Well folks, in the Writing War it is Mashup Wednesday and I have had the blessing of being by a ton of great blogs this week. Hopefully in your journeys to become better authors some of these will be helpful to you. And if during your week you see anything awesome feel free to send it to me so I can include it here! Thanks so much!Miss Bennett asks the question of the century in: "Should your author blog be about writing?"
Paul Goat Allen writes about exploring diversity in: "Neo-Retro: Saladin Ahmed's Stellar Debut Novel is New 'Old School' Sword and Sorcery."
Angela fulfills our deepest needs as human beings in: "Lessons in Storytelling– I need you."
Jason shares with us a bittersweet evocative of why we make art in: "A Foreign Concept."
Debbie while boiling rice gives great writing advice in: "Six free tools to help you write your best novel ever."
Krys Lee reminds us of how insensitive we can be to each other in: "Should we still be using the term 'Ethnic Literature.'"
L.A Christensen shares about the mysteries of the writing universe in: "Alpha Reading."
io9 introduces us to perhaps the most important video game for Science Fiction ever in: "Why Mass Effect is the most important science fiction universe of our generation."
Marji Laine explains the pros and cons of blogging platforms in: "Blogger vs. Wordpress."
This will be posted on my blog permanently, Samuel Delany on: "Racism and Science Fiction."
I really loved reading Samuel's essay particularly because I haven't read him before. I find myself feeling behind in reading ethnic literature because of where I have lived, but I'm trying to make up for that now. Hopefully my efforts will be seen as enough. As for my writing goals for this war post, here we are.
1. Finishing Draft Two of "Crimes of the Umbramancer" by the 30th of April.
Okay I'll be honest, I haven't gotten much actual writing done on Crimes. At a third of the way through I've done a lot of work on my outline. It is still skeletal to anyone who would look at it, and it seems like the various things I have going on in it are spaced way out. But I now know the entire outline of the story and I'm really thrilled to be working on it. I suspect that as I continue through the story that there will be more done to the outline so by the end I'll not only know how I write a novel, but specifically how I outline a novel too.
2. Comment on ten blogs in ROW80:
I've barely started for this week. I've seen so many blogs lately and blogged so much lately that I haven't had a lot of time to work on my writing. I'm really struggling here and trying to figure out what I should do here. If anyone has any suggestions please feel free to offer them in the comments.
3. Walking at least a mile five times a week.
Still failing, still keeping. This one will change eventually trust me.
4. Building a new blog for my diversity issue.
I think this is going well. I would love more followers still and comments, but I'm starting to think Marji has a point about Wordpress. I've heard from so many folks who I've talked with all this about that they have a difficult time posting on my blog. And that by itself bothers me. I'm wondering if I can keep an identical blog on Wordpress and then both communities would be able to hear from me. I don't know right now, just bouncing ideas around.
5. Going back to my writing ritual.
Still not been reading from the scriptures before my writing too often, but if I can get into a schedule in this next week perhaps that will change. We'll see what happens.
Tomorrow the month is over and so will my first giveaway for N.K. Jemisin's book, "The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms." And for every person who leaves a comment I'm putting your name into a hat for an opportunity to win a book by N.K. Jemisin called "The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms." Mind you it is the first in a Trilogy and each book in the Trilogy has been nominated for a Nebula Award! I'm super excited to give three copies of this book away and been thrilled with all the folks who've commented thus far! If you have more to say, please comment again and get your name in the hat more than once! On Friday's post I plan on sharing who the lucky winners are! Whoo hoo!
As always, my name is Jayrod Garrett and I am the First OG. Okay honestly, what do you think is better:
Wordpress or Blogger?
5. Going back to my writing ritual.
Still not been reading from the scriptures before my writing too often, but if I can get into a schedule in this next week perhaps that will change. We'll see what happens.
Tomorrow the month is over and so will my first giveaway for N.K. Jemisin's book, "The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms." And for every person who leaves a comment I'm putting your name into a hat for an opportunity to win a book by N.K. Jemisin called "The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms." Mind you it is the first in a Trilogy and each book in the Trilogy has been nominated for a Nebula Award! I'm super excited to give three copies of this book away and been thrilled with all the folks who've commented thus far! If you have more to say, please comment again and get your name in the hat more than once! On Friday's post I plan on sharing who the lucky winners are! Whoo hoo!
As always, my name is Jayrod Garrett and I am the First OG. Okay honestly, what do you think is better:
Wordpress or Blogger?
Well, first, I love Wordpress (I've had both Blogger and WP) and... Well, there are two things here:
ReplyDelete1) I can almost ALWAYS tell if a site is being hosted on Wordpress or Blogger (or Typepad or Livejournal...but that's because of the comment design)
2) even with all of their newer updates to Blogger, Wordpress allows the most customization (but you have to work to make use of it)
(oh, and one more)
3) Blogger seems to rely on a lot of depreciated HTML (codes like and are not recognized by it, though they are the newer standards
However, I see no problem with posting here with either my Wordpress account or my Blogger one. I think if you have your settings right, it shouldn't matter. I do like the way Wordpress now handles notifications (but that's a new thing).
And I'd love to write more, but now I have a whole bunch more webpages to go check out... Hmmpf!
Thanks Eden. I started looking into Wordpress, but I don't like the way their blogs look in the end. But when I am ready to purchase my own domain I am pretty sure I'll move in that direction. Thanks for your comment. Oh and if you are checking out the websites on the mashup I feel like it is a success. :D
DeleteI honestly like Wordpress better, and it seems more professional blogs, (from published author's websites) run from wordpress, but it sure seems like there are way more writing blogs on blogger. That's why I closed my wordpress blog, (yes, I started there) and migrated to blogger, and instantly had more to read and more comments on what I wrote.
ReplyDeleteBut if I could get the same visit/readership on either, I'd go with Wordpress. But I can't, so I'm very happy to stay at Blogger/Blogspot.
btw, I gave you a shoutout/award on my blog today. Probably gotten it before, but that's what you get for being awesome. :)
That is really good to know Kevin. I plan on staying here at Blogger for now. Maybe when I go professional I'll get a domain and change, but till then I'm happy here.
DeleteKevin thank you for the award! I won't get around to accepting it until Sunday. But I will accept it and gladly. Thanks again!