I am a Star?

Hi everyone, my intended post has been passed over for a fantastic piece of news which I just received:


Star Blogger Theres Just Life wants me to join her in Bloggers' Hall of Fame!

She had been bestowed the award by Denise at L'Aussie Writing. What I'll have to do though is write about my writing style and habit, and pass the star to some other bloggers.

Thanks for having me in mind, PJ. It is my pleasure to do both, with or without the award.

I first signed up with Blogger three years ago when living in Perth, Western Australia. I thought being retired I would have plenty of time to write. Well, I thought wrong. I had plenty of time alright, but apart from cooking and looking after son number three (yes the one with the orange hair!)  the rest of my time was spent cycling (and fishing) around Perth and enjoying the whole of Western Australia and other territories.

Needless to say the blog never took off. It remained dormant. When I returned to Malaysia and rehabilitated the farm land that I had bought some eight years ago (it had turned into a secondary jungle then), it occured to me that I now would have more time on my hands in between farm jobs to do some writing. This time I was right.

So last month I started this blog. Frankly I was worried that it'll suffer the same fate as the first one - still born - or I would be hit by the writers' block and would stop writing after a couple of entries. As it turned out, I wrote and wrote and surprised myself with seventeen entries in the first month!

I was of course encouraged by those visiting my blog and gave what I thought were their true and honest feelings about what I wrote.

What I write about: In my case I was very clear of what I will NOT write about, and that is socio-political issues. The reason being I am apolitical, and if I were to do a socio-political blog I would have to pass judgement and be critical of certain individuals, or the government, etc. I am just not into that kind of thing.

If there's an advice that I am to give would-be bloggers, it is this: blog what you are passionate about. Something that you will never get tired of writing, discussing and sharing. In this way you won't really be concerned about whether people read your blog or not. After all it is simply a matter of keeping a diary of your daily activities, which some of us do anyway, even without putting it into a blog.

But the blogsphere is a wonderful place. You will soon realise that there are indeed people with the same interests as you, and they will pay you visits and make a comment or two. And this, as I said earlier, is great encouragement.

My writing habit and style: I write spontaneously. As I like anybody or anything with a sense of humour, I tend to inject some in my writing. They are sprinkled with a little drama, even out of the most mundane of topics and situations!

In most cases the subject matter just hit me out of nowhere (often while I am in the middle of doing some work totally unrelated to writing itself). I would then capture not only the ideas but right down to the actual phrases that I was going to use, and kept them in my head. Of course some of them would be lost as it normally took me a few days between being hit (or inspired, as some would call it) and the actual writing, but so far I have been able to retain most of them.

Once I get access to a computer and the internet I just start writing on that topic. No drafting, no jotting down anything. I edit as I go along. I must admit I am a stickler for grammer and spelling!

What I write about: My first love is my family. But I am passionate about growing trees and rearing animals. So rather than writing about agriculture or agronomy per se, which can be rather boring, I find myself linking the two. And because I am so very fond of children and feel very connected to them, you will find children featuring prominently in my writing. That perhaps also explain the Aesop fable approach in some.

Now for the difficult but pleasurable task of listing blogs that I follow. Before that I must state here that since I am new at blogging where I started browsing for blogs I like not so long ago, I am sure there are many many more wonderful blogs with similar interest out there which I had not got the pleasure and fortune of discovering.

Also, I follow a great number of blogs, including by Artists, as Art is another subject which I am attracted to.

For this purpose however I shall limit myself to blogs with farming and nature theme. So here goes:

(I sincerely hope the following will accept the award, tell us about their writing style/habit, and in turn nominate blogs of their choice - thanks!)

http://bimbimbie.blogspot.com/  You'll find her nestled amongst tall Gum and flowering Banksia trees. Great photos of birds

http://kellesneverdonefarm.blogspot.com/  for the simple and frugal life - the way I like it!

http://thechicken-wrangler.blogspot.com/ where you'll get to learn all about chicken rearing

http://operationhomestead.blogspot.com/  for more farm stories involving goats, ducks and yes, chickens!

http://adventuresinthegoodland.blogspot.com/ more adventures and nice scenery here!

http://akelamalu.blogspot.com/ Head to Lancashire U.K for some delightful fictions

There you have it, PJ. Here's to you...