It seems that every person, at some point in their life, wants to go ‘back to basics.’ To something more simple, more rugged. While most people don’t necessarily want to go back to being a nomadic hunter/gatherer, there is something to be said about the ability to make what you need to survive. There are […]
Don't bypass edible plants, nuts, and even insects! Learn how to forage. Here are the basics for getting started on this fun survival skill.
Self-reliant living starts with re-skilling, and unless you have a mentor handy, there's no better way than hitting the books. These are my favorite books for self reliant living, and they're taught me more than
Building and sustaining a fire is one of the most valuable survival skills, but it can be challenging. Here's how to do it.
Homesteading Resources - Real food, food preservation, gardening, local food, natural health, homestead animals, homemaking, survivalism, preparedness.
You are going to need light if you are staying up at a cabin, especially an off-grid one. When the night comes, what are you going…
When we think of medicinal herbs, most people's minds go right to small weeds and flowers growing at the edge of your lawn or on a roadside. We don't usually think of trees as a
Here are some of our favorite old wives’ tales from the 1800s. We make no distinction between fact and fiction, so try them at your own risk.
Whether you're building, gardening, cleaning, on a construction, doing repairs and maintenance, you'll need these homesteading tools to make the job easier!
Hobbies that can also increase your survival savvy? Yes, please! Check out these 54 fun and useful activities to expand and improve your prepping skills.
Most people throw away tin cans without a second thought, but as you'll see, in a survival scenario they can be put to good use.
Trees not only provide oxygen, shade, and firewood, but they also offer many other benefits. Knowing about them could save your life.
Grandpa's tool maintenance tricks will help your hand tools and garden tools last longer. They might even become treasured hand me downs.
A concern that is high on the list for many preppers is how to stop bleeding in an emergency when they or family members are injured.
By the time she was caught and tortured by the Nazis, she'd saved 2,500 Jewish children. Yet Irena Sendler, who has died aged 98, insisted she was no heroin - and only wished she'd rescued more.
What if a disaster knocks out the power to your home, leaving you without a refrigerator? Here are nine ways to keep your food cold.
During a nuclear war, the thing most people have to deal with is radiation. Here are some OTC items that can help.
A dark winter is when there are widespread power outages during the winter, and that is exactly what is happening to millions of people.
Netflix has lots of survival and homesteading TV shows that offer valuable life skills you can apply to an off-grid lifestyle.
It's hard being a perfectionist writer. No joke. You all who fit the qualifications know what I mean. The urge to edit everything. The desire to make it right the first time. The need for every chapter, every scene, every word to be perfect. That doesn't fly come NaNo time. It's easy to read the rules and learn the guidelines. Easy to tell yourself "just write." And way, way easier said than done. After six years of NaNo and seven attempted novels, I've learned a few things about NaNo, first drafts, and not pulling your hair out when all you want to do is Make. It. Perfect. 1. Redefine Perfect on a Draft-by-Draft Basis I think we can all come to a near-consensus on when our first draft perfection streak started: the first time a teacher, probably in middle or high school said, "This is a big project, so I want you guys to turn your first draft into me by next Friday." First draft? What's that nonsense? We'd been writing essays start to finish since our very first one. We'd perfected the last-minute, overnighter A+. Our first drafts are our only drafts. So we'd write up our turn-in-ready essay and make a few changes to dumb it down, give the teacher something to review. It really shouldn't have worked, but it did, and it ingrained in us the confidence that we don't really need to worry about drafts. We'll get it right the first time. HahahahahHahahHAAHAHaaaaa Thing is, though, a novel isn't an essay. There's a lot more room for error in 50,000 words than there is in 5,000. And when you realize 30k in that you have to completely redo everything because of a plothole you left in the third chapter, it's easy to give up. It's a failure, and we don't want to fail. Nothing less than an A, right? The trick is to redefine "perfect" to the individual draft, to move the goalposts of perfection one draft at a time. Author Jane Smiley said, "Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist." Accept this as the gospel truth. The first draft's goalpost isn't "ready to publish," it's just "written." It doesn't matter if there's giant gaping plot holes. "No plot holes" is the goalpost for draft two. Or "no typos" or "no atrocious grammar" or whatever you want that second draft goalpost to be. Not "perfect perfect" though. That's at LEAST third draft, if not fourth or fifth. 2. Just Because You Wrote It Doesn't Mean You Have To See It So you just wrote a 2,000 word scene and realize "this isn't working." You have to scrap it all. A whole day's writing, down the recycle bin. But before you hit that delete key, stop! You wrote that. And maybe part of it is salvageable or belongs in a different scene. Don't shortchange your wordcount or do something you may regret. Just hide it. You've got a number of options to make the bad text go away without actually going away forever. Make the text white or use black highlight on black text. Change the font to an unreadable one, like Wingdings. Move the text to the bottom of the document, several pages down, or if you're using a program like Scrivner, to a separate file. You may be able to think of other tricks to make your mistakes disappear. Whatever you choose to do, implement it, from single sentences to whole chapters. During the first draft, and especially during NaNo, don't just delete haphazardly. That's part of draft two. Write that on your goalpost. 3. It's Okay To Skip Around or Come Back Later If you're anything like me, you like your perfect drafts to be written in one long swoop, start to finish, Chapter 1 to The End. You write a book just like you read a book. Maybe the thought of breaking it up gives you cold sweats. After all, how can you accurately write the scene where the hero finally meets the villain if you don't know if the love interest is there or not, or if there's a mentor figure the villain's supposed to kill that you haven't introduced yet so you don't even know his personality! This is me telling you, it's okay. It's okay to skip that awkward conversation if you don't know how to write it yet. It's okay to jump forward to the end when you too happy to write the death scene. It's okay to come back later, whether it's a huge event or a name for a minor character. Leave yourself a note, highlighted yellow and surrounded by attention-grabbing symbols (I like to do [ADD ____]). You don't need the paragraph or scene or chapter to be perfect now, only complete later. And I'll tell you why. You don't complete puzzles by doing one row at a time, in order, right? You get the pieces and parts you can figure out first (the outer frame, the obvious, odd colored pieces, etc) and then use those to fill in the rest. You can do that with your novel. It's just a puzzle where you decide what the picture is. 4. You're Always A Winner It can feel like if you don't get that purple verified bar, you've failed. You'll want to pretend you never even tried, to make November and NaNo have just not happened for us. We're perfectionists because we don't like failure. But sometimes, despite our best efforts, even if we do everything right, we just can't win. Maybe life got in the way, or maybe you lost your drive. Whatever the reason, you lost. But you've also won. Whether you finish November with 100 words or 49,999, those are words you didn't have before. You WROTE. You created something that didn't exist before, and you have the road paved to keep going. There is nothing stopping you from keeping going beyond November. You don't have to put down the story and never look at it again just because you didn't finish it in the course of one month. The "victory" goal of NaNo is 50,000 words, but the real goal of NaNo is to just write. Did you write? Congrats. You've won. What did you win? The right to call yourself a writer. Heck yeah, that's awesome. And what are a few colored pixels compared to that? ******** So, perfectionists, let go of your hair. November is coming, and you're going to write, and it's going to be just fine. Self-inflicted bald spots only lead to more stress. Scientific fact.
I’ve always liked making things with my hands, so when I took a spinning for beginners class I was hooked. I learned how to crochet years ago, so spinning became the next logical step for me to take. Why buy yarn when you can make it yourself? I knew I had to get my hands on a drop spindle.
While many of us dream of starting a business, the reality often is that we have to continue to work our day job in the meantime. Here's how to survive.
OCLC number: ocm04322029
It's time to charge more as a freelancer. Us freelancers need to decide our worth and actually ask for it! Click to read through these money-making tips.
Find out some tips and tricks on how to maintain consistency as a blogger in today's post. Being consistent is crucial to building a following.
Off grid communication is essential during a SHTF scenario or disaster. Here's how to communicate without your phone or Internet.
Lots of people dream of building a homestead from scratch, but worry about the cost to do so. Is it expensive? How can you reduce your cost? We'll explore the cost to build a homestead from scratch, including our experience building a cordwood house on raw land.
It is possible to get sick after touching a product you brought home from the grocery store. Here's how to disinfect your groceries.
A power outage in winter can be fatal. Without electricity, you won't have heat. No heat for a day is one thing. Imagine not having heat for several days.
Pine resin has many uses, especially in a survival situation. Read more on how to collect, and use of pine resin. It has more uses than you think!
Grow your best garden yet! A Master Gardeners shares her secrets - from soil to harvest. Learn tips for all skill levels.
Don't throw away your sawdust! We found a few dozen uses in and around the homestead you'll be glad you learned.
In this article, we'll go over some of the best powerless appliances for your kitchen. I'm talking meat grinders, rocket stoves, pasta makers, percolators, solar ovens, hand crank mixers, hand crank blenders, and more. How many of them do you have?
Give your vehicle a better chance against an EMP with this simple suggestion.
Even those who have spent their whole lives preparing for disaster are prone to mistakes. And once you make them, there’s no going back.
Trees are great for firewood and shade, but planting certain trees can offer other benefits such as medicine and tools.
To survive your second draft, you can’t tackle everything at once! Instead, you need something to focus on, specifically your novel’s structure.
Writing 10,000 words in a weekend - crazy, right? I thought so, too, until I did it! Here are my top tips for surviving the task and making it fun, too.
Neatorama is proud to bring you a guest post from Ernie Smith, the editor of Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail. In another life, he ran ShortFormBlog.Controversial literature that lives at the very edge of the First Amendment plays an important societal role: It tests exactly what we can say.In the age of the internet, it’s easier than ever to get one’s hand on information that touches the very edge of the First Amendment’s limits. (We are by ...
Planting medicinal trees and shrubs in your home landscape turns your yard into a holistic farm-macy! Here are ten wonderful medicinal to consider for your herbal medicine use!
Even hardcore survivalists can overlook things. What did you overlook? Here are some survival items you might have forgotten to buy.
Knowing how to keep your house cool in the summertime without using electricity is a good skill to have. Especially when the homesteading life doesn't stop because it's hot!
Homesteading is hard! Here's my 10 must-have items to make homesteading easier - and where to buy them.
During a power outage, people use flashlights or candles, but there are other options. Here's how to light your home when the power is out.
