Category: Uncategorized
Discussion: Writing Inspiration/Motivation
Sometimes no matter how hard you try you can’t write. The words feel like you’re trying to pull rusty nails out of a board and you’re just not getting anywhere with your writing. No matter what you write, whether it’s blog posts or full length novels, you’ve probably experienced something like this at one point or another.
I personally cope with this by either starting a different blog post, one that I’m more motivated to write (i.e. one for a book I really enjoyed) or just walking away for a little bit. Walking away can mean saving the post as a draft for as little as an hour or so or as much as a year. Usually I will come back to a post, particularly if it’s a review but sometimes it’s really hard. So I try to motivate myself by listening to music I enjoy while writing it or giving myself a little pep talk. It’s kind of weird but it generally works.
Now what I want to know is this: If you do writing of any sort, what motivates and/or inspires you to do it? When you’re struggling to find the words, how do you get past your writer’s block?
The Best and Worst of February 2015
February flew by in the blink of an eye for me. I don’t know why because I wasn’t particularly busy or anything but it just did. I suppose that’s a good thing because I’m super-excited about my upcoming trip to New York at the end of May for BEA 2015. And because I’m also super-excited for season 5 of Game of Thrones on April 12. So yeah, February was pretty uneventful and yet it flew past. I can’t really complain about my month this time around.
This month I received 5,169 views in total with 3,407 of those being unique views. That’s down from January when I received 6,644 views but considering that February only has 28 days this year, that’s not so bad. I had some pretty bad days stats-wise this February but I also had some good days where I hit the 300 mark compared to my usual 150-200. Really, like the personal side of my life in February, I can’t complain about the statistics side of things.
So what were the best posts this month?
1. Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal
2. How to Read 100 Pages in an Hour
3. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome
4. Discussion: One Star Reviews
5. Why no Writer Wants to Tackle Chronic Pain
We actually have some different articles on the list this month! My discussion of one star reviews and negative reviews in general was hugely successful both stats-wise and comments-wise. It was very interesting to see peoples’ takes on the issue, both authors and reviewers. As for the chronic pain article, that really surprised me because it was never popular, even when it was new. Since I got more referrals from Facebook than I normally would I’m guessing that someone shared my post on Facebook in either an author’s group or some sort of chronic pain support group. Whoever it was, thank you and I hope it caused you to think.
Okay, then what were the worst posts in February?
1. Rotten Romans by Terry Deary
2. Bullying Under Attack by Various Authors
3. Have you Finished The Mad Reviewer Reading Challenge? Tell me Here!
4. Discussion: The Most Underrated Book (For You)
5. Feyguard: Spark by Anthea Sharp
As far as I remember, these are all new ones here on the worst list. As with most months, they’re either posts that are extremely dated (#3 being from 2013) or they’re books that are old or really aren’t that popular. For the first two the latter doesn’t bother me but I was surprised to see Anthea Sharp’s Feyguard: Spark on that list as well because it was an extremely good book. But oh well. I can pretty much guarantee that these 5 posts won’t be on next month’s worst list because the ‘worst’ posts always seem to rotate.
Well folks, that was my February. How was yours? Did it go by as quickly as mine? How’s the weather where you are? Are you as sick of winter as I am of hearing about that stupid #TheDress incident?
Discussion: Goodreads Usage
A lot of bloggers and authors use Goodreads, a platform where you can review books and make lists of books you liked, want to read, etc. I mostly use it for cross-posting purposes to get reviews on my blog out there to a wider audience (which can be extremely helpful for self-published authors as well as traditionally published authors). Although I do also keep track of books using my shelves so I know which books I’ve read but have yet to review, what series I haven’t finished and what books I really want to keep an eye out for in bargain shops. Goodreads is not perfect by any means in part because of the author-reviewer drama that sometimes goes on, but it’s pretty much everything I need it to be: generally user-friendly, simple and practical.
What I want to know now is this: How do you use Goodreads? Do you use it as a way to keep track of your books, simply cross-post reviews, connect with authors or a combination of all of them? As an author, is it a good way to reach out to new reviewers or just readers in general? As a reviewer, do you use it quite a bit or not at all? Why?
Lazy Sundays: Clothing Sizes are Idiotic
I have to confess that I absolutely hate shopping. Clothes shopping in particular, but especially dress shopping. Not only is it stressful because I have to drive a minimum of an hour away to find clothing stores it also tends to bring up old insecurities caused by years of bullying in middle and high school. Did I mention that it’s also nearly impossible to find a dress between ‘Amish’ and ‘Look at everything I’ve got’? Ugh.
So obviously you guys can tell I had to go shopping recently. I had to find a dress for an occasion in the summer and the two dresses I bought two years ago aren’t sufficiently formal so off I went a-shopping. When I got to a dress store the clerk asked what size I normally was and I told her about a dress size four. She looked at me like I had grown an extra head and went off to find me something semi-modest but not grandmotherly. When she came back I tried on a beautiful blue dress that fit me like a glove; it seemed to be made for me. But when I went to check the price tag it said that the dress was a size ten. I didn’t like the shade of blue so I ordered in another colour in the same style only to learn that sample dresses are often inconsistent with the actual sizes. Therefore the clerk had to take my measurements only to tell me I was a size twelve.
This just highlights the stupidity and the arbitrary nature of clothing sizes. There are no standard sizes for clothing, dresses especially. I have gained a bit of weight since I last went dress shopping but I don’t think five pounds shoots you up from a size four to a size twelve. Clothing manufacturers seem to base sizes off some mythical algorithm that bears no relation to the sizes of their competitors. This is apparent in t-shirts because I can take anything from an extra small to a medium but it seems particularly bad in dresses. It’s just very, very frustrating and is the main reason why I never shop online for clothes.
Ladies, have you noticed that dress sizes vary wildly from brand to brand? And gents, do you have this problem with your clothes too?
Please, someone tell me I’m not the only one with this problem.
Discussion: Befriending Authors
We in the blogging community often work quite a bit more closely with authors than, say, a reviewer for a national newspaper or bigger book reviewing website. One of the consequences of that is we develop pretty good working relationships with authors and sometimes those develop into friendships (insomuch as one can be friends with someone purely online). But that also brings up a big ethical question: How do these relationships affect our reviews? Should book reviewers befriend authors and review their books?
No review is completely objective, obviously. Your own experiences and likes and dislikes go into your perception of a book and the writing of the review. But being friends with an author can make writing a review a little harder so should bloggers either a) not befriend authors at all or b) not review books by their friends.
Personally I consider myself friends with some of the authors I’ve reviewed here on my blog and I still reviewed their books anyway. (This is a limited number because while I’m friends with about 5 authors most of my relationships with authors would be considered ‘professionally friendly’.) But when I write a review I totally block out any perceptions of the author as best I can. If my friend writes crappy dialogue, I’m going to tell her in the review. If the characters seem one dimensional and have very few realistic motivations then I’m going to call him out on it. Sometimes it’s hard; I’m certainly not going to claim that it’s not. However, I feel that I am generally objective enough not to let my friendships as they stand interfere in my criticism. If at some point in the future I did feel like I couldn’t objectively review a book by a friend, then I simply would not review the book.
What I want to know now is this: As a blogger do you feel it’s right to make friends with authors at all? If you are friends with an author, do you feel it affects your ability to give them an objective review? How do you balance your friendships with your reviewing principles of honesty and openness?