I got a bit of a surprise this weekend when I looked at the stats on my blogs. It turns out, a major personal finance blog, The Consumerist, linked to one of the posts I put up on The Dog Ate My Wallet. Since that post was my yearly rant against commercials that claim luxury cars are good gifts, my post also linked to last year’s posts here. Traffic to all my sites went up considerably, though it was most evident on The Dog Ate My Wallet. My previous traffic high had been 35 views. On Friday, I had 1,390.
Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category
Time Change
30
Nov
I blame the fact that it gets dark so early, right now. In the evenings, I just don’t want to do anything productive. After dinner, I want to sit and watch my favorite TV shows and then just go to bed after they are done. I don’t want write a blog post, here or for one of my other blogs.
For now, I’m just going to have to stop holding myself to the 5am PST post time. I promise to post each day if you promise not to mind that sometimes that post doesn’t show up until afternoon or evening.
Up & Running
30
Oct
Still trying to get everything up and running and looking the way I want it to on my new web site. For the most part, I am pretty happy with the look. Sadly, WordPress.com has more free themes available for wordpress.com blogs than there are themes available for WordPress.org blogs on your own domain. That has limited me to what looks I can present, so I have settled for two basic ones that I like most.
I have got a bit more to research, but mostly, I am very happy with what I’ve been able to do on my own.
I’ve MOVED
29
Oct
As of Saturday, Oct 29, 2011, 100 Words On will be found exclusively over at my new website: www.erinshanendoah.com/100wordson
And as of Sunday evening, the whole erinshanendoah.com site should be up and running.
I’m excited about taking this next step in my on-line presence and hope that my readers will join me in making the transition. You may even find more to love- like my pet or personal finance blogs. Or perhaps you’ll choose to try your hand at super short form writing with the weekly/monthly micro-fiction contest.
Just be warned, before Sunday evening, it’s still a work in progress.
Finding Motivation
23
Oct
I have been lacking motivation when it comes to my fiction writing for a while now. I love to write. I love sharing my voice with others. But I need external motivation. I know this. So, I’ve made a couple decisions.
I am going to submit an excerpt of the novella I am working on, and possibly a short story, to NorWesCon for critique. It will be the first time I’ve ever submitted to a convention, so I’m starting in my comfort zone- a sci-fi/fantasy convention known for a respected writers’ workshop, instead of starting at a literary convention.
Geek Girl Con: Writing Through Real Life
12
Oct
I attended 2 panels at Geek Girl Con.
I could’ve been on the panel for Writing Through Real Life. Their advice was advice I’ve given, though I’m at a point in my writing that I need to hear this stuff again, from people outside my regular critique group. The content was solid.
I should’ve been on the panel, or the panel shouldn’t have been made up of people from the same MFA program. This wasn’t meant to be a recruiting event for one, or any, MFA program. It was supposed to be about finding time to write in real life.
Queen of my Domain
24
Sep
Pondering having my own website where I can have all of my writing endeavors housed under one roof. Considering there are two other blogs besides this one and the micro-fiction site, plus the 100 Words Project book and my fiction writing, this seems like it would make my business cards simpler, if nothing else.
Playing around in Publisher this morning to create the home page design. I’ll happily use wordpress for the blog pages, but I want the home page to be uniquely me. And it is nice to be able to design it myself without having to learn html.
Meta Post
13
Sep
On Saturday night, as I was falling in to bed at 12:30am (technically not Saturday anymore), I realized that I had never put up a post for that day. I felt bad, but mostly tired, very tired.
On Sunday, at critique group, I mentioned I was considering changing this from a 7 day a week blog to a week day only set up. The non-verbal reactions of my group quickly brought home the point that that would be a bad idea.
So we will remain at 7 days a week. And I will try not to miss any more days.
Growing my Blogs
23
Jul
Decided this week to put more effort into increasing blog traffic on my pet and personal finance blogs.
For Life by Pets, I joined the Pet Blog Directory and started linking to some other pet-centric sites that I read. I’ve already gotten a comment from a new reader, so that’s rather gratifying.
Over at Baking the Budget, I joined the Yakezie Challenge. It’s a group of personal finance and lifestyle bloggers who provide support to each other. In order to become a full member, I have six months to greatly increase my traffic.
Some changes may be in the works.
Google+
20
Jul
It’s apparently the time of trying new things here. In addition to switching to Google docs for the writing I do on my laptop and preparing to dump cable, I’ve also created a Google+ account. I won’t dump FaceBook, but I like some of the features of Google+.
My only real problem is that Google+ won’t allow a gmail address to be a secondary address on your account. That means I can’t combine my personal account (with my 15+ year old hotmail account) to my blogging account. Maybe this will require me to create a unique blogging Google+ account. Pondering.