favorite place.

This post is written about a bridge in Trussville by Sidnie of Green Enough for Me. Sidnie is a native Alabamian who is currently living in Germany with her military husband and two boys, Austin and Cade. Her husband will be deploying to Afghanistan soon. Her blog is an amazing, and often heart-wrenching peek inside the lives of those serving our country overseas. You can also follow Sidnie on Twitter at greenenough4me.

In my hometown, there's this green bridge that crosses over this river. It's not much. Not much at all. But this bridge, the kissing bridge, could quite honestly be my favorite place on earth.
I'm sure if it could talk, it'd tell the most vibrant stories.

David and I, newlyweds. David, living in Germany, home on leave. A month away from Austin's birth. January of 2007.

For as long as I can remember, it's been there. And long before that, it was somewhere else. It's endured a several mile move, involving trucks and cranes. I can just imagine the people it took to get it settled into its new home. I remember taking pictures with my cousins on this bridge when we were little, all snaggle toothed but still grinning. I wish I had those pictures to share, but they're more than likely tucked in an old suitcase at the foot of the bed in the guest room at my parent's house. I remember many cross country practices running across this bridge, hearing the wood pound beneath our feet. Always confident that the sturdy, old bridge would hold our weight.

Austin and Sidnie, 4 months pregnant with Cade. Daddy is in Iraq. June of 2008.
It's just off the main highway that runs through town. There's a few concrete picnic tables and a grassy area. But nothing more. Somedays, you can find some boys fishing for minnows. Or some barefoot children wading through the ankle deep water. You could tell how bad a storm was by how much of the bridge was covered with muddy red water. The town flooded once, years ago, and the bridge was covered for what seemed like forever. When the water receded, the bridge was still there. Covered with debris, but still there.

David, Sidnie, Austin and Cade. All of us on our last day home on leave after David's deployment. July 5, 2009.

As our family changes, so does the bridge. It's older. And parts have been replaced. It's needed paint over the years and probably needs some work that remains unseen. It's been rained on. And ran across. It stands firm across the river. It holds up to the footprints and the weather. It may creak, here and there, but it never sways. It's been through hell and back. But its always there.

It's strong. And beautiful. And confident.

It's always there.

"The ties that binds us are sometimes impossible to explain. They connect us even after it seems like the ties should be broken. Some bonds defy distance and time and logic; Because some ties are simply... meant to be."
-Meredith Grey, Grey's Anatomy

Where is your favorite place in Alabama?

Motivation from the Southern Christian Writers Conference

This post was written by Kathryn Lang from Successful Freelance Writing. Her reason for her blog is to help others fulfill their passions and dreams as she has been able to do by being a freelance writer. She has written an E-book called "Make Money Writing" to help achieve this goal. She is also a Christian, a wife, and a homeschooling mom of boys.

By Kathryn

This year was a new experience for me. Every year I go down expecting to learn something or meet someone. This year I spent the two hours driving down to Tuscaloosa repeating the speech I was scheduled to give during the first session.

Once my stomach settled down – AFTER I finished speaking – then I was able to settle in and learn some new things, visit with some old friends and make new friends.

A break down of some of the conference sessions I was able to attend:

• Greg Daniels of the Daniel Literary Group discussed “Finding and Working with a Literary Agent.” One of his key points was that all writers need to build a platform. Blogging is one of the aspects of that platform so each of you is well on your way.

• Cec Murphey was a keynote speaker but also presented a session concerning the relationship between writers and editors. He wanted us to understand that editors are in the business of making writers look their best AND that writers need to be in the business of putting forward their best before the editors even get to it.

• Vanessa Davis Griggs was the second keynote speaker and I believe everyone in the room walked away motivated to take on their purpose. She definitely got me energized to pursue those things that I am certain of regardless of circumstances.

• Carol Evans is the Editor of Birmingham Parent and she presented a session on “Writing for Parenting Publications.” She emphasized the importance of grabbing the attention of the editors from the subject line and carrying that through the query and manuscript.

The experiences that I gained at the Southern Christian Writers Conference were not limited to the many sessions that were available. I expand on what I learned in my post about what you can learn at writers conferences. The thing to remember is that conferences, workshops, classes and even other blogs are all tools to help you better your writing skills and expand your writing opportunities.

To read more detail on the Southern Christian Writers Conference, Check out Kathryn's full-length post here.guest

What's Your Blog Story?

This post was written by Mary Snyder. Mary is a Christian speaker and a published author. She is a very active and humorous part of the Alabama Blogging and Twittering community. She'll tell you more about herself and her journey into blogging below:

When Rachel tweeted that she needed some guest blogs up this week, my helium hand affliction kicked into high gear and I raised my virtual hand with a “I’ll do it!” tweet. Don’t get me wrong, I want to get to know all the bloggers, but I’m just clueless on what to blog about for such a group. So I thought…. why not blog about why we started our blogs? Yes, real deep and meaningful stuff. I know. Now some of you may have deep meaningful stories, but I don’t.

Let me introduce myself & tell you a little of my blog story. I’m Mary & you’ll find my blog at http://www.MaryRSnyder.com. I’m a blogger by default. I started my blog in January 2008 when my then editor suggested that I needed to secure the rights to a website of my name and start a blog. MarySnyder.com was taken so I opted for Mary R Snyder. I started the blog on January 3, 2008 and I didn’t know what to blog about. See, not much has changed. My blog is really a mish-mash of thoughts and ideas that fall out of my head and land on the page. Some are deep and thoughtful and others are frivolous and silly, but that’s my brain.

You may wonder about that editor that suggested the blog, but sadly we’ve gone our separate ways. No hard feelings, but Thomas Nelson decided to cancel my upcoming book and we just didn’t have much to talk about after that. Why they chose to drop me and not that Lucado dude I’ll never know. Me or Max Lucado? Well, I know you’re stunned too. Apparently Max brings in a few dollars for the Thomas Nelson folks.

The book is being shopped around by my agent, so we’ll see what happens. But the blog is still up and running …. aground sometimes, but still running.

The blog has connected me to women who are now among my dearest friends. We met on the blogs, we connected on facebook and we chat daily on twitter. These women are so incredibly important to me and many I’ve met face to face and others I’m looking forward to meeting soon. I don’t know what it is about this crazy bloggy world, but it’s created a new place to build friendships and that’s a good thing.

It’s amazing to think of all that has happened because of this little blog. I have new friends, not to replace my old friends, but to add to them. My life is richer because of them. I’m now speaking regularly for women’s groups and events. I blog for two of the biggest and most amazing Christian women’s events – the Girls Getaway Cruise and Extraordinary Women Conferences. I get to hang out with women at these events and I have so very much fun worshiping & praising the Lord with these women. I’m constantly pinching myself that I get to do this work! It’s incredible! It’s fun! and It’s humbling to think of all the bloggers the Lord could call to this and He chose me. I don’t take any of the credit; I’m just honored to be in His service.

The blog that started because someone told me it was a good idea turned out to be a great idea.

Why did you start your blog? Share!

How YOU Can Contribute To Alabama Bloggers!

So obviously, I do not want to be writing every post for this blog.

Frankly, that would be silly.

The point of this blog is to be a conglomerate of all Alabama Bloggers.

One of the things that I want to accomplish with Alabama Bloggers is to introduce us all to each other. I want us to get to know each other, find like-minded bloggers that we can bond with, and be entertained by each other.

So I want to spend a couple of posts per week allowing you to introduce yourself to the rest of Alabama's Bloggers. What I have in mind right now is doing three types of posts: Profile Posts, Spotlight Posts, and regular contributors.

A profile post is your opportunity to introduce yourself on a deeper level to us. Answer any or all of the following questions, or make up your own!

Who are you?
Where do you live and what are you involved in?
Where are your favorite places in Alabama?
Why do you blog?
How long have you been blogging / how many times a week do you blog?
What do you think your style of blogging is?
Who are your favorite bloggers?
What kind of blogs do you like reading?
What are some links to your best posts?

The best way to get people to read your blog is to be interesting (duh!), so tell us all the interesting, quirky, silly dirt on yourself!!

But don't get craaaaaazy - (i.e. - keep it G-Rated, people!!!)

A spotlight post will have a short (2-3 sentence) introduction of you, and then the rest of the post will be a normal blog post of your choice. It can be previously published on your blog or it can be original - just give us your best!!

If you're interested in being featured, please email me! Feel free to submit either type of the above posts or both! Or you can submit multiple links to posts on your blog as possible spotlight posts.

Also, I definitely need some regular contributors. If you're interested in contributing once a week, every two weeks, once a month, or more or less (I'm really flexible, can you tell??), please email me or comment on this post and let me know.

If you have a specific topic you'd like to do a regular column about, that would be great. Or if you just know that you'd like to write and have different things you'd like to write about, that would be great also. Just let me know your ideas and let's see if we can work something out!

But have mercy on me - I'm juggling a lot, so I might need a little bit of time to get back to your emails.

And, comment on this post what YOU'D like to know about other bloggers. What are some great questions that they could answer?

And especially, what other kinds of guest posts/recurring columns would you be interested in reading?

The bottom line is, I need all of you to contribute to make this blog work!

Thanks in advance!