Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts

Monday, February 7, 2011

Writer's block

You know, sometimes I sit down to blog, and I don't really know what I'm going to write about.

But then, it just comes.

I'm thinking that right now would be a good time for it to come.

Yeah.

Any time now.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Blogging Dictionary

Here are some blogging terms (more than you probably ever knew or care existed) that I found defined on the Internet:


Archives - A collection of all your posts on one page. Can be categorized by month, etc.

Bleg - To use one’s blog to beg for assistance

Blego - Blog+Ego. Measuring blogger worth

Blog - Short form for weblog

Blog hopping - Jumping from one blog to another

Blogathon - Update your website every 30 minutes for 24 hours straight

Blogathy - I do not want to post today and I do not care about it

Blogger - A person who blogs

Blogger bash - A blogger party

Bloggerel - The same opinion posted repeatedly on a blog

Blogging - The act of posting on blogs

Blogiversary - Your blog birthday

Blogoholic - Addicted to blogging

Blogophobia - Fear of blogs and blogging

Blogopotamus - A long, long blog post

Blogorific - (aka blogtastic) - Something which a blogger says is terrific

Blogorrhea - Unusually high output of articles

Blogosphere - The internet blogging community

Blogroach - A commenter who rudely disagrees with posted content

Blogroll - List of links to other blogs in your sidebar

Blogsit - Maintaining a blog while the primary blogger is on leave

Blogsite - A web site that combines blog feeds from a number of different sources

Blogsnob - Refusing to respond to blog comments from “not-friends”

Blogspot - Free Blogger hosting blog at name.blogspot.com

Blogstipation - Writer’s block for bloggers. Can't think of what to blog about?

Blogvertising - Also called blogvert. Advertising on a blog

Blurker - A blog reader not posting comments, just lurking around quietly

Comments - Enabling readers to leave their remarks

Doppelblogger - Plagiarize the content of another blogger: to Doppelblog

GAD - Google Adsense Disorder. Repeatedly checking your adsense earnings

Hitnosis - Refreshing your browser repeatedly to see if your hit counter or comments have increased

Post, Entry - Individual articles that make up a blog

Reciprocal Links - Called link love. You link to my blog, I link to yours, to improve search engine rankings

RSS - A family of web feed formats used for Web syndication. Short form for Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0), Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0), RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0). WordPress generates RSS 2.0

Tags - Labeling / attaching keywords to collect similar posts

Weblog - An online dated diary listing your periodic thoughts on a specific topic, often in reverse chronological order

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Why the heck would anyone ever want to be a writer?

So, I'm trying to plan my presentation for my blog folklore project, and I've been looking up some quotes on writing. I'm trying to talk about why so many people feel the urge to write. I'm pretty sure anyone who has even attempted to write will relate:


"Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind". -Catherine Drinker Bowen, Atlantic, December 1957

"If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad." -Lord Byron

"Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted." -Jules Renard

"The writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax." -Alfred Kazin

"Writers are just people who have a whole lot on the inside that they need to get to the outside, with pen and paper as their preferred method of transport. Same with dancers, artists, and singers - all the same urges with differing transportation." Graycie Harmon

"You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won't be able to take a break from being a writer..." -Stephen Leigh

"Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up." -Jane Yolen

"The historian records, but the novelist creates." -E. M. Forster

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you." -Ray Bradbury

"Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. " -E.L. Doctorow

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." -Sylvia Plath

"If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." -Toni Morrison

"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live." -Henry David Thoreau

"I do not like to write - I like to have written." -Gloria Steinem

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Idealism

Here are some great quotes about writing/imagination I've picked up:

"Every word written is a victory against death." -Michael Butor

"The world is but a canvas to the imagination." -Henry David Thoreau

"There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds." -G.K. Chesterton

"They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night." -Edgar Allan Poe, Eleonora

"Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures." -Jessamyn West

"I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see." -Duane Michals, Real Dreams

"All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers." -Orison Swett Marden

"If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking." -George S. Patton

"Some stories are true that never happened." -Elie Wiesel

"The man who has no imagination has no wings." -Muhammad Ali

"They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea." -Francis Bacon

"Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young." -Paul McCartney

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." -Henry David Thoreau

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Nothing like a little boost of confidence

Okay, today was a self-esteem booster for 2 reasons.

1. A girl in my creative writing class asked me if anyone ever told me I looked like Giselle from Enchanted. I said no, but that it was my new favorite compliment. I may project that image as I feel like my childhood fantasy is to become every Disney princess in one... and Giselle is just that... but I'm not sure we REALLY look alike. That's okay, it still made my day.





2. THEY LIKED MY POEMS! THEY ACTUALLY LIKED MY POEMS! Last week I left a little depressed because we only got to read one poem and no one really liked mine (including me, but then again I'm pretty harsh on all of them). This week though, my group seriously loved my poems. They are posted at my new blog specifically for my writing (it's invite-only, so let me know if you want to be invited). Anyway, it made me have some more confidence in my writing poems... even though it's not particularly my favorite genre, at least I know I'm not completely incompetent.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Writing

No one ever said that chasing your dreams was easy. Maybe if it were, it wouldn't be so fun.

I was introduced by my lovely neighbor today as an avid writer/reader who had traded in her scalpel for a pencil. Wow, did my creative writing professor have a field day with that one.

"So, you will have funding coming from independent sources in order to support you in your writing?"

"No."

"Do you expect to make money as a writer?"

"No. Well, at least not at first."

"Good. I like optimistic people."

Thus begins my career. I don't mind, because I'm the kind of person where that kind of fuel just feeds the fire. Tell me I can't do it more. Tell me. Great. Tell me I'm crazy. Ridiculous. Even better.

Our first assignment is to write four poems. While walking home I already had like a billion ideas running through my head, so I'll begin sharing some of those poems as I finish them.

It's going to be a great semester.