Tag Archives: blogging

Quick Note to Commenters

Posted on by
Comment

Comments are moderated.

Because of the amount of spam and the number of inappropriate comments this site receives, all comments from new commenters are moderated.

Much of the moderation is done automatically with spam prevention software. This software will automatically delete comments coming from blacklisted IP addresses, comments containing too many links, comments containing certain “bad” words, multiple comments submitted from the same IP address or commenter within a short period of time, and comments meeting other proven criteria that I don’t know or really care about.

This two-layer automated spam prevention system catches over 5000 spam comments to my four blog-based sites each day. This gives you an idea of just how bad the problem is. It should also help you understand why I don’t manually review every single comment myself.

The few comments that get through the automated system are manually reviewed. A few of them are true spam that I delete.

Others are comments by visitors who seem to have commented solely to advertise their business or service. Even if these comments are appropriate, if the commenter name field contains a company name or Web site name, that comment will be deleted. My blog-based sites do not exist for other people to advertise their products or services. If you don’t use your name or something that looks like your name in the Commenter Name field of the comment form, don’t expect your comment to appear here. Exceptions are possible but very rare.

Finally, a handful of other comments are nasty or inappropriately critical, abusive to me or other commenters. I don’t take that crap from anyone, especially on my blogs. If you have something critical to say, say it nicely. Don’t bash me or others by calling us names or insulting us.

The comments that make it through this entire moderation process are the ones that appear on the site.

Keep in mind that I go through the manual moderation process every 12 to 72 hours, so you might have to wait up to 3 days for a comment to appear. It all depends on how busy I am and whether I have a good Internet connection when on the road. Be patient.

I’d love it if more commenters would sign up for Gravatars so their custom icons would appear beside their comments.

I really appreciate reader comments, especially those that add to conversation here on this blog. I hope those of you who comment continue to do so. And I hope this message encourages those of you who have not yet commented to add your thoughts as comments to posts on this site.

Article Length

Posted on by
4

My biggest challenge.

Yesterday, I began writing an article for a travel magazine. The magazine is relatively well-known and it pays pretty darn well. I’ve never written about travel — beyond what you’ll find in this blog — but I think I’m up to the task.

But I am facing a challenge: word count. The article cannot be more than 1,500 words.

I’m not accustomed to working with length constraints. On my blog, I can make an article as long or as short as I want to. The same goes for the articles I write for InformIt and other Web-based publishers. (That’s one of the benefits of publishing on the Web — it costs the same to publish no matter how long it is.) Even my book publishers don’t usually limit my page count.

But this is a print publication and the limits are real. And I seriously doubt that the editors there will love my words enough to make an exception for me.

Keeping It Short

The way I see it, there are two ways to keep an article short:

  • Write it short. I’m using Word 2004 (old habits really do die hard) to write the piece. Word includes a live word count feature, so I can monitor word count as I type. This is how I’m trying to write the piece. What I’m finding is that I’m about 1/4 finished writing, but have used up more than half my alloted words. As a result, I keep going back and shortening up earlier paragraphs and sentences to make room for the rest of the story. I don’t think this is the best approach.
  • Write it without worrying about page count, then go back and edit the hell out of it. This is how I usually tackle length problems — especially when I have to shorten up text that appears on a page I’m laying out. In those instances, I’m cutting out 10 to 30 words. But at the rate I’m going with this article, I’ll have to cut more than 1,000 words. This can’t possibly be productive. After all, I’m writing material that I’m just discarding.

Another Way?

It occurs to me that there probably is another way to keep it short: rethink the entire article and reduce the amount of information I want to provide.

This is probably a more professional way to go about it. It requires me to come up with an outline of what I want to discuss and budget a certain amount of words for each part. If there are too many parts, I need to cut out the parts that don’t really communicate the theme of the piece. Once I have a handle on how to approach the article, I should be able to write it close to the proper length. I can then edit it down as needed.

The key, of course, it to stay within budget for each part of the article.

And I think this is a good example of how blogging and writing for the Web can hurt a writer. When I blog, I have no editor — it’s just me. I can write whatever I want, whatever way I want to write it. Sentence fragments? No problem. Slang? Go for it! Extensive use of parenthetical commentary? Why not (since I always have more than just one thing to say)? Bloggers who are also professional writers can lose the discipline they need to produce high-quality work for publisher with very specific needs.

But I think I’ll tackle blogging and how it affects writing skills in another post.

Any Thoughts?

Do any writers out there have some advice for me? Speak up! Use the Comments link or form.

Ah! Something to Write About!

Posted on by
Comment

I find a Web site that offers weekly suggestions for blogging topics.

A little over a month ago, a Twitter friend (@desertlibrarian) tweeted about an hysterically funny blog post she’d read on John Scalzi‘s blog, Whatever. This led me to subscribing to the RSS feed for Whatever. Scalzi’s apparently a hardcore SciFi author and although I enjoy some SciFi now and then, I’ve never read any of his books. (He’s probably never read any of my books, either.) His blog posts about SciFi don’t interest me very much (sorry!), but his thoughtful and well-written commentaries about other things — such as the Creation Museum — make it well worth keeping the feed subscription.

It seems that Mr. Scalzi had been keeping another blog or site that featured a “Weekend Assignment.” Here’s his summary of that feature from a recent post on Whatever:

For those of you who used to read By The Way, you’ll know that every Thursday I wrote up a “Weekend Assignment” to give folks something to do with their blogs over the weekend (Friday – Sunday, for AOL Journals, was typically the time period in which the members posted the least). I’m not doing the Weekend Assignments anymore, but I’ve bequeathed the activity to Karen Funk Blocher (aka Mavarin), and she’s doing them on her blog now. The first of her Weekend Assignments is up, and it’s asking what people are doing with their time in the wake of the WGA strike.

It seems like just yesterday that I wrote an almost pointless blog post about how much trouble I sometimes had finding something to write about. And then I find this.

So, if you’ll pardon me, I’ve got something to write.

What to Write About?

Posted on by
2

The hardest part about blogging — for me, anyway — is coming up with a topic worth writing about.

I’m a writer and have been since my early teens. So it’s easy for me to write. It’s easy to take an idea and communicate it to others using words, sentences, and paragraphs.

The problem I have is coming up with ideas to write about.

What to Write About?

Sure, I can write about what happened to me yesterday. But is it interesting? Barely. (For the record, I woke up late after being up for 2 hours in the middle of the night, spent some time messing around with some GTD (“Getting Things Done”) software that’s supposed to help me be more productive, ordered pizza for my local helicopter mechanic and a few other pilots, hosted a pizza party at my friend’s hangar (which is insulated and has amenities such as a latte machine and leather sofa), and came back home to waste some more time with the same GTD software (which wasn’t working as advertised) thus not getting much else done.)

I can also write about the things I think about, which can be more interesting when I’ve had time to fully develop my thoughts. Lately, I’ve been thinking about politics, but I don’t feel well informed enough to blog about my thoughts. I’ve also been thinking about the English as the official language issue, but I haven’t finished thinking about it — or reached a stage where I’m ready to write. I’ve been thinking about the pitfalls of living in a town that’s trying to be something it’s not — which is also something that it wasn’t when I moved here — but why waste my time preaching about something that no one cares about?

Why I Blog

I like to start each morning with a blog post. I sit at the kitchen table with my coffee and my laptop and write about whatever comes to mind.

I find this therapeutic. I’m taking my organized thoughts and recording them where I — and others — can read them again and again. Or perhaps I’m taking unorganized thoughts and organizing them as I get them out.

It doesn’t matter to me whether people read what I write. I blog primarily for myself. (Remember, blog is short for Web log and my blog is a personal journal.)

While it’s always nice to have readers who comment to say that they like what I’ve written or add some information I hadn’t known or considered, getting readers or reader participation is not my primary goal. It’s the head-clearing aspect of blogging. Getting it out of my head and onto…well, not exactly paper, but something that’s just as “permanent” and accessible.

Unpublished Blog Posts

Sometimes I’ll start a blog post and never finish it. It’ll remain as a draft on my computer’s hard disk, waiting for future attention it may never get. This isn’t as good as publishing a blog post. That’s not because publishing is the goal. It’s because completion of the thought is the goal and an uncompleted blog post represents an unfinished thought.

I can also assume, when I don’t finish a blog post, is that I didn’t have enough to write about when I began it.

Full Circle

Which brings me full circle with this blog post.

The topic was the lack of topics. And I proved a lack of topics by writing a blog post that didn’t really cover anything in enough detail to make it worth reading.

Have I just wasted my time? It appears so.

Have I wasted yours? Please accept my apologies.

Message from a Reader

Posted on by
1

This is the kind of crap I put up with.

Some people really need to get a life. Like this guy, Mike, who took time out of what must be a very boring existence to write me this e-mail:

Look, you and people like you have got to STOP spreading crap like your mouse story around. Seriously, I understand your point of view and if I got to to fly a helicopter around when I wanted to I may adopt your point of view. The problem is that 99% of us DON’T!!!

It matters not what you write… whether it’s a novel or just get up on your soapbox and subletly tell others there moral duty in an internet story about mice. Some responsiblilty should be utilized.

I (and others like me) can not shuttle these vermin to an estate in the GC!! In fact, many suffer disease and health problems from these little bastards, myself included. Remeber the plauge???

Please think of the consiquences of your words.

Seems to me as though you are already full of shit.

Wow. For someone who doesn’t care, he certainly seems to care.

Amazing how a simple post about mice can get a guy so riled up. I guess he really hates the little critters. He should get a job as an exterminator.

Normally, I just delete crap like this. But this one was so spectacular with its exclamation points and question marks and misspellings that I just had to share it with the 1% of readers (by his estimate) who actually do care.

And if anyone reading this agrees with Mike, here’s a solution for you: stop reading this blog. Because no matter how much hate mail you send me, I’m going to write whatever the hell I want to here.