Happy Birthday to my Blog!

February 22, 2008
My very first post!
https://ascattergood.blogspot.com/2008/02/begin-at-beginning.html

Did I ever expect, some 1,245 posts later, I'd still have a thing to say?
Okay, that was a rhetorical question. No need to comment. ;)

What was fun while scrolling back a little bit was remembering all the books I'd read and reviewed. And all the friends I've made along the way.

Danette and our Insomniacs Club. She and I accept parallel parking challenges. I first wrote about her book in 2008 and I still love her books!

A few years ago, my buddy Eileen redid my logo. All these clicks later, I love it as much as when she designed it.

I met Rosi Hollenbeck at a Highlights Foundation Workshop, also a while back. Now I love reading her blog and she kindly comments on mine.

Just a few friends who've made this writing thing so much fun.

I started this blog before I'd published a book. But I had a dream!

 Thanks, everybody, for reading! Hope you'll stick around!

Birthday Thought for the Day:

To Blog or Not to Blog

That is the question.

About this time eleven years ago, I considered starting a blog. I was publishing a lot of book reviews and a few personal essays and I wanted a place to share the links. I hoped to write fiction, and I loved finding things to share about books.
The advice then was that if you were trying to find an agent or an editor, many of them would check to see if you had an online presence. Facebook and Twitter were barely on the horizon. Or at least my horizon.
So off I traveled to Blog City.

My new critique group friend Lee Hilton started SPOON AND INK then, her fabulous food blog.
Fun times in the blogosphere, no? We thought so.

But I don't read too many blogs now, and I wonder if anybody's reading this.
:)

(Hellooooo out there! Anybody home?)

And then today I discovered an author I admire has a really great blog, and reading it inspired me to write this.

When I still worked as a school librarian, Claudia Mills's books were very popular in my school. I remember hearing her on a panel about publishing at the New School when I first thought about writing. I had those notes forever! Probably still do!
Here's the link. I'm going to make it extra large and obvious.
Please visit. You can thank me later.

https://claudiamillsanhouraday.blogspot.com/


Another blogger I try to follow is Caroline Starr Rose.  
She never fails to inspire me, teach me, or make me smile. 
When I clicked over there to get her link, I see she has a lovely photo and a quote I'm going to remember:

Learn to respect the pages the reader will never see.
— Joshua Mohr

I sorry to say I don't know Joshua Mohr, but I sure like that quote. I also love seeing the pictures she shares, mostly of the American Southwest which seems light years and many miles from my own vistas.
Thanks, Caroline!

(Aside: here's a nifty trick! Caroline turned one of her blogposts into a short article you can read in the current WRITERS DIGEST magazine.)

Inspired by Caroline and Claudia, here's my first blog photo of 2019 and a quote from the new Quaker Motto Calendar!

"There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship."  
Thomas Aquinas.

Happy Birthday, Blog

Tomorrow marks TEN YEARS that I've been writing this blog. How'd that happen?

Here's a post from four years ago, followed by my very first post.

And those links at the bottom of my most viewed posts? This is still near the top:

http://ascattergood.blogspot.com/2011/04/said-is-not-dead.html

You can't say enough about using SAID as a dialog tag. (Though apparently, I tried.)

And if you're still with me...

 

I'm sorry. I can't resist. Remembering I was inspired to blog by a Media Bistro workshop, I kinda sorta remembered it as being in February. So I just checked.

Yep. 2/22/ 2008. 
Whoa, I've been doing this for all those years? And a few of you are still listening? This is my 927th post and you're still here?

There must be thousands of bloggers who focus on writing and books and The South and food and-- well, you name it, there's a blog for it. 
So, if you're reading mine, a huge THANK YOU.

Here's that very first post, just for fun.

So how hard can this be. Write a little about what I read. Discuss the pros and cons of (mostly free) book reviewing I do. Pull my hair out online about how hard it is to write, how under appreciated writing is as a job choice. Post pictures of me with new very short haircut, my dog going for a run (ha, ok an amble) on the beach, my latest failure in the kitchen. Let the games begin!

For starters, I'm reading The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood. I just heard her read a chapter at the Writers in Paradise conference and bought the book on the spot. I'm a big fan. My knitting experience ended with the blanket my grandmother taught me to knit when I was nine years old, but the way Hood tells the stories of the women who gather to share and knit and care for each other is remarkable. I'd saved the book to read on my flight from Tampa to Newark yesterday but I can't stop reading it and worry that there will be no book to read on the trip back to Florida. I can't face a plane trip without a book.

OK, blogging is fun. Just like writing the long emails to my friends and family that they pretend to read but really skim and often ignore. Except for Leslie and Kate, who always read and always answer quickly. Thanks, guys!

_________________________________________________________________________________


If anybody's still reading, here are a few of my most viewed posts, over the years.

http://ascattergood.blogspot.com/2011/06/what-heck-is-historical-about-it-anyway.html

http://ascattergood.blogspot.com/2013/11/first-edition-first-printing.html

http://ascattergood.blogspot.com/2013/10/counting-by-7s-pov.html

http://ascattergood.blogspot.com/2013/09/horrendous-book-titles.html

http://ascattergood.blogspot.com/2013/07/repeat-after-me-s-s-s-s-s.html
(about using dialog tags other than said. Hoo Boy did that raise a ruckus!)

http://ascattergood.blogspot.com/2011/07/another-pinch-me-moment.html

Top Ten

(Actually Fourteen) Things I just this minute learned about blogging.
From my writer friend Irene Latham.

Her anniversary blogpost is a MUST READ.   (click there!)

You know when somebody announces "I couldn't have said it better myself" and then goes on to attempt to to it anyhow? I'm not doing that.

I truly can't think of another thing I could add to her list of
14 Things I've Learned in 10 Years of Blogging. (Go ahead, click her link!)

Except Happy Blog-i-versary, Irene.

Since Irene knows pictures are worth a thousand words...

And please,

Happy Birthday BLOG.

 In a million years when I first started this blog, seven years ago, I couldn't have dreamed I'd have two books published by this time.

Or that I would have written all these posts, all these days.






Are blogs still being read in this new age of Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc.? Are posts too long? Do we have a reason for being?

If your answer is yes and you are considering starting your own blog, check out THESE IDEAS for writing your posts. 


If you are curious about how my own blog began, here's the very first post.

And this is what I was thinking about last year on my Blog Birthday. 

Thank you, friends and family, for stopping by to see what's up in my world of books et al.

More Blogging about Blogging

Continuing with this week's Blog Theme-

Something for fellow bloggers to consider when leaving comments, this post by Writer's Digest's Jane Friedman is worth noting.

I'll lift two of her suggestions. You can click the link above to read the entire post. She always has good advice for writers, so it's worth a click in that direction.

To really impress, offer a targeted resource. Some of the best comments I've ever received pointed me to a very specific blog post or resource that I hadn't seen before.

Ask questions. If you didn't understand something that was discussed, there's a good chance someone else didn't understand either. So bring it up in the comments. Get clarification. Most people love the chance to elaborate, or they can address the question in a new blog post.


So, comment away, folks! Here, there and everywhere in Blogsville.

Blog Birthday #3: The Trouble With Blogging?

Blogging every day is hard work!
But what three-year-old wouldn't love celebrating a birthday for a whole week? So I'll keep up the pace till I run out of blog topics about blogging. At least for birthday week.
Today I'm ruminating on the bad things about blogging, the Anti-Blog post.

Three years ago when I first considered starting a blog, I consulted my writer friends. Without naming names, let me say that a certain one I love and admire shared with me an exchange with another, unnamed but articulate writer about The Trouble With Blogging...

It went something like this:

Compared to the studied seduction of the novel, blogging is literary pole dancing. Anyone can stand naked in the window of the public’s eye, anyone can twitch and writhe and emote over the package that was not delivered, the dinner that burned, the friend who forgot your birthday.

So right then and there, I decided I would never do this. Never rant about a burned dinner or forgotten birthdays. OK, so those things don't really matter to me anyhow. But I promised, as my friend and fellow blogger Lee cautions, never to navel gaze. And I've tried really hard not to.

Except I've already admitted I've had a tad too many food posts, for somebody who is not a food writer.
And I'm guilty of filling a few blank days with travel adventures, with book connections. But I honestly try to stick to my topic. With a minimum of Navel Gazing emoting.

Here are two that came close... But even these had a passing connection to writing or books.

(food)
Our Way Home

(sunsets)

A Place to Write