Wednesday Why - Single on Valentine's Day?

Today's Wednesday Why features an article I wrote yesterday, Single on Valentine's Day? Suite 101 has a couple of contests for January up right now, one where you write 14 articles in 14 days (I think my brain would explode...although there are people who write like, 5 articles a day! Crazy!) and a Valentine's Day one. When I first read about the contest, I thought, "What can I write about Valentine's Day? I'm perpetually single." And then I thought, "Wait, I'm single on Valentine's Day. I'm sure other people are, too. I can write about that!"

And thus an article was born.

This one was really fun to write, because basically I just pulled ideas out of my head about what I would like to do on Valentine's Day. Of course, the only one I ever do is the second one. (Apparently, I only befriend people who are in relationships or who hate Valentine's Day. I personally like Valentine's Day, even though I never have a Valentine. I just like to celebrate things, I guess.) Maybe some day I will have enough single friends who don't hate this holiday and will be able to try out a few of these ideas.

(Side note: Ever notice how Valentine's Day is the only holiday that people truly hate? Some people get riled up about it. No other holiday is hated as much as Valentine's Day. I blame marketers. They make people feel bad for not being in a relationship. Jerks. I'd feel bad about not being in a relationship, but I never find anyone who is worth my time and effort, so I'm pretty content with the single life.)

It was nice to write an article without having to research and take notes and all the prep work I usually go through. I basically just wrote, did some keyword research, edited, and published. The only headache was finding the proper category to put it it. (Dear Suite, please make a holiday category. Thanks!) I finally put it under Personal Development because it was the only thing that seemed completely appropriate. Parts of the article could have fit under Entertaining or Dating, but not all of it. But other than that, it was probably the easiest (and most fun!) article to write so far.

In other news, my head has been pounding all day. Nothing is helping. I'm thinking about a brain transplant.

Wednesday Whys - How to Choose Chicken Eggs for Hatching

I seem to be on a science-y kick lately with my article writing. It's kind of weird because in school I never really liked science. But I always did pretty good in my science classes, so I guess it makes sense if you look at it that way. Today's Wednesday Why features the article "How to Choose Chicken Eggs for Hatching."

On Sunday, I was hyper-productive. (On a weekend! That's even crazier!) I researched, wrote, edited, and published an article. All in one day. Usually it takes me about two days per article, but I was in the zone. Also, I was writing about chickens and if you know me, you know I'm kind of obsessed with chickens.

I started out by just doing some general chicken research. I knew I wanted to write about chickens, but I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to write about them. I think it was also inspired by the fact that in the spring my parents plan on raising chickens. (Yes, I will be there visiting them all the time. I've never known anyone who has actually owned chickens before. I'm so excited!) I had raising chickens on the brain.

I ended up reading a lot about incubating eggs and was going to write about that, but when I started to specifically researching that, I learned that there was actually a lot that went into just choosing the eggs. Who knew? You have to look at the parent chickens, the egg size and shape, and all sorts of things. And I thought to myself, "Hmm, this could be an article all on it's own. And then I could write about incubating them. And then caring for the baby chicks. And then caring for the adults." And suddenly I had four articles I could write. That is definitely a good thing, because sometimes I struggle coming up with ideas, but now I have something to work on while I think about new topics.

The article itself was pretty easy to write. I took tons of notes in an organized manner (That never happens! Go me!) and it wasn't really a complicated topic, so I had no trouble turning my notes into a nice article. And again, it was very informative to me and that always makes writing more interesting.

This week I will be concentrating on the rest of the chicken articles and my screenplay, which I had a major breakthrough on Sunday night at 2 AM when I couldn't sleep and instead wrote for an hour. Sunday was clearly a good writing day for me. Perhaps I should work on weekends more often...

Wednesday Whys - Is a Tomato a Fruit or a Vegetable?

Welcome to the first Wednesday Why! The article I picked for today is Is a Tomato a Fruit or a Vegetable? which I wrote for Suite 101.

I actually didn't intend to write this article, exactly. I decided I wanted to write about different types of tomatoes, but do you know how many different types there are? A lot. So I knew I was going to have to narrow it down, but I didn't know exactly how I wanted to accomplish that. So I was thinking about tomatoes, and somehow, the question of whether a tomato was really a fruit or a vegetable popped into my head, and I thought, "Hey, there's probably a good article in that!" And there was.

It was really interesting researching this question, and finding out what exactly defined something as a fruit or a vegetable. And I had no idea that there was once a Supreme Court case about this very question. Or how many vegetables are actually botanically classified as fruit. One of the things I try to focus on when choosing article topics is finding something that interests me, because if I'm interested in a topic, I know that I will write better and that will make it more interesting for other people.

Of my two articles on Suite (the other one, my first, is How to Choose the Right Belt for Women), the tomato one is almost three times as popular. I guess a lot of people have this question too. I also got my first (and only!) comment on this article. That was a serious ego boost. Nothing like having someone else tell you you did good!

What I learned from this article (besides whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable) is that in order to want to write, I need to pick topics that either interest me or that I learn something from. I really enjoyed writing this article - more than the belt one. Not that I'm not interested in belts (Look in my closet. I have a whole box of belts!), but they are more an every day part of my life. Tomatoes are something I don't know that much about, except that they are pretty tasty.

I will definitely be keeping this in mind when I pick topics from now on. Pick something new and interesting that teaches me something.