Even though the messages seemed to indicate that it had figured itself out, I still got another error message, so it's not a problem with my site. Besides, it shows the correct mini view for my site, so it can't be failing to find it. Oh well, it was just one more way of helping people who might be interested to find my site.
I'll be away from the computer a couple of weeks and don't know if I can find my own site through the hotel computer or other channels. We'll have to see. for now, one more posting of Cerel Gold before I go.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
definately not my thing
I have no idea what the instructions for fixing the problem mean, much less the nature of the problem, but it seems like they might want me to add something else. We'll see. they definately didn't add people to the process though. automated gobbldigook to me.
http://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=http%3A//enexplorations.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
http://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=http%3A//enexplorations.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Sometimes the days are very long
Whoosh! Such a week it has already been and more still to go. About the only upside today was that I got a little spare time to edit a friend's research paper and she had become quite a good writer. Always a pleasure to edit something into which thought and effort have been poured. I like to think I've had a role. Her writing has vastly improved over the couple of years that I have edited papers for her and I hope that my advice has helped the process.
It's always a little hard to tell. The impact of editing can be a very subtle thing, especially as it relates to the next paper (or story, or whatever) rather than the current one. I know that my writing improved any time I could get someone to do a real edit job, the more red the better, and marginal notes even more so. My old writing teachers (pre college and early college) always drove me crazy because they would just grade me with a comment. "Too many words" was a favorite of one. What, because I went over the suggested length? The story was too complex? Years, and I mean several many years before I found someone who would underline the verbose passage and offer an alternative. Maybe three examples was all he did and I bet I cut hundreds of words out of every story I revised thereafter because I could see where I was going wrong, both the specific sentence constructions that were adding verbosity, and the general concept of just using more words than necessary, especially when most of them were likely to be mushy and unconcrete.
Whenever I edit, as part of my regular work or for a friend, I always hope that I can enlighten as well as polish a particular piece. I'll ask question, underline what I'm reacting to, and always trying to comment on why I recommend a change, if I know.
It's always a little hard to tell. The impact of editing can be a very subtle thing, especially as it relates to the next paper (or story, or whatever) rather than the current one. I know that my writing improved any time I could get someone to do a real edit job, the more red the better, and marginal notes even more so. My old writing teachers (pre college and early college) always drove me crazy because they would just grade me with a comment. "Too many words" was a favorite of one. What, because I went over the suggested length? The story was too complex? Years, and I mean several many years before I found someone who would underline the verbose passage and offer an alternative. Maybe three examples was all he did and I bet I cut hundreds of words out of every story I revised thereafter because I could see where I was going wrong, both the specific sentence constructions that were adding verbosity, and the general concept of just using more words than necessary, especially when most of them were likely to be mushy and unconcrete.
Whenever I edit, as part of my regular work or for a friend, I always hope that I can enlighten as well as polish a particular piece. I'll ask question, underline what I'm reacting to, and always trying to comment on why I recommend a change, if I know.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Check out Curse of the Spider King!
My book review, and links to others participating in the blog tour, are at http://home.earthlink.net/~wyverns/ In sum: a great new, already award-winning book, and the start of a great new series. intended for tweens, its a light, pleasant, and imaginative book for adults as well as children.
Featured book:
Curse of the Spider King - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400315050
Author and series links:
Wayne Thomas Batson’s blog - http://enterthedoorwithin.blogspot.com/
Christopher Hopper’s Web site - http://www.christopherhopper.com/
The Berinfell Prophecies Web site - http://www.heedtheprophcies.com
Featured book:
Curse of the Spider King - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400315050
Author and series links:
Wayne Thomas Batson’s blog - http://enterthedoorwithin.blogspot.com/
Christopher Hopper’s Web site - http://www.christopherhopper.com/
The Berinfell Prophecies Web site - http://www.heedtheprophcies.com
Friday, November 13, 2009
meanderings and the search for readers
I of course imagine success in many forms, including popularity for my blogs. The hard part with blogs is advertising. Many search engines use a popularity sort, so of course the ones that aren't well known don't get noticed, while ones already popular get seen first, even when people are looking. With Science Fiction and Fantasy, I think no one's looking.
Some maybe under speculative fiction, and I need to do some searches myself under that heading, but so far what I've found hasn't been helpful. it is too broad, and most of it little different than contemporary fiction, less SF than James Bond. The alternative histories can be interesting but seem to me to require a strong knowledge of the particular history, and most are too modern for my tastes. Historical fiction and novelized history more often hit the medieval stuff I'm interested in, but only a handful break into fantasy or science fiction, and usually only the alternative histories land in a speculative fiction query.
Mostly, though, I need more hours in the day, to explore other sites and find others who might be interested in my stories, to find other writers (I've found a few but understandably, most aren't taking the time to post much on line outside ads for their newly published books. I need to spend more time trying to find publishers or agents for mine, but making the time... I have too many goals, too many interests and writing is more fun. Maybe one of the nights I don't go on line needs to be at the library, browsing the writers guide to publishers or whatever that thing is called. And another to explore other blogs and find my audience one person at a time.
Some maybe under speculative fiction, and I need to do some searches myself under that heading, but so far what I've found hasn't been helpful. it is too broad, and most of it little different than contemporary fiction, less SF than James Bond. The alternative histories can be interesting but seem to me to require a strong knowledge of the particular history, and most are too modern for my tastes. Historical fiction and novelized history more often hit the medieval stuff I'm interested in, but only a handful break into fantasy or science fiction, and usually only the alternative histories land in a speculative fiction query.
Mostly, though, I need more hours in the day, to explore other sites and find others who might be interested in my stories, to find other writers (I've found a few but understandably, most aren't taking the time to post much on line outside ads for their newly published books. I need to spend more time trying to find publishers or agents for mine, but making the time... I have too many goals, too many interests and writing is more fun. Maybe one of the nights I don't go on line needs to be at the library, browsing the writers guide to publishers or whatever that thing is called. And another to explore other blogs and find my audience one person at a time.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
patronate and mentoring
Over the years I’ve tried to be a patron of the arts as opportunity and finances allowed. I, like most of us, don’t have the funds to support anartist like the old rennaissance patrons who hired artists for months and years at a time to encourage and enable their artistic endeavors, but I have bought artwork at many cons. having tried to sell a bit of my own poor art at such events, to no success, I know how encouraging even a small purchase can be, and there are always plenty of pieces that catch my eye.
When I could get involved with a local art group--writing, calligraphy, painting or the like, I always try to encourage verbally, even if the art isn’t for sale, especially those clearly talented but unconfident ones. Those are the ones that really need to be nurtured and supported because the fragile ego is easily broken and I’ve seen too many stop their efforts out of a sense of hopelessness when they were the ones that had the best chance of taking their talent into the professional world or at least that of the successful amateur.
The latter are, in some ways, the more important. Some few oddballs and true talents will make it to fame and fortune, but the number who do don’t grow with the population, the few just become more famous, more rich, and they aren’t in a position to be mentors and patrons while they are in the midst of producing their art work with high demand. The successful amateur (or low end professional) are the ones that help develop the next generation of amaterus from which the next great one might spring. And they keep the art (or craft) alive in the face of modern pressures to turn to computer aide and automation. Granted, computers may have their place, but I don’t consider machine embroidery the same art as hand embroidery. If the artist is the designer/programmer of a desigh, I accept the argument that it is still art, but despite external appearances, it isn’t the same art. Ditto computer art and prints from paintings. Yes, i see the art in both, but they aren’t the same, aren’t equivalent. The painter can change a little of what they have done, but they can’t go back and forth with some change repeatedly, they cant make a handful of changes and sell it as two different designs, without reuining the first painting. And the skills are all different even if, to the uneducated eye, the resulting print looks to be the same medium.
Unfortunately, it tends to be a buyers world and if the .difference can’t be discerned from the outside, the buyer will go with what they like and the automated is often the cheaper if there is a choice. All we can do, as buyers, supporters, is to ask, encourage, and when funding allows, buy a hand made piece, a painting even though it costs more, and say thankyou and praise to the artists of all mediums for their efforts and for using the talents they’ve been given to good effect.
Visual arts, though, have their own advantage, in being visible. The writing artists end to be harder to find, harder to support: how much do you pay for a poem? Can you ask for one to be made, like the patrons of old asking for a statue on a specific theme. I saw an artcle recently on some poets who essentially write on demand, little poems rel to events fo the day. That is a truly great way for a paerp or magazine to be a patron of the arts. I wish more magazines would do it, too. I wrote (and still occasionally) write nonfiction essays and bad poetry (on my other blog) but have all but given up on selling any of them. The poetry because it's fairly pitiful and I just do it for the fun of it as mood hits, but the essays because no medium out there seems to support them.
They are on food and gardening and other like things that have many many magazines on the topic, but none of those magazines that I’ve found make any pretense of supporting anything but journalism and, on rare occasion, the personal nonfiction story that they mistakenly dub an “essay”. remember back in the old school days, writing a paragraph, five paragraphs, a couple of pages on a topic of almost any sort? To me, those are essays, structure and less so, but on topics that aren’t necessarily me and my life. But no one seems to support that wrting form anymore in any medium (The closest I’ve notices are a few of the PBS shows, where essays about places and nature and such are the voice over for film footage of those places and such.) Those magazines offer no such essays about their subject matter and focus, no poetry (surely there is plenty out there on homelife? Don’t people write about the familliar as well as the strange?) One essay or poem a month is such magazines would provide a vast patronage to a flagging art.
Unfortunately, I don’t espect to get published ina magazine much less influence the content of any of them, so what else can we, I, do to support writing? among children, it’s “easy” which is to say that making the time can be a challenge though the task itself is likely to be fun: volunteer to tutor weak writers through afterschool programs.or mentor good ones through correspondence. Adults are more of a challenge. finding fellow writers can be a challenge. the most effective way I’ve found has been through classes at the local college or at convention workshops. I’ve never successfully maintained contact at the latter, but have occasionally managed for the former, and sometimes I’ve helped them, sometimes they’ve helped me, and always we encouraged and supported each other’s efforts, which is a good thing, even though the groups so far haven’t lasted. If there are better ways, maybe readings if I could find any to attend? What else?
Online, I’m still learning. i mostly write but I do try to take time to roam to other sites and offer comments, always an encouragement itself. The hardes part has been looking for essays of the sort I want to see, the essay that is about a subject and not a nonfiction story about the writer. Those are too common, too easy, and supported widely without need of encouragement. But typing in “essay”--that’s mostly what you’ll get. Typing in potential topics... the first few hundred are the sites that sell it or something vaguely related. So, if you find a site that has essays from other than the I POV, please share and we can both encourage the writers with our comments and be patrons of the arts.
When I could get involved with a local art group--writing, calligraphy, painting or the like, I always try to encourage verbally, even if the art isn’t for sale, especially those clearly talented but unconfident ones. Those are the ones that really need to be nurtured and supported because the fragile ego is easily broken and I’ve seen too many stop their efforts out of a sense of hopelessness when they were the ones that had the best chance of taking their talent into the professional world or at least that of the successful amateur.
The latter are, in some ways, the more important. Some few oddballs and true talents will make it to fame and fortune, but the number who do don’t grow with the population, the few just become more famous, more rich, and they aren’t in a position to be mentors and patrons while they are in the midst of producing their art work with high demand. The successful amateur (or low end professional) are the ones that help develop the next generation of amaterus from which the next great one might spring. And they keep the art (or craft) alive in the face of modern pressures to turn to computer aide and automation. Granted, computers may have their place, but I don’t consider machine embroidery the same art as hand embroidery. If the artist is the designer/programmer of a desigh, I accept the argument that it is still art, but despite external appearances, it isn’t the same art. Ditto computer art and prints from paintings. Yes, i see the art in both, but they aren’t the same, aren’t equivalent. The painter can change a little of what they have done, but they can’t go back and forth with some change repeatedly, they cant make a handful of changes and sell it as two different designs, without reuining the first painting. And the skills are all different even if, to the uneducated eye, the resulting print looks to be the same medium.
Unfortunately, it tends to be a buyers world and if the .difference can’t be discerned from the outside, the buyer will go with what they like and the automated is often the cheaper if there is a choice. All we can do, as buyers, supporters, is to ask, encourage, and when funding allows, buy a hand made piece, a painting even though it costs more, and say thankyou and praise to the artists of all mediums for their efforts and for using the talents they’ve been given to good effect.
Visual arts, though, have their own advantage, in being visible. The writing artists end to be harder to find, harder to support: how much do you pay for a poem? Can you ask for one to be made, like the patrons of old asking for a statue on a specific theme. I saw an artcle recently on some poets who essentially write on demand, little poems rel to events fo the day. That is a truly great way for a paerp or magazine to be a patron of the arts. I wish more magazines would do it, too. I wrote (and still occasionally) write nonfiction essays and bad poetry (on my other blog) but have all but given up on selling any of them. The poetry because it's fairly pitiful and I just do it for the fun of it as mood hits, but the essays because no medium out there seems to support them.
They are on food and gardening and other like things that have many many magazines on the topic, but none of those magazines that I’ve found make any pretense of supporting anything but journalism and, on rare occasion, the personal nonfiction story that they mistakenly dub an “essay”. remember back in the old school days, writing a paragraph, five paragraphs, a couple of pages on a topic of almost any sort? To me, those are essays, structure and less so, but on topics that aren’t necessarily me and my life. But no one seems to support that wrting form anymore in any medium (The closest I’ve notices are a few of the PBS shows, where essays about places and nature and such are the voice over for film footage of those places and such.) Those magazines offer no such essays about their subject matter and focus, no poetry (surely there is plenty out there on homelife? Don’t people write about the familliar as well as the strange?) One essay or poem a month is such magazines would provide a vast patronage to a flagging art.
Unfortunately, I don’t espect to get published ina magazine much less influence the content of any of them, so what else can we, I, do to support writing? among children, it’s “easy” which is to say that making the time can be a challenge though the task itself is likely to be fun: volunteer to tutor weak writers through afterschool programs.or mentor good ones through correspondence. Adults are more of a challenge. finding fellow writers can be a challenge. the most effective way I’ve found has been through classes at the local college or at convention workshops. I’ve never successfully maintained contact at the latter, but have occasionally managed for the former, and sometimes I’ve helped them, sometimes they’ve helped me, and always we encouraged and supported each other’s efforts, which is a good thing, even though the groups so far haven’t lasted. If there are better ways, maybe readings if I could find any to attend? What else?
Online, I’m still learning. i mostly write but I do try to take time to roam to other sites and offer comments, always an encouragement itself. The hardes part has been looking for essays of the sort I want to see, the essay that is about a subject and not a nonfiction story about the writer. Those are too common, too easy, and supported widely without need of encouragement. But typing in “essay”--that’s mostly what you’ll get. Typing in potential topics... the first few hundred are the sites that sell it or something vaguely related. So, if you find a site that has essays from other than the I POV, please share and we can both encourage the writers with our comments and be patrons of the arts.
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