Happy Birthday USA and Rule of Three! by Christine Duncan

First off, I want to apologize to my blog mates for not doing my post last week. It wasn’t a conscious decision. My husband was ill (nothing serious but he did have a high fever) and I was busy with him. I never thought of it until somewhere around Tuesday afternoon, when he showed signs of feeling a bit better. I have to say that I was happy to read Michelle’s post this last Friday–especially point #2 about not sticking to a writing schedule at the point of life limb and sanity. We won’t talk about my sanity, or lack thereof. But I am sorry, ladies.

It has occurred to me that since this is now July–this post will go up on the 4th, Happy Birthday, US of A–that we have been blogging here at Rule of Three for over three years now. So we are also celebrating a birthday of sorts. We are coming up on post #500–which should fall to Michelle this Friday. WhooHoo!

And since this is July, I want to start getting our Fall lineup in place. Anyone who would like to guest blog here at Rule of Three, please email me at Chduncan100@hotmail.com.

Have a happy Fourth, everyone!

Product Placement and RSS Feeds by Christine Duncan

A couple of author discussions have caught my eye this week and I wanted to get other writers’ opinions on them. The first one is on product placement in books.

I have heard of big name authors doing this before–having their hero drink one soft drink instead of another or perhaps going to stay in a brand name hotel. This gentleman has obviously elevated the whole thing to a new level. I have to tell you, when I’m watching TV shows and I see the commercial inside the show (Biggest Loser does this a lot) I tend to tape the show so I can fast-forward through those parts. I think if I had to wade through much of it in books, I might just not read that author anymore. But this is the quote in the article that caught my eye:

“Our economy is down and the traditional book publishing industry is down, so it’s either cry in a corner, or do something about it,” said Mr. Hurt, whose self-published book will be available for $7 on his website.

Really? Am I missing something? How does product placement help? It obviously gave him the money to do the trip that he wrote about but for the rest of us authors, writing fiction from home, how would product placement help? Am I missing something here?

The other thing that kept coming up this week was–astonishingly enough–RSS feeds. I don’t exactly know why. This blog is on a feed to both Twitter and Facebook, which is something I have long taken some static from friends and relatives about. My daughter told me she tends to skip over my Facebook posts, because it is just a blog feed. (It’s not true either–I post on Facebook–I just don’t live it on as much as my kids do.)

A writer friend told me she doesn’t bother visiting this blog anymore because she knows she’ll catch it on Facebook.

I have to say, I tend to block people on Twitter when all I get is another sales plea from them but blog feeds that end up on my Twitter or Facebook page are welcome to me. Sometimes it’s a way to sift through and see what I want to read.

What are your thoughts on that? Are there too many authors out there doing blog feeds? Do you want to just choose blogs for yourself and maybe read them from some aggregator like Google?

For me, it’s more about there is only so much time in a day, and I have to be careful how much time I spend on the ‘net. Although it obviously can be overdone–I don’t find it as gimmicky as having trading card pics of my heroes to hand out to folks (a trend lately with Romance Authors) or even older trends like Banner ads on sites. But maybe you have another take. Tell me.

The twenty first century and Women by Christine Duncan

When I was growing up, the nuns that tried to teach me stuff talked about the coming twenty-first century.
They showed us films showing us the coming Utopia. People wouldn’t age much. Problems with childhood diseases would be cured. Nuns didn’t talk much about societal problems then. But when I brought the topic home, my mother, who was a feminist, liked the idea that we would progress so much, and she thought that in the twenty-first century, maybe women would make as much money as men. Maybe the problems with men beating wives and girlfriends would be gone.

To be honest, the twenty-first century seemed a long way off, and I knew only one thing with certainty. I would be old then. But I remembered the film and my mother’s thoughts. I hoped she was right.

The twenty-first century hasn’t solved much as far as I can tell. People still age–botox or not. Kids can get shots for many childhood maladies so that seems better, unless of course, your kid reacts to the shots. And women still are beaten every day in this country by a man who says he loves them.

And what can you do, you’re thinking? Well, for starters, if your man abuses you, you need to leave. Your kids are watching and they are more apt to be in some sort of violent relationship when they become adults if they see it as kids. And no matter what you think, they see it.

If your relationship is good, raise your kids with awareness. Let them know that abuse is never acceptable. If you see an incidence of abuse, don’t just gloss over it and hope nothing penetrated. Speak up. Your words will be remembered for decades, as my mother’s were.

If you can, blog on it this month–spread the awareness.

If you believe, pray, if you have money, donate, if you have time, volunteer.
We can make a difference.

What to Write – by Karen Fainges

Sometimes I find it very hard to know what to put into an article or piece of fiction. I find myself having to go back and remove a dozen wrong tracks. One day, someone gave me some good advice. The more I write, the more I realise how good the advice was.

“Write what the readers want to spend time reading.”

For non-fiction, that means keeping it on topic, no matter how interesting the piece of trivia may be. I go back over it with my teacher hat on and ask, are you answering the question (or is this on topic)? Anything I put a mental red line through comes out. Quite often, the thought goes into the ideas pile for a different article, so the creativity doesn’t go to waste.

For fiction it gets harder, but the advice still applies. I make myself ask, does the reader really want to know that? Do they care? Have I already told them that before? If I answer no to the first two, or yes to the last one, out it comes.

Stolen Blog Posts by Christine Duncan

It happened again just a few weeks ago.  A post I’d written for this blog was taken by someone else.  This time, whoever it was, had taken it, translated it into some unknown language and then re-translated it, badly, back into English.  The post, which was  originally titled Getting a Heads up on Taxes came out of all the translations  to something like A heads on Taxation.  The body of the post was even worse as the translator’s English seemed to deteriorate from there.

I naturally told the joker in a comment that I was the original author and I wanted it taken down–but I’m still a bit frosted.  How can we write and have people steal the very words we sweated over–and not be a bit perturbed?

I’m at the point where I wonder if we have to copyright everything–and how is that even possible?  So maybe next time it happens, I’ll settle for blaring the offender’s name all over the web from Twitter to Facebook–with pithy comments on their manhood–or lack thereof.  His name–if it is his real name and he hasn’t stolen that too–will be worse than mud!

Hey, Blog Thieves!  If you need content–I’m happy to guest post.  For Free!  I’ll send you something and you can put it up (with proper attribution.)  But don’t mangle my stuff and then put it up.  Don’t steal my words and take my name off the post either.  Don’t expect that I’ll take it as a complement when you cheat like that.  Words are all we writers have.  It’s like stealing a carpenter’s tools.

Rant over.  I’ll return you to your regularly scheduled blog posts.

Keep going

I’ve recently taken to doing 10 minute meditations first thing in the morning before work.  (Yes, even before I pour myself a coffee.)  My inner voice has been whispering to me for a while (*ahem* years) to sit down and listen.  

All the meditations I’m doing at the moment are based on the Chakras and they’re all from Youtube (because I get bored doing the same ones over and over).   

Like most meditation novices, my unruley mind wanders off a lot but that’s ok, I know this will improve with practice.  This morning, I tried a new guided Chakra Flower meditation.  It was lovely all the way through and I was able to focus better than usual.  At the end, the narrator said it was time to  receive a gift from a higher power.  The gift could be an image, an idea, a feeling – anything at all.   

My gift was two words “keep going”.  Timely really because I feel like I’m not getting anywhere with my writing and I’ve had another setback with my health this week. 

But the message was clear so I’m going to keep going.  I’m going to keep putting one foot in front of the other and do the next indicated thing…which right now is to get this post loaded up on-time.

Copying Blog Posts?

I seem to be on a roll blogging about blogging but I can’t help myself. This week I came across one of my posts from Rule of Three– this blog on someone else’s blog. Now they did attribute the post to me. It also had a link to this blog–so I suppose it should feel like a good thing since it’s another link out there. I’m left wondering why it doesn’t.
I guest blog on other folk’s blogs and we have guest bloggers here. It shouldn’t feel any different. Of course, before any of that stuff, we exchange emails with the other writer. We see what their blogs are about, see if we’re a fit with them. We do some promo. But really I’m not sure why this feels different. Have any of you had this happen? How did you react? Am I being wierd about this? I really want to know.

What I Use THIS Blog For!

Okay, having posed the question last week asking why people read blogs, I feel I have to be honest about why I write this one. Technically, people– writers, at least, are supposed to write blogs. It’s almost a given now. We’re supposed to write them to promote whatever else we write. And we are supposed to try to connect with an audience. Sounds good, right?
I may have started out with that motive, but now I write this blog for other reasons. I carp and gripe about it occasionally but really, not all that much. Because secretly, it is one of those writer things I look forward to. (Now there is a sentence fragment guaranteed to get me in trouble with the grammar police.)
Writing this blog gets me focused on writing again. I’m not talking about the promo part of writing either. I have to formulate my thoughts. I need to stick to a theme–writing. I need to consider you, my reader, and your needs. Many times I have to do research to make sure what I’m sharing with you is accurate. And the bottom line is I have to write.
Many times, having this jumpstart my brain back into that mode gives benefits in my other writing. Or to be less wordy, this gets me going again on my work in progress. I used to know a woman who wrote poetry for the first fifteen minutes everyday to get herself going. Of course, we’ve all readd of people like Anne Lamott and Natalie Goldberg who recommend we “freewrite” to get going. If not I suggest you pick up one of their books. But this blogs works better for me.
It’s not often in life that we get to like the things we should do. I just wanted to tell you how nice it is that this one of them. What writing chores do you like?

What do you use blogs for?

Recently I read that American newspapers are hitting the dust because many of us are getting our news online now–specifically, this source said, from blogs.
Now I am an avid reader of blogs, especially since I’ve been trying to do this one and put my own blog tour together. I use a blog aggregator called Netvibes that comes up as my home page with all of my favorite blogs already loaded on it. I can see at a glance if they have updated and if I want to comment on them. But I never see news there. I get occasional news updates from Twitter–but it’s the stuff like, did you hear So and So died.
I still tend to get my news from CNN or MSNBC. That’s not why I read a blog. And my favorite blogs might comment on news–but they don’t really revolve around news. I read writers’ blogs, because I don’t get enough professional interaction with other writers. Or sometimes I read hoping to pick up the occasional promo tip, or writing insight. I read to be amused and to get relaxed.
So now I’m wondering as I try to get this blog tour thing going, maybe I should be aiming to do something. Maybe I should figure out why folks read blogs so I can try to meet the need. So I’m asking you–Why do you read blogs?