I Got Nothing

 

Once upon a time, I used to blog every day. Sometimes I even posted more than once a day. How did I come up with so much to talk about?

I'm sitting here, trying to figure out what to write and I have nothing.

Part of it is because I used to blog about my stories and ideas and I don't do that anymore. Mostly because so many of my plans and the ideas I wanted to write, well, I just don't have time to write them. I think it maybe disappointed people, especially when I talked about ideas for more books in my Jarved Nine series.

Another part might have to do with being more tired now. I work ridiculous hours at the day job because of how bad the traffic is, and I'm done when I get home.

It's funny how I get ideas on topics to blog about while I can't write them down. I tell myself: Remember this for later! Only I never do.

I took a few minutes to look back at old pictures from posts. There was the one with the fountain pen--I don't use fountain pens anymore, although I like writing with them. I found the picture from when I discovered my latest favorite pen brand (EnerGel) and it's still my favorite. There's a picture from when I tried to make my mom's plum pirogis and failed. And the stray cat I fed on my patio until it disappeared.

And there are so many pictures of notebooks and planners--which I still talk about.

Blog Secrets

I mentioned in the last blog that I come up with ideas to blog about, don't write them down, and then forget them when it is time to blog. I also mentioned that I started writing down ideas in my test planner.

Well, the writing ideas down wasn't always a complete success either. You see, I'd write it on the second page of the planner, flip over to another day, and totally forget to check it when it was time to blog. Some of these ideas aren't time sensitive and I can blog about them in the future, but others?

There were a couple of holiday movies that I never got to write reviews for. Christmas Chronicle (or is it Chronicles?) thumbs up. Christmas Chronicle/s 2, thumbs down. Maybe I'll rewatch them (at least the good one) and review it for Christmas 2021.

The other movie I watched around the holidays felt like a Christmas movie, too. The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past with Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Garner. It was okay. Not a bad way to spend a few hours if you have nothing else to do and Matthew McConaughey.

Then there are the four movies I watched that I could have reviewed any time, but have forgotten too many details to do this. These I will watch again and will review at the time, so I'm not giving away future topics. :-) There are times it's very hard to come up with anything to talk about.

I could talk about the book I'm writing, but I don't want to give away spoilers. I could talk about the series in general and I'd like to do this, but I have so many ideas and I've talked about them in the past on the blog and then I never wrote them. I hate to raise people's hopes and have them disappointed. I do have ideas for 7 more Jarved Nine books--really--but no time to write them.

There are other ideas I come up with, but when I try to write them, I realize there's not enough to say to fill an entire blog post. This is frustrating because I would like to bitch about this email thing that's cropping up online, but two paragraphs isn't going to do it.

Basically, I'm the poster child for blogging wrong. Sigh. Some day. Maybe. I can get a better grip on this.

Copy That

I wrote a blog post for today and hit the schedule button so it would publish while I'm at work. Sometimes it's hard to figure out what to blog about and this was one of those days, but I finally came up with something.

And then I glanced down at my list of published blog posts and saw a headline that made me pause. I might have written about this already. I took a look at the earlier post.

Yep. The exact same topic I'd written about for today had been a previous post in October. Sigh.

Things might have been worded differently, but it was the exact same sentiments. Well, there goes that idea. (In case you're interested, it was the post about my 2020 planner impatience.)

I guess I've been excited about a new planner for a while now. :-/

Here's hoping I'm more original next week.

10 Things I Believe

I was stuck for blog topics. Really stuck. So I did some searching online and found most ideas didn't work for me. Seriously. Have blog readers choose character names? I don't even get to choose my characters' names. They tell me their names and it doesn't matter how much I dislike a name, I'm stuck with it. That ruled that blog idea right off the list.

But one of the ideas I saw on another post online was to blog about 10 things that I believe. This is going to be interesting since I've never really stopped to think about it. I guess we'll discover this together.

1. I believe that we're all here for a reason even if we don't know what it is.
2. I believe that no knowledge is wasted.
   
   And I'm totally stuck here. Gah! I must have more than two beliefs, right?
   
3.  I believe that kindness is one of the most important character traits someone can have.
4.  I believe that I have the right to cut toxic people out of my life permanently.
5.  I believe that examining one's life and making changes is an important part of growth.
6.  I believe that hard work pays off eventually if you don't give up first.
7.  I believe that people need to put their phones away while they drive. :-)
8.  I believe that there was an advanced civilization on Earth long before our known timeline.
9.  I believe that my characters are real people in alternate universes and that I've just plugged into them for a little while.
10.  I believe in science.
    
    There! I did it! Some of them were a little silly rather than philosophical, but there are ten of them. Hurrah!

Topics, Topics Everywhere, But Not a One to Write

I've kind of been stuck for blog topics again. I'm blaming my insomnia for this. I go through stretches where I don't get more than a couple of hours of sleep a night and my brain doesn't function well when I'm in this place. So once again, I went in search of blog topics for fiction writers. One of the suggestions: Interview a character.

Cool, I thought, this I can do. Then the problem becomes who do I interview. I search my brain only to see characters trying really hard to blend into the woodwork. Imagine them all avoiding eye contact. One heroine is studying her fingernails, a few of my guys are looking at the floor or the ceiling, a few are edging backward. Yeah, this is going well so far. It's like in Ferris Bueller's Day Off when the teacher says: "Bueller, Bueller, Bueller" and there's no response.

Since I want these characters to cooperate with me when I write them, I decide that this isn't the subject I'm going to push them on. They don't want to be interviewed, that's fine. There are more blogging ideas.

Describe your office was another suggestion. Um, no. I don't even go in my office if I can avoid it. It's a disorganized mess compounded by never putting things away from when I moved in. I did take a picture of my office, but I'm not sharing that disaster until I have an after picture to show it all put away nicely.

Looks like I'm on my own. Hopefully, I'll have a more interesting idea for next time.

Sorry

No blog post today. My mom was taken to the Emergency Room yesterday morning and I spent all day with her at the hospital. I hope to be back with a new post on Thursday, but that will depend on her health. Sorry.

Blogging Ideas

Coming up with blog topics is hard, but someone posted a link on Twitter to blog topics for authors. Cool, I thought, and went over to check it out. I was so disappointed when I discovered that most of the ideas either are ones I've done before or won't work for me.

Character names. I do talk about this, probably too much, but it is something that I find endlessly fascinating. I might want to talk about it again, but I'll probably wait since I know I did it recently.

Character illness and I why I chose to give him/her that particular disease. At first I thought hey, I could talk about Kel and his PTSD, but then the second part of the suggestion stopped me. Why I'd chosen to give him PTSD. Um, I didn't chose. Kel came to me with PTSD and it wasn't as if I could ignore it, not when it colored his entire life. Choose? Yeah, right.

Deleted scenes. Hmm. Well, maybe I could talk about those, but I don't have that many straight deleted scenes. Most of the time, the scene does make the book, just rewritten to actually make it interesting. Besides, I put those scenes out of my head and move on. I'd have to reread my cast off folders for each book.

Talk about what time of day you write and why. How interesting is I write in the evenings because I'm not at my day job? Seriously. 

Talk about your poems or other writing. I don't write poems. I hardly have time to write stories let alone extra, non-focused writing.

Guess I'm going to have to keep coming up with my own topics.

Come Join Me

I'm a guest over on Harlequin's Paranormal Romance Blog! Come on over and join me as I talk about Games of Desire, my novella-length release from Nocturne Cravings!

I Guest Blogged

I did a guest blog yesterday on the Harlequin Paranormal Romance blog about PHOENIX BURNING. Please stop by and check it out.

Paranormal Romance Blog

It's been cold in Atlanta the past few days. Not as cold as other parts of the nation, namely Minnesota where I used to live, but still cold enough that it felt like typical Minnesota-in-January weather. It underlined just how spoiled I'd become living in a warmer climate. I'm good with that. :-)

I hope that wherever you are that the weather is moderating (I know it's very hot in Australia right now) and that the New Year is a great one!

Pick a Topic, Any Topic

I'm supposed to be writing a guest blog right now, but instead, I'm working on my own blog. Why? Because it's easier to talk here. You see, when invited to guest blog around a new release, the author is supposed to talk about the new release. In theory, this should be easy. It's not.

The first problem is there's no specific topic. Just talk about your story. Anything. Well, that's like getting a paper assigned in school and being told you can write about anything you want. Instead of making it easier, that broad expanse of possibility makes it harder. Really. It was much easier in school to riff on a topic when the parameters were narrowed.

The second issue is that I've been invited to blog about my current release. I turned that in last August. Not only was that nearly 5 months ago now, but I wrote another full novella since then. Even writing about that story would be difficult because It's been about 6 weeks since I finished that one and those details are getting fuzzy, too.

Throw in the fact that I forgot all about the guest blog until late last night and that I need to turn it in tonight. Add in that I'm tired because I've been up since 4am and worked at my day job. Now I need to find a topic and be interesting in 300-400 words. Oh, and one additional handicap--I've been writing since I was 15 so I don't really know what a person who doesn't write would find interesting to hear about.

I'm not asking for suggestions. It's too late for that. I'm just kind of lamenting the task that lies ahead of me before I can go to bed. :-)

Back to Blogger

As much as I hated to do it, I've taken the WordPress blog off my website and returned to Blogger--hosted at Blogspot. I apologize if this inconveniences anyone, but despite the reams of security I had around that blog, it was hacked again. This is like the third or fourth time now.

No one else I know seems to have this problem, but for me, it's been a constant battle. The last time, I nuked the entire blog and the database it was hooked to and started completely over with a number of different security programs that did different things. I even blocked the IP addresses of the person who was trying to hack in, changed my password to one that was 32 characters long with numbers, letters, and symbols, and changed the standard names WordPress gives to standard installation features.

Despite all this, on Friday when I did a quick check of my users, I found another name in there beside my own.

I threw in the towel.

I don't have the time or energy to keep up with the hackers anymore. So despite what this is going to do to my Google search results, I am keeping my blog off my site and returning to Blogger. It's not the optimal solution, but it's the best I can do.

Blogging Ahead

I usually don't write my blog posts more than a week ahead. There are exceptions, like when I wrote a bunch of posts while I was up in Minnesota in April. I was inspired, I guess. Or when I know I'm going to be on vacation or away from the computer for some other reason.

Right now, I'm writing blog posts ahead because I won't have internet for two weeks after I move into my new home and because I have an August 15 deadline for a story, so my plan is to write all the posts through that date.

After Aug 15th, I'll share pictures of my new house with my things in it. This will be such a big deal for me because I've been living with almost all my things for a year and a half while I worked in Atlanta and still had my house in MN.

The problem with writing ahead right now is it's because I have to, not because I feel inspired. Actually, all I feel right now is exhausted. Moving is a lot of work and there's still more to do.

Tomorrow, my dad and I will paint the laundry room. The house was mostly in good shape, but this room is just banged up beyond washing away the marks on the walls. Easier just to paint over them before the washer and dryer arrive.

Monday the movers arrive with my stuff from Minnesota.

Tuesday a second set of movers will move my stuff from temporary housing to my permanent home.

Then, sometime after this, but in the near future, I need to get a Georgia driver's license and license plates. And still make my Aug 15 deadline.

TL; DR

Another recent article on the internet was about long articles. Sorry that I'm not linking to it, but I read it last week and I didn't save it. Of course, I can't remember which site it was or even narrow it down.

The gist of the article was that people don't read long posts. He gave the stats, like so many will click away almost instantly. I'm guessing those are people who ended up there by mistake. I accidentally click on stuff all the time because of my impatience.

Of the people who stay on the site long enough to read something, most last one screen length. They don't scroll, they leave. The author ran through how many people he lost at each point. They can actually measure how many pixels deep people read. Which is maybe taking analytics just a step too far for comfort.

The thing is that this has been common knowledge for a long time. It was one of the first things I learned in journalism school and it's why when you read the newspaper, the most important information comes first and it's been this way for decades at least. For all I know, maybe centuries.

This article also made me wince. I know my blog posts tend to be long, not quick and snappy. I suppose I have a ton of people who take a look and think TL; DR. (Too Long; Didn't Read) Sorry, y'all.

Copyright and Fair Use

I had a funny thing happen to me last week--and by funny, I mean strange, not humorous. I was checking email at lunch while I was at work and among the notes was a take-down notice. Yes, someone was accusing me of infringing on their copyright.

This left me puzzled because I'm very careful about this and I couldn't think of anything I'd posted recently that even touched on someone else's material. I clicked through on the link they'd included and it was a blog post I'd written nearly two years ago. Yep, it was from January 2011 and we're nearly to 2013. I read through what they were objecting to. Four sentences.

I got a take-down notice for quoting four sentences.

There's this part of copyright law called the Fair Use Doctrine. I'm linking through to the Wikipedia entry for anyone who wants to read in more detail about it, but basically it allows others to quote copyrighted material within certain circumstances.

Since four sentences can hardly be construed as too much material, I was fine there. I also fell within the category of commentary--I was fine here as well.

The take-down email also, quite frankly, pissed me off. It still pisses me off when I think of it. Some corporation is trying to quell Fair Use of material and this isn't good. Believe me, I'm a strong supporter of copyright, but I also believe that companies like this one are doing more to hurt copyright in the long run than all the pirates running loose on the internet.

Sending intimating take-down notices for instances of Fair Use does nothing but foster resentment, and ultimately, will lead to more people pirating material. Fair Use exists for a reason--so that people can talk about ideas and share thoughts. Fair Use is vital to society.

And I took the blog post down anyway, despite being assured that there were attorneys who would take on the case for free. It galled me to do this, but I did it anyway because it's just not worth the time, energy, and aggravation to fight a take-down notice on a blog post that's nearly two years old. So the bullies get away with it and no doubt will go on to bully others. I'm sorry about that.

The event was covered by Tech Dirt. They have the four sentences I quoted. They also have a screenshot of part of my blog before I took the post down.

Ten Years Ago

Not blogging today is my way of offering moment of silence to honor the victims of 9/11 and the other victims of terrorism around the world.

Join Me at JoJo's Book Corner

I'm guest blogging today at JoJo's Book Corner for her blogoversary! See the model who looks like Dak, the demon hero from Enemy Embrace (Oct 2011 in Crave the Night). I also talk about one of my favorite books from the mid 90s and am giving away a copy of Through a Crimson Veil. Please join me!

Aside From Writing...

That online class I took last week was on branding, something I really have trouble with despite being an advertising major in college. I tell people that I was trained to handle multi-million dollar accounts, not nickel and dime operations like I am. :-) I haven't had time to read the lessons yet because I was deluged with email from other class members on Day 1, and this weekend (when I meant to catch up on posts), I got sick and had no brain power.

But one of the things I think I caught scattered among the nearly 1000 posts this class generated in one week was that we shouldn't blog about writing, that it only interests other writers. What we should blog about are other things we're involved with/interested in.

This makes sense to me, but it raises the question: What the hell do I blog about if I stay away from writing and my stories?

Hobbies:

Watching Major League Baseball. This I could probably do, unfortunately my demographic is women and I'm doubtful I'd attract the right audience to my blog if I picked this topic.

Watching movies. Kind of. I used to watch a movie a week, but that fell by the wayside years ago. I've become so picky, that it's difficult to lose myself in the story because I'm so busy noticing plot holes. Since movies have become work for me (all that analyzing I do), I've mostly stopped watching them.

Reading books. I have no plans to review the books I read. Oh, an occasional non-fiction one now and then if I really loved it, but I won't criticize another author, and a good reviewer should cover the pluses and minuses. I crossed this one off the list pretty quickly.

Playing Hidden Object Games. I suppose I could review these and the demographic is okay since it seems as if a lot of women enjoy these games, too, but there are review sites like Gamezebo who review huge numbers of games of all kinds. I can't compete with that, and they also preview upcoming games. It's the site I go to for reviews and previews. Also, I go in streaks when I play these things, and when I'm busy writing, I don't play much, so that would leave huge gaps.

Flower gardening. I know nothing about gardening. Really. All I did was buy perennial bulbs and plant them. I mulch so I don't have to weed as much. Then I just look out the window and enjoy the color. This does not make for a successful gardening blog. Then factor in that I live in Minnesota and we're talking about maybe six months without anything to talk about even if I did have a clue about what I was doing.

Scrapbooking. I haven't done it in 5 years, even when I did do it, my pages were okay, not great, and I'm not particularly creative with how my pages look. I'd be embarrassed to take pictures of my finished work, especially after seeing what people who are good at crafts can do.

So what does this leave me with? The only other things I do are write (which I'm not supposed to talk about) and go to work. I'm not keen to blog about my day job because then I have to follow all these guidelines my employer has set forth for social media and it's easier to just avoid this and any potential problems it might bring up. And since I can't blog about sleeping, I'm not left with much. :-/

I thought about blogging about computers because I am a major geek this way, but I'm far from an expert and a lot of times I just figure things out by playing with them. And there are gazillion tech blogs out there anyway written by people who know much more than I do. Another fail.

I'm hoping things become clearer when I have time to actually go through the lessons and work on the exercises that were part of them. But looking at my list above, I'm not holding my breath for an epiphany.

Not Quite Undead

Come over and visit the Harlequin Paranormal Romance blog today! I'm a guest over there talking about how a Ghostly Vampire Gets a Happy Ending. I talk about Cass and Malachi--Malachi being the vampire who's not quite undead anymore--from Shadow's Caress.

It's Hard Work!

I was asked to guest blog for the Harlequin Paranormal Romance blog because Shadow's Caress was released from Bites on Feb 1st. (It's a fun story with fun characters and suspense! Check it out.) Of course I said yes! I love talking about my characters and their stories, but guest blogging is hard for me.

Theoretically, you wouldn't think guest blogging would be any harder than blogging here, right? It's not the case, at least not for me. Here, I just riff about whatever I feel like talking about, but when I guest blog, I need a topic and need to stay on topic. I tend to digress. Often.

Plus, on a guest blog, I'm trying extra hard to be interesting, and yet because I have to stay on topic, I often sound as if I were writing an academic paper rather than blogging. That's how stilted and formal my language ends up being. I ran into this same problem with this guest blog.

I had a topic--How to make a ghost sexy--and that's normally really hard to come up with, so I figured I was one ahead. I started making notes because let's face it, y'all know I was just writing down what the characters were saying, internal monologue as well as external dialogue. It's not a question I actually asked myself at any point while I was in Pre-Book or writing the story.

As I notebooked, though, I realized that I had put some thought into a few areas and I'd made decisions on how I was going to handle things. I decided to focus on that for the blog. Knowing I have a problem with formality in guest blogs, I decided to try writing it in ink on paper rather than using Word. Maybe that would avoid it.

Nope. I ended up with a boring academic treatise. I had another thought: What if I wrote it in an email? I tend to be really chatty in email unless I'm sending a note to my agent or an editor. Then my mind goes blank on chatty stuff and I'm overly businesslike. Anyway, it was worth a try, right? It worked! I got my chatty tone back and that's how I like to blog because I am chatting with y'all.

One small problem. I got a little too chatty and I hit 200+ words before reaching my topic. Um, yeah. Editing, cutting, and revising were necessary.

I'll post the link to the guest blog tomorrow--stop by then to check it out!

Bloglines

Just a quick FYI. Bloglines is shutting down Oct 1st. If you're like me, and don't pay attention, this will be a surprise to you. It was to me. If you use Bloglines, you'll need to transfer your feeds to some other RSS reader.