Dipping into the Archives . . .

I’m foregoing my usual re-blog today… 

Regular readers may remember me mentioning a friend of mine—prison librarian and microfiction author, Johnpaul Mahofski.

So, this rather incredible human being has just spent 4 weekend sessions, lasting at least 9 hours each, finding all the broken links (sites change their names, people disappear, etc…) in all my posts from 2011 (the first year of this blog’s life...)…

The last of those weekend sessions was him compiling all the links from those posts that he found valuable…

I’m going to list all those 2011 links in a minute; but, first, I need to let everyone know that this particular post is number 2,159—that’s an average of 25 posts a month for seven years…

Also, I need to point out the search bar in the upper right of each page of this blog—handy, to see if certain topics or names are here, somewhere in the depths of seven years of blogging…

And, down near the bottom of the left side-bar there are two widgets—Archives by Month & Year and Archives by Day of The Month.

Plus, if you first select a month and year in the first widget, the second widget will show all the days of that month…

One more way to dip into the archives here is not so far down in the left side-bar—Top Tags—gathering “similar” posts together—where larger words mean more posts…

Also, Johnpaul is committed to checking all the posts from the other six years and producing a list of valuable posts from those years (stay tuned…)…

I should remind you that Johnpaul is a librarian and, apparently, they just love tedious checking of things, as well as making lists :-)

Reminder: what follows is not a list of my posts from 2011—it’s a list of some of the links (from 2011) that I put in my posts, that a librarian/microfiction author liked, and gave his quite unique titles to………

I wonder if there are any broken links in this list… :-)

So, here is Johnpaul’s List of Valuable Links from 2011:

(Why you should give away your book)

(Book and writer recommendations from CJ Cherryh)

(The Seven Basic Plots in Fiction)

(Jung’s collective unconscious explained)

(A very thorough look at Jung’s collective unconscious)

(Concept of Archetypes at Carl Jung)

(Jung’s Archetypes discussed)

(Reflections on all things Psychology)

(Noam Chomsky linguist, social scientist, activist, author)

(Language and Etymology links)

(Online Etymology Dictionary)

(Literary Fiction Genres)

(Three interviews with novelist John Gardner)’

(Wikipedia entry for William S. Hatcher mathematician, philosopher, educator and member of the Bahá’í Faith)

(Wikipedia entry for Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist)

(Wikipedia entry for Allen Ginsberg, poet)

(Wikipedia entry for James Franco, actor and filmmaker)

(Wikipedia entry for Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet and socialist activist)

(Wikipedia entry for Neil Stephenson Author)

(Wikipedia entry for A Grain of salt)

(Wikipedia entry for John Gardner, American novelist)

(Wikipedia entry for Novel)

(Wikipedia entry for Carl Jung’s idea of Personal Unconscious)

(Wikipedia entry for Jungian concept of Shadow, Id)

(This site’s intent is to foster the writing arts)

(Article on writing stand alone books with series potential)

(A solid blog for writers resources)

(Article on how Book Bloggers can increase an author’s sales)

(Article on whether to self publish or not)

(Article discusses what subsidy publishing means for authors)

(Blog offers practical advice for building better books)

(Mystery Genre Definitions)

(Flash Fiction defined and demonstrated)

(Common Word lists and word usage lists—a must have for writers)

(A word counter)

(Explanation of synchronicity in life, by a writer)

(Carl Jung’s theory of synchronicity is explained)

(Why words mean what they mean)

(The mission is to find as many words of English with as many people as possible)

(Poems, Poets, Prose, Collections and more)

(Obscenity defined, from a legal perspective)

(Article against social media experts)

(Full dictionary and thesaurus for American, British, Canadian, Australian, Indian, and global English)

(MFA’S effect on Literature—the good and bad)

(Sweat equity as a writing tool)

(Best bits of writing advice she’s received)

(Why a bad review isn’t always bad)

(How a writer can conduct their character development)

(Pirating ebooks—is it a bad thing…)

(Book production terminology explained)

(Article about what a writer’s goal is for their book)

(Self publishing is explained through the vast knowledge of an author)

(An inside look at a writer’s mantra)

(The quiet theory of influence)

(A series ponders if writing a book is done for money)

(Getting people to care about the products of your imagination)

(Gifted author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)

(Marketing made easier)

(Finding your loyal readers)

(Why someone should write is discussed)

(Discussion of how many readers one needs for sales success)

(Real news sources in difficult times)

(Alternatives to mainstream news sources)

(Reality of your social networks)

(Blog about the nature of writing)

(Finding some joy, even in darkness)

(The idea of what makes success)

(A literary theorist responds to “What is Fiction…?”)

(Word of mouth Sales)

(Windows zenware* writing application)

(Simple note-taking app)

(Blog on writing publishing and editing)

(Valuable links on writing)

(How a movement of ‘ordinary’ Liberian women changed history)

(The dangers of being a perfectionist)

(Humorous article on why bad books don’t ruin self-publishing)

(A blog with many tips for writers)

(Self publishing tips)

(Vintage article on Amazon’s publishing platform)

(Article on Amazon as the future of Publishing)

(Emily Dickinson resource)

(The most respected publication for the library community)

(A hard look at the pattern of borrowing and the digital shifts of Library patrons)

(A page created by an independent prose machine)

(The Quality and Professional responsibility of Self Published work is discussed)

(Article on Self-Publishing expectations)

(Writing, support, and useful links)

(She is much more than a hashtag)

(Life lessons turned into Self publishing tips)

(A blog focused on giving voice to those in need)

(An article on writing more words per day)

(Article on traditional publishing’s struggle with Ebook presentation)

(A writer’s experience with traditional publishing)

(The critical aspects of digital publishing)

(A start to finish for writers to create their book)

(The Author’s Guild site)

(Human rights and the implications of copyright)

(Legalities of censorship in America)

(Tips on how to write a novel)

(12 articles of 2011 that are must reads for writers)

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#TopTags vs #Searching ~ A #Blogging Journey in #Reading, #Writing, and #Publishing

Counting the present post, this blog has 1,385 posts. 

Image Courtesy of pedro valdeolmillos ~ http://www.freeimages.com/photographer/pv-29785

You probably couldn’t have missed all the hashtags in the title up there—intended to help the folks on Twitter find this particular post.

Hashtags are one way to find what you’re looking for…

When someone finds a blog in the wild, they usually have the most recent post at the top and those preceding it streaming down the page…

If they come to a blog through WebSearch, they see the post in the link they clicked on and that’s it…

So, let’s assume they like what they read.

How do they further explore the blog they’ve found?

Well, since there are so many different ways bloggers set up their blogs, the first thing most folks do is look for a Search Bar to find topics of interest to them.

This blog has one of those in the upper right, under the Main Menu Tabs…

Of course, using the search bar may not find exactly what you’re looking for—most search algorithms, even Google’s, fail, at times,  in varying degrees…

So, some bloggers (like this one) use a Tag Cloud (Top Tags Widget) to give the traveller a way of finding collections of posts that have certain core ideas and topics.

These tags are selected for each post by the individual blogger, so they depend for their accuracy on the abilities of the blogger in question to select truly representative words or phrases for the Tags they apply…

So, back to the 1,385 posts on this blog and my Top Tags Widget, which is down a bit in the left side-bar.

I must add, since I’ve been very aware lately of folks who use their phone to get here, that the small screen user needs to find their general “Menu” button and look for something like “Request Desktop Site” so they can see the left side-bar…

If you scroll down there, you’ll see that certain words are larger. This means there are more posts with that tag (and, on this blog, letting your cursor hover over the words will show how many posts there are…).

I thought, beyond the possible over-abundance of hashtags in the title—intended to alert folks to the fact that this blog has lots of stuff about #Reading, #Writing, and #Publishing—I’d also put a few of the Top Tag links right here in this post—a mini-guide to what’s here—an author’s selection of “Most Important” topics…

Let’s start with a few for Readers:

Reading, Short Stories, Libraries, Literacy

Just those Tag Links will let you read 167 posts…

Now, a few for Writers:

Writing Resources, Writing Advice, Creative Writing, Book Promotion

Those links will take you to 194 posts…

Now, some for Publishers:

Self-Publishing, Traditional Publishing, Publishers, Indie Publishing

Those links have a total of 202 posts…

So, I hope this post has been successful in helping you to navigate the blogging I’ve done in the last 5 years, 1 month, and 26 days  :-)
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A Blog for All Seasons

Click This Image for Some Fine Blogging…

This will be the 16th post I’ve done about Maria Popova—and, I should point out that if you take that link, you’ll see this post at the top of the other fifteen—I “Tag” my posts and they get gathered-up in the Top Tags area—down a bit in the left side-bar…

You may want to spend some time checking out the Top Tags since there are over 1,200 posts on this blog and, in all honesty, today is not my best day to write a post…

Just dealing with more than a bit of physical and psychological and emotional stress—I quit smoking about a month ago—I’ve been unkind (to say the least) to my Best Friend—I’m hoping her compassion will continue to protect her from the insanities of someone being devastated by withdrawal symptoms…

So, before I have to just lie down and swirl in the juices of my muddled mind, let me tell you why you should check out Maria’s blog, Brain Pickings.

One reason is who Maria is:

“I’m a reader, writer, interestingness hunter-gatherer, and curious mind at large. I’ve previously written for Wired UK, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab, among others, and am an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow.”

Another reason is why she writes her blog:

“Brain Pickings is my one-woman labor of love — a subjective lens on what matters in the world and why. Mostly, it’s a record of my own becoming as a person — intellectually, creatively, spiritually — and an inquiry into how to live and what it means to lead a good life.”

More on her mission and what creativity means:

“The core ethos behind Brain Pickings is that creativity is a combinatorial force: it’s our ability to tap into our mental pool of resources — knowledge, insight, information, inspiration, and all the fragments populating our minds — that we’ve accumulated over the years just by being present and alive and awake to the world, and to combine them in extraordinary new ways. In order for us to truly create and contribute to the world, we have to be able to connect countless dots, to cross-pollinate ideas from a wealth of disciplines, to combine and recombine these pieces and build new ideas.”

So, take a listen to Maria (while I go lie down…) and she just might convince you she has much to say that you need to hear…

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Sick As A Dog, Yet Still Faithful . . .

One of my jobs is writing stories and books—another, blogging 5 days a week…

Image Courtesy of http://www.freeimages.com/profile/anaophelia

Today I am sick as a dog and have been struggling just to find the picture for this post…

I do love my work and bemoan that I don’t have the energy to do all the work needed for a real blog post…

It’s probably just the flu…

Perhaps tomorrow my body will cooperate with my mind and heart…
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Friday Poll ~ Should All Writers Blog?

Before we get to this week’s poll, here are the results from last week—Protecting Creative Ideas:

Image Courtesy of Mikhail Popov ~ http://www.freeimages.com/profile/hoboton

37.5% voted for “Proper Copyright”.

And, the “Other” category had the same percentage, with these specific answers:

“Don’t talk about the ideas you want to copyright if you want to protect them.”

“A mixture, protect your novels, but some writings are just for fun.”

“I write in social media sites and through text message.”

“Don’t worry about Piracy” got 25%.

And, “File for Trademark” had no votes.

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Now, for this week’s poll…

Many “gurus” and “experts” on the ‘Net claim a writer Must blog, if for no other reason than to have a “Platform“.

Also, with all the screaming about writers using social media, many folks forget that blogging is a form of social media…

So, the poll will be very simple; though, there is the “Other” space that can be used to complexify it :-)

Now that you’ve voted, check out this article—Thou Shalt Blog?

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To Leave A Comment, Use The Link At The Top-Right of The Post :-)
For Private Comments or Questions, Email: amzolt {at} gmail {dot} com