What Writing's All About

This is going to be shorter than I want it to be... it's late. I'm tired. I'll have to come back to this topic another day. But...

See, here is why you need to learn your own voice when you write:

I held this contest, the Great Chocolate Contest, for people to write stories based upon the Imagination Room from The House on the Corner. It's hard to know what you'll get when you do something like that. But, see, that's part of the cool of doing it. Seeing what you get. How will someone else interpret what you've done, and how will that be different from what the next person does. Seeing the different voices of the different stories that all come from the same place. It's cool.

I had hoped for better participation, of course, but I'm learning I'm not really very good at hosting the contests. I mean, if the BEST chocolate in the world (that I've ever tasted) can only get two people to enter, then I don't know what else to offer. Well, I suppose there's cash, but, man, that's so... uninteresting. Or something.

So, yeah, two entries:
You can find Briane Pagel's entry here. Okay, you can't actually find it there, but you can find his link to it there along with an introduction. I have to say that Briane's story is so Epic. It's nothing I ever would have thought of. And I'm completely saddened over the fact that I did not think of Seal Team i, because that idea is just awesome. You should go read it; you might recognize some of the characters.

You can find Rusty Webb's entry here. He really gave it the full on horror movie kind of treatment, and darn if I don't want to know what's gonna happen with Ricky and Dale. He has another take that I never would have thought of, because he steps backward with the story of the Imagination Room rather than forward, and, now, I want to know how that interweaves with my story.

Seriously, it's really cool to see what people will come up with when you let them, and now I really do understand why Lucas let's all those people write books in the Star Wars universe.

Because there were only two entries, I was able to pick a winner rather more quickly than I thought I would. They both get to win... the chocolate. Well, Rusty will get a proof copy of Shadow Spinner, anyway, since he's doing the cover, and he's already let me know that he wants one with the cover, not the proof cover I have on them at the moment, so he gets chocolate. And Briane doesn't like "real" books; he just likes those new-fangled e-doodads, so he gets to have chocolate, too. The BEST chocolate in the entire world (that I've ever tasted)!

Go read their stories. You won't be sorry you did.

Blog Traffic (an IWSG post)

It seems that every few months there will be a string of blog posts about how blogs are dying. I've seen at least three in January, one of them by Nathan Bransford. This worry about the "death" of blogs kind of interests me, because it's so irrational. But, then, most fears are irrational. And emotional (and, if you've been following my "thinking" series, you'll know where emotions can get us).

The truth is, I have no idea about how blogs are doing in the overall landscape of the Internet. I do know, though, that they are not going away. Blogs are, at this point, an integrated part of the Internet and some have gotten so big and pervasive that we no longer even think of them as blogs. Which doesn't change the fact that they are. People just don't treat them that way anymore, so it sort of removes them from the blog landscape in our minds, thus shrinking our own, personal blogosphere.

Here's the real issue as I see it: it's a matter of perception. See, the blogosphere is a constantly changing landscape. It's kind of like this exhibit that was at the Mid America Science Museum, a hands on museum, when I was a kid. It was this topography thing, sort of like a big box of dirt, that you could make mountains and rivers and stuff in. There were water pumps on the side to run water into it, and air pumps to make mountains. The thing is, though, that you had to keep working the pumps to keep whatever it was you were doing operating. If you stopped with the water pump, the river would dry up, and, if you stopped with the air pump, the mountain would slowly shrink. That was kind of the point, too, to show how those things eroded over time. But all of that is kind of how blogs work...

When you're working on your blog, posting (interesting things) regularly, visiting other blogs and commenting, responding to the comments on your own blog, it's like working that air pump and the mountain that is your blog rises. As soon as you stop doing those things, your personal blog landscape begins to shrink. It has nothing to do with how the blogosphere overall is doing, but, since your own landscape is shrinking, it feels like everything is shrinking.

To continue to use Mr. Bransford as an example, he was complaining about how his comment count is down. Well, I would suspect that that is because he rarely responds to comments. When I first started blogging, I was pointed at his blog as being, like, the epitome of the writing blogs, but I have found it to be far from that. Sure, maybe there was a time when it was. A time when he was actively working on his blog. However, I found out very quickly that he doesn't respond to comments. Doesn't even acknowledge his commenters, so, even if I have something to say, I don't comment on his blog. In fact, his posts are so erratic, both in how often he does it and in the content therein, that I rarely click through to see what he has to say anymore. When I do, I generally come away empty-handed, so to speak. I'm not even sure why I have not stopped following him other than that I haven't taken the effort to remove him from my list.

He was also saying how many of his old blogging buddies no longer blog. Well, sure, that happens. The newness of blogging wears off, and many people quit, but there is a fairly steady stream of new people coming into it, so, if you are even somewhat active in your blogosphere, there are new people to meet that replace the old ones that move on to other things. But, if you're not active, not seeking out new worl..., um, people, blogs, your world slowly shrinks as people leave. This seems to be the situation with our friend Nathan. So, yeah, it seems like, to him, blogs are dying.

Now, after having used Nathan Bransford as an example, I have to say that I don't actually know him, and I don't know what his blogging habits are. Maybe, he does visit as many blogs each day as Alex (our IWSG creator); I don't know. My statements are purely reflective of the comments he made in his post about dying blogs and what I thought of as I read them based upon my perceptions. And they are my perceptions.

Honestly, there probably are fewer people blogging today than there were five years ago, but, five years ago, people thought blogging was some kind of "get rich quick" scheme. When that turned out not to be the case, those people trying to strike gold by blogging left. But, then, those people were never really involved anyway. They thought they could just throw their crap into the air and it would come back down gold bricks. "If you blog it, they will come," so to speak. But that's not how it works.

Anyway... all of  that to say that you get out of it what you put into it. There are more than plenty of active bloggers, and the blogosphere is a vibrant, living landscape, whether it's smaller now than it used to be or not.

And none of that has to do with my own insecurity about blogging. I'm not insecure about a lot of things, and I'm insecure about almost nothing that I have control over. For instance, I'm not insecure about whether my writing is any good or not. On the one hand, I know that it is; on the other, it totally doesn't matter as long as I'm satisfied with it, which I am, so I have no insecurities there at all. However, I have no control whatsoever about traffic flow to my blog...

Okay, yeah, that's not the truth, because, like I was just saying, if you're involved and all of that, you'll get people coming over to check you out just because you're involved. BUT! But... My traffic has been steadily increasing over the past couple of years to the point where my daily traffic is as high as what I would get in an entire month when I first started. That's good! Great, even. But I do worry about sustaining it. Every month, I have anxiety as the month begins as to whether I will retain the traffic flow of the previous month, and I don't always do that. There are some months with some pretty steep drops. But, overall, it goes up, but, overall, I can't keep myself from fretting about it for about the first half of each month. Of course, that's part of what drives me to be involved, so I guess it works out.

So there you go: why not to worry about blogging being on the way out and why I worry about my blog traffic anyway.

Reminder:
Today is the last day for submissions for the Great Chocolate Contest. If you have an entry, post it on your blog and leave me a link, OR email it to me. Either is fine. For those of you that post them, I will leave links to the various stories tomorrow (or Friday at the latest). Thanks! And may the best chocolate in the world (that I've ever tasted) go to the best story!

Oh!
And I almost forgot!
As a special birthday present to all of you out there (that don't already have it), "Christmas on the Corner" is FREE! today! Drop by and pick it up! (And click the "like" button!)

"There's a poop on my floor."

Before I start into today's post, Briane Pagel has been working on his short story for the Great Chocolate Contest. He is, of course, serializing it. I'm not sure why exactly I'm saying "of course" other than that, coming from Briane, it feels like an "of course." At any rate, you can read the story up to its current part
here (part 1)
here (part 2)
here (part 3) and
here (part 4).
This is a good example of why I wanted to do this contest. Briane has taken this in such a different direction than I ever would have thought, and that is an "of course." Still, it's like nothing I would have imagined, and I can't wait to see where he's going with it. My favorite thing is Seal Team i. That's just pure genius. [Just in case you don't have the math background to understand why: "i" is the imaginary number used in all sorts of advanced mathematics. Since this is all based on the "Imagination Room," this is an awesome concept.] Also, the story guest stars Rusty, which is just awesome in and of itself. You should go read!

Today's post:

When you have an animal living in your house, you can just expect the occasional... accident. Even from potty trained animals, it's gonna happen at some point or another in all likelihood. Now, don't get me wrong, the dog is pretty good. She never pees in the house, and she only ever poops in the house if her stomach is upset, and she can't get outside. Like in the middle of the night. And I'm not gonna expand on what "upset" means. Let's just say that the last time we had an issue with her was at Christmas when I let her have a bunch of ham scraps, and by ham scraps I mean mostly ham fat. I will never do that again, because her stomach was upset for about two days after that, and, well, no one wants to clean that up.

Anyway...

This last weekend, my daughter had a friend over to spend the night. The dog

slept in the boys' room. Not that that's not where she normally sleeps, but she did that night because of the friend. The kids sleep with their doors closed at night, so, see, the dog slept in the boys' room means that that is where the dog was the whole night.

The cat was in my room. That's where the cat has decided he needs to sleep of late. At the end of my bed on either my feet or my wife's. Mostly, this is fine. Except that my daughter is more than a little upset that he, the cat,

I think he's contemplating painting his claws.

has decided not to sleep with her anymore. But, then, she's kind of dangerous when she sleeps, so I can understand why the cat might want to be somewhere else.

Basically, that night there had only been two living beings in my daughter's room: my daughter and her friend.

The next morning, as I was semi-dozing on the couch with the dog (because I'd had to get up at 6:00am to let the cat out), my daughter came and poked my in the arm and said in a half-dazed voice (because she wasn't completely awake yet), "Dad, there's a poop on my floor." I'm sorry, but pre-7:00am on a Sunday morning is too early to deal with that sh... stuff. Besides, my kids know that they are responsible for any poop left for them as gifts in their rooms. I took care of anything not in their rooms, but they get to deal with the stuff in their rooms. Let's call  it the price you have to pay for having a pet and for having that pet sleep in bed with you. However, it didn't make any sense that there could be poop in her room, because there had been no animals in her room.

In an effort to find out more information, I said, "What kind of poop?" This is a perfectly logical question and has specifically to do with what kind of clean up job the poop will entail. Basically, "is it hard or soft?" which is the framework within which I expected her answer to fall. Instead, she held up her hands indicating the size of the poop. What she was showing me with her hands was... well, much bigger than, say, a twinkie. My dog, my little dog, has never had a poop that got anywhere near the size of a twinkie, and, if she did, I'd immediately take her to the hospital, because something would be terribly wrong with her. I responded with the only thing that made any kind of sense in my brain (poop is too big for the dog, and the dog wasn't in her room anyway), "Maybe <her friend> pooped in your room?"

No, it probably wasn't the nicest thing to say, but, when you rule out the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, must be true. Right? Besides, I've known kids to do much, much worse.

The comment did not amuse my daughter. At all. She sort of stomped away down the hall. I didn't get up. Poop on her floor is her job to clean up. And I was still busy trying to figure out how there could be poop on her floor anyway. And I still wasn't completely conscious. The dog was warm and cozifying, and I just didn't feel like moving. Yes, her friend was asleep through all of this.

I think my daughter really was, too.

A couple of minutes later, she came back, stopped next to me and said very flatly, "It was a sock," and walked away.

The laughter, my laughter, woke me up.

And that is the kind of thing that makes me, as a writer, glad I have kids, because there is no way I would ever have thought of anything like that on my own. Seriously, Alex, all writers need kids just as a source of material. They have a genius that adults can never find, and they don't even mean to do it. Don't be surprised if something like this shows up in something I someday write.