First off, what the hell is going on with WordPress today? I woke up and this blog’s “best ever” day has gone up by nine views, and my fiction blog’s has gone down by four. Has this happened to anyone else or are they just screwing with me?
Second, I really am going to finish replying to all my comments soon. Tomorrow, if all goes well. But when does it ever? Can anyone answer me this question?
Third, I need another glass of wine.
Fourth, … oh yeah! Another WTF WordPress. I scheduled my 63rd Scenes from the Second Seat on the Right post for 11am this morning but it went live at 10. Did WordPress not get the memo that the time changed last night? Was it only Canada that changed? I’m confuddled.
Fifth, what do I do with all these Hallowe’en candies?
Sixth, if anyone can answer the above questions to my satisfaction and (as always) with humour, you get a point. Extra points if you send me a bottle of wine.
It’s true. I’ve been slacking off on my blog. Two days this past week I failed to post. My excuse? Life. What kind of excuse is that? A terrible one, if you ask me.
So I’ve decided to join in to not one, but two events to keep me on track for the rest of the month. I won’t be able to participate in Every Damned Day December this year, so I’m gonna make up for it ahead of time.
So what, you might ask, are these events? Let me show you.
The first is NaBloPoMo (or National Blog Posting Month I assume, since NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. …shouldn’t that be INTERnational by now?). The sign-up form can be found here if you’re interested in joining me: http://www.blogher.com/joining-nablopomo-november-add-your-blog-2014-blogroll-now Here’s the official logo:
It’s Friday!! What with Hallowe’en and the chaos that comes with it, I totally forgot about your Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt! Thanks so much for the reminder, John! So what to do…? Oh, I know!
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “memory.” That’s it! Have fun!
After you’ve written your Saturday post tomorrow, please link it here at this week’s prompt page in the comments so others can find it and see your awesome Stream of Consciousness post. Anyone can join in!
To make your post more visible, use the SoCS badge! Just paste it in your Saturday post so people browsing the reader will immediately know your post is stream of consciousness and/or pin it as a widget to your site to show you’re a participant. Wear it with pride!!
Badge by: Doobster @ Mindful Digressions
Here are the rules:
1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.
2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.
3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” or “Begin with the word ‘The’.”
4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people can come and read your post! For example, in your post you can write “This post is part of SoCS:” and then copy and paste the URL found in your address bar at the top of this post into yours. Your link will show up in my comments, for everyone to see. The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top.
5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.
6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!
Okay, so you have a WordPress site of your own and your site has followers. When you started out, you got your first few notifications that someone had hitched their wagon to your blog and you thought, “Great! I have someone reading what I write!” But then as time went by, you realized that maybe they weren’t reading after all.
Fast forward to where you are now. You have tens if not thousands of followers. How many of those numbers do you figure actually visit your blog?
What brought this up in the first place was the municipal elections we had yesterday across the province of Ontario. Voter turnout at most elections is far below the numbers of of eligible voters. The difference between running for election and blogging is the people running for election are putting out money to advertise themselves. At least we bloggers don’t need to go to that length to have our sites viewed. But I digress.
From what I’ve gathered over the last twenty-one months of blogging, it seems that any of us are, at any given time, being visited by 10%-20% of our followers. The 20% is if you’re either very lucky or if all of your followers are friends and family.
I have just over 2,100 blog followers at the moment. I would estimate that over the course of my blogging career, I’ve had between 10-15% of my numbers actually reading my site on a daily basis. Which means that people have come and gone, and some have come back again, but on an average day I have around that many regular followers, not including those who show up once and I never see again. My regular followers don’t visit every day, but I know they’re out there by our interactions. On my fiction blog it’s even less – I have over 600 followers and would guess there only around 20 or 30 people who regularly read. That’s only about 3-5%
I’m far more frustrated with my 3-5%, obviously, than with my 10-15%, but as I said, at least it doesn’t cost me anything but the time I put into writing.
If you had to guess just going by feel and judging by the number of followers you chat with in a day, how many of your followers are reading you?
The English language amazes me. I’m sure many other languages are equally amazing, but English is the one I’m most familiar with, so it’s the one I’ll talk about.
When I came up with this week’s prompt, “degree(s),” I had one thing in mind. The temperature. But then I thought about how many different things it could mean and I was astounded. So many words in the English language are like this. It must be so confusing for people learning it. At the same time it opens up so many possibilities for things like the SoCS prompt.
In my mind right at this moment is the worry about what will happen with SoCS when I take some time off from my blog in December, and since this is stream of consciousness, that’s what I’ll write about.
I won’t be around for perhaps three weekends in December. I can handle this in a number of ways: I can just not put up prompts and let SoCS go for that time; I can pre-schedule the prompts and let SoCS run on its own, or I can get someone to guest-post for me. If that is the case, I can either leave it up to the guest poster to come up with the prompts or I can leave them myself for the guest to put up.
I suppose I need to know if anyone would be interested in doing it. I’m leaning toward this way of doing things, as sometimes participating bloggers need a helping hand with the pingbacks, and because I like to ensure that everything is being read. It’s a big job.
I realize that it’s still a long way off, so if you want to let me know that you might be interested, I won’t hold you to it. I merely want a feel at this point if there’s anyone at all who’s interested. Please comment below.
Friday is here and with it comes your Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt! I’m hella tired today – two mornings in a row of being dragged out of bed by a grumpy kid with a sore throat at 4am will do that. So no preamble or explanation today, just a prompt:
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “degree/degrees.” Have at it!
After you’ve written your Saturday post tomorrow, please link it here at this week’s prompt page in the comments so others can find it and see your awesome Stream of Consciousness post. Anyone can join in!
To make your post more visible, use the SoCS badge! Just paste it in your Saturday post so people browsing the reader will immediately know your post is stream of consciousness and/or pin it as a widget to your site to show you’re a participant. Wear it with pride!!
Badge by: Doobster @ Mindful Digressions
Here are the rules:
1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.
2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.
3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” or “Begin with the word ‘The’.”
4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people can come and read your post! For example, in your post you can write “This post is part of SoCS:” and then copy and paste the URL found in your address bar at the top of this post into yours. Your link will show up in my comments, for everyone to see. The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top.
5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.
6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!
It’s been an amazingly successful week for SoCS! We’ve had a record number of participants and quite a few new bloggers join us, which makes me very happy. 😀
After months of writing stream of consciousness posts, I’m finding that it has loosened me up in most of my writing. I’m not quite as anxious when I begin to write a blog post. I’m wondering if anyone else who participates in stream of consciousness writing (whether here on WordPress or elsewhere) has discovered the same thing.
What is the best part for you about writing this way? For me I have to say it’s the speed in which I can get a post out. Not having to edit–something I usually do to a fault–makes it much easier to write a blog post on Saturday, which happens to be one of my two busiest days of the week in most cases.
I’d love to hear from everyone who has tried writing a stream of consciousness blog post! I’m still working on getting caught up with reading everyone’s posts from yesterday and replying to comments. I’ll be reading though, and will reply as soon as I can.
I like circular. What comes around, goes around and what you give, you get back. Rectangular things are better than trapezoids, but not better than squares. I suppose I’m a little obsessed with order, though you wouldn’t know it looking at my house. Tidying up is at the bottom of my list of things to do.
Order in the way of plans are also important to me. When things go pear-shaped I get stressed. Not that I need to stick to a schedule – it’s more for my kids than me. Both of them are obsessed with schedules.
Today will be a busy day. If things don’t go as planned it will result in a late night.
This post sucks.
But that’s Stream of consciousness for you. Pear-shaped indeed. Show, don’t tell, right? Haha.
Would you look at that – it’s Friday again! And that means it’s time for your Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt! It ‘s been a fun week for me in blogland, though I’m still trying to catch up with last week’s SoCS posts. I’ll get there though! Have no fear. I did want to mention to everyone, since the pingbacks aren’t always reliable, to check to make sure your link is in the comments after you post. And don’t forget to visit the other participants! Getting to know one another is what it’s all about! So, without further ado:
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “shape.” Use it as a noun or a verb, put the word in your post or simply use it as your theme – whatever comes off the top of your head!
After you’ve written your Saturday post tomorrow, please link it here at this week’s prompt page in the comments so others can find it and see your awesome Stream of Consciousness post. Anyone can join in!
To make your post more visible, use the SoCS badge! Just paste it in your Saturday post so people browsing the reader will immediately know your post is stream of consciousness and/or pin it as a widget to your site to show you’re a participant. Wear it with pride!!
Badge by: Doobster @ Mindful Digressions
Here are the rules:
1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.
2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.
3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” or “Begin with the word ‘The’.”
4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people can come and read your post! For example, in your post you can write “This post is part of SoCS:” and then copy and paste the URL found in your address bar at the top of this post into yours. Your link will show up in my comments, for everyone to see. The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top.
5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.
6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!
It took me a long while to decide to use my real name on my blog, and a little while more before I really felt comfortable with it. To start with, this blog was about me “coming out” as a writer. You may think it silly to equate it to announcing one’s gender preference (granted its nowhere near as traumatic as all that) but in a way it was the same. I’d seen, after all, the way people looked at me when I told them I was writing a novel. The word “flake” might as well have been stamped on my cheek for all the lack of praise the confession got me. It seems if they can’t see the finished product, the product will in their mind never be finished.
So it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I signed up with WordPress using my own name. I was tentative – worried people I know would see my efforts and laugh. I still worry about that. But, having said that, I have gained a certain amount of confidence in myself. I started a Facebook page recently with the title “Linda G. Hill, Author” (you can find me here: https://www.facebook.com/lindaghill.fiction?ref=hl Like me!!) and that felt weird particularly when it asked me if the person I was making the page for approved. I think I actually yelled at the screen, “It’s ME!”
I still think about blogging under a pseudonym, even now that I’ve been blogging consistently here with my real name for a year and nine months. There’s a freedom in not using your name; what stops me is not being able to see the point. I’m quite happy here this way. I feel relatively secure in that I don’t disclose my precise whereabouts; I post pictures of my children knowing that they can’t be identified by their surname. (It isn’t “Hill.”) I find it easier than trying to keep up a facade. I don’t need to be careful not to give myself away… and I’m so close to being ready to get published that I’m no longer shy about calling myself a novelist. You’ll get your proof, damnit!
I would say the majority of blogs I follow here are anonymous. I realise there are many reasons for wanting to remain that way. For those who don’t use their real names, have you ever been tempted? And for those who do, was it a difficult hurdle to get over? Please share your story.
