I’m taking a break from writing this week and next week. I actually need to, as I’ve been feeling frustrated lately.

Instead, I’m trying to pay more attention to the things around me, things I normally pass by without a second glance or even an afterthought. And I’m taking my camera along. So…

In that spirit I’ve started a new photoblog. The idea is just to post at least one picture every day of something that caught my eye in and around the small town where I live, and to do this without writing the story behind each photo.

I’ll be writing again in a little while. Right now I just want to look around and take some pictures. So please visit me in my small and very ordinary town.

I’ve had a blog here, and another one over at Blogspot for a year now, and so of course I have an opinion about which platform I prefer.

Comparison:

1. Both are free, and both are easy to set up and easy to use.

Contrast:

1. WordPress lets you add static pages, and with some themes you can even switch the order of the static pages and your blog, so that you can create a proper website.  Blogger has no such thing.

2. WordPress has more themes, but you cannot edit the stlye sheets or the HTML of your theme. Blogger is more limited in its ready-made templates, but you can choose from many, many templates to download from other sites, and you can edit any of the ready-made to your heart’s content, provided you know how, of course. This makes BLogger more versatile for the tech-savvy. (I’m currently learning HTML and CSS, and so at some future time, I’ll want to experiment with my other blog. Expect chaos to ensue.)

3. WordPress has a built-in stat counter. Blogger invites you to add your own, which I have done. This is how I know that one blog is being read and one is not, though that’s due to the content being different.

4. Blogger allows you to use AdSense in order to make some money. However, you must have a lot of hits in order for this to work for you. WordPress does not allow you to monetize your blog.

5. In addition to categories, WordPress has tags which you can add to your posts. This allows tag-surfing through other WordPress blogs, which allows you to find a lot of WordPress bloggers with similar interests. It builds communities. Blogger lacks this feature.

6. People have wondered in the past whether Google favors its own product in its search engine. It seems to me that it does not.

My verdict?

I prefer WordPress because it has more of the features that I personally like and use. I can see, however, that others might prefer Blogger for its CSS-editing and money-making possibilities. It’s my intention to keep both blogs active, and to maintain a presence on both platforms.

I posted a discussion about websites and their necessity for writers, particularly novelists, over at Adventures in Writing. If you’re a writer, or a reader who likes to visit authors’ websites, please stop over and give us your opinion.

Adventures in Writing

A new multi-author blog dealing with various aspects of writing, which I feel honored to have been invited to take part in.

Douglas L. Perry has his first post up there now, and you can expect to see introductory posts from each of the blog’s authors over the coming week. Discussions on the writing life will start up in earnest shortly thereafter. You’ll find interesting and varied topics every day, as we have an interesting and varied cast of writers. It’s going to be a real adventure!

I haven’t started writing my new novel yet. I said I would start it in February, but I did not. Nope. I did not start it.

I have characters, plot, tension and most of the scenes outlined (according to the snowflake  method) but with the expectation that I will still need to grow and expand the story during the writing process. Still no title I like, but basically everything else is in place to at least start this project. So what’s wrong?

The initial enthousiasm is gone (of course it is). So now I’m facing the prospect of working hard for several months, maybe a year, at a single project. I imagine this is a common dilemma for writers accustomed to writing short, but I’m wondering what is really a better use of time and effort – writing a single 100,000+ word novel that may never see publication, or in the same amount of time writing twelve or fifteen or twenty short stories, some of which will almost certainly be published somewhere.

What to do? What to do?

Well, January is over and I do want to report on my progress.

First for some really GOOD news!!  I had a short story accepted at Reflection’s Edge and it will be published in the February issue. Actually, I think, any day now!

Now for the mixed news. For the new novel, I am still following the snowflake method, and I am now making spreadsheets with all the projected scenes. Yes, by the way, I did learn how to use Excel. Anyway, this won’t take much longer, and once I have completed this, I will be ready to start the draft.

Now for the bad news. The two short stories are not finished. Partly, this is becuase I was without my laptop for 16 days. It crashed, and while waiting for the manufacturer to send me the recovery disks, I had to borrow my daughter’s computer. So I had no time for blogging and very little time for writing. For this reason, I am granting myself an extension.

I will post another update soon. In the meantime, feel free to shake your head and roll your eyes.

First of all, Happy New Year to everyone who reads my blog! I hope 2009 brings happiness, pleasure and success.

Secondly: I’ve been tagged by Erica Naone  to participate in a seven-degrees-of-separation internet challenge, and I’ve accepted. What it means is that I have to come up with seven things about myself and publish them here on this blog for the world to read (well okay, not the world) and then I have to tag seven other bloggers with the same challenge. So here goes:

1. I don’t like cold and snow. I once lived in a place where winter was a lot fiercer than it is here in PA, but that was a long time ago. I couldn’t do that again.

2. I take pictures of cakes. Whether they’re of the home-made or the bakery-bought variety, if they’re cute or original or even just nicely decorated, I take their picture. Sometimes I take multiple pictures of the same cake. Seriously. I could fill an album with the cake pictures that I took over the years.

3. I don’t watch a lot of TV, but when I do, I usually put on the Disney channel, where the raunchy revolution never happened and the family sitcom still rules the day. I like to watch kid-shows like The Wizards of Waverly Place, Cory in the House, The Suite Life, and even Hannah Montana. My husband is trying to rehabilitate me by forcing me to watch House marathons.

4. I often get distracted during simple numbering tasks, and end up numbering wrong. For example, I had to go back and add #4 to this list.

5. I have another blog that no one reads, yet I update it consistently. So allow me the opportunity to shamelessly link to it now.

6. I like to scrapbook. Then I photograph my scrapbook pages and upload them with all my other, regular photographs to three different photo storage websites. This is to keep them safe in the event of fire or flood or tornado or vandalism. Which are things I worry about.

7. I try not to be too introspective. Yes, you read that right. I doubt that many “true” things about the self can be learned that way, and for me, introspection is the shortest road to self-absorbtion, and then to self-pity.

So there you have it, my list of seven. Now I’ll tag seven others with the same challenge, and we’ll see what happens:

1. Shari Lambert

2. Joseph Robert Lewis

3. Alex Moore

4. A. Fulkerson

5. Merrilee Faber

6. KJ (aka Nana)

7. Eliza Wyatt

I hope you’re all feeling up to the challenge

…at the draft.

After a month-long break (okay, okay, more than a month!) I’m back. And of course, I’m talking about Beamstar. There’s just so much work to do, and I hardly know how to go about it! I’ve divided the novel into five sections of about 20,000 words each, and I’m taking them one at a time. I’m only using pen on paper now, listing all the things that must be added, deepened, explained. I do not consider this writing, or even revising. I consider that I am wasting time.

Ah, well.

Major areas needing revision in the first part of the novel: world-building, character motives, and backstory.

I’ll be posting about the revision process here, but with less frequency than I posted during the summer. I do enjoy writing about writing, but I’m busier now than I was then, and the blog is of lower priority than actually working on the book.

I just hope it doesn’t take long, because I am sick of living in the world of Beamstar and I want to move on. Other worlds await.

This is just a post to say that I haven’t had time for blogging lately, and this will likely continue for another week or so. I will be back to posting regularly and visiting my favorite blogs as soon as other projects/responsibilities are taken care of. Also, I will begin revising my novel on October 4.

A bit of good news: My short story “Hot Air” is now appearing in the online humor magazine Defenestration. Go thou and read.

I haven’t been blogging this week because I’ve been busy writing the final scenes of the novel and uh, well, ummm, no, ah, it’s not done…  But stay tuned for an announcement regarding this.