Ultimate Blog Challenge

I've signed up for the Ultimate Blog Challenge for April, in the hope that it might give me the inspiration to blog for the love of it - rather than it being a chore. I love to write and am at my happiest with pen and paper or in front of the PC, thinking of the right word, the perfect phrase, the succinct sentence. 
However, with blogging, I've stumbled along a bit lately and I've been thinking over some of the reasons why this may have happened. I think there are several things a blog, or a blogger needs:

• A Passion for what you are writing about
• So a Theme is probably a good thing
• The Commitment to blog regularly and consistently
• Which means that you need to Write well and succinctly
• To Follow other like-minded blogs and contribute via comments

So, with that in mind, I shall use this month to shape and develop my blog into something I Want to do and hopefully a place where people can come along and enjoy the read...

Don't Think Just Write

BLOG, BLOG, BLOG

Current Work: Blogging, critiquing, editing

Listening to: My Man Friday stringing onions (very satisfying..)

Reading: Gone to Ground by John Harvey (an english author)

To Blog or not to Blog?

I've changed my blog days again, thought I'd revert back to Monday, Wednesday, Friday and do shorter posts. I have been reading about how to make the best of your blog, so am going to put it into action. Though I know I should be slumbering. The trouble is the heat has dissipated, we've had a day and a bit of rain (which is great for the veggies) and I'm in auto mode as I prepare for my lovely son and his family who arrive on the 14th. So I will blog, it may be short but a blog it will be...

Book Worm

MERCY BY TONI MORRISON

Characters: Told mainly from the view point of slave Floren and the household of Jacob and Rebekka including two servants Lina and Sorrow.

Plot: Floren is a young intelligent girl who tells the story of their life and how things are never what they may seem

Setting: North America in the seventeeth century

Quick Summary: Toni Morrisson has a gift for telling it how it is. The use of words and description are powerfully weaved together in this short story which tells a sorrow tale about slavery, about greed and about power but mostly about love. Its quite a difficult read as there is little dialogue which is written in the patouis of the time. I enjoyed it, but it took a long time for me to get into it.

Recommendation: I would if only for the words and how to construct beautiful descriptions. As a story, I'm not sure. I think if you have read Beloved or Jazz or any other of Toni Morrisons work you might find this a little tame.

BLOGGING

Current Work: Queries, drafting, blogging and admin...
Listening to: I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue Radio 4 Listen Again
Reading: Ice Cold in Alex by Christopher Landon

Blog Exposure
I've been writing this blog for some time now, but I'm not sure anyone reads it. Apart from a few family members that is. I do try and put the link on most of the information that goes out but I still think I could do more to raise its profile. So how do you attract traffic to your blog and what changes do you need to make? I know I need to make sure I use keywords more for SEO (search engine optimisation) and shout about it more but what else is there to do? So something else to put on the 'To Do' list, else I'll be thinking I've gone a bit gaga, talking to myself and the big empty space known as the World Wide Web!!

Three Cheers For...

• Two articles submitted to Suite 101, on Fictional Characters and Personality and the other on the great French writer Alexandre Dumas who wrote the Three Muskateers - All for One and One for All!


• Submission of Short Story The Secret of Success to Womans Weekly


• Five queries submitted, two are recycled articles that have been published


• Submission of All Will Be Well to two agents


• Development of 'alpha male' character for Harlequin WIP - I quite enjoyed this bit!


• Hopefully found a critique partner to help with my Harlequin endeavours


• Wrote an outline for next chapter of The Good Life


• Plus lots of other non writing stuff such as the addition of three chickens (now known fondly as the Three Degrees) to our 'family; keeping in touch with family and generally melting because of the hot weather - oh yes that reminds me had a trip to the beach as well. Very refreshing.

Finally managed to add an image to this flippin' blog!

MORE BAD THAN GOOD

Obscure Word of the Week

Miscible – capable of being mixed

[Medieval Latin related to MIX}

Not sure when you might want to use this word in writing but then it’s a funny old business isn’t it?

The Good and the Bad

Journal Jottings - 2000 words approximately

Short Stories - 0

Queries and Pitches - 0

Articles Articulated - 0

Rejections Received - 0

Time-wasting activity level - 10/10

Not much time spent on anything this week! Firstly, I went down with a lingering headache, possibly heat induced. Then a planned family visit arrived, as predicted, a very welcome distraction, which I was looking forward too. And, then an extremely low internet connection for the last few days – the lowest being 4.8kpbs, which hasn’t (or maybe has) helped things along.

On the positive side, well there isn’t one. But in my defence, time wasting activities have included playing scrabble which is good for my vocabulary, sitting on the beach helps with settings and descriptions and visiting restaurants to observe character traits (and gain a couple of pounds but unfortunately not the folding kind).

So, it’s not been a positive week in terms of writing and submitting. However, I have done a lot of background reading, research and planning which is helping to hone my writing skills… (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!)

A Writer Must Write

All the advice tells me so and up until now, that is exactly what I have done. But, I have also talked a lot about my novel, with my Man Friday and my little sister, whose family very provided a welcome break to our solitude this week. I have been reluctant to talk about my progress with my novel, again because the ‘advice’ has told me not to. However, I am beginning to understand that advice about writing (and about anything for that matter) is a very individual thing. Advice really needs to be taken into your own personal context and what works for you. Talking things through and having to explain what it is I’m trying to write has actually clarified quite a lot of loose ends for me this week and I’ve even changed the name of my main character!

To Plan or Not to Plan

I’ve also spent some time looking at the various methods for planning a novel and have decided that I really do need to invest some time in this. I’m looking at the index card method for mapping out chapters and scenes and have started to transfer these from my ‘journal jottings’. It has been quite cathartic as a process – which is not by any means finished – and I have made some editing changes, which has helped things along. I wish I had started at this point at the beginning, but (so I’m told) sometimes it’s best to start in the middle! (If you ask an Irishman for directions, they would reply ‘if I was going to there, I wouldn’t start here!’ – so my Irish educated Man Friday tells me.)

Bedside Table

I still have ‘The Star of the Sea’ on the go. I’ve probably read about four chapters - its very complex with quite a few characters and as I said previously, it’s written in a strange style. There are quite a few footnotes, which I find a bit distracting, but impossible to ignore and graphics at the end of each chapter, the significance of which I am still trying to work out.

Sis and Bro-in-law have kindly left a couple of novels in return for ones from our bookshelf. It’s a great system, a little like a library but with less turnaround and resources. I’ve been thinking about setting up an ex-pat book swap with other honorary Italian citizens in the area, but it might not be a practical option given the rural area we live in.

Over and Out

My writing magazines fell from the postie’s hands at the weekend and I’ve been absorbed reading about the famed ones, searching for that one great tip which is going to make everything happen. Which of course, it’s going to… isn’t it?

Post Script

I’ve just read an article about blogging and it talks about daily rants – yes, this does contribute to time wasting but sometimes it’s worth it. I’m not sure the world is ready for a daily deluge from me, but I can see their point about developing a writing habit. So, for now I shall stick to my weekly habit for therapeutic purposes and hope you don’t suffer too much.