Reciprocity Returns to "A Writer's Edge"

With much huffing and puffing, I've wrestled the list of reciprocal linking blogs back onto the front page. It's over in the right column and up to date as far as I know. Probably needs a shaking out, but the oldest live links are at the top and the most recent are added at the bottom. Yes, yes, the page needs rebalancing, but Blogger is giving me so much grief as I tinker with the template, that I thought I should leave well enough alone for now.

If your link is missing and you have a permanent, non-scrolling one to A Writer's Edge on your home or index page, just shoot me an email. Conversely, if you want yours removed, let me know.

While we're on the subject of communication, I won't bite if you ask to use part of a post or maybe even all of it on one of your web pages. You only need to ask permission and follow the parameters of attribution and linkage. Common sense and courtesy.

Ranting in Writing Blogs

Those who read A Writer's Edge at the website will see some of the changes I've made in the home page -- and resulting construction problems. Yes, as much as I advocate using Blogger for your ordinary blogging needs, sometimes it sucks like Electrolux. Until I drag the page into DreamWeaver, I won't be able to fix the bottom that, I suspect, visitors seldom view anyway.

I've included a "recent visitors" box from Blog Catalog now, mainly because it's the only way I can see more than ten visitors from there to thank and entice to leave a shout on my Profile page or a Comment or Review or to join The Neighborhood on the blog's page. I may expand the features from MyBlogLog, too, currently in the left column.

This must be the Week of the Blog for email, because I've received several nutty messages, including a request to remove a link to a news article because someone is unhappy with what the article says. I don't even mention the person in my post! He writes to me, "Yes, I am the subject of the slander in the article." His logic goes like this: my link causes the newspaper article "to show up highly on the search engines...what is happening as a result of the hyperlink in your post that is objectionable to me." I"d much rather that my links cause my blog to show up highly in the search engines, but maybe there's a lesson here, somewhere.

Then a Google Alert alarmed me when I found one of my recent posts appearing in toto in someone else's blog, but WITHOUT links or attribution. Jeez! If you're going to steal my work, at least leave the link or use my name. I wasted an hour or more trying to track down an email address for the hacker jerk (he has several sites on Blogspot), found none, so settled for wading through Blogger's complaint system, only to receive a lengthy email from them, saying that I had to put a full DMCA complaint in writing. Sheesh! Shall I post his name, this Indian student? Let you visit his sites and leave nasty remarks? Would you? Or would he welcome the attention?

Blogging Changes

As I meticulously stepped through a link check of the home page for A Writer's Edge, I discovered a few boo-boos. Now both Blue Ribbon Blogger images are connected to the current Blue Ribbon Bloggers blog. Another link was scrambled (I swear gremlins live in the grid!), and that got me to thinking about all the reciprocal links that I displayed before the PageRank brouhaha.

According to the people who pay close attention to such matters, PageRank is no longer the behemoth image-maker for websites that it once was. Google typifies the Peter Principle in action. They've tweaked their algorithm out of pertinence. Thus, I'm considering an experiment: bring back the reciprocals and see if traffic picks up.

Or was it something I said that put people off the last few months? A writer must accept the fact that someone will always be offended by a piece of writing. I have difficulty believing that something I wrote was bad enough to drive away a significant number of visitors, and other blog/website owners have noticed a drop, too. If you were offended and left, well, you're not reading this, but if you can remember something I wrote that you found questionable, please let me know in a private email to writer [AT] writers-edge.info.

In the meantime, let the links begin!

Statistics for Writing on Blogs

Many readers of A Writer's Edge are bloggers. Some do it for pleasure, some for practice or as a writing prompt, some share useful information, and probably a few are in it for the money (good luck!) If you're a blogger, you might be interested in these Important Blogging Statistics from the producers of the Blog World Expo, coming up in September in Las Vegas:

• Over 12 million American adults currently maintain a blog.
• More than 147 million Americans use the Internet.
• Over 57 million Americans read blogs.
• 1.7 million American adults list making money as one of the reasons they blog.
• 89% of companies surveyed say they think blogs will be more important in the next five years.
• 9% of internet users say they have created blogs.
• 6% of the entire US adult population has created a blog.
• Technorati is currently tracking over 70 million blogs.
• Over 120 thousand blogs are created every day.
• There are over 1.4 million new blog posts every day.
• 22 of the 100 most popular websites in the world are blogs.
• 120,000 new blogs are created every day.
• 37% of blog readers began reading blogs in 2005 or 2006.
• 51% of blog readers shop online.
• Blog readers average 23 hours online each week.

The people who run this operation also have an interesting and useful blog about blogging and bloggers. Blogs and blogging seem to be where it's at these days, whatever "it" is. Now, don't you feel smart?

How to be a Famous Writer

HOW TO BECOME A FAMOUS WRITER OR

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Blogging at Length Matters

The archives for A Writer's Edge threaten to overflow. What I mean is that the directory in the left column is taking up too much space. I'm thinking of shrinking the listing. Shall I simply delete, say, the first year or two? Weed out the less useful postings? Figure out how to wrestle Blogger into displaying an annual listing?

Eliminating some of the entries would be a lot of work because they are referenced in search indexes, directories, blogs and other websites. I don't want visitors to arrive to a standard "404" (page can't be found). Aside: I read that "404" is entering the American lexicon as slang for stupid or clueless as in, "Don't ask John, he's 404." Back to the topic: I would create a custom-designed error message explaining why the hoped-for article has gone missing and where and how to find similar material in the website.

I wish it were possible to ask everyone to vote on whether a particular post goes or stays. Well, I guess it is possible if I wanted to create a lot more work for myself. But the idea is that dealing with the blog is interfering with other activities I want to spend more time with: reading, editing, and building websites. What are your thoughts on eliminating old posts? Would that do readers a disservice? Would it be detrimental to the blog itself or my reputation (whatever that is)?

Blogging for Human Rights

Writing Blog Topics

Bloggers always want to know how to attract readers (just like people who write books). Should I blog about a popular topic, throwing my two cents into the mix; or should I blog about something new and different or provide scarce information? Some social scientists over at the HP Labs performed just this sort of research analysis with the following startling result:

"the relative performance of the first two benchmark strategies as a function of the rate of novelty decay switches so sharply around some critical value that it resembles phase transitions observed in the real world.

Given the importance of maximizing page views for most content providers, this work suggests a principled way of choosing what to prioritize when designing dynamic websites. Knowledge of the rates with which novelty and popularity evolve within the website can then be translated into decisions as to what to show first, second, etc."

Now, if only we just knew what the "rate of novelty decay" was ... is it something like the half-life of nuclear particles or atoms approaching a critical mass?

Lacking the proper calipers and thermocouplers to measure the novelty decay rate here, I'll opt for answering the initial question with a resounding Yes! It all depends on the focus of your blog, and it may be inversely proportional to the size of your ego.

Blog Writing About Blogging Writing

If you like NY Times book review's Sarah Boxer's comprehensive look at Blogs, you might want to take a look at her book on the subject: Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web (Vintage, 2008). The article provides a history of the genre(?), movement(?) and insights that had not occurred to this insider. Her writing makes me feel like I'm writing from inside a warm, pink, fuzzy bubble; living all inside my own mind. But wait! Maybe I am, for she ends the piece this way:

Blog writing is id writing—grandiose, dreamy, private, free-associative, infantile, sexy, petty, dirty. Whether bloggers tell the truth or really are who they claim to be is another matter, but WTF. They are what they write. And you can't fake that. ;-)

Other books on blogging mentioned in the article:

We've Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture
compiled and edited by John Rodzvilla, with an introduction by Rebecca Blood
Basic Books, 242 pp., $20.00

Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob
by Lee Siegel
Spiegel and Grau, 182 pp., $22.95

Republic.com 2.0
by Cass R. Sunstein
Princeton University Press, 251 pp., $24.95

Blogwars
by David D. Perlmutter
Oxford University Press, 235 pp., $24.95

The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet
by Daniel J. Solove
Yale University Press, 247 pp., $24.00

We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Lawin the Internet Age
by Scott Gant
Free Press, 240 pp., $26.00

Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World
by Hugh Hewitt
Nelson Books, 225 pp., $14.99 (paper)

The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture
by Andrew Keen
Doubleday/Currency, 228 pp., $22.95

Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers
by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, foreword by Tom Peters
Wiley, 252 pp., $24.95

Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution Is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture
by David Kline and Dan Burstein
CDS Books, 402 pp., $24.95

Blog Brags Worth Writing About

Google has finally restored PageRank to this website, back to the #3 rating it had dropped to late last year (from 5). SEO Moz, on the other hand, upped their estimate to a full 5.0 (see badge at the top of the left column), and I breezed through another blog valuation site last night that gave us a 5.5. Strangely, Google also lists almost a thousand back links!

Sweeter, though, was the email received yesterday from Amy Liu at Blogged because she said:

Our editors recently reviewed your blog and have given it an 8.2 score out of (10) in the Entertainment category of Blogged.com.

This is quite an achievement!...

We evaluated your blog based on the following criteria: Frequency of Updates, Relevance of Content, Site Design, and Writing Style.

After carefully reviewing each of these criteria, your site was given its 8.2 score.

We’ve also created Blogged.com score badges with your score prominently displayed. Simply visit your website’s summary page on Blogged.com:

... Please accept my congratulations on a blog well-done!!

You can see the listing and add comments or a review and help make this blog a full 10.

This must be my week, because I also learned that A Writer's Edge is now listed on the Publish-L web page of Subscriber Links, vetted by the list mom (owner), Pat Gundry. It's an honor to be included, and I thank Pat profusely for all her good work managing this most informative mailing list.

All this comes on top of last week's coveted "Recommended" status in the Preditors & Editors guides to services for writers. Combine all these heady accolades with an overflow of work flooding my way (feast or famine), and I'm falling off my rolling desk chair. One of these jobs may become a steady blogging gig, so stay tuned for further announcements.

New Features at AWE

Allow me to direct your attention to the right column on this blog's web page. First you find a gold box asking you to vote for A Writer's Edge in the 2008 Writer's Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers competition (just click on it to open an outgoing email message to WD). Many thanks.

Below that is a nifty feature by which you can subscribe via FeedBlitz to receive posts automatically by email. I must admit, I'm seeing how many people might be interested in receiving writing help this way. I'm still contemplating starting a newsletter. Signing up for the email feed won't, however, automatically put you on any mailing list.

The third box in the right column is something new. I finally wrestled Yahoo!'s intricate code into a search box that barely fits in the column. Click on the Yahoo! logo and enter a keyword or phrase, then click on the grey Search button. Yahoo! wanted it to take up 300 pixels. I wanted no more than 175. I win, for now! Better yet, it works much better on this website than the leading search engine. I discovered Yahoo!'s more thorough indexing as I searched for all my posts on Writer's Block and Creativity. Soon I hope to have them gathered into an eBook to add to the others. It just seems to me to be a natural companion volume to Be a Successful Writer.

More Widgets for Writers

About a month has passed since Liz Cohen wrote to tell me about the Answers.com Widget Gallery. Although I almost immediately adopted the Word of the Day widget for this remodeled site, time to blog about the new gizzies escaped me. I love that they are customizable for a wide variety of platforms. That saves tinkering time and is mandatory for people who don't know how to modify HTML or XML code. The widgets available include two feeds from WikiAnswersTM, Answer Boxes and Tips, and four "of the day" services: word, birthdays, quote and history. Beaucoup info is available describing and illustrating each device and its installation.


As long as we're on widgets today--Amazon Widgets now have more features such as the option to shuffle products each time they're displayed, forcing a default term in the Search widget, and the ability to designate custom identification numbers for each widget. Amazon has also made it easier to get rid of unused widgets on your My Widgets page. You can learn more about them at Amazon. I'd love to be able to use these inside posts. Maybe I'll widgetize my Wishlist.

SmartLinks Amazing Technology for Writers

A new-to-me company, Adaptive Blue, is offering "smart links" and SmartLink Widgets to enhance blogs and websites. They come in a variety of flavors (stocks, music, wine, movies), but we'll focus on the one for books. SmartLinks for Books shows an example (image to the right) of the results of clicking on a blue arrow (like this one ) embedded in your text, using the widget to:

* Get a preview of the cover and description
* Choose from book sites like Amazon, B&N, etc.
* Find it in the local library via WorldCat
* Bookmark using a favorite service
* Post book link to Facebook or Twitter
* Access the best reviews from around the web
* Find similar books by subject and customer picks
* Find more books by the same author
* Lookup author's bio and web links

If you scroll down to the lower part of the page, you'll see a visual of a different type of book widget and a link to the widget page itself. Prepare yourself to be amazed, confused, and perhaps overwhelmed at first. The versatility of this technology blows me away! Two other resources on using this tool are the BlueBlog and the Book Widget Gallery.

To Fraser, whomever you are, thanks for the email introducing me to this amazing service.

If any of you readers are already using a SmartLinks widget to enhance your online writing, please let us know about your experiences and implementation.

Word Play for Writers

I wish I could afford to include HBO in my cable TV lineup, because I would have liked to have seen the series "The Wire". Or, at least I want to view the segment in which the the city editor "Gus" shouts to the newsroom:

"Anybody threatening to commit an act of daily journalism?"

When I saw this quotation mentioned in a real-life newspaper, my mind went immediately to blogging, rather than the newsroom. Here, in this blog, is where I commit an act of journalism daily. Some may quibble about the term "journalism" being applied to what I write and surely to what many others dribble or spew into the cybershphere. But the phrase "act of daily journalism" really resonated. So did using the verb "commit", because that's what a blog feels like to me, a commitment. And some bloggers do wield their electronic clubs like weapons, while others feel threatened by them, but let's not go there today.

Committing to write a daily blog post is a way to approach tackling a larger project such as a novel. It can also pull you away from a Writer's Block. If you're serious about becoming a professional, paid by someone else to perform acts of any kind of regular writing, a blog with some substance demonstrates reliability and dependability. A blog proves you can handle an assignment ... in a small manner. It's a beginning. We all start the writing life unpublished. Don't let yours end that way.

Good Blogging for Writers

Did I remember to tell you that Writer's Digest editor Maria Schneider added A Writer's Edge to her exclusive Project 20/20:

So here's the deal: There are 20 Fridays left in 2007. Starting next Friday, I'm going to highlight one writer's blog each week then add it to my guaranteed-to-be-fabulous blogroll.

I'm looking for blogs that:
• are dedicated to the topic of writing and/or publishing
• are updated frequently
• are owned and maintained by private individuals

from The Writer's Perspective

After completing her 20-link blogroll, Maria has gathered together 20 Tips for Good Blogging. Being the ed of the leading serial publication for writers, you can bet that she produced these tips with writers in mind. We may disagree on some of the aspects of blogging, but, hey--there are no RULES, only guidelines suggested by experience. Sort of like in creative writing, right?

New Year, New Look

Obvious to those who visit the website, we have a new layout. Finally! It looks a bit vacant, compared to the previous one jam-packed with ornamentation and excessive linkage. Speaking of links, the reciprocal ones are still around and the link to them will reappear soon. The list will be updated as before with the oldest friends at the top. However, newer ones will first appear on the main page before being added. I've still a lot of tinkering to do, adding in necessary material (hang on WebRing, the code is coming!)

Another change illustrated in the previous graf is more linkage within posts instead of in the sidebars where viewers' eyes tend to just slide across, and readers by feed and email never see. Have no fear, page readers, I refuse to insert those annoying pop ups for keywords, really more ads than advice.

Tell me how you like the new look: more space, less clutter. Better? Miss the mess?

Dubious Blogger Awards

A shady practice may have begun long before The Blog Fairy started handing out her lovely Blue Ribbon Blogger awards:
and then suddenly (to some of us) passed on into the fairy heavens:Since the time that Blog Fairy anonymously tapped me through MyBlogLog, A Writer's Edge or I have received a few more awards from people I know, ones I call my "Internet Friends". Suspicion crept in, however, when I began to receive ones with instructions to link back to the givers, and sometimes to an originator, as well as to a certain amount of new awardees. I bristled, as always, at being told what to do. I can think for myself, thank you very much!

Perhaps I was naive from the get-go, but I think I've watched this formerly generous and meaningful practice degenerate into just another shallow attempt to obtain link backs (obviated by Google's revision of the PageRank algorithm). It's a silly, blatant form of viral marketing that reached the ultimate (I hope) this holiday with bloggers passing around growing lists of blogs ostensibly as seasonal greetings. Call me Grinch, but I refused to participate.

Yes, I suppose the same process occurred with the "top women blogging on writing" or whatever that list was. I recall the moment I quit following those links and realized people were just passing on someone else's recommendations without personally evaluating the writers or the blogs. It was nice to be included at the beginning of the pyramid (it's always good to be near the top!) But like any pyramid scheme, it turns into a valueless scam very quickly. And I don't think it fools any half-savvy readers.

Am I hot or what?

Tips for New Bloggers

[Groan!] I think I broke my new blog layout. However, in the process, I've discovered a great new resource, Tips for New Bloggers. As usual, I don't recall how I arrived on Kumar's blogstep, begging for direction, but there it was, step by step, slowly I turn into a more competent writer of xhtml. I should add that the term "New Bloggers" refers to Blogger.com's "new" templates which are long out of beta and now de rigueur there.

A Writer's Edge Changes

Happy New Year's Eve!

Beginning in January, I plan to use the time I usually spend blogging so much for another major project. Posts will appear less often, but at least twice a week. In an experiment to bring back a PageRank, the Reciprocity list will temporarily relocate to another page, as the Directories links did. I hope to do the same with the Archives list, now growing too long after 42 months.

The whole blog may relocate to a sub directory on the website. You'll always be able to find it by clicking on the menu link "Blog" near the top of every page, and the feed link will be updated if necessary (http://feeds.feedburner.com/writers-edge/EElx). If neither of these work, you should always be able to reach the archive pages with URLs like: http://www.writers-edge.info/2007_12_01_archive.htm -- one for January would be: http://www.writers-edge.info/2008_01_01_archive.htm -- see?

Please be patient as I attempt a transition into a new layout tomorrow. Undoubtedly glitches will occur and the main page maybe unavailable from time to time.

Stay tuned and have a fabulous new year! And for friends across the International Date Line:

Happy New Year!

Google Capitulates on Blogger Comments

Straight from the Blogger Buzz:

You Blog, We Listen
December 20, 2007 — permalink
Two fixes just went live, before we sign off for a brief holiday break:

* Unregistered commenters can once again provide an auto-linked URL

Yay? Does this help, previously irked commenters?

Is Your Writing Published or Not?

Frequently people ask if they can submit a piece of writing to a contest or a magazine, publisher, agent if it had already appeared on a web page, in a blog, at a critique site. I advocate playing it safe, because appearance on any web page fulfills the definition of being published. A web page is anything that will appear on your computer monitor's screen. As quickly as it appears, a search engine robot may be "spidering" that website and capturing an image of the page for the search engine's index. There the page becomes part of an archive.

The definition of "published and first rights used" depends on the potential buying publisher, contest holder, agent. Some dismiss appearances on critique sites, some don't count blogs, some will even waive self-publishing (with minimal distribution). Jordan E. Rosenfeld explores the vague and shifting boundaries in a Writer's Digest article, Shades of Gray:

Here's his quick list to determine if your piece counts as "previously published."

It was published if...

• you gave up your first North American serial rights

• it went through an editorial process

• it appeared in an online journal, even a defunct one

• it appeared in a print publication with a small print run

• it appeared in a literary anthology

It's unpublished if...

• it won a prize but was not printed

• it was workshopped in an online writing workshop

• it appeared on your blog or someone else's (though this is changing, so tread carefully)

Another Blogger Award

Not quite certain what to make of this Best Friends award, but it sure is cute. I discovered it on Colin Richards' Life. Then it popped up at Blue Ribbon Bloggers, where I've yet to post. Such a slacker! Good thing I have best friends I don't even know in cyberspace, putting up with my lacks and idiosyncrasies. Oh, that's what best friends are all about, aren't they?

Bloggers Unite in Kindness

Another Bloggers Unite opportunity arises tomorrow. Remember that once popular saying that advocated "random acts of kindness". It always made me bristle, because kindness shouldn't be random, it should be deliberate and institutionalized. What am I going to do? I thought about hugging a stranger or feeding the hungry. I think I'll feed a stranger by donating a grocery bag of nutrition to a pick up point at a neighboring grocery store. I like that concept: taking food to the grocery to feed someone else. Yeah. Here's our chance to start a new, good habit. Hear what others plan:

Google Screws With Blogger

Can you just imagine what their offspring would look like? Oh, sorry, wrong joke--Google already owns Blogger. Today I automatically logged into my account, noting the confusing notice about Blogger instituting use of OpenID for commenting, acknowledging some snafu about URLs and generally wreaking havoc in my little brain.

A few readers have protested the unavailability of anonymous commenting on this blog. That's fine if you object. I have my reasons, and although I don't moderate comments, I do see them almost as soon as they are posted. I can hit "delete" with the best of 'em! So, I went to enable this new system, hoping it would coax more comments, which have fallen off during their testing period. I couldn't. I couldn't do anything with my own blog that I was logged in to, unless I logged in again!

First they call my blog crap and drive away advertisers by demoting the PageRank to zero; then they don't respond to my request for explanation, re-evaluation; now they're driving participants away by screwing with the comments process.

Eventually I was able to change the comments to this new OpenID system. I have no idea what that does. Will some kind soul please use it, and tell me (in a comment, if you can) if it is good for you? So far Google Screws have not been good for me.