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This week, I’ve been thinking about the times when staying true to your dream feels like you are rowing against rapids in the middle of a vast, swiftly moving river that isn’t moving in the right direction.

I don’t care how many perfectly wonderful dream-come-true stories you lay at my feet, I know that dreaming tests the limits of your capacity to stay with it to the end.

It’s because life can be unpredictable, sometimes messy, and filled with stretches of challenging situations that test your resolve and your capacity to handle everything thrown your way.

The easy part of dreaming is giving up. It’s the staying with your dream through all the ups and downs to create the future you want that is challenging.

This has been a difficult year for me preceded by a stretch of time marked by both wonderful moments and stressful heartache. I am stuck in this pattern of taking four steps forward and five steps back.

Just recently, I came down with bronchitis as my workout regimen was beginning to reshape my health. I was ill for a month, unable to attend my classes and watched the decline of the gains I had been making.

This week, I began slowly making my way back to my old workout schedule, only to spend Saturday sleeping the entire day away in order to recover. Being sick for such a long period of time was frustrating to deal with as it made me feel more stuck, which seems to be some grand overall lesson I am being challenged to accept.

It’s enough to make me shake my fists and swear at the night’s sky.

Everywhere I turn I’ve encountered brick walls and delays that are matched only equally by personal challenges and family heartaches. All of it has forced me to pause and question my personal dream.

“Shouldn’t this all be easier?” I find myself asking the sky, as if expecting the sky will answer back at me.

My thoughts dwell on how much more I will be given to handle until I find myself fighting back the tears that want to show the world that I am cracking inside. I’ll breathe deeply and turn my attention to the present moment, bringing focus to my breath as I remind myself of what is wonderful and working in my life.

Sometimes I succeed at stopping the tears, other times I fail miserably.

It’s a process.

The reason I am sharing where I’ve been emotionally is not to depress you, but to let you know that life will still happen to you while you are living your dream journey. Sometimes family obligations, illness and personal tragedy will slap you and your dream to the curb, but you must not give up.

Honestly, I cannot imagine my life without the feelings of hope and accomplishment that working on a dream brings to your life. Dreaming makes life interesting and exciting and it certainly softens the blows that life will swing at you out of nowhere.

It’s OK to cry. It’s OK to be sad, or angry, or frustrated.

These are normal, powerful feelings that are meant to be explored and not shoved aside to the far corners of your mind because you think that you must always live in the flow of positive thoughts and emotions.

Feelings, even sad or negative ones, are meant to be felt and dealt with in the moments they arise so they won’t keep nagging you. If you stuff them down and try to ignore them you run the risk of using them as a mantra for creating and living an unhappy life.

Being stuck can be frustrating, I KNOW.

But as my mom always said, “Catherine, nothing lasts forever.” And I know in my heart and soul that this is true and eventually this situation that is beating me blue will pass and life will take on a new trajectory.

In the meantime, the only way I know for dealing with feelings of anger, despair, sadness, frustration and other negative emotions while staying true to your dream is do do something creative–no matter how small of a creative exercise it might be.

Creativity is the antidote to negativity.

Creating something new funnels your raw emotions into projects that shift your focus away from what you don’t want, or don’t like, towards new possibilities and hope.  Time will stand still as you take a timeout from your life to create.  You don’t have to work on a major creative project to feel the benefits that taking a creative break can bring.

Here are 20 Simple Creative Ways to Help you Stay True to Your Dreams:

1. Read a good book, even if it is just one chapter.

2. Add images to your vision board, even if it is only one.

3. Go for a walk in nature.

4. Play with children.

5. Dance around your kitchen to your favorite music.

6. Dig in your garden.  Pull weeds.

7. Plant something in your garden.

8. Paint something.

9. Write. Anything.

10. Create a 150 lifetime goals.

11. Fix a meal for your neighbor.

12. Volunteer.

13. Dye your hair.

14. Rearrange your furniture.

15. Sew something.

16. Visit a lake, the ocean, a stream, a waterfall, or a fountain. Make a wish.

17. Draw your dream in the sand at the beach.

18.  Skip stones. Make another wish.

19. Buy chalk and write yourself positive chalk messages leading up to your front door.

20. Leave positive Post It Note sayings wherever you go to inspire others.

In order to survive setbacks and difficult circumstances that seem beyond your control is to do something with their emotional residue. Creativity frees the mind from emotional chains and allows you to be in the moment–far from pain and regret–to the place where your dreams live.

I am not perfect. I am human.

I wish I could promise you that painful experiences won’t happen to you when you dare to dream big, but I would be lying to you.

What I can tell you, is if you stay with your dream the painful experiences will become part of your dream story.  The stories people find the most inspirational are the ones where the hero overcomes adversity and incredible pain to triumph and thrive.

It’s the thing that movies are made of.

Your difficulties can inspire others to stay with their own dream journeys. You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to remember that you are human and that “this too shall pass.”

Just don’t give up.

Catherine Hughes
Share your dream online!

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The post The Difficulty in Staying True to Your Dreams appeared first on Catherine M Hughes Web Content Developer.

When writers first begin showcasing their craft on the Internet they usually start with subjects that only they want to tell the world. It’s natural to want to “push out” subjects that have long been sitting inside your brain looking for a place to land.  For this reason, I always recommend that people have two blogs.  One that is focused on a particular subject that you are passionate about and another one (like on Tumblr, for example) where you just write whatever your heart and brain feels like creating.

But if you write online long enough, eventually the professional writer in you will begin to ask yourself what is is that you love to write about that people will actually want to read about.  This is often the point where the writer becomes interested in reviewing blog statistics to see what visitors are reading, if anything, and seeing which stories resonates with the reader the most.

If the visitor numbers are low, writers will yearn to expand a writing dream beyond just hitting the publish button.

Writers will ask:

“Why isn’t anyone reading my blog?”

You may even notice a statistic called bounce rate and flesh out that many of your blog visitors are only looking at posted stories for 4 seconds, or less — obviously not long enough to read the story.  Staring at the statistics makes you question whether you have any writing talents at all.

There can be many reasons for this, but the obvious first choice is that you, the blogger, however great you are — aren’t somehow writing with the reader in mind. Writing on a blog is a two-way conversation, and if you are a blogger who recognizes that this could be an issue for you, then you need to ask yourself this at the end of every article you write for the Internet:

If I am at a party and telling this story . . .

1. Would you still tell it in the way you are writing it?

and

2. How would you adjust the story for the person you are telling it to?

For example, let’s say there are a lot of distractions at this party … would your story remain as long? How would you change the structure and the timing of your delivery? And most importantly, is it even a story the listener would want to hear?

Enter Google Trends

When the you are ready to expand your online audience and write with the reader in mind, Google Trends can be an online writer’s best friend.

Google Trends will tell you what the world is interested in reading and sharing with their connections. This doesn’t mean that you have to change your writing niche, it just means that you need to adjust some of your writing so that it resonates with what the reader is currently relating to in their lives.

And if you don’t know who your reader is, then we have an even bigger problem.  You should know their: age, sex, marital status, income, hobbies, and education. You should have a mental photo that conceptualizes your ideal reader right above you in your writing space.

In discussing using Google Trends to expand your blog readership here,  I’m going to assume you know who your reader is.  So I am going to walk you through how I use Google Trends.

A trend is often a pop culture fad, but it can be anything that suddenly catches the Interest of a certain group of people — it doesn’t necessarily have to be the world.  Think about trends as being those subjects you might chat about around the water cooler at work.

For example, a popular trend is: “make dreams come true.”

If you go to www.Google.com/Trends you will see what is currently hot on the Internet and have the ability to search trends for ideas for “make dreams come true”

When you enter a phrase like “make dreams come true” in the search window, Google Trends will return a graph showing how this item trends over time on the Internet.

Looking at “make dreams come true” you can see that it was a rising trend in 2009, then dropped  some in 2013 and has remained pretty steady ever since.

The average 8 Women Dream reader is looking to make their dreams come true. The trending phrase works with our demographic and believe it or not, 8 Women Dream is not in the top four positions in Google search for “make dreams come true.”  This is a problem that needs to be fixed and 8 Women Dream should be focusing on using this term as regularly as possible.

Here’s How to use Google Trends for the term “Make Dreams Come True” —

Create stories around the trending term that use the phrase in your title, keywords, meta description and images as well as in your content.  Make sure the trend relates to yoru topic and here’s how we do it on 8 Women Dream with different dreamer’s subjects:

1. How Positive Affirmations Make Dreams Come True

Thankful Thursday dreamer and empowerment speaker, Sue Faith Levy shares how positive affirmations can make dreams come true and offers her own examples of positive affirmations.

2. Pay for World Travel and Make Dreams Come True

World traveler and Saturday travel blogger, Natasha von Geldern offers creative ways to finance your dream of traveling the world and how to make your world travel dreams a reality.

3. 5 Things You Need to Make Dreams Come True

Catherine Hughes, the director of 8 Women Dream reveals the 5 things you need to make dreams come true.  Understanding what motivates you is key to having the ability to make your dreams a reality.

4. 50 Motivational Weight Loss Quotes that Make Dreams Come True

Fitness blogger, Heather Montgomery lost 100 pounds after joining 8 Women Dream and went on to become a triathlete after the age of 40.  In this post, Heather declares her top 50 weight loss quotes that motivated her in making her dreams come true.

5. Make Dreams Come True by Starting Over

Life coach and author, Lisa Powell Graham acknowledges letting her dream of publishing her novel fall aside to other events in her life and how to start over when you’ve been ignoring your dream.

6. Make Dreams Come True After Divorce

Therapeutic photographer and artist, Iman Woods discusses what life is like after her divorce and how she makes dreams come true from the heartache that divorce can bring.

7. Make Dreams Come True Creating Products to Sell as a Motivational Speaker

Motivational speaker and comedian, Kelly Swanson explains how to create products to sell as a motivational speaker and how doing this can make dreams a reality.  Multiple streams of income are a dreamer’s best friend and a way to help finance your dream journey.

8. Create a “Make Dreams Come True” archive page.

Create a place specifically dedicated to a trend–as long as it matches what your site is all about.  It makes sense for 8 Women Dream to have an archive page dedicated to stories about making your dreams come true.

Attempting to ride a trend means that you write how this trend effects your niche blog topic, and in our case, our dreams.

Looking at Google trends in a niche

You can also use Google Trends to search what might be trending in your chosen blog niche when you have writer’s block to see what the world is finding interesting on your dream subject.  For example, we could just enter the term “life purpose” and see what is currently trending around the subject of live purpose:

A subject that is currently tending on the Internet for “life purpose” is the The Purpose Driven Life- What am I Here For? by Rick Warren. If my niche was about finding a life purpose then I might want to think of ways in which I could line my stories up with Rick Warren’s book on The Purpose Driven Life.

The best trends are the ones you catch as they begin to happen.  One such trending topic post on 8 Women Dream landed 10,000 new readers in a day.

You can also look at the home page of Google trends for global trends that (if you are lucky) may be trending on a subject you’d like to write about.

The idea behind riding a trend is that when the world begins to ramp up their search for your trending phrase you have a good chance of showing up high in search for your phrase, and if your title is interesting enough too, visitors will click on your article and come check out your blog — in droves!  And if your trending phrase matches what your writing is about then it is possible to go viral if your content is good and develop a new following of loyal fans and readers.

Wouldn’t that be a dream come true?

Catherine Hughes
Share your dream online.

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The post How to Use Google Trends to Make Your Content go Viral appeared first on Catherine M Hughes Web Content Developer.

Viral content is so tempting for creatives who are sharing their dreams online.

The idea that 100 thousand people–or more–could suddenly rain down upon what you have provided can be a dream all its own.

Except that viral content can be a problem.

I associate viral content with snake charming. Handled right and you will mesmerize an audience, handled wrong and it will take you out with one big bite.

Having something go viral doesn’t always mean anyone will even know (or care) who you are, even though something of yours has gone “viral” on the Internet.

And not all popular attention is positive.

Viral creations can attract all kinds of problems that you might not anticipate. It’s hard for creatives sharing their stuff online to understand the different types of content, when you should use them, and how viral content works with fame and sponsors rushing in to make dreams come true.

Take 8 Women Dream for example.

The idea behind 8 Women Dream is that each dreamer writes content once a week that over time builds a backlog of dream stories, or what is known on the Internet as long-tail pages on this site and it’s through this backlog/long-tail content that most of the traffic and much of the discovery happens for 8 Women Dream. This is how the Internet works.

Long-tail content is one of the reasons Google search rates a site’s age as a part of its algorithm. The number of years a site is online combined with the number of growing pages with GOOD content determines how much Google sends traffic your way–if the content is truly good and follows the standards of the Internet –then Google can make you very, very successful.

Um. Yes. There are Internet standards.

It’s the backlog of long-tail content that will bring viewers from all over the world (and some Webby judges once a year) to a site and help grow a site’s exposure over time. It has always been my belief that if you build your dream story online via this long-tail format (and create incredible, visually interesting content about your dream) then eventually the right person who can help you make your dream a reality will show up to view what you have created online and reach out to you.

If it’s good enough.

The past dreamers on 8WD who have shared their stories built the long-tail foundation to this site that the current dreamers stand upon and by the current dreamers continuing to add more valuable content to this foundation, opportunities increase for all of the dreamers to garner the attention of someone of influence in their field and gain a tribe who wants to help their dream come true.

This is why long-tail content is more valuable than viral content–BUT a piece of viral content can help a dream tip over into big success if it’s the right message at the right time–however it is an incredibly difficult accomplishment to pull off.

Building the kind of long-tail size needed to be found on the Internet is a monstrous task–it’s so much more than great content, social media sharing and publicity–it’s also building a big community with lots of interaction. When Huffington Post started their blog they added 50 emotionally charged bait stories a day to quickly build their site size and seize their place on the Internet.

The best way to make your dreams come true online is to get so big that you can’t be ignored then share something perfectly targeted to go viral once you’ve reached a certain size.

But whatever size you think is big enough to play in the big leagues of the Internet is already too small. Creating a following that loves you is not something that can be accomplished overnight or even in a year of dreaming on 8 Women Dream.

All too often, we let the instant-access of the Internet entice us into believing that anything we put online we think is good will give us instant Internet success. Success, no matter how you slice it up is still a time-spent game that requires you to put in the time–however long that might be–to change enough to garner the success.

This is where people think creating something viral will help them achieve the right attention for success.

But viral isn’t always a friendly beast.

Let’s say I am a watercolor painter who wants my work to be noticed. I want my paintings to be loved by the masses and be featured in a certain galleries I’ve had my eye on. I’ve built my website and I’ve used my blog to share my painting process. I get a lot of good, positive feedback on my work so I decide I want to create some viral content to get more attention and maybe land an agent.

My dog is pretty cute.  He always gets all the attention wherever I take him and he has this cute trick he does with a bone. I decide to film him and create this cute little video that I upload to YouTube. Let’s say the video is stumbled upon and viewed by an influencer (an important part of the viral process) who loves it and shares it with his/her following.

Suddenly this video goes viral.

Except it’s not about my painting abilities–it’s about my dog. The video will attract a lot of pet owners and dog lovers, but it won’t attract the audience who will help make my painting dreams come true. And even if I place the dog video on my website, I’d be attracting the wrong tribe of people who come only to watch the video, but never interact anywhere else on my website–unless my paintings are all masterpieces of this dog… and I paint animals for a living like no one has ever seen before.

Let me ask you this: think of the last time you saw something go viral. How about the blue and black/gold and white dress controversy? Can you tell me the dress designer? The store it is sold at? The name of their website? The price? Who took the photo?

The virality of that striped dress could be very good for the designer, but not so much for the person who took the photo or the girl who put it in the window.

Viral content should be more like Justin Beiber’s success–however you think of him–like a kid who plays his stuff on YouTube for years until he gets discovered by an influencer. By the time he goes viral (in his niche!) he already has been performing online and he is ready for his music to go viral.

The viral situation works in his favor because his long-tail performing content was building for years on YouTube before his first viral video tipped him into the place where his dreams came true.

Viral for viral’s sake can eat a lot of bandwidth, cost you some serious website hosting money and it can even take your website down for your regular readers. It can bring trolls who write nasty comments, and strangers who like to send angry, threatening emails. Commenters and sharers can make fun of what you are doing and heckle you for doing it. Your family can be harassed offline or your kids teased at school. It can even cost you your job. Viral content can bring you the wrong kind of attention. You have to think it through.

Going viral isn’t always a good thing.

So when you think you are ready for something viral to launch your dream into the stratosphere, or bring attention to what you are working on, you need to think deeply about what your viral content should be and how it should be delivered. Cute dogs and cats may not work for your demographic.

Yes, they might be popular, but they may do absolutely nothing for your dream.

There are some key ingredients to successful viral content if you think that you are ready to give it a try and thanks to BuzzSumo, they’ve analyzed the most popular content of over 100 million articles and shared what they discovered. BuzzSumo is a company that specializes in providing insights into the most popular content online and the influencers who share it.

Here are BuzzSumo’s 10 ingredients to increase your chances of viral content:

1. Longer content gets more shares.

3,000-10,000 word articles receive the most shares (8859 total average shares) online. Research is important here. Long content has to be loaded with quality information. Even researchers for the NYTimes discovered the most emailed posts for The NY Times were their long articles over their shorter ones.

2. Compelling images increase engagement.

Twice as many people, on average, share articles with at least one image in the post, underscoring the importance of having visual elements mixed in with bodies of text. This is especially true on Facebook.

3. Twitter also likes images.

Stories with thumbnail images did substantially better on Twitter than those without.

4. Invoke emotions.

The most popular three emotions invoked were awe, laughter and amusement. Next came quizzes. It would seem that the world loves to be awed by quizzes that make them laugh in amusement. The most sharable content online has a positive or upbeat twist to them.

5. Lists and infographics are king.

List posts (like numbers and bullet items) and infographics receive more average shares than other content types.

6. 10 is the bewitching number.

BuzzSumo found that #10 item lists received the most social shares: on average 10,621 social shares. In fact, they had four times as many social shares than the second most popular list number: 23. The runner-ups were 23, 16, and 24.

7. Trust plays a major role in sharing.

This means you need a byline and an about page that tells who you really are. Long gone are the days of hiding on the Internet. If you want viral–it has to be the real you.

8. Influencers make the difference.

BuzzSumo found that having one influential person sharing your content resulted in 31.8% more social shares. Having three influential people sharing your content doubled the number of social shares. And having five influential people sharing your content almost quadrupled the total number of social shares. Become friend with influencers in your niche.

9. Re-promote old content on a regular basis.

Content always has an initial spark when it is first released out on to the Internet, then it dies off a timely death … unless the headline and meta data hook people into coming to see it over time. Updating and re-sharing old content that ties into an upcoming trend can cause it to go viral a good year (or longer) after it was originally published online.

10. The best day for social shares is Tuesday.

Content gets the most shares on Tuesday or Monday, depending on the social network: Facebook is Tuesday, Google Plus is Tuesday, Twitter is Tuesday, Linkedin is Monday, Pinterest is Monday, and YouTube on Monday or Tuesday.

You must also be willing to market your own dream content and not just on one platform like Facebook. You need to branch out into other forms of social media and find people who will like what you are doing. This could be Reddit or Buzzfeed or any number of smaller social communities, but you have to be willing to promote your own stuff over and over.

Constantly–not just once.

I see this all the time on 8 Women Dream: a dreamer will work her heart out on a piece of content and then share it on Facebook once and that’s it. No Twitter; no LinkedIn; no Pinterest; no re-sharing on Twitter several times during the week and when a trend might be launching. It just gets shared once… on one day … then they ask me: why aren’t more people reading this?

The Internet is a big place with loads of activity and to rise above the noise you have to share your creation over and over until it gets seen. Content should not be a one-hit wonder. Plus you need to be sharing other creative work you find on the Internet and comment on other creative’s blogs so that you are part of a larger community.  Want a lot of comments?  Comment on other blogs regularly. You can’t expect people to comment on your blog if you aren’t out there commenting on other blogs yourself.

You become part of a community first and give your attention to them before you ask them to come look at your lovely stuff.  Most of them will probably start checking out your stuff before you ask.  The Internet is a “Givers Gain®” environment. You must first give before you expect anything in return.

Creating viral content shouldn’t be a dream in and of itself.

Your dream should be perfecting your craft and getting better at it day after day, getting to know your tribe and what they would love to see from you, and building a website with lots of long-tail content before you think of producing something viral. The popular site, Elephant Journal averages 20 content posts a day (even on weekends) and the contributors share their own content across all social media platforms.

They believe in the long-tail before viral.  Big before famous.

Now get back to work, dreamers. We’ve got more long-tails to attach to our dreams.

Catherine Hughes
Share your dream online.

The post Don’t Let Your Dream Be Fooled by the Lure of Viral Content appeared first on Catherine M Hughes Web Content Developer.

Hell if I know what a blog editor does.

I’m kidding…

Editing is a part of any dream, whether you want to be a famous singer or own a winery on the Pacific coast. All dreams require adjustments so that you can become a person capable of handling everything that will come from dreaming your particular dream.

When I talk about blog editing, I am not necessarily talking about correct grammar, although grammar and using any tool correctly is important.  Giving your dream your very best effort–especially when you are a writer–matters.

But when I talk about blog editing, I am speaking about the rearranging of content so that readers will read it and search engines will find it.

I guess you could say that I started my editing involvement, or “rearranging obsession” back when I first began to push my bedroom furniture around with my butt. My dad finally built me a dollhouse in one side of my closet so I could move my rearranging obsession from pushing around my massive bedroom furniture without help to rearranging miniature doll furniture instead. Growing up I spent many hours moving doll furniture around, making and gluing mini-curtains, reupholstering small furniture, and changing rooms around.

What would happen if I put the kitchen in the bedroom? Let’s do it!

I can’t believe that my dad saved our house paint for me so I could mix colors and paint my dollhouse walls by myself. God, talk about parental trust!

Once I entered high school, I moved on to writing and rearranging content on the school newspaper. I loved my journalism class and working with the other students. At the time I excelled at journalism, I was recovering from being bullied and losing a best friend involved with it, while being told that my dad had esophageal cancer.

My school newspaper participation saved me and this is when I really got into rearranging content.

Don’t get me wrong, as a writer I loved researching stories and then writing about issues important to the students.  I worked hard to write from all points of view–unless some kids were hurting other students–then all bets were off. My experience with the newspaper helped me look at fellow students with compassion while my newspaper teacher taught me how to layout a newspaper for print. He also let me sell newspaper advertising to local businesses and me and my new best friend, Lee, were damn good at it.

But I loved, loved, loved laying out the newspaper for print.

After my father died, I put all my writing and “journalism silliness” behind me and pursued careers in banking tech and management. It wasn’t until I had the opportunity to create my first blog, at the encouragement of a dear, dear tech guy friend, that I began to play around with layout and content once again.  It had been 20 years since I looked at how people read short stories.

I found that not only had I missed writing, but I suddenly became fascinated by how blogging was supposed to work and how people read on electronic devices.  What?  I can rearrange my own content? Sweet Jesus, there is a God!

I’ve been involved with tech, blogging and content ever since.

But what does a blog editor do?

Well, for starters, my computer and work desk are in my bedroom because I want it all right near me in a quiet place where I can create at any time. Does that tell you anything about me? There are those that would say that having “work” in your bedroom is a big mistake, but if it was good enough for famous columnist and writer, Erma Bombeck, then it’s good enough for me.

Besides, any aging women will tell you that there are advantages to rolling out of bed when you can’t sleep and being able to write a 2:00 a.m. story, or at least, type out some story ideas.

This may annoy the other people in your life and make some for some challenging early mornings.

For example, it’s a holiday weekend, and there are things on the 8WD site that need my attention besides the fact that I need to write and edit my own weekly story. So I roll out of bed early this morning, brush my hair and immediately sit down in front of the computer to begin to work with 8WD content before coffee has even graced my lips.

Someone somewhere in my home manages to make coffee without bugging me until they nudge me in the shoulder with a hot cup while I am in the middle of studying semicolons (because I suck at using them). Karen, our newest 8 Women Dreamer makes me painfully aware of my lack of semicolon use every time I read one of her perfectly semicoloned stories.  While reviewing and admiring her work before she’s ready to publish and offering her my feedback in Google chat I realize I’d better REALLY re-enter the world of semicolon knowledge while gulping my first taste of coffee.

It begins to dawn on me that I am going to need a lot more practice.

Then my college son interrupts me because at age 19 going on almost 50 he is at that stage where he doesn’t want my attention until he wants my attention NOW.  I’ve learned to take advantage of these now moments because it’s the only time he may tell me about girls at school and his friends.

Finding out about your son’s life is like trying to get someone on the opposite site of the Grand Canyon to yell back to you. I seize the moment and, of course, he would like food with my answers.

We have to negotiate on who will be scrambling the eggs.

I take a break from editing and semicolon hell.

When my son has decided he’s had enough of mom, I brush my teeth, get dressed and go back to my bedroom computer and shut the door. I usually begin writing at this time if the artistic flow is happening.  If not, I look at the website stats for stories that are dying, read comments and respond, add comments, fix ALT tags, work on social media accounts, answer emails (aghhhhhhh so many emails … SIGH), and continue studying semicolons which leads me to studying separate clauses which leads me to being distracted by a YouTube video where I watch a segment on Rosie O’Donnell’s stand-up: A Heartfelt Stand Up.

I make a mental note to watch this later on HBO and run some heat-map testing on the home page of 8WD.

I realize we need to get out an 8WD newsletter and add it to my to-do list, then suddenly the writing muse hits me and I shift over to writing this story.  I write for several hours before beginning my keyword phrase research.  I stop to have a late lunch and read over some of my favorite blogs on my Kindle.  I look at 8WD logo sample feedback and add a note to my to-do list.  I go for a walk and spend some time planting herbs in my garden.

I return to my desk late afternoon to fix old posts that should be trending, but aren’t, along with others that Google webmaster tools has marked with errors and I make my first edits to this story.

By now, dinner is being barbecued for me and pretty soon there comes a knock on my door letting me know that dinner is ready.  I join my family and we watch a round of 6 Nations Rugby.  We eat, clean up and I sit down to watch a video from one of the online courses I am taking.  I am always updating my skills– ALWAYS. You have to.

I see that Rosie O’Donnell’s HBO special is airing soon and since she has a large women following I want to take in what she will be talking about so I set the channel reminder.

By the time Rosie’s special is to begin, the kitchen had been cleaned and round one of my story editing was complete.  I was thrilled to find that I was going to have the living room to myself because if I had to watch one more sporting event with men I was going to kill myself. I laid across the couch and placed my journal on my lap in case I wanted to make some notes. I was mesmerized by Rosie’s stand-up performance. People have no idea how hard it is to entertain people by being a storyteller.  I love watching women dreamers at work.  Rosie’s talents are a force to be reckoned with.

And you know what? Rosie’s dream-come-true life isn’t perfect either.  Life is life.

Her HBO special becomes an important program to watch because at the end she describes what it is like for women when we are having a heart attack, which is very different from what happens to men when they are having one. I tweeted her because Rosie’s HBO special will save lives.  I then did one last survey of the 8WD Facebook Page, answered some chat questions to some 8 Women Dreamers, and set off for my bedroom.

As I entered my bedroom, I glance at my bedroom desk where I decide to answer just a few more emails, study some title ideas for this post and save this for more editing the next day. Before drifting off to sleep I make a list of everything I need to get done for my own dream for the week, tasks for 8 Women Dream on Sunday, and ideas for the site and myself the rest of the week. I fall asleep with my journal on my chest and my glasses tilted up on to my forehead.

My computer remains on, logged into the 8 Women Dream site with the yellow glow from the monitor lighting my darkened room to remind me the several times during the night that there is always more work to be done.

Dreaming is 24/7.

And so is blog editing.

Prepare yourself.

Catherine Hughes
Take your big dream online.

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The answer lies in how successful dreamers manage their creations, approach their art, and the difference in attitudes about why they are doing what they feel they have been called to do.

What do I know about this? I have lived the life of both the amateur and professional.

If you want to operate at a top level for what you seek, then you have to pass on the urge to behave like an amateur.  And for many dreamers, this is a bitter pill to swallow.  They somehow think it will “spoil the integrity of their craft.” (insert visual of water spitting out my nose here).

Let me use blogging as an example.

Amateur vs Professional Blogger–

1. The amateur blogger ignores the basic rules for writing on the Internet.

It’s hard to read on a computer. The light shines back into the eyes, making the reader scan the page looking for content. Large blocks of text, small or creative font, colored font, colored backgrounds — all interfere with the visitors ability to read your writing. Stop making it so difficult. Your blog should read like a well laid out report with subheadings, numbers and bullet points so that the reader sees quickly what your story is about.

Centered text is for printed invitations –not for the Internet. Think about why books are published in black ink on white paper in a simple, easy-to-read typeset. Eyes love to rest in white space. If you want your readers to actually read what you write, then make it easy.

Stick with black writing on a white background.

Amateur bloggers will ignore these suggestions because they think a blog should look like an art project with plenty of distracting visuals and colors.

Forget that visitors come to R E A D.

2. The amateur blogger writes stories that can be found in any number of diaries throughout the world.

Women bloggers are famous for writing blogs that read like pages out of someone’s diary instead of sharing a compelling story.  Yet women wonder why there are so many men in the top blogging spots.

Contrary to popular belief, professional blogging is not  downloading your every thought and emotion. Top bloggers plan their blog posts well in advance of when they publish them. If they write from personal experience, they share the lessons they have learned with their niche readers, but their blog is not the place where they share their entire life story down to when their daughter first sat on a toilet seat.

They forget to ask “Why am I writing this?”

3. The amateur blogger changes their writing subject every time they get bored.

Amateur bloggers refuse to stick to one subject so that they develop a following. They write about everything and anything. It doesn’t matter if the reader is confused or isn’t interested in what the blogger is writing about.

If it is something that currently interests the blogger, then they naturally assume readers “out there” are just going to love it. In three months (or less) they run out of steam and wonder why they can’t think of anything to write about.

If you write about everything, you eventually end up writing about nothing.

4. The amateur blogger refuses to look at blog statistics.

The amateur blogger doesn’t want to know the truth about the audience they are not reaching or how little traffic might be visiting. They believe that by simply writing  and hoping, the general public will some how find them and adore them forever.  If their writing is good enough people will magically keep coming back for more.

Statistics aren’t for the amateur.

They are something only business websites use. Why bother understanding the interaction (or lack thereof) on your blog?

Because you might have to face the truth and change.

5. The amateur blogger treats their blog one dimensionally, instead of like a magazine.

Blogs are basically magazines and if you’ve picked up a magazine lately and thumbed through it you may have noticed all the different styles of articles that are covered under one topic. A blog needs to offer a variety of styles for several reasons:

There are magnet posts (posts specifically written to attract new readers), controversial posts (posts written to gauge how passionate your readers are about your niche topic), list posts (posts written to help visitors easily find other content on the Internet), image posts (posts written to help your blog be found in image searches), informational posts (posts written to reveal how you are the subject matter expert in your niche topic), emotionally vulnerable posts (posts written to help form a bond between you and your blog reader), and more.

Top bloggers write in these different styles while remaining on blog topic.  The amateur blogger will never think about the different styles of blog posts that need to be written in order to expand their reach beyond family and friends.

6. The amateur blogger ignores the value of an About Me page, Contact page and commenting system that isn’t moderated.

Amateur bloggers don’t get that readers want to know who the blogger is and how to contact the writer of the blog. Providing this information builds trust. Amateur bloggers invent cute names for themselves and make it difficult for readers to comment or contact them. It’s like the amateur blogger wants readers, yet repels them by hiding who they are, how to contact them, or by moderating the comments.

All this screams that the blogger doesn’t value or trust readers and has absolutely no interest in getting to know them.

7. The amateur blogger refuses to study blogging or learn basic programming, like html.

All the amateur blogger needs to do is write something and hit publish, right? Everything will just naturally take care of itself, right? Wrong. It is necessary to understand Internet marketing, copy-writing, guest blogging, networking in blogging communities and social networks, keyword research, and html code (so you can fix your blog when it is fighting with you).

But if you are an amateur then all of this will seam too overwhelming, or at best, unnecessary.  Amateurs believe that none of this matters because they are writers and the writing is the most important thing. You will get there purely on your writing skills, right? Forget about your images being prepped for the web, sized properly with ALT tags.

To the amateur blogger this unnecessary stuff just takes up too much time.

8. The amateur blogger references song lyrics like poetry in their blog posts.

Women bloggers are famous for this and it’s illegal. Lyrics are one of the three parts of a song that are copyrighted. You cannot use them without permission.  Besides,  when the amateur blogger gets better at blogging they will look back on lyric infused posts and cringe at how cornball they look. Lyric posts tend to come about when bloggers are being hormonal, drinking, or over-emotional.

It’s never good. Write your own poetry instead, and leave the song lyrics to high school teenagers.

9. The amateur blogger uses free blogging platforms and free blog themes.

If you want to move up from forever being considered an amateur blogger then you are going to have to bite the bullet and buy a domain name, hosting, and set up a proper blog. Purchase a blog theme and work with a graphic designer to create a brand logo.  Don’t build your empire solely on a platform that you don’t control.

Remember Myspace? AOL Journals? Blogspot? No?

Managing your own blog gives you complete control over what happens to your writing. You wouldn’t set up your business in the basement of a random retail outlet store, so why would you set up your blog on someone else’s platform?  Amateur bloggers will believe that they are somehow exempt from this rule and they can become a top blogger using free platforms and templates.

Silly rules weren’t meant for them…

While top bloggers take responsibility for the success or failure of their blogging efforts, amateur bloggers often blame everything on circumstances “beyond their control.”   They give up too easily and never push themselves beyond where they are comfortable with their writing.  And it’s sad when it all fails.

Successful dreamers understand that they have to keep pushing their limits to be the best. They are never satisfied and continue making changes to improve every little nuance of their creation.

My advice on how to be a successful dreamer is to not fight the basic rules and practices set up by the professionals in your industry.  Follow them.  Watch what they do and stop resisting what you think won’t work with your creative style.  Be open to the possibility of change.

Forget the rigid rules you learned in school and stop saying no to every suggestion because you are afraid, or too proud.  Top dreamers take big risks.  They are not afraid to fail and appear foolish.  Be open to foolishness.

Go with the dreaming flow.

Approach your dream like the actor, film producer, director, and martial arts expert, Bruce Lee approached life:

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

Become your dream, dreamers.

And be successful.

Catherine Hughes
Be a success online!

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Sometimes, as I sit here thinking of what to say to you about my week spent dreaming, my dream life doesn’t seem all that exciting or inspirational enough to write about.

In fact, I must confess that part of your dream journey can be akin to watching paint dry.

With any big dream you’ll have to perform behind-the-scenes work that no one really sees or cares about, but you. It’s the repetitious dream work that you must regularly roll up your sleeves to do because it keeps your dream moving forward and prevents you from losing momentum.

Often, it isn’t glamorous work.

You have to do it even when you don’t want to because you want your ultimate dream bad enough.

That’s how you can tell you are on the right dream path if you are willing to do the maintenance work even when you don’t want to.

This week, I needed to work on the back-end of the 8 Women Dream website. Now, I could probably hire this site work out, or ask someone else on the team to help me, but it’s actually maintenance work that informs me of what is going on with the 8 Women Dream website.

Working on the site is like listening to your child breathe when they have a slight cold.  You make decisions on their care based on what you see and hear.

When I work on updating parts of 8WD, I am usually fixing parts of the site that have become obsolete.  I implement the latest Internet standards and while I am digging and fixing typically one click leads to another and I find something else, which leads to more work.

It can be a tedious, but necessary process.  I am always satisfied when I am finished because I value what I see as I click through the site.

I’ve discovered over the years that I’ve managed the 8 Women Dream site, that I enjoy editing and placing content, testing it, changing it, and testing it again. It becomes a sort-of mental conversation with the readers as I learn what you enjoy reading and sharing and what you don’t.

Reading through and doing maintenance on the site always makes me ponder if more can be done for our readers.

Can we be more?

Can we do more?

Can we reach out more?

I love to write. Writing online is what lead me to create 8 Women Dream, but I am the kind of writer who writes the best when my whispering creative voice begins to share a story idea with me through my imagination.  It then simmers in my mind for a few days before it completely takes me over and I am forced to sit down and write.

I’ve been known to miss showers, live in pigtails, and stay up way later than I should to pound out my thoughts in written form.

Sometimes my whispering voice goes quiet when I’m lost or scared about the next step I should take. It’s harder to create movement in your life when you are carrying good responsibilities–like children you adore and income that comes from other creative sources.

There are times when I sit down for my weekly dream update here and I think,

“I have nothing to say.”

Writing when you must put something out while you are feeling blocked is its own sort of maintenance.  It stretches me when I force myself into the chair and begin writing–anything.

So when I spend a week updating and fixing the site itself, it doesn’t really feel like I’m working on my dream of having one of the top websites for women on the Internet, which is kind of crazy if you think about it.  The fixes and updates place the site in a better position to be found by more women… doesn’t this relate directly to my dream?

But fixing and editing maintenance never feels as lovely as imagining and expressing creativity, does it?

Before Heather of 8WD became a triathlete and lost all her weight, she had to decide to do something towards her goal every day so she could eventually compete as a triathlete. She had to begin by walking each day to build momentum and grow stronger. I am sure there were days she had to talk herself into moving out the door until exercise became a part of who she is, like breathing. Exercise was her dream maintenance, eventually changing her diet became a part of it too. And she will be the first to tell you that there were many times the exercise felt boring until she had completed it.

The hard truth about dream success is that there will always be some sort of maintenance that needs to be done regularly.

Sometimes the maintenance can be fun while other times it can feel like digging a ditch on a 100 degree day. And yes, sometimes it can be boring.

A painter has to clean and care for brushes, deal with solvents, prepare canvases and perform a great deal of maintenance work that is not actually painting the flower. There is also the practice of painting to work on new techniques, or sketching work to be done that may, or may not, go well.

The “other work” is all a part of your dream journey, but you should love your dream so much–even when you don’t want to do the maintenance–that your vision of your completed dream will still suck you in and force you to do the work you don’t feel like doing.

I’ve fixed 2,043 stories on 8 Women Dream this week.  Do you think it was fun?

I did not touch every story, although I did look at quite a few of them to see if they needed updating–after looking at how they were appearing in search. I just needed to fix some code on the site that allows visitors to see when the last time a story was updated, which fixed a bulk of the errors the next time Google bots crawled the site.

As I looked through the data I realized that 8 Women Dream has written close to 2,469 stories. The book, Les Misérables, was only something like 1,488 pages and it’s considered one of the top 10 longest books every written!

8 Women Dream has enough stories to have written a book on dreaming big.  Truth be told, some of our stories are better than others.  We 8 Women Dreamers have become better as we’ve practiced our own writing and dreaming maintenance.

I’ve written 336 posts, Heather’s written 331, Lisa 261, Iman and Sue are tied at 109 posts, Kelly’g got 105 to her credit, Natasha is at 88, and we’ve published another 806 from other dream contributors. Karen already has 3 under her belt.

It blows me away to look through these numbers. I wouldn’t have noticed and felt as proud as I am of what we’ve accomplished here if I hadn’t been performing maintenance.

Even in doing the work, your dream can bring you lovely surprises.

When I am fixing these old stories from the 8WD site–maybe an image has dropped off, or a link is broken, or some web standard needs to be addressed–I read the entire dream story over again.  I can see that showing up on 8 Women Dream and sharing a dream story for a while changed the dreamer who contributed in profound ways not revealed at the time.

You are never the same once you begin a dream journey.  Once the dreaming bug bites, you’ll have a fever for it for the rest of your life.

I am reminded how the dream of starting 8 Women Dream has become more than what I imagined it could be on that Christmas that my son and I struggled through many years ago when the idea hit me.

The stories on 8WD remind me of all that the dreamers have gone through–the good and the not-so-good–and I am proud.  They did this.  We did this.

Simply by showing up and doing the dream maintenance.

Catherine Hughes
Share your big dream online!

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Are you worried that you can’t make your dream come true?

One of my favorite dream experts and best-selling authors, Barbara Sher, has a dream exercise she calls, “Reclaiming Wonder.” She developed this exercise because she found that when people attempt to get back in touch with their dreams they become stuck in their everyday burdens.

They suddenly can’t see past their responsibilities to pursue the dream–even when they desperately want to.

You spend so much time worrying about what to fix for dinner; when you need to buy new tires for your car; how you are gong to pay for your or your kid’s college, and so forth–down to worrying about what you need from the grocery store for dinner that you forget to stop feel the moment that you are in as it is happening.

It’s like Christmas. I bet there are many of you who spent the past holiday season in a blur, running around frantically trying to buy gifts, bake, wrap, work, and prep for guests until you collapsed in your pajamas the day after everyone is gone. During the crazy, did your stop to notice the changing season?  What about the trees in your yard?  The snow? How about the smell?  Did you stop to notice the smells of the holiday season?

All to often, people forget to look at the winter season with the wonder of a child because everyone is so busy worrying about everything … then BOOM another year is over.

Wonder is the place where dreaming is born. It’s the place of the beginnings.

In order to start a new adventure, like blogging, you have to get back to that place of wonderment like when you first experienced play as a child.  Do you remember what imaginative play felt like?  Do you remember how it had no rules? Sometimes it would simply involve spinning in circles until you fell on the ground and then laid there staring at the sky lost in your daydreams.

Wonder put you in touch with what drew you in–what was calling out to you to inspect at a closer range. It’s about living in the moment and taking a chance.  It’s about being lost in thought and not caring what anyone thinks.  It’s almost as if you are separate from the world in your own private place observing nature and the space around you as if it had a life and voice of its own.

Then you grow up, take on a world of responsibility and give up on play and your imagination.  You stop connecting with that child who found everything about the world an interesting, captivating place.

Maybe you dreamed of traveling the world, living as a Monk in Tibet, chasing the Lions in South Africa, dancing on stage, staring in your own movie, or painting a masterpiece.  You didn’t care what anyone thought about these dreams–you just languished in them, twisting them into their own stories whenever you wanted to escape into your mind.

Those were the days when the flowers and the butterflies felt like they were talking to you.

So how does a worried adult bring back their wonder and awe at life?

Barbara Sher has an exercise in once of her books, “It’s Only Too Late If You Don’t Start Now” …

Reclaiming Wonder

1. Find your favorite dried spice (hopefully it isn’t garlic, but Ok if it is…) — something that you love to smell.
Place some of it into a small plastic bag that is easy to access and can fit in your pocket. You can just put the spice directly into your pocket, but if your spice is ground cinnamon, it could get a little messy. You want this spice easily accessible at all times as you go through your day.

Whenever you hang up your phone after a business call, or look at your cell phone, or finish running for the train, bus, taxi, or race across town to pick up your kids, reach into your pocket and squeeze the spice with your fingertips, and watch yourself snap back to the pleasure of wonder.

2. At this very moment take the palm of your hand and touch something near you, like to polished wood of your desk or the fabric on your pants, or sleeve, and pay attention to the sensation.
See how many different surfaces you can touch without getting up from your chair. Imagine what the same experience must have been like when you were only a one-year-old.

3. Discover how many senses respond to the atmosphere outside.
Sit somewhere outside or next to an open window  and close your eyes. Take in the bluster of winter (or the warmth of the air if you are somewhere warm at this time of year). Take in the quickness of the wind, or the stillness of the air. Notice how much you know about this day without using your eyesight at all.

Listen to the wind blow through the trees, or the rain on the roof, and feel the heat or cold or dampness on the skin of your arm and the wind in your hair, and smell the fires burning, or fresh cut lawns. And notice the extra awareness of quickness or calm or crispness, of hints of memory about days like this or the expectation of rain or snow or nightfall that comes from somewhere harder to name.

4. Once you’ve taken in all you can with your eyes closed, open them and look around you.
Take special note of what shows you the kind of day it is; screen out other distractions. Note the clouds moving, bright shadows or the absence of shadows, dawn or evening light, or the purity of winter.

All this belongs to you. That’s what you’ve lost and what you want back again. And now it rests in your hand.

When you see the extraordinary in the everyday, you’re always on a journey, no matter where you are.

This where you can begin to enjoy the possibilities that life has to offer. As part of your plan to work on your dream this year, start first with reclaiming your sense of wonder. Look at all the beautiful things that work in your life right now. Let go of your thoughts about needing to be responsible and remember what it was like to be a kid full of imagination.

Start there.

Then get up and go find your favorite spice.

This week promise yourself that you will bring back into your life that sense of childhood wonder.  Try something only a child would do.  See if it helps you remember something you loved.  Pay attention.  Listen to what you soul will tell you about the experience.

Catherine Hughes
Take Your Dream Online!

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Isn’t that what a new year is about?  New beginnings?

Whenever there is a shift on 8 Women Dream the site ends up expanding and changing in ways I never imagined. It’s like hiking through a forest and suddenly stepping out into a clearing where the view puts the hike into greater perspective.

Your hike takes on a greater context.

I am not afraid to admit that it is difficult for me when a dreamer shifts off 8WD to do other pursuits in their life–all admirable dreamers in their own right for giving it a shot–but for a while it will feel to me like a hole has been left in my rose garden. I contemplate how will I fill that person’s dream space. What will happen now?

Where do we go from here?

These are the nights that I lay in bed practicing the deep breathing exercises pointed out to me in Yoga class where, I may or may not have, rolled my eyes as I placed my forehead on the mat.  I learn not to fight the positions by breathing into them. It is a way of letting go.

In bed, I’ll stare at the pale white ceiling, close my eyes, breathe in and ask for the next dream lesson, then breathe out and ask for a sign. It’s so scary that I dream of  getting up, having a glass of wine and taking it all back.  I squeeze my eyes for a second to add, “But please not toooooo difficult.” I then let it go while I imagine my thoughts floating out into the night sky for the heavens to breathe in.

And I wait as I work.

This time the wait lasted longer than it ever has in the past and I began to worry how the old year was going to end on 8 Women Dream and the new year would begin.  I decided to take some time off and enjoy the holidays for a change.  I wanted to really enjoy my son and his friends, spend time with my mom and relax into my life for a change.

Quite by accident, I ended up creating a new dream space for myself–complete with a new desk and a big screen computer my son had that I have been in love with since he first took it out of the box. He purchased his own gaming machine for Christmas since there was no way in God’s holy green hell I was spending that kind of money on a computer for video games.  In spite of this he still presented me his lovely flat screen PC that I love.  Once I got it from him I realized that it needed to be near a window looking up towards the hill above.

I also needed to set up a bookcase because my idea of keeping everything in baskets and pretty boxes wasn’t working anymore.

Then my dear friend, Elisabet, gave me a Christmas tree candle piece for the holidays.  I wanted it near me so I could light it while I wrote–sort of like having her unwavering faith in me hovering over me while I write and work.  This has suddenly become my new little corner of heaven.

It was in the middle of this moving everything around right before the holiday process when Karen and I made the decision to move forward with her dream story on 8 Women Dream. I liked that she was (and I believe still is) an amazing teacher.

A real teacher.

In our Google Hangout she was already teaching me while I was trying to teach her.

In the first few minutes of our video chat, Karen used a phrase that I don’t remember hearing before, “Psychic Distance,” is what she said. A phrase referring to the degree of emotional detachment maintained toward a person, group of people, or event needed to perform or complete a task like writing.

She was speaking about writing when she used it, but the phrase made me immediately think about when dreamers suddenly stop working on their dreams.

It’s sort of like that moment in therapy where the therapist thinks the patient is finally getting to their core issue when the patient suddenly decides that they don’t need therapy anymore and they stop. It’s as if some dreamers arrive at the edge of their dream diving board with all of their dream possibilities circling in the cool water below and not being able to jump. They decide instead to climb back down the ladder and leave the swim area entirely.

It’s taught me that dreaming needs to be done with a certain amount of detachment from the outcome.

You dream because you have to. It’s an itch you have to scratch. The dream won’t be silenced until you give in to it. But to be successful at dreaming you have to stop yourself from trying to control the outcome and from being too emotionally invested in how it is all “supposed to be.”  Your dream never ends up looking like you imagine. That’s sort-of the beauty of it all.  And you have to carry on–regardless of the hundred rejection letters, besides the financial constraints, in spite of the need to improve your talents, no matter what the competition does, and despite the fact that you don’t know how to make it work.

You have to be able to pull back emotionally and just enjoy the process of working to create something from nothing. Forget about perfect.  Replace perfection with giving everything your best shot then jump in feet first and don’t think about how the water is going to be.

The water doesn’t matter. The fact that you jumped does.

This dream week, I learned a new phrase; I met a great teacher; I made a new friend; I spent time with an old friend; I focused on doing only what I love (I’ll write about that later); I witnessed a new dream unfold; I mastered recording a Google Hangout, and I saw that the universe does listen to me late at night.

Gulp.

Carry on dreamers.

Catherine Hughes
Be a Success Online.

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