What Makes a Post Freshly Press-able: Don’t Touch Me

Every day, a handful of WordPress.com bloggers are featured on Freshly Pressed. On The Daily Post, we take a close look at posts that have been Freshly Pressed, focusing on why we were drawn to them and what they can teach us about great blogging. We hope this series provides tips and tools to make your blog the best it can be.

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It’s been said that there are only two story plots in the whole world: somebody comes to town, and somebody leaves town. Don’t Touch Me by Delusia is an intimately personal take on the former. When a woman’s lover returns after a long absence, her feelings for him teeter between familiarity and uncertainty. Here’s why we liked this post:

The Ghosts in Your Dashboard

Your WordPress.com dashboard is the nerve center of your blog: it’s where your ideas come to life, and your creativity gives them shape. As writers, artists, and thinkers, we know inspiration can be sporadic and those moments of genius are fleeting — they come and go, which means that sometimes your literary flame burns out, and those bursts of creation are short-lived.

The result? An abandoned idea. The dreaded draft, sitting in limbo, staring back at you. And so, we’re curious: what’s lurking in the drafts section of your dashboard?

What Makes a Post Freshly Press-able: Cruising Yoknapatawpha

Every day, a handful of WordPress.com bloggers are featured on Freshly Pressed. And every day, many more wonder, “What do I have to do to get Freshly Pressed?”

Here on The Daily Post, we take a close look at posts that have been Freshly Pressed and explore why they were Press-worthy. We hope this series provides insight into the process and offers tips and tools to make your blog the best it can be.

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Good storytellers pull you alongside them on journeys into the past, the present, the unknown, and the imaginary. Linda, from The Task at Hand, did just this recently on her Freshly Pressed post “Cruising Yoknapatawpha.” Here are a few reasons we enjoyed her post so much:

Quick Tip: Plagiarize Yourself

Feel like writing, but can’t settle on a topic? Realize that you haven’t posted to your blog in weeks, but finding no water in the well? Mine your own ideas by going back through comments you’ve made, and you’ll soon be giving your writer’s block its what-fors.

The Use of Medicine

Having closed out my grammar series, I’m now starting up a new series of posts in which I’ll share an excerpt from something I’ve read that made an impression on me and explain what I liked about it. The idea here is that appreciating compelling or artful writing can help us to become better writers ourselves. In this first installment, I consider a story by Joe Meno entitled “The Use of Medicine” and collected in his 2005 book of stories entitled Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir.

Being the Grammar Police

For nearly two years, I’ve written posts about grammar and usage, so clearly it’s a topic that I think is important. Equally important, I think, is knowing when it’s appropriate to insist on proper grammar and how to go about it.

You hear of cases now and then in which people go into public and make a big show of correcting grammatical problems on signage. Take for example this instance that resulted in probation for two men who fixed the grammar on a sign at Grand Canyon National Park. The men in fact went on a nationwide crusade to fix public typos, as documented in an NPR story and a book.