Velvet Verbosity

Throwing myself headlong into this November write-a-palooza has been rejuvenating and exciting, but more than that, it has introduced me to some new people offline and on, and I’d like you to meet some of them.

Thanks to Twitter, Networked Blogs, and various internet serendipity, there have been some new faces around here.  You’ve already met the newcomers to the 100 Word Challenge, like Gabriel Gadfly, Pattikens (turns out we’re neighbors, sorta), and Niqui.  Poets, aspiring writers, each interesting in their own creative right.

LouCeel, a longstanding 100 Worder, has been up to some new creative endeavors.  He is now helping to man The Inferno, where one of my word portraits was recently featured.   The Inferno is an offshoot of  The Artist Challenge.  You should check them out, especially if you’re looking for more inspiration.

Through a TweetDeck filter following NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo participants (well at least those on Twitter, and those who know to use #hashtags) I found College English.  She caught my eye when she tweeted something about 100 Words, and I found out she and all of her students are participating in NaBloPoMo to raise money for The United Way!  Bravo Debbi and students.  If you’d like to support them, here is the original post.

Finally, through Pattiken, I also found the social networking site, She Writes.  I’m very excited about it, even though I haven’t had time to join groups, introduce myself, or spiff up my profile.   Even though it’s called “She Writes”, it is open to the guys as well.  You know, if you can handle all that estrogen.

ALSO, I’m participating in Citizen of the Month’s Great Interview Experiment.  I’ll do an interview here on my blog of this blogger, and be interviewed by this one.

Whew.  That’s a lot of links.

With love,

Lceel gave me an award, like what? A week ago? I have a half written post about it but I have to choose 5 bloggers to pass it on to. Should be easy, but nothing is easy in my world. The act of choosing something, ANYTHING, for me is pure torture. Let me put it to you this way. Recently someone I work for who totally loves and respects my work basically outed me as an obsessor (I would obsess about obsessor not being a word, but I can’t obsess about EVERYTHING!). Now before you start hopping around in front of your computer yelling to your spouse in the other room, “I SO called that one!!”, let me tell you something.

I obsess because I’m ADD and obsessing helps me to focus. I have this on very good authority. Yep. I had my brain waves measured cause I thought I was suffering from anxiety (aka obsessiveness) and lo! No anxiety pattern, but a CLEAR and DISTINCT ADD pattern. Whaddya know?

Turns out I adapted to my ADD mind a long long time ago by hyper-focusing. As a toddler I could watch ants or spiders for hours. After I learned how to read, I read voraciously, consuming books like other kids my age consumed popsicles and Saturday morning cartoons. Once I discovered TOPICS I would read every book on a topic that interested me, and then I would read all the books that were referred to in those books. I never left the library with under the maximum number of books I was allowed. Ever.

So what’s my point? There isn’t one. I’m just making excuses for my poor blog etiquette. This whole post is a product of my reviewing some of the blogs I read, and then clicking through to other blogs, and THEN discovering the whole world of Daddy Blogs which has totally restored my hope for humanity. Sort of. And now I have more choices than I could ever handle.

So I’m working on it Lceel. I haven’t forgotten. It’s just going to take me a while because I’m busy obsessing about WHO to choose. I hold you personally responsible for the state of my fingernails.*

*So totally not true. My fingernails are beautiful and healthy and I’ve never once chewed them.

Now even the homeless are blogging.  For reals.

The Homeless Guy 

Some excerpts:

All the libraries are closed today - not a good thing for the homeless. Yesterday’s balmy weather and high temps in the 70’s will be tempered today with highs in the 40’s.

With the library closed, I hope to do some cafe hopping. I hope they let me hang out on their computers for most of the day. That shouldn’t be a problem if business is moderately slow. Now to just find a good position in this seat, so that my back won’t hurt.

The Homeless Guy even Twitters!

I am on Twitter.com Start up an account, if you haven’t already, and follow me! I am at twitter.com/thehomelessguy.

What the hell?  I have a Mac Book Pro and I still don’t really get Twittering.

Technical blogging behind-the-scenes crap is probably not what you came here for, but today, that’s what you’re going to get. Making this blog work isn’t as easy as it looks. Of course, being a creative perfectionist never helps in making things easy. I’ve been trying to find a template that I could be happy with while I built my own over time. There is no shortage of good looking wordpress templates out there, but most don’t work the way you want them to. The last one I had up here was very attractive, but really screwed with the formatting on several posts. I tried redoing a couple of the posts, but the template was stubbornly holding on to wonkiness, so I gave up and tried a couple more of the templates I had downloaded.

Changing the templates is actually a fairly simple process (as was exporting all my posts and comments from blogger) but frustrating. I put up a template, view the site, and WOW! That looks great, I think to myself. But wait? What’s this? Where did my blogroll go? Or, whoops, that first post looks great, but the rest look like I was drunk when I was writing them.

Template after template presents some sort of problem, ranging from minor annoyance, to “Holy crap, that looks like hell!”

I’m settling on this most recent template because it is by far the cleanest in terms of formatting, as well as easy to read, elegant and simple. However, I had to delete almost all videos because they were messing with the page code, which I can’t edit because it is using CSS style sheet coding as well as pulling content from, uh, somewhere. I think it’s a problem with the combination of a new template with imported content. Clearly the recent video I posted is not a problem. It wasn’t a big loss to lose the other videos, most were for laughs anyway, and they are easy enough to find on YouTube should I decide that my blog just wouldn’t be complete without them.

This is one of those templates that doesn’t like wordpress widgets, and doesn’t allow for the built-in blogroll which was so nice because I could have categories. I’m sure if I had the time, I could figure out the code and add it, but I’m opting to build it as a page instead.

I also had serious trouble installing my tracking code. That’s still a little messed up, so I can’t tell who, if anyone is visiting, unless they comment. Maybe I’ll just buy myself a Romper Room mirror so I can see you all by way of magic. “I see Lceel, and Larmster, and RJ, and and and…” Remember that creepy woman and her mirror? I watched that show during a brief stint in a daycare, and I remember all the kids leaning in closer as she began to name off names, and I thought, “If this woman can look through that television box and SEE me, I am so outta here.”

“If you build it they will come”.

So I made it! I got the land (domain), I got the permit (host), I got the building materials (Wordpress), I got a temp-orary shelter (template), I put all my words in boxes and moved to the new place (I got exported). I like the new place, don’t you? But it is under construction so forgive the wonky formatting. I’ll be behind the tarp building the final site.

I’m here. I’m alive. And kicking. I’ll be back soon with something of actual substance. Send me some love. Tell me what you want to hear about. Give me a writing prompt.

I was out of town for Thanksgiving, and I thought I would surely find time to post, but it just didn’t happen folks. I’m re-acclimating to home and work. I’ll write soon.

I asked this question of some fellow bloggers over on the NaBloPoMo forum. Like, should I tell you, dear readers, that I blog in a bowtie and striped socks…only? Or that this morning I ate a double whopper from three days ago for breakfast? Or that I live in MaryMark Pennsylvania at 204 Iron Rod Lane? Or that my boyfriend likes to wear my bowtie and striped socks on Wednesdays at 7:32 P.M.?

Just how much should I tell a bunch of strangers, any of whom could be my next great stalker?

The truth is, I think I already have some answers to this question. And the answer depends largely on what you want to accomplish by blogging.

If you want to have an audience, a real audience, there are three known formulas that seem to work. 1. Have a topic or theme, and be an authority on it. 2. Get personal. 3. Be scathingly funny. It goes without saying that all three require good writing. And good writing combined with all three of the above is bound to be a hit.

Think about it. From a reader’s perspective, you might catch them once, but what will keep them coming back is either a desire to know more about your topic, or a desire to know more about the writer. Funny is just funny and people always come back for funny.

Blogs are a form of media and it stands to reason that what has always worked through history will work for blogs. Take television. The general categories of choice are news (informational television), drama (including the bane of our century, Reality TV), and comedy. You could break it down further, like into cartoons and music television, but these really still fall into the three larger categories.

Anyone can blog, and everyone seems to. However, not everyone is being read. (Whether everyone should be blogging is a topic for another post.) Gaining an audience requires emerging, through strong writing, into one of the general media categories. Establish yourself as an authority on something, reveal the drama of your own life, or take comedy lessons from Citizen of the Month. He’s even mastered how to harness all three here. (Look, it’s about his ex, her bra, and how he mastered the art of unhooking said bra so just go read it. You’ll learn, you’ll love, you’ll laugh.)

Myself? I don’t care if I have an audience. But if you do happen to be reading, perhaps you could say hello? You know, just a little comment so that I can see you’ve been here? Not that I care or anything.