Word Grrls

I ran the WordGrrls.com site from whatever to whatever. I’ll look up the dates sometime. It was a site for writers. I used to post writing exercises and ideas for writing inspiration. I’ve kept my posts from the old site but decided not to keep the domain.

There are 2,572 posts filed in Word Grrls (this is page 6 of 258).

White Noise Pollution

I’m well liked in my family. This I understand. I think I’m easy to like. I don’t see how I have any other secret to being liked. I’m not especially anything. I’m not good socially. I never have been.  Most of the time it’s easy to be part of a fairly large family who really do mean it when they ask how you are. But…

I’m the quiet one in a family of people who love to talk. To me it seems they just never run out of something to say, especially advice. It’s like noise pollution or white noise at times. I just stop listening and let them become part of the background. You know how it is when you put the radio or TV on and forget it’s there? It just becomes part of the atmosphere.

Now and then it drowns me out. So I give in and do as I’m told even when my own ideas, instincts or opinions were different and just as valid. That’s when I feel angry.

True, I feel guilty about it. We shouldn’t just ignore our Mothers, our sisters or our brothers. But, there are times when I just can’t take the constant feedback any more. I’m the oldest. Long before I was an adult they all expected me to be the one in charge, and I was. I managed everything. It’s odd to me that now they think I need all this advice.

Of course, I do understand it is all well meant. It’s no one’s fault but my own that I sometimes feel there is too much advice for a grown woman all of 47 (nearly 48) years. So, even when I do lose patience with all the communication, I do know it comes from the right place. I just endure.

Some of the feedback is good. I may never post this because they would be hurt (over over analyze everything) if they read this. I don’t want to hurt anyone. But, there are times I’d like to feel more like an adult than a child who has to be taken care of and told what to do.

Exploring Outside the Blog

I’m going back to working with text files again and start working with pdf. A webzine, rather than a blog. Well, a webzine as a working name.

Running a blog has become ruined with marketing and pressure to conform. I’ve always liked doing things my own way. Following all the "rules" for bloggers means putting marketing first. I don’t want to do that. Yet, each time I try to get working on my sites again there is all that stuff telling everyone how to do everything better, almost always involving SEO and marketing. I don’t want to live like everything is for sale. I don’t want to blog that way either. So, blogging is out.

Of course, that means deciding what blogging actually is and what I want to do next. Once upon a time it was a web log, keeping dated entries about changes made to your projects on the web. Some personal posts became sprinkled in and next thing you had the personal online journal. Blogs came from that, later. Dated entries were the key to what was a blog and what was not. That is so lost these days, there are blogs which don’t want to post dates at all. They call it evergreen. I call it, not a blog.

I have a lot of old content to merge with something new. Once I take it out of CMS software I won’t have to keep trying to find ways to make it display for software, just the txt or pdf file type. That will be a LOT easier.

I’m keeping something blog-like to post things I find along the way, in niche and topical blogish displays. Likely on Blogger because I can use Open Live Writer to create the post and then filter it to whichever site I want it to show up on. They will be content curation sites, not blogs. I can post links to niche sources in the sidebars, as I find good links. But, dates, marketing, and professional templates won’t be important.

National Dictionary Day

National Dictionary Day is observed annually on October 16.

National Dictionary Day was created in honor of Noah Webster’s birthday (October 16, 1758) and was set aside as a day to emphasize the importance of learning and using dictionary skills and increasing one’s vocabulary.  Webster is considered the “Father of the American Dictionary”. 

Source: National Day Calendar

Did Disqus Kill Commenting?

When you think about it, did Disqus kill blog commenting? I stopped commenting on other sites because of Disqus. Having to register for their service and even then most of the time I would have to login with it only to have it not find my account. Far too much trouble when something like Twitter was so much simpler. Now I just leave a note on Twitter, with a link referring to whatever I wanted to comment on. Much easier, less stress, and it works.



By the way, Disqus is now spamming you but you can pay for it to stop. Or just stop using Disqus. People might start commenting on your site again, or not. I think the days of leaving comments on blogs are gone. Too much hassle to deal with software, like Disqus

Reward the Author

Have you seen something like this before? The reader has a vote in how much the author is paid for the article. I say a vote because I don’t know if the author is paid the amount I picked. Is this a good way to pay web writers? It is based on readers and reader opinions about the content.

How Software Changes Your Mind

I’ve had so many ideas and from those ideas I spin off into making them reality and find even more options. More than I can keep track of. Software, it’s advances, limitations and quickness to become obsolete/ unpopular, changes how you end up doing things.