Strategy & Content Services with Sandra Lee Schubert

Welcome to Explore Writing Through Your Senses . Enjoy the journey to becoming a more creative person. You do not have to be a professional writer to write. Writing is an activity anyone can do. Your writer’s toolkit is always with you.  We are founts of creativity.  Are you suffering from writer’s block? Can’t come up with a line to start your story? Using your senses, inspiration is as close as your nose, eyes, or your ears. How to use this book: Each essay in this collection is designed to be concise, allowing you to quickly read, engage with a creative prompt, and start writing. As you explore your senses, you’ll develop a rich repertoire of sensory details to enhance your writing anytime. Let your imagination roam free and enjoy the journey! Suggested amount $3.50. Available on Gumroad. Sign-up required. 

With summer just around the corner, it's time to heat up your content strategy. Seasonal content is a great way to engage your audience and tap into the excitement of summer. Whether you're writing blog posts, newsletters, or social media updates, consider themes like vacation tips, summer sales, or outdoor activities.  Use vibrant, playful language that captures the carefree spirit of the season.  Remember, summer is all about fun and relaxation, so keep your tone light and engaging.  Let's make this summer sizzle with content that resonates! Authored by myself with the support of AI, alongside Grammarly/ProWritingAid. Content tone and edits are my own. 

April is Earth Month, and with Earth Day on the 22nd, it's the perfect time to focus on eco-friendly content. Whether you're a business promoting sustainable products or a writer passionate about environmental issues, crafting content that reflects your green values is essential. Here are tips to get you started.  Start by highlighting your eco-friendly practices, products, or services.  Use your platform to educate your audience about sustainability, offering tips and actionable steps they can take.  Remember to write with empathy and avoid sounding preachy.  Celebrate Earth Day by making your content part of the solution! What if you are none of the above? No problem. We all live on this planet. Caring about the earth and leaving a healthy planet is a plus for us all. Highlight other businesses that create sustainable products. Write about recycling tips you have found helpful in your business or home.  Authored by myself with the support of AI, alongside Gram...

Continue to refresh and revitalize your website content. It deserves a thorough review and update. Here’s a couple of short tips for your website content: 1. Update Outdated Information: Review all pages and ensure that your information is current and accurate. 2. Improve SEO: Refresh keywords, meta descriptions, and titles to improve search engine rankings. Use tools like Google Analytics to identify popular keywords in your industry. 3. Enhance Visuals: Update images, videos, and graphics to align with your brand’s current style and message. 4. To optimize for mobile, make sure your website is mobile-friendly and responsive. A well-maintained website reflects professionalism and keeps your audience engaged. Regularly updating your content can boost your SEO and keep visitors returning for more fresh insights. Resources: 1. The Ultimate Guide to SEO in 2024 - HubSpot Blog 2. The 15 Best SEO Tips for Digital Marketing Beginners - CareerFoundry 3. How To Get Backlinks: 10+ Ways That Rea...

“I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.”  - Peter De Vries If you're looking to make writing a more consistent part of your daily routine, here are five ideas to get you started. Don’t try all at once. Test them out for a couple of weeks, a month, a year. Routines take time. I will confess up front that I am not a consistent writer. I write in bursts of creative inspiration, which is different from my writing for work which means deadlines. I am a poet and essayist, with some prose and fiction. I don’t carve out the time to yank the words out and toss them on paper to see what happens. I don’t give myself the deadlines I do for work. However, do what works for you. These ideas are suggestions to kickstart your routine. Write in the morning . Many writers find that starting their day with a bit of writing can set a productive tone for the rest of the day. Try setting aside dedicated writing time first thing in the morning, before you check your emails or s...

Spring to me is the perfect time to make plans and set goals. The air vibrates as everything wakes up. The birds are perkier, and lunchtime is for walking outside and not just for huddling in warm offices. The ground has thawed enough for planting to begin. What we plant now will blossom and bear fruit in the summer and the fall. It is also the time to seed our creative gardens. My grandmother’s garden took two forms. Her front lawn was manicured and beautiful. A wayward dandelion knew not to rest in her grass. Flowers lined her house, leading to the backyard. At first glance, it mirrored the front lawn with well-placed bushes and trimmed grass. But toward the back, there was a line of demarcation. Behind the careful planning, she gave her garden over to its natural desires. The garden was a riot of color and textures, a cornucopia of sensory pleasure. Wildflowers grew with abandon, trees linking with shrubs. Bees had their choice of nectar. My grandmother loved her perfect garden ...

Creativity comes to us in many forms. We are born with talent, or we earn it through study and diligence. But most artists know that training alone will not give you inspiration. It comes from many places. Senses help us navigate the world and provide us with enough stimulation and inspiration to make a lifetime habit of our art. What wakes you up in the middle of the night with a burst of an idea? Have you ever had a feeling so deep that it compelled you to your computer or canvas? One advantage of being an artist is being in touch with our intuitive nature. We have developed our senses so we can be fine-tuned to the inspiration that is all around us. You can’t escape the need to follow a creative urge. The impulses that drive creativity can come in many shapes. Trusting the promptings that intuition gives you can lead to unexpected creative surprises. I know some of my best writing comes when I trust my gut and write with my heart. Consider that each sense has an intuitive aspect. Th...

Food, glorious food, we can’t escape it. The taste, the texture, the way sugar dissolves on the tongue. How salt brings out the flavor in our meals. Food thrills us. It can torment us with desire. I don’t know many of us who successfully live without food. Without it, we die. Food represents who we are. Taste. A good meal shared with friends is a sublime pleasure. We live in the best of times because we can taste so many things. A neighborhood is a feast of tactile delights. The Korean store is next to the Turkish market and across the boulevard from a string of Restaurants that include Thai, Dominican, Mexican, Romanian, and a McDonald’s just across from a Subway franchise. There is a taste of delight for everyone. I am happy to live in a place where I can sample a variety of foods and all the intricacies of taste. Gourmet magazine used to publish an anthology of food-related stories. Food was the central character. Taste is paramount in each story. The driving forces are the sensuali...

Sniff, sniff. Sniff. Do you smell that? Is that the scent of creativity filling the air? Of all the senses, this one can really affect you in multiple ways. According to the now-defunct Sense of Smell Institute, the average human being can recognize approximately 10,000 different odors. They said, “And a connection between artists and scent can be traced back at least as far as Leonardo da Vinci, who had such an abiding interest in fragrances that he listed among his many duties for Ludovico il Moro in Milan the practice of court perfumer.” Typing at your computer limits you to the screen in front of you. Using a journal can give you more sensual opportunities. Choose a journal not just for its visual pleasure but for the smell of the new leather and paper in the journal. Have you ever walked into a room and sniffed the air? Your mood can shift completely by its smell. We have a long memory regarding scents. Our childhood is full of scent experiences. Discovering our own body odors is ...

As artists, it is important to engage in all our senses as fully as possible. Think of a potter out of touch with her clay. She might create technically correct pieces, yet they lack a certain feeling to them. There is a potter whose work I love. I like to hold her pieces. They vibrate. Each piece seems to have a special energy. Each item in her collection has a feeling of love in it. Wouldn’t each of us want our work to elicit that kind of energy? Do you   remember the first thing you ever touched? Most likely you don’t. When you were young your senses were on fire. Every touch was a fresh experience. Watch a baby and how they react to new textures. It surprises them. You can see the baby trying to figure out what it is they are feeling. Even when touching something they don’t like they are still willing to keep exploring. How can that happen? First, remember what it’s like to feel. Explore the world as if you were a child again. Don’t take for granted the ordinary things. As you ...

Artists use their senses. Everything is a playground for the muse. The way the light hits water can lead to a brilliant piece of art or an interesting story.  A friend and I discussed the insanity of our senses. How we can be over-stimulated, fractured by the sounds, the shapes, and the colors surrounding us. We are in a state of wonder about this heightened awareness and where we take it. As I write I am listenig to Irish music on a public radio station. Outside my closed door, I can hear the fan as it oscillates in my living room. Out of this mass of sound, one thing can catch my ear. It could be the sound of a baby crying or the distant wail of a fire truck. As a child, I could hear fog horns of the East River. I knew from stories my mother told me that the river was a dangerous place. The sound made me think of a lone ship lost on the water searching for its way out of the darkness. Many years later that sound still haunts me. What do we hear? Angels singing while listening to ...

Photo by  Daniil Kuželev How do our senses influence our creativity? We use our available senses all the time. We touch, taste, feel, smell, and listen. Our creative selves swim in a sea of senses. The question is, can we use this to be our better selves? Let’s start and become keen observers and writers. At the beginning of the year, we imagine what that year will bring. According to the dictionary vision “is a special sense by which the qualities of an object (as color, luminosity, shape, and size) constituting its appearance are perceived and which is mediated by the eye.” What if using this special sense, we look at our lives in a novel way? My eyesight is not the best. When I bought new glasses the world came back into view. I didn’t know what I had been missing. Not that everything sparkled; I couldn’t help but notice that I needed to revisit cleaning my apartment. But the fuzziness I had been living with disappeared, and the edges came back into focus. I rediscovered a new s...