I Never Said Goodbye…

I don’t know if anyone is still reading this.  I know I haven’t posted here in over a year.

It started with another case of blogging block. I couldn’t think of anything interesting to write about, and by the time I did, it felt like I had already been gone too long. Plus there was a bunch of things going on in my personal life that made blogging impossible. Things that I wouldn’t have felt comfortable blogging about.

My writing life changed, too. I’ve since adopted a pen name (though I’m still unpublished), and it began to feel too strange to continue under this one. I began writing more short stories, instead of focusing on my novel(s) for one thing. I can thank my experiences here for that. I’ve also settled, more or less on one definite genre, and not the one I originally imagined I would be writing in.

I started a new blog in my new name: http://jaymimizuno.wordpress.com I probably should have just changed over the address of this one, but to be honest I didn’t think of it at the time. Plus, I no longer use the e-mail address associated with this account.

I plan to find and follow all of the bloggers I enjoyed reading during my time here, with my new account. Just a quick glance tells me that I have already missed so much that was going on with them. I may never manage to catch up again completely , but I’m going to try.

Finally, I want to give a long overdue “Thank You” to everyone who supported me while I was here. I hope you know how much I appreciated your words, your support and comments.

Thank you again, everyone. I hope to see you around the blogging world soon.

Michelle

A Full Day of Writing?

Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?

I always wondered how much I could get done if I had unlimited time to write.  Would I be disciplined enough to actually work, or would I spend the day watching television and eating obscene amounts of chocolate?

Only one way to find out.

I cleared my schedule for my day off, and decided to spend the time working on writing — and blogging, since that’s part of the whole writers must participate in social media  thing that is, to me, more intimidating than writing itself.  Don’t believe me? I’m not just an introvert, I’m a full-blown internet hermit.  Oh, I like reading what everyone is saying on blogs and in forums, but participating? Saying something, even with the option to think ahead of time and not just blurt out the first embarrassing thing that comes to mind?  Not me.  I’m the lurker in the dark corners of social media, with a tendency to turn into a grouchy goblin if pushed to interact.  Or, you could say I have a tendency to act like this guy:

"Don't talk to me!"
Hawaiian Monk Seal, Photographed at the Waikiki Aquarium, March 2009

It was a day meant to push my limits, however, so I needed a plan.  I decided to start with my writing, rotating between my three current works-in-progress.  I could only move on to the next manuscript when I finished what would have been the normal word count goal for the day.  After going through the manuscripts, I would then move on to blogging.  Not just trying to write new posts, but focusing on interaction.  I had to do this for one solid hour before I could return to my works-in-progress.

This routine was to be repeated as necessary throughout the day, from the time I woke up, until I either fell asleep or the clock struck  midnight.  The only breaks were physically necessary ones, like meals, or taking care of my dog.  Not even writing can compete with this face:

I surprised myself with how much I managed to get done.  Between the three manuscripts, I wrote a total of 2326 words(according to my writing software’s word count.)  On other days, I’m lucky if I add 300 words to just one of those manuscripts.

As far as blogging? I wrote a couple of partial drafts of posts, but I decided to spend the bulk of my time working on the “social” side.  I’ll admit I didn’t comment nearly as much as I probably could have, on posts, because I had a tendency to get distracted by reading the next post on the blog, and the next…  I did mention I was a lurker, didn’t I? I did find several new blogs to follow, many of which I found in the blog roll on The Write Transition.  What can I say? I think she has great taste.

I’m pretty pleased with how the day turned out, and I’m looking forward to scheduling another one like it ASAP.   Though I didn’t reach all my goals for the day, especially in blogging, I think it deserves a little celebration:

Photo taken July 4, 2009
Highlands, North Carolina, USA

Insulting Spam? Really?

In my day job, I run a website that contains a blog:  mostly new product updates, media features, things like that.  Not really interesting reading, I’ll be the first to admit.  But I must admit I was taken aback at first when the site started receiving messages like this(I copied and pasted it from the original, so all bad grammar and missing punctuation is the responsibility of the original poster):   When Someone said your blog post, I hope that it doesnt disappoint me just as much as this one. What i’m saying is, It was my choice to read, however i actually thought youd have something interesting to state. All I hear is a bunch of whining about something that you could fix in the event you werent too busy looking for attention.

Huh? First, I’m not sure how a post about a new product design that is about to be added to the website  is whining.  Second, do they really think repeating  the same message, almost word for word, from different user names, will really make whatever point they’re trying to make? I know a lot of these “spam” posters are just posting to blogs to try to build up “back-links” to their own sites, but they can’t really expect people to allow these kinds of comments through.  Can they?

Looks like the wild and wacky world of internet spam has just gotten a little wackier.