Category Archives: Blogging

Apr 1 2013

Taking a Break


Panama City Beach, Florida, during spring break

Panama City Beach, Florida, during spring break (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You may have noticed I’ve already been on hiatus the last couple of weeks. I didn’t plan to be. This time of year is always busy, with taxes, spring cleaning, and other commitments. But this year seems worse than usual (or maybe I’m just getting too old for it 8^).

Anyway, I just haven’t been able to keep up with blogging. There are so many posts I wanted to write, even started to write, but I just couldn’t get them done.

It doesn’t look like things are going to improve before the end of April. So I’m just going to take a break. I’ll still try to do Friday Fictioneers if I can fit it in.

I gave up on the short story I mentioned before, and started a new one. It’s going much better, but I haven’t been able to work on it much either. I’m really hoping I can finish it this month and submit it somewhere.

Nov 15 2012

Friday Fiction: Remote


Bottle of Batteries Copyright-Sean Fallon

Bottle of Batteries Copyright-Sean Fallon

 

After such a welcoming response to my first Friday Fictioneers entry (record numbers of comments, likes and traffic), how could I resist participating again?

I’m hoping to make this a regular thing. I’m moving my regular posts back to Mondays (and trying to be more consistent about them), and planning to try to post a Friday Fiction entry a day early every Thursday, at least when my schedule allows.

So, without further ado, here’s my second Friday Fictioneers entry.

 

Remote

“Tom, it’s Frank. Drop what you’re doing. Turn on CNN. You have to see!”

“What’s going on?”

“Just do it. Now! I have to go.”

Tom hung up, and searched for the remote. Finding it under a cushion, he
hit power. Nothing. Again, still nothing. Dead batteries. He opened the
junk drawer and picked up the box of batteries. Empty. “I miss TVs with
buttons.”

He heard a distant sound. Crashes, explosions, screams, all
mixed together. “The battery recycle bottle! My only hope.”

Digging through the bottle, he tried battery after battery. Then darkness. He
ran to the window.

 

Sep 18 2012

Watch Out For WordPress Timeouts


The Passage of Time

The Passage of Time (Photo credit: ToniVC)

If you compose your blog posts directly in WordPress, watch out for session timeouts. I recently got burnt by this for the third time. I hope I’ve finally learned my lesson.

Here’s what happens. I start writing a post, or continue from a saved draft. Then I get interrupted by something (like having to do my real job 8^), but I leave it open in my browser. Later (sometimes hours later), I come back to it and start writing again. Most of the time everything is okay. But sometimes my session has timed out while I was away. Continue reading →

Aug 16 2012

Despair


English: Mount Despair 7292 feet (2223 m)

Mount Despair 7292 feet (2223 m) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Do you find those motivational posters annoying? Perhaps even nauseating? If so, here’s the perfect website for you: Despair.com

I particularly like their collection of Demotivator posters.

I’m tempted to order one, but I can’t make up my mind which one. Certainly there’s the one on Blogging. It’s so true. Or how about The Road Not Taken? Teamwork would be great for the office. On the other hand, Priorities might be good for a writer.

What do you think?

 

 

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Jul 19 2012

Blog Traffic—Where’d It Go?


I’d really like to get some feedback from more experienced bloggers on this. I’m into my fifth month of this blog now. It’s been growing slowly but steadily—32 followers now (not sure if this includes those using the rss feed, as I don’t think there’s a way to track them).

The problem is that starting last month my traffic stats took a big dive. This shows up most clearly on the monthly summary, taken two days ago:

WordPress traffic stats

WordPress traffic stats

My question is what caused the sudden drop off in traffic in June? Continue reading →

Jun 25 2012

Just a quick note…


I’m on my way out of town until Friday. I’m hoping to be able to check in here from time to time, but I can’t guarantee it. If anyone makes a comment and is waiting for it to be moderated, or for a response, please be patient.

Writing schedule

Well, my try at writing for 30 minutes first thing in the morning, before reading email and news, didn’t work out well. For one thing, I’m worried there might be an important email that needs a response. It just wreaks havoc with my OCD tendencies. Also, I’m often still tired from being up before I would naturally awake, so I don’t feel creative. I did manage to do a 15 minute practice on The Write Practice, but that was actually over lunch time. Which brings me to…

I’m going to try a new schedule: read my email, news, cartoons and blog posts in the morning as I have been, but make sure I skip less important things and get through it all before I start work. Then I’ll have my lunch hour free to write. I think this will work much better, but we’ll see.

A great checklist

I just wanted to mention one other thing: David Farland posted this checklist he says he used for his writing. This is one of the most comprehensive lists I’ve seen for the things that could go wrong with your story. I highly recommend it.

That’s all for now, back next week.

Jun 18 2012

Clipping Web Pages For Later


Cover of "Kindle Wireless Reading Device,...

Cover via Amazon

Today I want to mention a nice tool I found for Kindle (and Kindle reading app) users: Klip.me. Klip.me allows me to quickly send a web page to my Kindle. This has worked great for me with both Chromium 16 and Firefox 13.

Klip.me comes as a browser extension for Google Chrome (or the open source Chromium) and Apple Safari, as well as a (beta) bookmarklet supporting Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari and IE9. Continue reading →

Jun 15 2012

Refocusing on Writing


P writing blue

P writing blue (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This blog is supposed to be about my writing, as well as other random thoughts. Lately there’s been too much random and not enough writing.

The little writing time I’ve gotten in lately has gone entirely to my blog.I haven’t mentioned Write 1 Sub 1 since my post about it in mid-April. Well, I failed for May. I started a short story, but got sidetracked and never got back to it. Now we’re half way through June, and still no progress. I need to get refocused. Continue reading →

May 28 2012

What’s My Niche, Part Deux


English: People with Asperger's Syndrome are o...

People with Asperger’s Syndrome are often preoccupied with particular, specialized areas of knowledge, such as this boy’s interest in molecular structure. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A couple of months ago I wrote my original “What’s my niche?” post. At the time, I decided to ignore the advice to focus on a particular niche. But a couple of recent events have me rethinking this.

First, last month was National Autism Awareness Month, and I stumbled across several interesting blog posts aimed at raising awareness. These caught my attention because I am an Aspie (as I mention on my About page). Asperger’s is considered an Autism Spectrum Disorder, essentially a high-functioning form of Autism.   Continue reading →

May 14 2012

Random Act of Kindness BLITZ!


A smile. An encouraging word. A thoughtful gesture.

Each day people interact with us, help, and make our day a bit brighter. This is especially true in the Writing Community.

Take a second to think about writers you know, like the critique partner who works with you to improve your manuscript. The writing friend who listens, supports and keeps you strong when times are tough. The author who generously offers council, advice and inspiration when asked.

So many people take the time to make us feel special, don’t they? They comment on our blogs, re-tweet our posts, chat with us on forums and celebrate our successes.

Kindness ROCKS!

To commemorate the release of their book The Emotion Thesaurus, Becca and Angela at The Bookshelf Muse are hosting a TITANIC Random Act Of Kindness BLITZ. And because I think kindness is contagious, I’m participating too.

Now being new to the writing community, I’ve had trouble deciding what to offer and to whom. After some pondering I realized that one of my strengths is a good eye for typos and grammatical errors.

So I’ve decided to offer a proofreading of one manuscript to one commenter chosen randomly from those who comment on this post. Continue reading →