Synchronicity Again

I blog about this from time to time, when things coincide out of the blue when there is no reason why they should, and today’s synchronicity is about wasps. I’m subscribed to a site which sends me a poem every Friday (I used to get one every day but reading poetry takes concentration) and today’s was about wasps. It’s not the time of year for wasps, though what with global warming they do tend to hang around later than they did, so the poem was unexpected. It was a good poem, about helping wasps to escape the chimney where they’d been nesting and assist their passage to the outside world; the whole process being compared to The Great Escape.

Apart from that I thought no more of it. At least not until I read Beetleypete’s latest instalment in his short story. And guess what? In the very first paragraph wasps were mentioned.

What is going on here?

Kirk out

Interview, Anyone?

Beetleypete has an interesting post today where he’s interviewed by another blogger about his life on wordpress. Fair warning: I’ll be picking up this idea in the autumn and pouncing on my followers to interrogate them about their writing lives. In the meantime I’ll be asking myself some pretty searching questions:

How would I describe my blog? Hm, that’s a hard one. The go-to description is ‘a writer’s life’ and that’ll do for a start, but basically this blog goes in any direction it damn well pleases and I just tag along (pun intended, ho ho).

What is my writing process like and do I have any rituals? My process nowadays is that I just get to the computer and see what comes up. If nothing comes I’ll look at my diary, news headlines or Facebook for ideas and in the end something usually comes together. As for rituals, a cup of tea always helps.

What’s one of your blogging pet peeves? I guess it’s rudeness or trolling. Fortunately I haven’t had much of this in recent years but I’ve had a few in the past. They always get blocked – and interestingly when you look at their blogs they’ve produced little or no content. Actually that’s another pet peeve – people calling your writing ‘content’ (slaps wrist.)

What are some of your biggest aspirations? I’d like to have more followers and views than I do; then again if I did my whole life could be taken up with responding to comments. I guess as long as I’m enjoying it, that’s enough.

What are some of your biggest blogging mistakes? I’d have to say arguing with trolls. There are some people I should have blocked straight away.

What advice would you give to someone thinking of starting a blog? Do it. Write about what interests you, blog often and don’t go on too long. I aim for around 500 words, Beetleypete goes for 900 but more than a thousand is too much for most readers.

So that’s it. Pretty soon these and other questions will be dropping on your doormat. In the meantime, thanks to Beetleypete and to Confessions of a random blogger and I hope you don’t mind me swiping some of your ideas.

Kirk out

Content? Not Content. My Tips for Writing a Great Blog Post

Beetleypete has a useful post today reminding new bloggers that content is king. He’s right; if you’re going to write a blog post you want other people to read, you have to make it worth their while. There’s so much stuff vying for our attention that if you’re going to invite readers to yet another blog it has to be interesting. And how do you know what people are going to be interested in?

A while ago on this blog I did an experiment; I asked people to tell me what they liked and didn’t like. I didn’t get that many replies but they virtually all said ‘Carry on as usual.’ That was quite gratifying in a way because I’ve never been able to make this blog stick to just one subject; though the main theme is ‘a writer’s life’ it can go in any direction – politics, sport, philosophy, travel, decorating, gardening and probably a whole range of other topics I haven’t even thought of yet. So I think the first rule of being interesting is to be interested; to be engaged in what you write about. Otherwise, if you’re not interested how can you expect anyone else to be? To be engaged is not to be obsessive (as OH’s blog sometimes is; I know OH won’t mind me saying this because often zerothly’s posts are a ‘brain dump’) – you can’t expect all but a handful of people to follow you through nineteen long paragraphs full of technical detail. So the second rule is to know your audience. This is of course impossible because unless they like or comment, how do you know who is reading? What I do is to have in mind a sort of mish-mash of all the readers I know about plus an idea of someone of reasonable intelligence who is interested in ideas. I also write for friends and family who very often keep up with what I’m doing via these posts.

So; be interested, don’t ramble on for nineteen paragraphs, and know your audience; those are my top tips for producing great content. Except that I don’t like calling it ‘content’ – it sounds like toothpaste in a tube – so let’s just call it writing. Which after all is the point…

Have a great Wednesday. I am now waiting for the doctor to call.

Kirk out

Update: doctor called as I was posting. I now have to call back to arrange more blood tests.

There’s a Block in my Blog

As beetleypete has so consistently pointed out, the blocks on WordPress are a bloody nightmare. It’s an answer to a problem nobody had, an idea which solves nothing but creates loads of barriers, particularly when it comes to editing. Every time you press return it creates a new block, a sort of uber-paragraph, which has to be formatted separately from everything else – and when it comes to poetry, as you can imagine, this is practically impossible. The poem ‘Spike’ below is not one document but consists of dozens of individual blocks, each of which has to be edited separately. There is no way, for example, to select the whole document and make it bold – which I do for those of my readers who struggle with the inexplicably faint font – nor, I’ve just discovered, can I select the whole poem for deletion. I was going to do this but now I shan’t bother – deleting ninety-one lines individually one by one is not my idea of fun.

I did Spike yesterday at a Quaker songs and poetry gathering, and it went over well. Singing carols on Zoom is a tricky business; you’d think everyone could just unmute themselves and sing along but apparently the echoes and feedback turn it into an infernal shrieking. Not what you want. So we all had to sing separately along to the music and clap silently. Incidentally, did you know that Quakers don’t generally applaud? I can’t remember why, I’ll have to look it up. We also don’t say ‘yes’ when asked if we agree with a minute in a meeting, but ‘Hope so’ – the idea being that… hang on, I’ll have to look that up as well. Quakers can come across as being quite obsessive, but there are a couple of fundamental practices that I’m totally on board with. The first is not swearing oaths or making promises. The idea behind this is that your word should be your bond, whereas if you make a promise you are setting up a double standard of truth and saying ‘I’m telling the truth now but I might not be on other occasions.’ I never thought about this before but it makes perfect sense. The other thing I agree with is not gambling because it’s unearned income. This is thought to be wrong – a prohibition which extends to charging interest or playing the stock exchange, not usually thought of as gambling, though that’s exactly what it is. Charging interest in particular leads to vast swathes of unearned income, as does locating your company somewhere you don’t have to pay tax. If you think about it, our whole system is based on charging interest and that’s a system which makes the rich richer and the poor, who have no choice but to pay higher interest on their debt – I know whereof I speak as my overdraft charges have nearly doubled – poorer.

So there we are. I’m going to leave it there as I’m trying not to think about the news, but I send a special thought to you if you’re going to be alone at Christmas, particularly if you had plans which you’ve had to cancel.

There’s an interesting analysis here of why Quakers don’t clap.

Kirk out