Strategery

Why do you blog? Some people have goals about how many blogs they will visit and comment on, how many link backs they will make every week, and how many how many how many.

I tried that. For about a month.

It was stressing me out, and making it hard for me to want to write here.

At the University of Florida (and I suspect it is similar in most colleges), there were two main plazas that most everyone walked through on their treks from the dorms/parking lots to their classes. The Hari Krishnas would serve yummy vegetarian glop for a dollar donation on Fridays. The "Redcoats" would stand up on buckets in their maroon suit coats and yell at the girls in short shorts that they were the whores of all the earth, and the boys were informed their fornication would lead to their everlasting damnation, etc. And usually Yoga Guy was out there on his mat, too.

It was a rare day where I wouldn't see someone that I knew as I walked through. The plazas were a place to hang out and relax, a place to listen to people argue, a place to lay under the trees and look at the clouds or just lean up against a tree and read.

Blogs are that same type of thing for me. I'm on my way to email, or renew my seriously overdue library books, but I take a few minutes to hang out with you guys on my way there.

That's what I'm going for on my blog. I haven't checked my new visitors vs. returning visits, duration of visit, how the person got here. I understand that such stats would be useful if this were a business. But it's not. This is where I hangout. Stay as long as you like. Come back when you can. I'm not worried about it.

I comment when I'm interested in the topic and have something to say. When I follow someone, it's not part of my master plan to have X number of followers by X date. I follow someone because they intrigue me in some way.

I understand the usefulness of branding and online presence. I think it's great for people who can think like that, but it freezes me up. The blog is fun. That's my motivation.

Why do you blog?

Thanks for reading and commenting. Getting your take on things is the best part! 
Glutton for Punishment?

Introductions to blog friends

Hey. I was checking out the friends of my blog and realized that I have personal relationships with less than half of you. Which is kind of exciting, not to discount the value of my physical-presence-friends. Part of the point of starting a blog was to meet new people, so I have this happy feeling of "It's working!" I want to know more about you, so if you'd like, please give us an introduction.

I live in South Carolina, am a full-time mom and full-time writer. I've made the transition from thinking that maybe one day I'd like to write to just doing it, and I'm in the next to last round of edits (I hope) on my novel before I send out query letters to agents.

Every good biography includes an embarrassing story, right? I'm trying to think of one I wouldn't mind sharing...okay. This is gross, but not too bad. When the husband and I were dating, we were playing Scattergories at my Dad's house. So you roll a 26 sided alphabet die, and you have to come up with examples in certain categories that start with that letter. Double word scores are possible- like stores that start with K=Krispy Kreme gets two points. So the die roll was K, and the category was food or restaurants maybe. And I said 'King's Kabobs'. Which is a real name. At the Sarasota Renaissance Festival it was right next to 'The Queen's Buns'. See, I'm not making this up. But Nathan (now husband, then boyfriend) didn't buy it. They voted me down and I only got one point. Totally Unfair. The next category was car parts and nobody could think of a K car part. Except Nathan. He said 'King's Muffler' and for some reason it struck me as funny. I started laughing too hard, and then I was choking, and I couldn't stop choking. I threw up all over the table. There was a distinct green pepper odor since I'd had a lot of peppers in my salad. The room had cleared in a nanosecond, but my stepmom came back and helped me cleanup. I remember Nathan was a teensy bit reluctant to kiss me that night, but we still got married.

You don't have to share an embarrassing story, but feel free to tell us about your blog, your writing, and whatever else we might like to know about you.  
Glutton for Punishment?