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According to Do Blogs Influence Purchasing Decisions? at Christian Marketing, blogs do, indeed, influence buyers. "A recent Technorati study (Technorati’s 2013 Digital Influence Report) found that blogs hold a lot of influential power on purchasing decisions of consumers." "...when bloggers like your book, this influences people to buy it."

I found this incredibly interesting because among bloggers I know there have been questions about whether or not we're just writing for each other. How many books can we read/buy? I've also heard some reservations from writers who've done blog tours as to whether or not they were worth doing.

Perhaps Christian bloggers influence purchasing decisions and others not so much?

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I wish I had pulled things together so I could have planned a series of posts for Women's History Month. Fortunately, someone else was more on top of things. A group blog entitled Kidlit Celebrates Women's History Month will be posting on new books about women during the month of March.

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I just met Aaron Becker on Saturday,  and here he is again at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast. It's a beautiful post packed with images. And what did I notice? Aaron meditated two hours a day for eight years.

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Notice in yesterday's post that Jonathan Bean is going to be at the Connecticut Children's Book Fair in a few weeks? He's at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast today.

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I've noticed a few things going on locally that are worth rounding up for a post.

First off, Bank Square Books in Mystic is expanding. This is an attractive bookstore, anyway, that does neat author luncheons, though I've only been to one and it was a while ago. But it was neat then, and there's no reason to believe anything's changed.

Connecticut author Tommy Greenwald appeared on the local Fox affiliate late last month, talking about his new book, Jack Strong Takes A Stand. Speaking of lunch, as I was just a para ago, I had lunch with Tommy once.

The Connecticut Center for the Book, part of CT Humanities, maintains a list of Community Reads projects. Cheshire is reading Alice Bliss and East Hartford is reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

I recently stumbled upon science writer Linda Zajac's blog. In addition to her posts on writing and science, she has posts on Connecticut state parks. I have to have been to some of these places, because I've been to a lot of Connecticut state parks. However, I keep a trail album, and once I've put my material in it, I pretty much leave it there. By the way, speaking of lunch, as I was a couple of paras back, I think I may have had lunch with Linda Zajac, too. Can't be sure. I've had lunch with a lot of people, but a Connecticut science writer named Linda sounds familiar.

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So you've probably all seen that gas pump video from the Tonight Show by now. Old news. And you've probably heard that there is some question as to how authentic it was. If not, check out How Much Lying Is OK on Late Night? at Slate. Why does this make my Weekend Links post, you're wondering? The author, David Haglund, claims that "... when humor’s involved, people grant a lot more latitude. David Foster Wallace’s unacknowledged use of composite characters in his very funny pieces for Harper’s and elsewhere disappointed some people, but it has not really besmirched his reputation. David Sedaris fictionalizes his “nonfiction” considerably, and yet when this is pointed out, most people shrug." This is of interest to me because I write essays, though they aren't all particularly funny. Haglund also says "that people seem to hold writing to a higher standard than storytelling on screen or on a stage." Which may be true, but it didn't seem to fit in with the rest of his essay.

In When Fanfiction Took Over Children's Publishing at Oz and Ends, J.L. Bell comments on Peter Rabbit and the Tale of a Fierce Bad Publisher in the new issue of The Horn Book. (This is a really good article, by the way.) He concludes, "...it appears the British children’s literature establishment has turned to fanfiction."

Also on the subject of fanfiction: 10 famous authors who write fan fiction at The Daily Dot.

Tanita Davis did a link roundup Friday at Finding Wonderland, which is how I found Diversity 101: Who's That Fat Kid? at CBS Diversity. I do have an overweight character in an unsold manuscript, and I'm going to be rethinking how I deal with him as a result of reading this article.

I got started on Google+ a couple of months ago. As with every other form of social media that isn't blogging, I'm finding it underwhelming. Seven Ways Writers Can Build Online Authority with Google+ makes me feel that perhaps I'm the one who's underwhelming.

Jules at Seven Imps writes about a picture book she hopes won't be written off as another book about bullies, Ben Rides On.

 

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I made a few appearances around the Web last month.

Finding Wonderland: The Writing YA Weblog An Author's Take on Self-Publishing

City Muse, Country Muse April 2013 Carnival of Children's Literature

The Book Designer Self-Publishing: Carnival of the Indies Issue #31

The Bibliophilic Book Blog Interview with Gail Gauthier

Thank you to all these bloggers.

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The Greenhouse Literary Agency is offering the Greenhouse Funny Prize, with a U.S./Canadian winner and a UK winner. The prize is representation, and the deadline is July 29th.

The most recent Poets & Writers includes Digital Digest: Algorithms for What to Read Next. The subject is the reliability of on-line reviews. The juicy bit: "Estimates about the proportion of phony reviews to the overall total run as high as 30 percent, with Gartner research predicting that paid endorsements (deemed illegal by the Federal Trade Commission unless disclosed) will account for 10 to 15 percent of product feedback by 2014." At lunch today I told a family member about that 30 percent estimate, and he said, "That's all?" He would have thought the percentage of fakes would be higher.

Blog anniversaries: A Chair, a Fireplace and a Tea Cozy is eight and Teaching Authors is four.

I like the idea of a slow writing movement, which I stumbled upon at the American Society of Journalists and Authors. So I googled the term and  found slow writing movement pieces at Rock Your Writing, Another Word, and a few other spots. I suspect it's a movement that will be, uh, slow moving.

Another World Book Night recap at The Book Wheel. Be sure to check out the comments and note the number of givers who ran into people worried they were peddling religious tracts.

Tanita Davis reviews Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger at Finding Wonderland.

The Emerging Writers Network will be observing Short Story Month in May. This is a neat idea, and if only I'd known about it much, much earlier, I would have planned my May differently.

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I missed last weekend's links, so I've got a bit of a pile up today.

I was never able to get into Veronica Mars, but this post at GreenBeanTeenQueen on what to read while waiting for the movie appears to be a listing of YA mystery. Except for Rats Saw God, which I read back in 2004.

Are teen readers moving back to print from eBooks? Leila at bookshelves of doom wants to know. Yeah, me, too.

A huge list of YA mystery at Stacked.

Love Dorothy's World at Oz and Ends.

Secrets & Sharing Soda's contribution to March's Carnival of Children's Lit, which it hosted, was on Afternoon of the Elves by Janet Taylor Lisle. Secrets & Sharing Soda said of it, "This is one of the creepiest children’s books I have ever read." I remember reading that book. I do recall some oddness to it. I also am 90% certain I read it to my kids. This is a book I'm probably going to revisit sometime.

Since I've been on Feedly, I've been able to do more visiting and reading, so I've been able to add friends' blogs. I particularly liked the poem Call Me Ishmael in this post at Tanita Davis's blog. But be sure to read the body of the post, too.


As I'm sure I've mentioned here before, when I was in high school I read The Wild Boy of Aveyron by Jean Marc Gaspard Itard. So I always have to read about new versions of the story, such as Wild Boy: The Real Life of the Savage of Aveyron by Mary Losure.

New NESCBWI member Mark McNulty is starting a blog relating to his soon-to-be experiences as a father. The jaded, broken mom in me wants to go, "Hahahahahaha, like you're going to blog and write fiction after that kid is born! Like you're going to bathe after that kid is born!" But I work really hard to control that part of me. Mark, the author of The Sea Shack, is also going to be reviewing books at The New American Dad.

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Last year, I read about a blogger who did a monthly thank you to all the bloggers who had included him in posts in some way. I have no recollection of who this guy was now, but I do recall that he was mentioned all over the Internet. That is not a situation I ever find myself in. However, this month I have been around more than usual, so this is a collection of the posts and blogs that either featured or included me in some way over the past four weeks.

Alison Pearce Stevens--Marketing Monday Gail Gauthier.

GreenBeanTeenQueen--Guest Post Gail Gauthier

bookshelves of doom--The Epic Elizabeth Peters Lovefest

The Writing Reader--Carnival of Creativity

Finding Wonderland--Turning Pages: Saving the Planet & Stuff, By Gail Gauthier

Secrets & Sharing Soda--March 2013 Carnival of Children's Literature

Thanks, folks.

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And I found it! I heard about this at the Kidlitosphere listserv, lost--Oh, you don't need to hear about all that.

What I've got here is a list of children's books on Green Issues/Sustainability/Recycling posted at Playing by the book. Check out the comments for more recommendations.

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Many of this weekend's links are recent ones because the Feedly reader is working so well for me, and I'm able to hit the blogs I actually want to follow on a more regular basis.

Go to India with Mitali Perkins. Great photos and captions. At the end of this post, Mitali writes about being able to speak in Bangla in many of her conversations while in India, mostly due to her parents. Not two hours before I saw this post, I had been feeling really proud of my self because I'd been able to read and understand an off-color joke in French that my cousin had sent me. It was kind of as if Mitali and I had had the same kind of linguistic experience, don't you think?

Every marketing effort counts--Author Scott Peterson is in California, but a Connecticut on-line paper gave his new book some coverage because he used to live there. That's, like, the other side of the country.

Heard through  Jen Robinson this week that Robert Cormier's books are available in eBook editions. This reminded me, of course, of my Robert Cormier story.

I shared 20 Embarrassingly Bad Book Cover for Classic Novels at my professional Facebook page, but it's good enough to share again and again. Got this from Melissa Wiley.

I've only read one book on this list,  Magic for Beginners, but the list really sounds like one for those teenage girls who aren't jumping up and down waiting for the next girl-torn-between-two-boyfriends story.

I love the idea of including "Authorial Asides" in a book post, the way Tanita does in this one for Awakening by Karen Sandler.

Roger Sutton on judging some of the judges involved in this year's Battle of the Kids' Books.

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Right now, I am very happy with Feedly as my blog reader. It's giving me an on-line magazine type layout and not just a listing, which is all I ever got from Google Reader. If things continue as they are now, in a few weeks I'll probably do a blog post counting the ways I love Feedly.

However, for those of you Google Reader people who are still wondering what to do, I found a rundown of some other reader options at Bewitched Bookworms.

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I actually have a few minutes this Sunday. This should be fun.

Melissa Wiley at Here in the Bonny Glen did an inspiring post this week How Do You Manage To Read So Many Blogs? She did a follow-up post, Sending Web Content to a Kindle (or Kindle App) for Reading Later that I haven't read yet but want to. If only I could send it to my Kindle. Actually, I think I'm going to send it to Computer Guy. Now that the Saving the Planet & Stuff eBook has published, he has nothing to do.

Because of Melissa's post, I poked around at some blogs I have been visiting only off-and-on recently. As a result, I learned that Leila at Bookshelves of Doom is doing an Elizabeth Peters week.

Another Melissa, Melissa Stewart, did a post on the surge of interest in narrative nonfiction for children. Does Story Appeal to Everyone? raises the question of whether presenting fact in a narrative/story frame is something that adult children's lit gatekeepers like more than child readers do.

Narrative nonfiction is a term for creative nonfiction. I actually like narrative nonfiction better for two reasons. 1. It describes the writing. A narrative follows a storyline. You know what narrative nonfiction does because it is called narrative nonfiction. The term creative nonfiction doesn't tell me as much. 2. The creative in creative nonfiction is confusing for some people, leading them to believe it's acceptable to create material the way a fiction writer would because a fiction writer is creative and creative writing is about making things up, right? This type of nonfiction isn't about making things up; it's about how you organize the factual things you've accumulated through research.

And while we're on the subject of narrative nonfiction, Nieman Storyboard has a piece on short-form nonfiction narratives in journalism.

Finally, this week we have 31 Things We Learned From Laura Ingalls Wilder. I wish this had had a subtitle like "31 useful things for the twenty-first century."

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I worry that I use too many exclamation points. I've read that they're like bullying. Still, I am listening to Shirley Jackson as I type these words. I must exclaim, because I am, you will recall, obsessed with her.

On Valentine's Day, Jessa Crispin did a post at Blog of a Bookslut on the possible reasons behind Shirley Jackson's name being missing from the list of great twentieth century authors. In her post she has embedded a link to Jackson reading from her short story, The Daemon Lover on an album.

I couldn't make out the words, but it was her voice. At least, that's what Jessa says.

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 I actually worked several hours today, which I don't normally do on Sundays, and that has cut into my linking time. I can only offer three quickies.

I've mentioned here a number of times, I'm sure, that I've been a martial arts student for over ten years. That's why you often see me writing about writing and studying the same as training, which is what we do in my taekwondo dojang. Imagine how much I loved stumbling upon The Writer's Dojo: Where Writing Ninjas Come To Train. It is an entire website for writers developed around what you might call the martial arts training metaphor. It's very clever and probably very helpful to the writers who train there.

This is kind of a 360 turn from martial arts, but I've seen two blogs offering assistance to people suffering from Downton Abbey withdrawal. GreenBeanTeenQueen did a Post Downton Abbey Reading List. The Porter Square Books blog  did a Downton Abbey Fan? We've Got Some Books For You post. Oddly enough, there is no duplication.

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My first link today is Little Miss Bronte JANE EYRE at Kelly Fineman's blog, Writing and Ruminating. Why? you may ask. Because it's a board book. A Jane Eyre board book. According to my calculations, I have posted about Jane Eyre here at OC twenty-three times. Because, you know, I love her. And that's enough to get you to link to a post about a board book, Gail? No, I bought the book Friday night. I am determined to spread my love of Jane to other generations of Gauthiers.

I found a terrific stash of podcasts at Write the Book. Write the Book is a radio program out of Burlington, Vermont that is all interview, and all "interviews with authors, poets, agents, editors, and illustrators." What I like about these podcasts is that they truly are "all interviews," which is why I keep repeating those two words. I've stumbled upon a couple of other podcast stashes in which the hosts describe their podcasts as including interviews or being about some particular subject but then organize the podcast as if it was a variety show covering a number of other things. Thus I am stuck listening to five or ten minutes of fluff before I get to the one thing I want to listen to. Write the Book...again...all interview.

Does Social Media Sell Books? Gillian Flynn's Agent Gives Her Perspective at Huffington Post has some interesting points. According to the interviewer, two of 2012's best-selling authors weren't terribly involved in social media, at least themselves. And agent Stephanie Rostan says, "...no matter how active an author is online, the conversation about them and/or their book must be picked up and carried on by others for it to truly have an impact on sales." I think a lot of people--writers and people in publishing, too, probably--forget that part. We have blogs. We have Facebook pages. That's not social media in itself. The group has to accept the message and pass it along to get the social part.

On that sad note, I need to sign off.

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I've just stumbled upon Interviews: How to Become a Writer at Kelcey Parker's blog, ph.d in creative writing. I haven't read any of the interviews yet, and, I must admit, I haven't heard of any of the writers in this series. That doesn't say anything about them, or me. Writers are very specialized and function in different worlds. What I'm liking is Parker's "basic premise is that becoming a writer is not rocket science, but it’s not magic either. Being a writer is a lifestyle choice...It requires writing about writing, reading, writing about reading, attending readings, meeting writers, writing to writers, writing about writers, maybe even teaching or class-taking. (Notice that I haven’t even mentioned publishing. That will come.)" Oh, my gosh, yes. You have to like and want the lifestyle because that is what sustains you when nothing else does. (Excuse me for sounding all deep. Not to worry. It will pass. Yup. There it goes.) Scroll down to her four reasons for doing the How to Become a Writer series. "Most advice out there is about short cuts: how to write better novels or how to get published or how to outline a killer plot..." Once again, Oh, my gosh, yes.

Hmm. Ms. Yingling says that the number one concern of middle school students is losing long time friends. That seems like a little tidbit I should file away for later use. Then check out her experience with boy readers and eBooks, as well as those of her commenters.

Top 10 Things One Writer Learned About Social Media Marketing at Mystery Writing Is Murder (By way of Cynsations). Note in particular Items 2 and 5. I've seen this kind of advice a lot. Yet I also see writers on Facebook who only show up to make an announcement, then disappear, and writers who use their blogs as an announcement page, posting maybe a dozen times a year. I'm never going to win any awards for my social skills, but I understand what the word "social" means. Yeah, that's why later this evening I hope to post a picture of the pizza I made for dinner tonight at my personal Facebook page.

This is not very much, I know, but I've been shoveling a lot of snow this weekend. I'm hoping in the future to include more podcasts, and you'll be hearing why in a week or two. If you are in New England and you don't have power, stay warm.

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My Facebook wall lit up today over The Atlantic essay Introverted Kids Need to Learn to Speak Up at School. It could have been called "Buck Up, Kiddos!"  The essay is very short and doesn't get into much depth. It's made me want to seek out Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain, which I read about last year.

I have no knowledge of research or science behind introversion and extroversion, only the same kind of anecdotal experience that my Facebook friends write about. I have two thoughts here:

1. Introversion may lead some of us self-identified introverts to behave in over-the-top, "out there" ways in some social and professional situations in which we have to function outside our comfort zone. We don't know how to be "on." We can only behave in ways that we think are "on." As a result, many people may be surprised that this person or that one believes themselves to be introverted because they often appear rather mouthy and loud.

2. Introversion may be relative. I think it's safe to say that three of the four members of my very immediate family identify as introverted. We believed the fourth was an extrovert. For, myself, it was marvelous to think that one of us had escaped what I obviously feel is a difficult personality issue. However, at one point it became clear that his friends didn't see him as an extrovert. His friends saw him as introverted, his family saw him as extroverted. He didn't necessarily behave any differently with one group than the other. I think it was more a matter of where those groups fell on the introversion/extroversion scale.

I do not think that introversion is something about myself that I need to change. I do, however, work on making myself comfortable in bigger, extroverted world situations, on the theory that if I'm comfortable, I'll function better. Just this past week, I managed to split my registration for a conference at which I'll be speaking this spring. I'm teaching on the Friday afternoon of a three-day conference at a site only about an hour from my home. The prospect of having to be with hundreds of people 24-hours a day for 3 days was filling me with anxiety. As it turned out, there wasn't even much being offered on the second day of the conference that I was interested in, though I did want to take part in a 3-hour workshop on Sunday. In terms of time, staying for the whole weekend would have been wasteful. I have family issues I could deal with at home on Saturday and nothing really to gain in terms of conference content if I stayed. So I arranged to teach my workshop on Friday, attend Friday evening social (extrovert!) events, stay over, head home Saturday morning and come back Sunday morning. We're talking a couple of extra hours of driving. For an introvert, that is nowhere near as exhausting as having to struggle to be on for an extra 24 hours with strangers and near strangers.

Now, once again, we may be talking a relativity situation here. Extroverts (like the teacher who wrote The Atlantic essay) could very well say that I've allowed my introversion to deny me some professional networking time. I suspect many introverts would say that networking is highly overrated and that I have come up with a way to give myself my best chance of a successful weekend by slipping myself into and out of Extrovert World.

Needless to say, I'll be blogging about how this goes come May. I'm also hoping to read Quiet at some point.

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I've actually had a little time to look at some of the Internet gleanings I've been saving up these past few weeks. And I can't wait to discuss them.

It took a while for me to get around to The Last Word on Blurbs at Educating Alice, because the documentary about Gary Shteyngart's blurbs that Monica links to runs 15 minutes. When I finally saw the  little film, I found it interesting because it seems to project the pointless nature of blurbs and suggest that the literary world, itself, doesn't take them seriously, while all that same time portraying Shteyngart, a well-known "blurb whore" in blurbing circles, as a nice guy trying to be helpful. As I was watching it, I imagined hundreds, if not thousands, of writers contacting him, hoping for a blurb, not because it would say anything particular about the quality of their books but because it would be neat to have a Shteyngart blurb. I'm thinking it could be like collecting autographs or balls signed by athletes.

Some of what you'll see at Six Things I Learned About Publishing a Book That Very Few Books Will Tell You at The Huffington Post you probably have seen in a lot of books. However, I was particularly interested in Points 1 and 2. 1. The author, Nataly Kelly, talks about connecting with an editor on LinkedIn. I have wondered about whether or not LinkedIn would be useful. I rarely hear any talk of it in author promotion materials. However, my limited knowledge of it suggests that it is professional rather than social. Shouldn't that mean you'll get fewer political rants and odes to pets there and more real professional exchanges? I could be convinced to link up with LinkedIn. 2. Kelly says an agent is necessary to assist with negotiations, even if you "made" the sale yourself. I've often heard that. However, in this video Mark McVeigh did for the 2010 WriteonCon, he said that getting an agent at that point is a little late, and that for most new authors, an agent won't be able to do much more for you than the editor's original offer. Which way to go? I am at a loss.

New Developments in Self-Publishing at Turbo Monkey Tales. Note that in spite of the new technical developments related to self-publishing, the post also makes the point that self-publishing is still publishing. In order to publish a book, someone has to do the work of a publisher--"editing, design, and marketing, at the very least." If authors publish themselves, then they either have to do that work or they have to pay someone to do it. But there's no getting around the fact that it needs to be done.

And while we're talking about writers needing to spend money, as we were in that last para, let's also touch on them making money. The financial realities described for genre novelists are similar to those for children's novelists. I would add something to this quote from the excerpt from Brian Keene: "And you probably won’t see a royalty check until another year AFTER your book has been published (provided enough copies have sold to earn out your advance)." The part about "provided enough copies have sold to earn out your advance" is extremely important. Many books never sell enough copies to earn out the authors' advances, and, thus, those authors never see a royalty check, never see money beyond the original advance. Some authors only make money the years they receive advances. 

Okay, we're going to end this weekend's links on a lighter note. Maybe. Take a look at 7 (More) Children's Books by Famous "Adult" Lit Authors at Brain Pickings. My personal favorite is the first one, The Crows of Pearblossom, by Aldous Huxley. It's about a crow couple who are having no luck at all starting a family because a rattlesnake that lives below their tree keeps eating their eggs. Seriously. It eats 297 of them. They trick the snake into eating two stone eggs, which, as you might guess, kills him. They then go on to live happily ever after, I guess, with the 60-plus children they proceed to produce. There is a Greek tragedy element to this story that appeals to me.   

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It's been a rough weekend with little free time, and I need to prep for tomorrow when I'll have a couple of electricians in here. In here. In my office. So I only have time to pass on a couple of readings.

How Long Should You Keep Trying to Get Published? at Jane Friedman A number of self-published commenters complained that this piece was out of date, I guess relating to the section Self-publishing when no one is listening. They seemed to feel that you can self-publish even if you "haven’t yet cultivated an audience for it, or can’t market and promote it effectively through your network."

Digital Technology's Impact on the Arts; New Pew Survey at ArtstoMarket. What I found interesting about this post's account of the Pew Survey was not that arts organizations are incorporating new technologies  (What organization isn't?), but that the survey addresses the cost of doing so. "...organizations are striving hard to capitalize on opportunities and incorporate new technologies to build new relationships with supporters, their audience and the broader community. But to do that effectively, they find they need skilled staff and dedicated budget for products and services, which makes it difficult at a time of reduced arts funding."   "...organizations are turning to new tools on the internet and in mobile technologies to increase awareness, promote events and exhibits, and provide custom experiences for patrons. But there are costs involved, even when using tools that are free or affordable, with regard to staff and to training. That said, 99% have their own website; 97% have an active social media presence; 50% maintain a blog;"

With writers, we often hear of the costs of new technologies in terms of time spent, but not so much about real dollars and cents because we do a lot of our internet promotion ourselves. We don't think about the time we're spending as costing us money, though for most of us our work with digital technology comes right out of our writing (production) time. This is probably due to the fact that most of us don't make a great deal of money to begin with, so we don't see the loss of writing time as a big financial loss. Arts organizations are far more aware of the amount of money it takes to keep them afloat and can tell when real money is being spent.

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Jo Knowles has done an excellent recapitulation post, Goals, Dreams, And Themes, at her blog, Jo Knowles. She didn't call it a recapitulation post, but we know one when we see one, right?  Twenty-seven goals was rather ambitious, at least by my standards, and I don't dream, myself. I think in terms of goals and objectives, as you'll see in tomorrow's post. But this was great reading for a writer, and Jo's Goal 23 is going to figure in my thinking for my goals and objectives post for Time Management Tuesday. (That's tomorrow, folks.)

Know of other author recapitulation posts? Let me know in the comments.

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Yes, I was talking about unit end recapitulation last Tuesday. Not to worry. I'm not talking about recapitulation in the sense of "recalling a charged event" and "feeling remorse if appropriate." I'm talking about what I did and how successful I feel I was with it. Because that will be a factor in my planning for next year.

Time Management Tuesday

I managed a Time Management Tuesday post, every single Tuesday. Even during Retreat Week. Even on Christmas Day. In terms of managing time and perseverance, terrific. But did it do me any good in terms of work?

First off, my time management research last year led me to submit a workshop proposal to the New England SCBWI for its spring conference. It was accepted, and I will be teaching a Situational Time Management workshop that weekend. I have spoken at professional conferences before, even at a writers' retreat. This is the first regional conference.

Secondly, I have been using the unit system (which has evolved a lot since I first wrote about it back in February), transitional time, and constant planning to manage my time.

Which leads us to...

The Saving the Planet E-book Edition

Preparing this e-book has been hugely time consuming for both my computer guy and myself. I will go into his work at some other time. I spent huge amounts of time seeking out and planning ways to publicize the book. The unit system and constant planning (see above) were significant here, because for many months I was working part-time. Planning units for the various research helped to make good use of the time I did have. Given that I often had only two days a week and that they were frequently Mondays and Fridays, trying to get into a big writing project might have been extremely difficult. So this was a good use of the time I had. But the fact that it took up so much time will definitely influence what I do next year.

Submission Binge

I did a binge of submitting short stories and essays early in the year, which resulted in a short story being accepted for publication at Alimentum. Again, that will have an impact on my plans for next year.

The NESCBWI Blog Tour 

This is a little project I assigned myself last year and finished this year. This was worthwhile for a couple of reasons. It provided content for Original Content, of course, but was also a community building effort before I even got into building community. (See below.) I friended some of the bloggers on Facebook and made connections of one kind or another. And it could have an impact on my planning for next year.

May Days

Last year I took part in a Facebook event called May Days, which was sort of like binge writing for a specific unit of time. I wasn't prepared for the project, so I just wrote two pages of anything every day. At least one piece I worked on was reworked this fall into a press release for Saving the Planet & Stuff. Again, this will be coming up again during my planning for next year.

Community Building

When you consider how late in the year I became interested in community building, I managed to do quite a bit with it--at least, by my standards. The Connecticut Children's Lit Calendar, the weekend reading roundups, and the Next Big Thing Author Meme, which I expect to be posting next weekend, all involve community building. I've also been more conscientious about taking part in the Carnival of Children's Books this past year and have taken part in the Carnival of Creativity a couple of times. How will community building figure in to my plans for next year?

Not only are these the bigger projects I've been involved with this past year, they're the projects I've written about here at Original Content. I'll use them as examples for next week's Time Management Tuesday post.

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I did a big gift wrapping last night, visited with an out-of-state relative at lunch time, and baked cookies and made candy this afternoon. I am so ready to browse.

Earlier this week, I heard on Facebook about Book Blogging 101: Is Originality Gone?, published at Parajunkee. It's all about the giveaways seen at so many book blogs, as well as "press release" type material that doesn't appear to be original work from the blogger. Interesting stuff, interesting comments. We had an interesting discussion about this post on the Kidlitosphere listserv.

Here's something else interesting that I just discovered: One day later, Parajunkee carried a post called  Welcome to the Giveaway Social, and it lists 50 giveaways at blogs. Aren't giveaways one of the things  that Book Blogging 101,  was describing as unoriginal the day before? Well, anyway, if you're interested in trying to find some free stuff, there's 50 chances for you.

Here's something else I found at Parajunkee that I think is interesting: This is another Book Blogging 101 post, from 2010, called Book Blogs vs. Mommy Blogs. I stumbled upon a link to this post and followed it because I visited a couple of localish Mommy Blogs a few months ago, looking for places that might be interested in linking to the Connecticut Children's Lit Calendar. I'd heard things in the past about how writers ought to "get in" with the Mommy Bloggers, and I thought blogs that focused on families might be interested in reading, visiting with authors who make appearances in their areas. Well, I was quite amazed to see that the blogs I found appeared to be small businesses and not all that family focused. I have no objection to the business aspect. I just wasn't expecting it. And I wasn't expecting it, because of the label "Mommy Blogger."

Is that a derogatory term, by the way? Is it an attempt to belittle these businesses because they're run by women?

Parajunkee doesn't address that question, but its post does discuss differences between book bloggers and Mommy Blogs. Wish I'd seen it earlier.

Also, why is Mommy Blog capped, but book blog isn't?

Enough about Parajunkee for one week.

Carmela Martino has a post up at Teaching Authors on Building a Writing Portfolio. I'm interested in  writing portfolios because I write different types of things. I've also been a little surprised by the number of people I've met over the years who just decide they're going to write a book without having done any other kind of writing. Okay, some people manage to do it. Nonetheless, it seems an awful lot like walking up to a stage door on Broadway when you haven't put in any time acquiring other acting experience.

Ms. Yingling writes about graphic novel editions of City of Ember and A Wrinkle in Time.

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I have just spent several hours with Christmas baking, some of which did not turn out very well. The word "nasty" may end up being applied to one concoction. I have been looking forward to sitting down with the Internet for nearly an hour.

Reviving Your Out-of-Print Novel as an E-book Part 2 at Tales from the Rushmore Kid. I actually saw this guest post on Friday. We did Item 1 differently than Tina's guest blogger did with her e-book. In order to make sure we had the book as it actually was printed, we sent a copy of the completed book to be scanned, which did, indeed, come back to us as a Word document. The scanning process changed the appearance of the text, in large part because there are a number of different fonts used in the book. All the different fonts had to be corrected by my computer guy. In addition, the scanning process caused all kinds of minor copy errors, such as dropping quotation marks. I've copy edited the book twice and plan to do a third run through before publication at the end of January. Between the two of us, we've probably put in a hundred hours, anyway. Was there an easier way to do this? I don't know.

What Creative Nonfiction Isn't at Celebrate Science. It's hard for me to resist a creative nonfiction post.

150 Ways to Give a Book at MotherReader. I think that when Pam started doing this a few years ago, the list was much shorter.

In Sendak "born to Holocaust survivors"? at Oz and Ends, J.L. Bell notes something I totally missed in The Believer Sendak Interview.

Ah, Days of Blood & Starlight, the follow up to Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor, was released last month. Ah, I was vaguely aware of that because Laini and I are Facebook friends. Which, in this case, means we don't actually know each other.

Well, this prowl around was nowhere near as relaxing as I'd hoped it would be, since I have probably a half hour of work to do on the so-called "good computer," if only someone else would give up whatever game he's playing on it. There are hours of other things to do here, too.

Back to the salt mine.

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