blogging


This was originally on the blog of the Ultra Fabulous Miss P.

I found it on Rob’s site yesterday

Google your name and the word “needs” in quotes (”Annie needs”) and see what results come up. The results will be highlighted in the little paragraph contained below each result. List the first 20 and then tag* 20 or more of your friends.

Annie needs

1) to be rescued by the Armed Forces

2) a Daddy Warbucks

3) a home (oddly this came up a half dozen or so times)

4) a miracle

5) to release a live album

6) prayers

7) jesus! (with a small “j”, really)

8) some help

9) the basics

10) jingles

11) a family

12) some advice

13) someone, or if someone needs her, she cannot open the door

14) help with her homework

15) acting lessons

16) buckets

17) to be recast for the Marloo Theatre’s production of Table Manners

18) to take drastic actions now by marrying Adam Chandler

19) a simple problem solving/task centered approach

20) donations

 

*tagging is….completely optional!


This morning I checked my stats not expecting to see much. I didn’t post today as I sometimes do when I have watched a movie worth noting for whatever reason. And then I went about my business. I am working on writing exercises from a writing book by Ursula K. Le Guin and have been blogging about it on my new writing blog. Then there was skating and we had a family movie from last evening to finish up with BabyD.*

After dinner, I logged on to make sure I have the posts queued up properly for the week and discovered well over 500 views for the day.

500?

Immediately I suspected the widow board but a bit of investigation turned up nothing.

I have StatCounter, so Rob called up today’s visitors and aside from someone in Calgary – who appears to be intent on reading everything I have ever posted – there was nothing to indicate where the traffic was coming from or what they were looking for.

The downside of blogging is this kind of thing. Lots of anonymous views with nary a comment left in their wake.

The Calgary viewer has happened before though. Someone finds me by accident and then reads until they bore themselves of me. It has led to stalking before and probably won’t now although when this has happened in the past, the reader was not living just hours away.

*Bedknobs and Broomsticks which Rob actually remembered down to the nonsense words of the spells.


I generally don’t blog the Friday post until the night before unlike other days of the week where I might be a week or two ahead. I discovered long ago that to be a (week) daily blog, some advance planning/writing is necessary. If I didn’t do it this way, I wouldn’t get any other writing done and fiction is my main priority.

Fiction is my main priority. I came to that conclusion last week. I am avoiding the hard work by blogging, but since I love to blog – a dilemma. I thought about just shutting down the blog and leaving 50 Something Moms. In the short term, I would have oodles of time for my “serious” writing. But in the near long term, I will lose everything I gained from blogging with the community and friendships I have made being chief on the loss list with no guarantee that I will be any more productive on the fiction front.

So I have decided that 50 Something is going to be strictly a two post a month proposition for the near future. I just don’t have time, and I don’t get the sense that I am in the right company. Perhaps I am too young after all? I hate tweener gaps. The SVM network is, ironically, launching a Canadian Mom site now. I wish I’d had that option last fall. But oh well.

I am instituting a new daily task calendar to go along with my quarterly plans. Perhaps this will keep me on track? I am juggling too many projects and sending out stories that are still in want of revision. Case in point? 2.0 came back from the sci/fi mag for the second time with a very nice rejection letter. It was a second look for them, but they still can’t picture it in their publication. It’s not a total defeat. They liked it. But there are still problems, and when I read it again the other night, I could see them easily which means I am rushing to get this out. It’s a miracle really they considered it once let alone twice because they are probably not the right market even. A testament to the strength of the piece but an indictment of me. I am spread too thinly.

Being in a hurry to get to where I want to be has always been a problem for me. I can see so clearly where I am meant to go and be that I ignore the stuff that is standing in my path.

Okay, ignore is strong. I underestimate the travel commitment. It’s a pantser thing and since I so seldom am wrong when I head out with my lance toward the windmills, I forget about the last battle in the larger war until I am flying bum over head to find myself looking up at the sky again.

“Details. Oh yeah, forgot about them.”

I got too caught up in the platform thing that Christina Katz is so keen on. It does me no good until I have product to “pimp”. Because isn’t that what  a web platform is for?  I have three and a half manuscripts of which one is finished and that includes the memoir. There are a half dozen short stories that need finishing in some way or other. I have another novel idea that is sitting in short pieces.

And I am having trouble with the whole “platform” thing anyway. I can see the point of networking with other writers, but the whole point of blogging is community.

And then there is Rob, BabyD and life in general with myself somewhere down on the list. Did I ever mention my growing interest in becoming a yoga instructor? 

Time, time, time. See what’s become of me.

I am in transition right now. Things might be more me-centric than usual, or not, here for the next couple of months.

In other news?

CB had another break from reality last weekend. I wonder what it’s like to be able to simply discount reality and invent a new one for oneself?

He called our mom to report an attempt on his life by people who have been following him. Mom asked him if he could call her back later as she was late for mass and had a brunch date with a friend. He said, sure, he was just updating her anyway.

Imaginary people stalking CB with nefarious intentions has come to be normal for us.

DNOS called him back while Mom was out.

“I’m expecting a home invasion at any moment,” he told her.

But a few days later, Mom finds a message on her voicemail from CB. He apologized for freaking her out. Everything was fine now.

BabyD has graduated from her remedial reading program and is now in the highest reading group with her friends, which was her only concern during the whole ordeal. I am pleased with her progress, but she is still a haphazard reader who tires very easily. Reading is going to be the straw that breaks her school loving back someday I fear. She is too much like her dad for my liking sometimes.

ED is still in Mexico. And still fine. 

It snowed most of the week. Depressing. But the sun is back today, and we are being threatened by a warming trend for the next week or so.

And that’s it.