Tag: Noon and Wilder

  • Lovely Monday

    Boria

    It’s Monday at four o’clock in the morning, almost five.  I couldn’t sleep so I got up to write a bit.  I figured I’d use the time to share some thoughts on writing and life, at least according to Noony.

    First, a digression: the picture above made me laugh this morning when I wandered my archive looking for something to illustrate today’s post.  Boria is an odd cat.  Raised by our dog, he thinks he is a dog.  This is a look he gets on his face when I do things he doesn’t expect – like get out of bed at an unholy hour.

    I talked about blocks last time I had a regular bimonthly post, and I’m still in a similar situation vis a vis my story.  But this isn’t all bad, at least in my opinion.  Why?

    Fallow periods are necessary in any artist’s life.  Sometimes they arrise because we fish our pond too aggressively and don’t take the time to restock the fish.  Other times they arrise because of outside stressors.  This latter one is the case for me as I extricate myself from an organization I’ve been actively building for the last three and a half years.

    On the other hand, as I sit back and reflect on all I’ve done and learned, I realize I am wealthy indeed.  I’ve made friendships that I’ll keep for a lifetime, and, like Thomas Edison is quoted as saying relative to his failed attempts to invent a working light bulb, I’ve learned things that don’t work in running a business.  While I haven’t been writing as much in the last two months in terms of story output, I have been blogging quite a lot and working on my social media tasks.  I think it’s important to remember that even if we aren’t working on a particular project, it does not mean that we are not working – even if there’s no action apparent to the outside eye.

    Fallow periods are necessary and deserve our respect.

    One hopes that after this one, I won’t freak out my cat anymore, as well.

    Boria

  • Writer Wednesday: Why Blogs Are Good For Writers

    In thinking about a topic for today’s post, I am reminded why blogging is good for writers.  Of all the forms of social media available to us, blogging is the most flexible and the most adaptable to an individual writer’s style.  Not to diss Facebook, by any means, I merely want to point out that if you’re a writer, you ought to be blogging.  Why?

    Here, then, are Aunt Noony’s Five Reasons Why Blogs Are Good For Writers:

    1.  Blogging allows you to explore your voice.  What is voice?  It is, quite simply, the thing you use to talk with.  It’s a Zen concept and, for that reason, tough to pin down.  But what is definite is that voice is as individual as the writer.  The better we can get in touch with our own voice, the better writers we become.  We get in touch with our voice by writing.  A lot.  Blogging lets you do that in a low-pressure, supportive environment.

    2.  Blogging gives you a platform.  Do anything long enough and you begin to develop a set of topics and opinions upon which you can feel qualified to write.  If you love coffee, for example, pretty soon you’ll get tired of writing “I love coffee” and start to come up with some interesting coffee facts.  Collect enough of those kinds of articles and poof: instand coffee platform, just add water.

    3.  Topics for blogs are unlimited.  Do you enjoy talking about underwater basketweaving?  Go for it! Cosplay?  Have at it!  Knitting?  Do it!  Any and all topics, both tame and adult-oriented, lend themselves well to blogging.

    4.  You can expand your skills by blogging.  You will, over time, learn a bit of HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language), the language in which websites are written.  You will begin to understand how search engines find topics when users are looking for things.  You will make friends and influence people though your blog, and one day, maybe help others into the world of blogging.

    5.  You don’t have to limit yourself to arbitrary character limits.  If you only feel like posting a sentence or two and a bunch of pictures, you can.  If you feel like writing and writing and writing on a topic that makes you passionate, you can.  The sky’s the limit!  You can adapt your writing to your moods and, in the process, collect a set of clips that you can leverage later to other blogging opportunities.

    Still on the fence?  Why not ask your favorite blogger if they’d be willing to let you do a guest post on a particular topic?  No one says you have to dive in head-first your first time.  You can ease into the blogosphere gently.

    I’ll warn you, though.  It can quickly become addictive.  Enjoy!

    Write on!

  • Coming Soon – Another Chapter of the Night Is a Harsh Mistress

    Just wanted to give everyone a quick update – my coauthor, Rachel Wilder, has agreed to help me finish The Night Is a Harsh Mistress!  Stay tuned for my next post, which will have the next chapter.


    Happy writing!