A blog, or web log (hehe, get it?) is just an online journaling software. I just started one a couple of days ago.
My question, then, is if any of you blog or journal in any way. I've been told that journaling is a good way to keep your writing juices flowing -- whether it be online or offline.
In case you want an example, mine is located here:
I journal every morning, and I try to write at least five pages. Many of my stories started out as a line in one of my journal entries. Oliver
Posted by Maccabeus (Member # 1369) on :
I've never been able to keep up a journal of any kind. I tried when I was young and it was my most disappointing writing experience ever, because at the time I couldn't think about my day and write at the same time. It was a school assignment, too, so I got an F.
Posted by cvgurau (Member # 1345) on :
I used to write journals in both English III and Improvisation for school, and also when I was younger, and I found the experience somewhat relaxing. Although it's been a very long time since I've kept a regular journal, when the mood strikes me, I still put pen to paper and write down what I want or need or feel. It's a great way to bare my soul and rationalize and work out some strong feelings. I can, for example, think of a few specific times when, if I hadn't written it down, I would have gone INSANE!!!
It's also a great way to start a story or two, like Oliver said.
Chris
Posted by writerPTL (Member # 895) on :
I love the concept of blogs and enjoy reading them from time to time, but every time I try to keep one up steadily, I get tired of it. It's the same thing with regular journals, I dunno why. Often there are things it would be better to get out than keep inside, but if I think about writing them I just can't.
Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :
[This message has been edited by cvgurau (edited August 19, 2003).]
Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :
What gave it away? Posted by cvgurau (Member # 1345) on :
Heaven help me, but I'll never be able to understand the irrisistable allure of Star Trek, in any of it's incarnations. Granted, I watched Voyager almost religiously, but that was mostly because of Seven of Nine.
Chris
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
I think that it's mostly a matter of there not being very many science fiction outlets in the mainstream media, particularly science fiction outlets with an "open" universe that allow just about any science fictional premise to be entertained (most SF worlds are "closed" e.g. Battlestar Galactica, V, Babylon 5[i]--which had some really annoying characters I always wanted to see die and [i]not come back to life--Dark Angel, Highlander, ect.).
I also liked Buffy...until Angel and Cordelia left, but they got their own show, which was pretty good except that it didn't last all that long. Buffy (and Angel, when I switched to that) had that same "open" attitude (except that I really wished that the Scooby gang would die and not come back, and they just wouldn't).
Stargate has the same feel, they don't just have the ongoing battle against the Go'auld (I could probably look up how to spell that, but since no two characters on the show bother to pronounce it the same way, I think I'll spare the effort). They get to try out all kinds of novel and sometimes just wacky speculative ideas, and it isn't just one person saying what the creative vision of the show is going to be.
X-Files, of course, before we got the "inside of Scully's head" episodes going (don't get me wrong, I liked Scully, and the first few "drama of Scully" episodes, but they got old even faster than the "where is Mulder" episodes).
Some of it is probably the unique chemistry that seems to develop when the actors actually have some input into the overall creative course set by the show, and that can only exist where the universe is a bit "open" (see above). But I think a lot of it is the issue of invoking the imagination of the fans, so that they can imagine their own ideas being part of the show (I think the reason I liked Angel more than Buffy is that when the Scooby gang got really unbearable, I could imagine an episode of Angel where they have to deal with the extermination of the Sunnydale Klan but I couldn't imagine the same as an episode of Buffy).
I could go on about this a good deal, but I will just hope that I've answered Chris' prayer for understanding of the "irrisistable allure of Star Trek" (yes, I am bold enough to offer my help in lieu of that of Heaven).
Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :
quote:...until Angel and Cordelia left, but they got their own show, which was pretty good except that it didn't last all that long.
Angel is still on the air. Season five starts this fall.
Survivor, your distinction between "open" and "closed" shows isn't one I'd heard before, but it makes a lot of sense to me.
To bring this back on topic, maybe I should post a blog entry about this.
Posted by cvgurau (Member # 1345) on :
quote:Go'auld (I could probably look up how to spell that, but since no two characters on the show bother to pronounce it the same way, I think I'll spare the effort).
I think it's Goa'uld, and I also think that no two people pronounce it the same on purpose. Because the SG teams are a diverse group, they each have a different way of saying it. Like to-may-to, to-mah-to, I guess.
Chris
PS--I love that show. It's so bloody creative, isn't it?
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
Angel is still around? Well, for some reason or other I stopped putting in the effort required to watch it (if only more of our media were text based).
I particularly like the way Jack pronounces "neutrinos"
Posted by cvgurau (Member # 1345) on :
"Those, uh, watchamacall 'em...nintendos."
Hilarious.
Chris
Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :
Angel switched to Sunday nights for a while. That's probably when you thought it had been cancelled.
[This message has been edited by EricJamesStone (edited August 25, 2003).]
Posted by cvgurau (Member # 1345) on :
I'd hate to revive a dead thread, but I was wondering, where could I get a free blog page that was a little better looking than say, geocities?
Chris
"Laugh, and the world laughs with you." "You can't change the world, but you can make a dent." "Stupid people piss me off."
[This message has been edited by cvgurau (edited September 06, 2003).]
edited to add: Wow, there's a lot of them, but which one's the best, do you think?
[This message has been edited by cvgurau (edited September 06, 2003).]
Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :
Well, I haven't used any of them. I work for a web hosting company, so I host my blog on my company's servers.
But I believe BlogSpot is the most popular free blogging host. It uses the Blogger.com blogging utility (which I used before switching to Movable Type).
A couple of the bloggers who have posted in this topic use BlogSpot, so they can probably comment better than I on whether it works well.
Posted by pooka (Member # 1738) on :
The irresistable allure of Star Trek:
My husband confronted me once that he thought I was spending too much time trekkin'. It was during the time when STNG was on every night and DS9 was still in production and Voyager had just begun. I guess it was kind of addictive.
That's funny that there is such diversity in the pronunciation of Ga'uwuld. For a show that had a linguist for a main character initially, they sure don't watch their p's and q's. Or should I say I's and Y's. Maybe that's the whole root of the hostilities with the Gaould, they are very particular about pronunciation of their species.
Or maybe to them it would be like for us mixing up "your species" with "you're specious". I was going to write something funnier that rhymed, but this is my first time posting here.
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
The Goauld are the worst offenders when it comes to mangling the pronounciation. Also, it isn't the species designation.
Posted by srhowen (Member # 462) on :
cvgurau, try Xanga, they have free and premium, but free is pretty good too. You can do a lot with it.
Mines at www.xanga.com/srhowen I have premium, but really most of what I did was with non-premium, didn't like the banner ads.
Shawn
[This message has been edited by srhowen (edited September 07, 2003).]
Posted by cvgurau (Member # 1345) on :
I signed up for the free Xanga package, and I'm toying around with it a little before I decide whether or not to get the premium package. I only have two entries, and not much more than that, but if you want to see them, it's www.xanga.com/cvgurau
Chris
Posted by srhowen (Member # 462) on :
If you have a background you want to use, and header uploaded somewhere--MSN does not work if you have it there, I can give you the html to put in a custom background.
Shawn
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
Okay, now that I've pretty much exausted the topic of how to spell Go'auld, I would like to ask a really stupid newbie question.
What exactly makes a 'blog different from a regular personal website?
Posted by Mind Surfer (Member # 1686) on :
Ok, does anyone have any experience with blogs that aren't published? So just for your personal use? Anyone know any good software to do this on a Mac?
Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :
quote:What exactly makes a 'blog different from a regular personal website?
Basically, a blog is a method of organizing and updating a website.
A blog has a chronological organization. Updates to the blog are "entries," and usually (but not necessarily) the most recent entry is at the top.
There are a number of different tools out there to help create a blog, and it's easier to keep putting new content into a blog than a regular website because the blogging software not only provides a standardized format, it also takes care of archiving your old content.
[This message has been edited by EricJamesStone (edited September 08, 2003).]
Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :
quote:Ok, does anyone have any experience with blogs that aren't published? So just for your personal use? Anyone know any good software to do this on a Mac?
An unpublished blog is like an unpublished newspaper. What's the point?
If all you want to do is keep a journal, a word processor is all the software you need.
Posted by srhowen (Member # 462) on :
Blogs change fast--they are an online journal--a log book that's not personal, though xanga allows you to make private blogs if you like.
Shawn
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
Okay, but if you just started...say, posting journal pages to your site and keeping them organized by when you wrote them and all...that would be a blog? Or not?
Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :
quote:Okay, but if you just started...say, posting journal pages to your site and keeping them organized by when you wrote them and all...that would be a blog? Or not?
That would be a blog. There are various tools that make blogging fairly easy, but if you want to do a blog using Notepad to edit the HTML of the page directly, and FTP from the MS-DOS prompt, you're welcome to do so.
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
Wouldn't you use Edit if you were running from the Dos prompt? Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :
Touche.
Posted by cvgurau (Member # 1345) on :
SRHowen, you've mentioned you have premium. I've mentioned I do not. Tell me, is it worth it? Better?
Posted by srhowen (Member # 462) on :
It doesn't cost that much--and the image hosting is great. I use that a lot. I also got rid of the ad banner which I like or didn't like depending on how you look at that, and I can do more with it than with just a page already set up. I have to tinker with it.
So for me it is.
Shawn
Posted by cvgurau (Member # 1345) on :
I don't want to sound thick, but I probably will anyway. So, what's image hosting?
Chris
Posted by srhowen (Member # 462) on :
LOL--picture holding. You upload pictures and graphics to use on your site, but you can use them on other sites as well--you link to them through html. Sites like MSN and Yahoo (picture sites--photo sites) don't let you do that. Yahoo does, but often times you get a out of bandwidth notice and your picture turns out to be that annoying little box with a little white box in the corner with a red x in it.
That is one of the main reasons I switched to premium.
Shawn
Posted by daovinci (Member # 1757) on :
I keep a journal and several blogs...though I'm much more active in my journal. Perhps that's because I've always got my journal with me, whereas my computer use is a little more reserved.
To me, journaling is as essential as eating or breathing. It is where I collect quotes, facts and story seeds. It's where I analyze, reflect and simply let loose my imagination.
Posted by J (Member # 2197) on :
To revive a very old topic, those of you looking for something a little different can go here:
Funny thing is I don't journal. Never have. My stories all come from observation of life. I tend to be a loner, a watcher. I think a lot. Perhaps too much, some have said. ;-) When I have an idea for a story I jot it down and file it on my compter. There are 18 novels outlined, proposed or written there. I do, however, keep a blog: http://5riversnews.blogspot.com/ Lorina
Posted by DavidN (Member # 6429) on :
Yes, I do. I started a blog about a week ago. Mostly just for the reasons you stated, to keep my writing flowing. I get real basic comments but I would love to hear what people thought of my writing.
Usually only when I have something to say. Littered with typos. I suppose if I ever get something published and become a pro or semipro, I'll have to go back and clean it up. Perhaps if I ever do get something in print I might use it for that one person(if there is one) that possibly might be interested in background notes and story development--anything peripheral and thus more than anyone would want to know.
Posted by InarticulateBabbler (Member # 4849) on :
Yeah, I have one, too. You can find it in my profile. Or, if you too lazy, you can just click on this link .
Posted by Hunter (Member # 4991) on :
A lot of hatrackers were kind enough to look at my blook/novelog when I posted it, but I've moved it to a swankier template, so if you want to peek at it again, it's at http://scarymarybook.blogspot.com .
[This message has been edited by Hunter (edited October 07, 2007).]
Posted by DebbieKW (Member # 5058) on :
I've never writen a journal or diary, but I do have a blog where I post links and talk about information that I've learned about the publishing process. Writing things down helps me remember them, and I figured I should let other people in on my research. My blog is at:
I don't journal, I keep notes, but I do blog. I have one of my own on writing and art http://www.abraxan.blogspot.com (I'm a sculptor, so it's hard to keep the art part out of my blog) and I write for another http://www.whspubs.blogspot.com. I enjoy writing the articles (mostly writing tips, how-to's, bits and pieces I've learned through my own struggles to get somewhere with my writing).
I don't know how useful blogs are for marketing your writing, but my blogs have few if any typos - I figure any writing I "put out there" (not just forum posts, although I do try to be careful with my typing on forums as well) is an example of what I do, so I'd better do it well - and typos annoy me anyway. I try to have a new entry every couple of weeks, but I don't always make that goal.
I'm trying to be consistent at this blog. http://samwrites2.wordpress.com It takes the place of my columns published each Thursday when a newspaper paid me to write years ago. I miss the cash and have to once again develop writing as a daily discipline.
