (family memories)

Love This Vintage Photo

My mom turned up this photo of her mother during my recent visit. I’d never seen it before. Wow, it’s hard to imagine my grandmother in the early 1900s on a motorcycle.

Take a look at that bike! I love what my grandmother is wearing. Her name was Ruth Vining and she lived in Tyro, Kansas. To read more about her life, check out my mother’s book, My Flint Hills Childhood: Growing Up in 1930s Kansas. It’s hard to tell is that’s smoke around the back of the motorcycle from the exhaust or just fading or damage to the old photo.

If you’d like to know more about the motorcycle, a reader clued me in that it’s a Flanders 4. With a little internet research, I found an old ad from 1911 that features it.

Closing in on Half a Million Views

I noticed on the eHow site that my articles are nearing the half million views milestone.  I’m also just 34 articles away from having 500 written.  Wowee….

Articles Written: 466 

Article Views: 486,593

 

If you’d like to contribute to my viewing numbers, here are a few titles you might find interesting and appropriate to the fall season:

How to Rake Leaves and Clear Them Away Quickly - 

Trees provide wonderful shade, but overwhelm homeowners with leaves to rake in fall and spring. Equipped with some basic tools, you can rake those leaves and clear the yard in record time. Here’s how to efficiently rake and remove lots of leaves. (That’s my brother-in-law working on the leaves)

How to Cook a Pot Roast as Good as Mom’s  -  

My mom’s pot roast made a fine meal with the meat fork tender and the vegetables full of flavor. After 40 years of practice, I turn out a roast beef dinner that would make my mother proud. Here’s how to make it. (I made this earlier in the week. My husband tells me he prefers the green beans and mushrooms cooked longer than the 45 minutes I suggested. He wants them soft and fully flavored with the meat juices)

How to Warm Up Cold Feet in Bed  - 

Lying awake with feet that feel like blocks of ice is no fun. It seems to take forever to warm them up. Here are some ways to take the chill off. (Now that I’m back in Florida, this isn’t as much of a problem, but for those going into a northern winter… Brrr)

Writing a Teacher’s Guide and Book Club Guide

I want to create a teacher’s guide and also a book club guide for my mother’s book, My Flint Hill’s Childhood: Growing Up in 1930s Kansas.  The guides will be available as Squidoo lenses and hopefully will prove useful to book clubs or teachers that might want to use the book.

However, I don’t have much of clue on what teachers might find useful and what normally goes into a teacher’s guide for a book. I’ll have to search around on the internet for examples of these and also for book club guides. If anyone runs across examples of these or has suggestions for content for the guides, please let me know. Send links or post a comment on this posting so I can follow up on it.

Interesting Feedback from Squidoo

Squidoo lets you know which lenses (webpages) are doing well and which need updating. That’s a nice feature of the site.

Top Traffic

Nice work!

1. An Old-Fashioned Halloween – 10 visits
2. Sugar Valley Lakes – 10 visits
3. An Old-Fashioned Christmas – 9 visits

Least Traffic

Time to get the word out.

1. Write Family Memories for Our Echo – 0 visits
2. My Flint Hills Childhood – Guide for Book Clubs – 0 visits
3. My Flint Hills Childhood – 0 visits

Nice and Fresh

Most recently updated

1. Meet the Author: C.J. Garriott – updated today
2. An Old-Fashioned Christmas – updated today
3. An Old-Fashioned Halloween – updated yesterday

Getting Stale

Most out-of-date lenses

1. Write Family Memories for Our Echo – updated 36 days ago
2. Shannon Marie Hyle (Martin): A Tribute – updated 35 days ago
3. Sugar Valley Lakes – updated 33 days ago

Checking the Stats

statistics for My Flint Hills Childhood (paperback edition)

I love checking statistics on things I’ve worked on. WordPress does a great job of providing statistics on my blog efforts.

Now I have another place to check frequently, my mother’s book on Blurb. The site gives weekly statistics on the number of viewings of the book. Since they are having a contest this month, her viewing have taken a big jump. The contest was right on the heels of the book getting a mention in a USA Today article, so that probably contributed to the increase in viewings.

My contribution to the book involved pulling in the content (text and photos) that Mom sent me, and working out the layout. Then I proof-read the book as well. I guess I did the book design work and editing. My part was much easier than Mom’s as she wrote most of the content over a twenty year period.

It would be great if you would vote in the contest. The prize for the writer is $3,000. Make my 85 year old mother a happy author! To vote, just go to Blurb’s contest and get a username/password to vote. In the search box, put My Flint Hills Childhood to vote on Gail Martin’s book. You can only vote once on an individual book.

Please Vote Soon




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