Day 83: 5 Minute Freewrite: Wednesday

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Thank You

I wanted to thank @f3nix and @marcoriccardi so much! both had delegated some steempower to me while they were away from their online life for a while. Thank you so much!! That really helped to boost the vote I am handing out to every freewriter!

Please welcome our newest freewriters @saronym @warpedpoetic

I floss my tears turned out to be a bit of a challenge to many of you. But it also seemed to have pushed all of you to level up. I really am impressed by the quality, the depth and the fun of the stories you all came up with. And I highly encourage you all to go back to the prompt and read each others work!

I do want to apologize to all of you who do not speak English as their first language. I should have told you all that it is not an American saying that means something. The way this prompt came about is as follows. I said to my husband that I need to floss my tears (meaning teeth) and he said: "That is a great prompt!"
So, blame him! lol

But - I thought that it would be a great prompt to push you all out of your comfort zone and open up to do something different.

Steemit Trouble

Lately, Steemit has been running slow and/or has been giving error messages. If you run into trouble with Steemit, you can use https://busy.org/ instead. You will need your active key to sign in for the first time or steemconnect works too - I believe. Whatever you post on busy will show up on the steemit platform as well. If you don't know about the different keys - let me know so I can write up a tutorial or direct you to one.

An added bonus is if you post on busy.org and use busy as one of your hashtags, you will get a busy upvote. One per person per day. It is a good upvote, so you might include that in your Steem success strategy.

Prompt: nose ring

Set your timer for 5 minutes
Start writing
Use the hashtag #freewrite
Publish your piece (include a link to this post if you wish)

Copy and paste your URL into the comment section of the prompt post.

Or, if you don't want to publish your freewrite, just copy and paste as a comment under the prompt post*.

If you don't know what a freewrite is, here is a link to the introduction post.

Here is @snooks excellent tutorial on how to join our freewrite adventure

And @improv's input:

Two things I do a little differently. I just type "timer" into google and it pops up a 5-minute timer. I also type directly into steemit. I also rarely use a photo, don't I? So that's three things.

Please read, comment and vote on each others freewrites as much as you can.

Help

I am going to post this for a bit. Even though many of you responded, eventually, I would love to see several freewrite encouragers signed up for each day. Our numbers are growing - which is wonderful!!! But reading 30+ posts takes a bit of time and I don't want anyone to get burned out.

Last week, I asked you for help and you responded!! Thank you so much @marcoriccardi @miniature-tiger @deirdyweirdy @byn @brisby @f3nix for taking on a day and @improv @dmcamera @snook @janine-ariane for being available once in a while.

What is that help, you ask. Every day, once the new prompt is out, the freewrite encouragers mentioned above visit all freewriters who left a link to their post in the comments of the previous day's prompt. They read the freewrite, leave a comment and drop the new prompt.

I will still give all of you a vote - mostly on the comment with your link and read as many freewrites as I can. If you want to help, you too can take a day or share. We often now have 30+ participants per day and there is plenty of fun reading for all to be had. If you can't commit to a day, please read as many of your fellow freewriters work as you can. Make sure to leave a comment!

To sign up on the google spreadsheet, click here

I suggest that all of you who are taking on the prompt delivery join discord. That way, you can private message each other. Especially the occasional people can speak up and say which day, or the 10 from the top... they want to read.

The first post by the Isle of Write - the discord which took us all in with open arms and hearts. Read it here and give it some love, please

Post by a Friend

Our freewriter friend @fitinfun asked me to share this post with you all. It has to do with money

Contests

@improv is the master of puns! New contest up!! Enter his Punday contest here
The Constrained Writing Contest by our fellow freewriter @svashta is on! Click here to join
@miniature-tiger is starting a 50 word story challenge. This is the opposite of what we are doing.
Here, you spill your gut out typing fast! The timer is beeping any time.
There - think about every word. You only get 50 to tell the story!
Click here to accept the challenge!
The pink rabbit contest is hosted by our freewriter friend @janine-ariane
If you like a picture to be a prompt, check out the #365daysofwriting challenge hosted by @mydivathings. Click here for a recent link

If you come across any other contests the freewriters might want to enter, please let me know!

Writing help

A free app: Grammarly. A lot of us are not native English speakers and I am finding it a helpful app. It will underline spelling and grammar mistakes. Just remember that is is not always right -especially if you use complex sentence structures. Here is the link
Remember The Most Dangerous Writing App. You set the time - 5 min - and start typing. Don’t stop!!! It will destroy what you wrote if you stop for more than 3 seconds - and backspace does not count as writing on the app. If you are prone to stop and think - this app forces you to keep going. You can make corrections after the 5 minutes are over.
A timer. Egg timer is a free tool you can use on your desktop to set a time. This is useful for our freewrites or if you want to work in blocks of time and then take a break. Here is the link
Our fellow freewriter @arbitrarykitten has a business here on Steemit. Several editors are offering to edit and format your post for a small fee. Check out their intro post
Our discord channel Isle of Write has workshop rooms for fiction, non-fiction, and poetry where some of the experienced writers might be able to give some tips. Join with this link https://discord.gg/zfXNRnK
If you are ready to get serious about improving your understanding of the English language check out @majes.tytyty blog. He has lots of useful information to understand words and their roots better. If you have questions or need help, leave a comment on his blog.
Check out @ghasemkiani if English is not your first language. He explains many idioms. Often to use those correctly is the biggest struggle when using a foreign language. He uses #idioms-tutorial
If you know of other helpful tools or people, please share with us!

Voting

Remember to check your voting power. Do not vote for a while if you are under 90!
https://www.steemnow.com/ or use https://steemworld.org/

Here is an excellent article explaining how to maximize your vote. It helps you to grow to vote wisely!!

And here is a counter opinion on voting by our freewriter @improv

This post is talking about using your vote for maximum curation. Thank you, Asher @abh12345 Read the post here

Money

There are several people who offer SBD for free on this platform! How great is that!!

Here are a few

@fisheggs - follow this account and you get up votes at random times.
@sydesjokes - he rewards his followers with SBD for any kind of interaction with him- comment, vote, resteem.
@craigcryptoking- he does a giveaway a few times a week. All you have to do is to be the first, or fourth or eight commenter. And he added a few more.
@danielsaori - he does a comment contest. A new challenge every week.
@rexusmo - I think a few of you have started to leave links to your post. Every day, he has a cheering up post. You leave a link to a post you are proud off and you might get a reward. Keep trying!!