One reason a lot of people don’t practice their creative writing skills is because it doesn’t generate money while they do it — it doesn’t seem like a valuable time investment when you’re sitting there just trying out various creative writing ideas, generating fun little stories, but not much else for hours on end. (I mean, we all only have 24 hours a day, except for maybe Hermione Granger and Harry Potter and their little time-turner, so the rest of us have to make the most of the ones we do have. LOL)

We all would love to be the next bestselling author straight out of the gate, earning a 7 figure income while doing what we love, but what are the REAL chances of that without a few years of practice first? And practice of any sort generally is a non-paying job…

So while trying to figure out a much-needed way to hone my literary skills and also get paid while doing it, I ran across Pay Per Post. They offer you a way to help out advertisers and sponsors by reviewing their products or services in your blog, from anything from firefighter simulators and mystery shoppers to big Hollywood movies just released and charity events that want to spread the word and more, all while getting paid to do it. Each has an at-a-glance offer of what you can earn and what type of post they’d prefer, making it easy to decide which ones might suit you at any given time.

The great thing is you can match offers to your blog topics and you have freedom to write about them in your own style so they can ‘fit’ your ‘theme’ as much or as little as you want. And since Pay Per Post gives you a list of offers (topics), you don’t have to worry about ‘blank page syndrome’ when trying to decide what to write about! (Always fun for the ‘practicing writer’, in both senses of the phrase. =)

So why not make your blog yet another get creative writing tool in your quest to improve your writing skills AND get paid while learning your craft? (Don’t you just love win-win situations?) I do…

What are YOU going to do with all the money you earn!?!?!?!

payperpost

I like to have my TV on while I work on my computer on my book auctions. (Well, it’s really a 2nd computer monitor hooked to a tuner, sort of HD before HD became popular, but that’s for a different blog…) Usually I just have it on as ‘background noise’ – that is, unless one of my favorite shows, like TORCHWOOD, HEROES or CASH IN THE ATTIC, is on and my attention is drawn from what I’m SUPPOSED to be doing to what I’d rather be doing.

Lately, though, for some reason I’ve been paying a little bit more attention to the commercials, too, and they really make me wonder WHAT the heck the advertisers think they’re doing.

Example: the latest Burger King commercial. The women in it are ‘jealous’ of the King’s newest ‘melt’ sandwich, fearing it’s too much like homemade and it’s impinging on their purvue. (In other words, their family prefers the King’s cooking to their own! Oh my!!)

So how do they solve the problem? Make better sandwiches? Take away their kids’ allowance so they can’t afford to buy them? Heck, no. The solution for the mothers is to try to run over and KILL the competition, i.e. the King. (Yup, murder is the solution offered.) I understand as an adult it’s supposed to be a joke, but if you watch the various versions of the commercial, it just seems to become a vendetta against the King, with a sandwich as the justification to run him over or off him in some other nefarious way…

Now, I think I’m beginning to better understand why it’s so hard to eradicate gang problems, especially when your food chains are now on TV championing taking out people permanently who bug you in any way. (What IS the world coming to?) Pretty dang sad, don’t you think, that they couldn’t come up with something a little less ‘final’ for an idea to sell their sandwiches?

Not only is Burger King advocating violence for dealing with your little disagreements, but now ABC Family is showing a movie called HOLIDAYS IN HANDCUFFS – a show where a girl solves her ‘datelessness’ problems by kidnapping a guy at gunpoint, only to have him fall in love with her by the end of the movie. Yeeesh. Wonder how many kids watching that ‘family show’ are going to think that’s a way to fix their inability to attract the opposite sex. (Okay, I personally admit if I managed to get Mario Lopez in handcuffs, I’d probably not let him out very quickly myself, but I’m old enough and experienced enough to know that putting him in them unwillingly in the first place is a BIG no-no… Willingly is a whole other ball of wax. ;)

I was going to send Burger King a quick note about my opinion of their campaign, but it seems that they don’t accept email anymore – citing problems with, to paraphrase the legalese, fear of being accused of stealing people’s ideas. So, I guess I’ll have to pull out pen and paper and send them a little snail mail… (Wonder if I remember how?…)