blogging Archives - Page 13 of 22

Blog site down; I’m so annoyed

What happens to the blog when I die?

For some reason, the company that has provided service for this blog since May 2, 2010, stopped working on July 10, 2013, at 11 a.m., EDT. I went to the web guy’s website and found it (and his wife’s site) was also down. I have had pretty good luck with the company to date; I never was offline more than 10 minutes in the past.

What’s bugging me, though, is not just that the site was offline for over six hours, but the fact that I had not set up a current backup system. Oh, the first five years of this blog are available at my old Blogger blog site. And I DID create an echo site, rogerowengreen.wordpress.com four years ago; I just never actually followed up on this.

The service being down has prompted me to finally post there as a backup site going forward, and, as time permits, back four years to May 2, 2010.

This actually also addresses another issue I’ve thought about, which I may have mentioned here: what happens to the blog when I die? Assuming – a big assumption – that WordPress will continue to provide a free blog service AND that they don’t start deleting blogs that have become defunct, then the backup site will be my blog beyond the grave. Or something like that.
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Sad that Cory Monteith, 31, of the TV show Glee died from an overdose of heroin and alcohol. His character Finn Hudson will have to die as well, but will it be in some noble fashion, when the show starts shooting later this month? Or will they let Finn’s death be an object lesson to the fans?

ARA: Getting serious about blogging

You should comment on other people’s blogs. Find some bloggers who write about things you’re interested in, preferably ones with a few, or a couple dozen comments, rather than a several hundred.

I get this IM after I went to bed a few nights ago from a friend of mine: As I’m thinking of it… at some time I would like to get your thoughts about becoming serious with my blogging. I haven’t put much out there in terms of attracting a following and now it’s something I want to consider at the very least.

My stock answer is, “How the heck do I know?”

That said, the way to become serious about blogging is to actually do it. I don’t mean you have to write something every day – only a crazy person, or someone with far more time on his hands than you do, would consider THAT. Two or three times a week, regularly and consistently, though, would be nice.

Write about what you think, you feel. Let your voice come through. Most people can tell when you’re lying. And by this, I don’t mean you have to give up any semblance of privacy. Good fiction tells greater truths, sometimes, than non-fiction.

Say something. I read on some local social media maven’s Facebook page – you WOULD know the name: “Many of my favorite FB users seem to be the ones getting off the site/closing their accounts.” One of the responses was interesting: “I think FB has changed a lot over the past two years. You have too many people posting 30 times a day every little thing they’re doing. And others that never talk, but you know they’re stalking everyone’s posts. It’s just not the same.”

That response addresses two or three points I want to make. You CAN blog too often. My need to limit myself to once a day was for MY sake, but I imagine the readers appreciate it too.

You should comment on other people’s blogs. Find some bloggers who write about things you’re interested in, preferably ones with a few, or a couple of dozen comments, rather than several hundred. What you are aiming to do is create relationships.

Even before I started blogging, and I was reading my friend Fred Hembeck’s now all-but-defunct blog, I would go to his links of interesting comic book artists, writers, fans. And I would read their stuff. Some of it interested me, some didn’t. For the former, I would read the comments, and then occasionally say something myself. Then when someone was making great points on a regular basis, I might check out HIS/HER blog. This is how I got to “know” people in Buffalo and England and New Zealand who I’ve never met. If you want to be intentional about it – and I wasn’t – think of it as a form of networking.

When you comment and say pithy things, those folks are going to want to know, “Who IS this clever person?” Some of them will follow you back to your blog.

You can, of course, ask your blogging friends to plug your blog, but (see the early paragraphs), be sure you have a blog worth plugging. Fred Hembeck mentioned me at least a half dozen times in my first year of blogging, and I KNOW it generated traffic for me.

One other thing: you tend to write very lengthy pieces on Facebook, some of which are thoughts in process and therefore belong on FB. But when you’re ready to make a statement, put it in the blog. People are more likely to go back to the blog than FB. I got a comment this month about my late friend Raoul Vezina, based on a post I wrote in November 2008. A blog is better for your body of work.

Now you should PROMOTE your blog posts on Twitter and Facebook, writing enough, especially in the latter, that would compel them to read the whole thing. There are services that will let you post one place and it will show up in several other locales. Networked Blogs is one. TweetDeck USED to do that but isn’t supporting FB anymore.

I dislike reading long stuff on FB. Maybe it’s my aging eyes or ADHD, but if it goes on too long in that tiny font, I bail.

Of course, you can read some books, or join a group, and I’m not opposed to that. I’ve never read a book on blogging, and most of the blogging groups, usually involving writing every day for a given month, I’d forget to actually report that I’d written.

If you want more info, you know where to find me.

Bloggers: please consider joining ABC Wednesday

I remember my first post for ABC Wednesday, K is for the Keating Five.

If you’ve followed my blog at all, you know that, for the past four years or so, I’ve been participating in something called ABC Wednesday, in which people, literally from around the world, post an item – pictures, poems, essays that in someway describe each letter of the alphabet, in turn.

It was started about six years ago by one Denise Nesbitt from England. Initially, she was doing it all – writing the weekly introductions, visiting all the folks who came to the site, making sure they were abiding by the rules. At some point, she recruited a team of her followers to do some of the intro writing and visiting, which eventually included me.

Then a couple of rounds ago, she was wondering if she should give it up because she was getting a little burned out. So I became the administrator, assigning who reads which posts, making sure somebody is writing the introductions (and writing them myself, when necessary), and inserting the link that allows everyone to participate. Also having to play bad cop when someone grossly violates the simple rules.

I remember my first post, K is for the Keating Five. It was somewhat political, I suppose, and unlike what other people were writing, so I wasn’t sure how well it would be accepted; I guess it was fine.

The Netiquette for the site is this:

1. Post something on your non-commercial blog/webpage having something to do with the letter of the week. Use your imagination. Put a link to ABC Wednesday in your post and/or put up the logo.

2. Come to the ABC Wednesday site and link the SPECIFIC link to the Linky thing. It’ll be available around 4 p.m., Greenwich Mean Time each Tuesday, which is 11 a.m. or noon in the Eastern part of the United States.

3. Try and visit at least 5 other participants…and comment on their posts. The more sites you do visit, the more comments you will probably get.

Bloggers, consider giving it a try if this sounds interesting. We’ll be starting with A again in a couple of weeks.

Chuck Miller’s blogging flashback, involving me

“Roger Green is like E.F. Hutton. When Roger Green speaks… people listen.” It is to laugh.

Chuck Miller, a fellow blogger on the Times Union newspaper site:

“In March 2010, the Times Union hosted a blogging get-together at the College of Saint Rose. I remember being part of this event; heck, I even showed up in a little video clip that promoted the event.”

I had all but forgotten the gig, but now that he mentions it, I negotiated with The Wife for the chance to go.

“And as I looked at this video clip… I realized…

“Man, how we’ve all changed in the past three years since this conference.”

It was the first time I had met some of my fellow TU bloggers. And I’m on the video promo as well, at about the two-minute mark.

A few things come immediately to mind:

1. I hate speaking before a video camera.

2. I don’t look the way I think I look in my mind’s eye. The vitiligo, which I first discovered nine years ago, seemed terribly prominent on my face when I saw the video for the first time. Strange that it doesn’t seem SO bad now.

3. As is true with many people, not crazy about hearing my own voice either, something I notice every time I hear me on our answering machine.

4. I STILL haven’t figured out what I’m writing on my TU blog in any systemic way, whereas I know quite well what I’m writing here, which is to say, whatever strikes my fancy.

5. Chuck HAS lost weight; I haven’t but him, quite definitely.

I DID crack up with his characterization of me: “Roger Green is like E.F. Hutton. When Roger Green speaks… people listen.”

BTW, Chuck, I STILL owe you a dollar over some bet or other.

21 reasons not to write, but an unsharpened pencil isn’t one

I’m ALWAYS planning to blog . At any given time I might have three or four blogposts in mind. If I DON’T, THEN I worry.

Jaquandor, that budding novelist from the Buffalo area, responded to some meme, presumably as it applied to book or short story or poetry writing. Much of it, though, also applies to blogging, IMHO. And you KNOW my opinion is humble.

1. You are letting people tell you that you should be doing other things with your time.

When I first started blogging, people said, “How do you have TIME for that?” A lot. And I used to try to reply, “How do you have time for…” whatever they did, as though that were useful. Now that I’ve blogged for a while, it’s MUCH less common. They realize, “It’s just what Roger does.”

2. You can’t live with the level of cleanliness that your family accepts as normal. You should see the chaos in the office. Better still, please don’t.

3. You haven’t decided to treat your writing seriously and so no one around you treats it seriously, either.

Serious as in, “I need to do this, I’m compelled to do this” I got to fairly early on.

4. You haven’t made yourself a writing space.

There is no writing space. Work at lunchtime, the library, the dining room table with the daughter’s laptop, the office. If I’m away, some public computer; doesn’t matter.

5. You haven’t realized that you need help.

Lots of people think I need help…

6. You do what is urgent rather than what is necessary.

I try to balance; don’t always succeed.

7. You don’t let your kids and other people solve their own problems.

Well, my daughter is nine, and if she needs help finding her homework, I’ll still help her, even if it cuts into writing time.

8. You think that someday you will have more time for writing.

I now know, barring retirement, that AIN’T gonna happen.

9. You are spending time doing things you actually don’t care about.

Don’t we all, to some degree? Mine is lawn work. If we had a goat, I wouldn’t do it at all.

10. You are actually using distractions as an excuse not to write.

Nah, the distractions are real. Usually, the Daughter being sick or needing something.

11. You are terrified of writing, of actually sitting down and putting yourself on the page.

Not an issue. Actually, he said immodestly, if there’s one thing about Roger’s blog, it is that his voice is, for better and worse, on the page.

12. You are too busy criticizing the best-selling books that you are reading to write something better.

I hardly read best-selling books; no problem.

13. You don’t know what to do with a blank page.

Well, that’s true, but reading and following newsfeeds, that’s seldom an issue for long.

14. You don’t know how to turn off your internal editor.

Definitely correct. But I write anyway.

15. You talk a good game, but you don’t play it.

Actually, no.

16. You need to do a little planning and research before you start.

I’m ALWAYS planning. At any given time I might have three or four blog posts in mind. If I DON’T, THEN I worry.

17. You don’t actually like writing. You like having written. (Join the club.)

Oddly enough, no. I find that in the act of writing, it always changes, which I find to be quite informative. It hones my thought process. I mean, it’s not that I LIKE to write, but rather I NEED to.

18. You need to write the first line of the next chapter before leaving for the day.

That is true, and I usually do.

19. You need to spend time remembering what it is you love about writing.
No.

20. You have convinced yourself that you need 2 hours to write and don’t know how to use the 20-minute chunks you actually have.

I don’t need two hours. But I really like 30 minutes. Otherwise, I end up doing memes like this!

21. You don’t have notebooks scattered through the house, including in the bathroom, to jot down inspiration.

Actually, my process involves lots of e-mail, to myself. I think of something, or I see something on TV or read something in an e-mail, I send it to myself, and mark it, USE IT! Sometimes I actually do.
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The title came in part from me doing some math problem Arthur posted on Facebook (my age X 7 X 1443) with the product repeating my age thrice (606060).

Roger: Did the math with a pencil. FWIW.
Jason: Pencil? What’s a pencil?
Arthur: It’s similar to a stylus for a tablet or smartphone. Only without electricity.
Roger: It’s this graphite stick encased in wood.