Harvey Here #9 - 100 Not Out

I am sitting on Ray’s lap and I am very pleased with him, woof
He has written 100 blogs and that is quite a mile stone, arrf
Ray and I have had our ups and downs, but I think he looks after me well, woof, woof.
A lot of his blogs have been about art and writing and running and I like these things too, arrf, arrf
I have to say that running is the thing I liked the best, especially at Tyninghame beach, woof, arrf

He can surprise me at times. Recently he had a birthday party with a bbq in the back garden. There were loads of people there and I went around hoovering up the tasty bits that people dropped on the floor. It was a bit of a surprise seeing so many people in the garden. Someone left a tuna steak in a basket on the floor of the kitchen, so I helped myself, woof, woof.

Ray had some good news to do with his art today, but I will let him tell you about that himself, later, arrf

My First Tooth

I never expected it to happen, but here I am, one month into blogging. I have posted seventeen times (including this) and I now have a stack of labels as long as your arm. Labels… what? Yes, it’s true, there is a lot of jargon to learn when you try anything new. Labels are those handy little… well, labels that you put on the end of each post (submission to the blog.) But already I’ve got into trouble. The very nice list of labels that appeared somewhere on the blog, which you could hit in order to go to the blog in which it was featured has disappeared. Now, if I want to hit a label, all it does is give me the post I’m already reading. This is a pity because some of the labels are intriguing e.g. blood, horror, celebrities and cafes.
That brings me to my next discovery about the blogging world and me. We want to share our musings. In following this fine and noble cause, I have committed myself to a few things already.
• I’ve promised to start up a review of cafes I visit. There are two reviews on blogs already and I visited another today. So I am going to have to master the dark art of setting up lists on the blog .
• I’ve also promised to put another version of ‘An Autumn Leaf with Attitude’ on the blog and unless someone offers me money not to, that’s what I’m going to do.
• This is the biggie – I am following other people’s blogs. Yes, I have been seduced into the whole blogging world. This is particularly apt because the latest blog I have linked to is ‘.Belle du Jour,’ maybe seduced is the right word.  Confession time – I have nine blogs which I follow and blogger (trade name for the Google blog) kindly manage for me. I’m going to have to control myself.
My proudest moment has been getting my first follower. Zoë gets the gold medal for this. I’ve also had quite a few comments, which always gives me a little buzz.
So, what next? I’ve already got an idea for another list.
• Books, I have read. I hope that the world is ready for this – I am going to share my thoughts on my random book reading exploits.
• The best news yet is that I have a helper. Harvey has been mentioned on the blog quite often and he has agreed to contribute an occasional post. Thanks Harvey.

"Look forward to it - woof."

PS Just found out where the labels list is - in the edit page, which I think is a strange place to put it! (Harvey has the most labels - YES.)

Writing, Running and Blogging

That's me in the red and white halves
at the Trapprain Law race earlier this
year

I am a member of one or two (maybe three) on-line writing communities, Authonomy.com and My Writers Circle are my two favourite writers’ sites at present. I am also a member of a running club and a triathlon club. I often visit sports club’s web sites. A lot of people write on or to these sites. In fact one of the running sites has a regular blogger on it (Mr Stuart Hay) who participated in my social research earlier this week.

As an infant blogger, I have started to look at the sites with new eyes and see if I can discover why people do what they do. I am seeking any insight offered into why people bother to write when they don’t have to and why people go out in the wind and rain in Scotland to run around mean streets and desolate landscapes. I am of course one of them and could ask myself the same question, but I want to get a sensible answer so I am again taking the scientific approach. [I have often wondered why people run and the best I can come up with is that ‘life is far too soft and we need to suffer some of the time.’ When I have offered this explanation to other runners, they have usually told me to sod off]

But why do writers write, particularly if they are not getting paid for it and if they don’t know if anyone will ever read their wee pearls? It’s a bit like me sitting at this computer and writing this piece, not knowing if anyone will ever read it. So whom am I addressing? Is it cyber space? Now that is a scary thought.

Authonomy.com might offer an explanation. This site offers authors the very remote chance of getting their book published. To arrive at this hallowed place, you must first put the chapters of your book on the site. Then you give comments about other author’s books and receive comments back from them. You can put a book on your shelf, which is a bit like voting for it. Other people can put your book on their shelf, if they like your story. At the end of each month Harper- Collins promise to read the top five books with the most votes that month. They write a crit of the story and very occasionally, they offer the author a publishing deal. Now this is a great idea for dealing with the slush pile of unsolicited manuscripts that arrive at publisher letterboxes each week. Something that isn’t obvious when you join up is that although the people who get to the top of the pile, undoubtedly have good stories they are also expert social net-workers who must spend twenty-three and a half hours a day on-line and the half hour they sleep they dream about publishing their book. The comments given and received on this site can be excellent and I have gained a lot from some of the good advice I have been given. So, this is a very good site because it offers you a way of achieving your dream, (the holy grail of publication) and you get a lot of support from like minded people who energetically pursue their hobby, calling, craft … without having to explain to anyone why they are doing it.

Runners’ web sites are pragmatic. They tell you who ran and how far, in what time and when you can do it all over again. There are many expressions of support and congratulations. So once again members of running or triathlon web sites share a sense of identity with other people who do the same thing without asking themselves why they do it.

Maybe people who support writing or running web sites don’t ask searching questions like why are you writing or running when you could be watching the telly or down the pub because that very question might kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. They might decide it’s not worth doing it any more

The question that a baby blogger barely out of his nappies has to ask is why do people and in case me, why do we blog?
>
This is the deliberatley home made looking cover of my book as it appears in Authonomy.com

A newbie on the block

I’m a newbie, virgin, just off the boat beginner at the blogging malarkey. The blurb says it's just about writing down your thoughts and sharing them with people… aye right!
If anyone is going to read my blog then it will have to offer them something. I’ve already hinted that I’m a bit of a butterfly, landing on the flower that seems to be the most interesting at the time. Is that a good thing for a blogger to be? In fact, what is a good blogger? In the best traditions of social research, I decided to do some fieldwork and find out what makes a blogger.
First of all the fieldwork. I looked at the styles of well know local and international bloggers. This wasn’t as difficult as it sounded. I had four bloggers who I occasionally read and they acted as my random sample.
First the international blogger Natham Bransford. This guy is a literary agent for a high flying publisher and a highly recommended and prestigious blogger. He lives on the West Coast of the US and writes about all things to do with writing and getting published. Having read some of his posts I noticed two things - he is well received and gets lots of comments – okay three things – he writes very well (annoying ), four things – he writes like a West Coast American, with lots of references such as ‘Let’s shoot for the high country,’ or ’ I'm a Times New Roman guy, so I'd shoot for 3-4 pages double spaced TNR.‘ Having read this I must be on the track of something.
Next comes a well known runner (in East Lothian he is) and jazz enthusiast Stuart Hay. Now I can really relate to this guys wit and in depth knowledge of the said running and jazz, both things I like, but maybe not as much as Stuart. Applying the test of noticing things about his blogs… well yes he does sound a lot like a Scottish runner who likes jazz and has a lot to say about running and jazz. So that can’t be a bad thing can it?
Now I come on to Nicola Morgan, who describes herself as a ‘crabbit old bat’ who helps people who need a publisher. Reading her posts, I notice that she tells her readers that getting published is an incredibly difficult business, rent with heart ache and disillusion and the only thing to do is ‘ never, ever give up writing.’ She also mentions chocolate quite a lot. Now this woman is very successful, she has published loads of books and when I met her she was the chair of the Scottish authors society. Does she live up to her title?… well she likes to think so.
My final piece of research takes in my good friend Christine Howson. Now Christine is a mother, a very good swimmer and she likes triathlons. So we have a lot in common, apart from the mother bit and of course I’m not a very good swimmer, anyway, what she writes about is her family and various aspects of family life and events that happen to her, such as swimming and entering triathlons. I must say that she sounds like a mother a very good swimmer and of course, a marine biologist… that is obvious from the photos on her blog.
So what has my research shown? Well all four bloggers are good writers and they write like the people they are, and about the things that are important to them.
And what have I learned?
1. A blogger is a person who likes writing and posting things on a blog site.
2. It’s important to be a good writer.
3. It’s a good idea to write about things you are interested in with a style which is instantly recognisable as your own and not somebody who lives in San Francisco.
4. It helps if the things that interest you, also interest other people who can comment on what you have written.
5. Reading other people’s blogs is good idea.

Now that I have carried out this research I feel ready to move on to the next stage in my blogging career and find out how to become a good writer. Work out which of the many things I am interested in, I should write about. After that I can write a little tag line describing my blog and what it is about… brilliant.