Blogging Slumps

Tomorrow for Bloggiesta's Twitter chat, I'll be hosting a conversation about pushing through the blogging slumps. Please join us even if you aren't participating in Bloggiesta! I want to have a fun and energetic discussion about this since I know many of us are suffering!

It will be at 8 pm EDT/6 PM MDT... use the hashtag #Bloggiesta and you'll find us!

To get you thinking, I thought I'd start the discussion right here right now!

This past week I've reached my 11th year of blogging... well, book blogging that is. I had another blog for a year before that which eventually died when the book blog became the main place. So let's say 12 years. Many of you have blogged for even longer, I know. During all this time, I never thought I'd get tired of it. I figured I could talk about books forever and ever! I also never thought new and exciting other passions would take over.

Well, so about two years ago all those things I thought would never happen, happened. 

1. I didn't have much more to say about books and reading. For instance I felt like all the topics from Top Ten Tuesday I'd done a thousand times already. And I couldn't think of any new discussion posts on my own to throw out here either.

2. A new passion entered my life and that's all I wanted to talk about. Books suddenly took a back seat.

3. Which meant I wasn't reading as much so I didn't really have anything to review either.

4. Life just continues to get more and more complicated...having kids get older just makes things harder even than when they were younger. Just sayin'.

So between all these things, the blog suffered. But I was determined to not let it end. But, I figured that blogging isn't a matter of life and death and that it would wait for me to figure things out. So this is what I told myself:

1. You don't have to blog every day. (I had nearly been doing this for all the years.)

2. You don't have to blog only about books.(While I hadn't totally been doing this already, it was still mostly "all about books".) And since there was a new passion,  who says I can't just start blogging about that? 

3. Blogging is for fun and you can take breaks and then come back. No one is going to freak out.

4. Speaking of freaking out, the real blogging buddies will stick through the slumps with you. So hopefully worry about losing followers and such is not a thing.

It was painful though for a good long while. I felt guilty skipping days, then weeks. And almost months. I felt guilty talking about things besides books, knowing that people that came here to read and check in expected the discussion to be about books. I felt tired and lethargic just thinking about sitting down and writing something to post. I felt like everything was boring with regard to the blog.

It's been a sad time.

And I'm not totally sure it's over. But I feel like that after more than two years of slumping, I can see the light again, for this blog. I feel more energetic again. I'm reading more again. I'm not caring so much about what I post and telling myself that it's my blog and I can post whatever I want on it. I can change it's direction throughout it's lifetime as much as I want and as often as I want. I can try to recruit new readers that match that new content. Or not. And, I can have readers and followers that enjoy some or all of things I do.

And so it's all okay.

So at this point, I don't see the blog ending anytime soon. But I can't promise anything about what the future holds for it! Who knows what direction it will take? The possibilities are endless!

And now I want to know:

What struggles have you had with blogging? Have you gone through some of the same issues and thought processes that I have? Do you get blog guilt sometimes and feel like you owe people something? Let me know how you've struggled and how you've gotten through it! Or if you still are suffering, let me know what's up and how we as a community can help!

Comment here, and/or  if you can, please join us tomorrow at 8 PM EDT on Twitter (#Bloggiesta)  to talk more and see what others have to say!

Bloggiesta Mini Challenge March 2015: Twitter Chat Tutorial

I feel sort of silly volunteering myself to tell you all how to Twitter chat. If you knew me in real life you would really find this hilarious! In a crowd, I'm very quiet. And what's more crowded then Twitter? And Twitter often makes me feel like I'm talking to myself (there are those days of exception were I think... wow! Twitter is the coolest place ever!) but then again there are those times, like during Bloggiesta or when I'm hosting a read along, or when I'm participating in some other event like Bout of Books or ArmchairBEA or the Dewey's Readathon where talking on Twitter is fun and easy! It becomes the hub of everything that's going on.

And then I wonder what we ever did without it!

So many times, though, when I host a chat for Bloggiesta, there are always many new-to-Twitter bloggers or new-to-chatting bloggers who are wondering what they've gotten themselves into!  And if I could peer into the computer I could see their eyes big and huge, glazing over in confusion and pretty soon their hands being thrown up in the air!

So I'd love to explain how I see this all working.

But before we talk about chatting on Twitter, let's talk about hashtags. I'm sure you've all seen this explained other places, but just in case, here's the scoop. A hashtag (or the pound or number key #) is a way for Twitter to filter the things everyone is talking about. They are used many ways. There are some very established ones (#amwriting comes to mind) where people use it to connect with other Twitter users writing/talking/thinking about the same thing. Other times, people make up silly ones, that go viral for a day and wow, you can find some pretty funny things! Let me see what's trending today.... #DitchYourDatein5Words. Hmmm... okay.

Twitter is especially fun during a big event. . . like a few weeks ago during the Oscars. If you clicked on the hashtag #Oscars2015 (or whatever it was I forgot now) then you could see everyone's reaction to what was going down on the TV in real time. It's a blast. (This only works with TV if everyone is watching at the same time. Most of the time we are all on different TV times, so then you have to beware spoilers if you do this!)

So, Twitter chatting is the very same thing, only we set a time where all meet and chat together with the purpose of having actual conversations. Remember:  You have to use the hashtag that's been agreed on (in our case it's #Bloggiesta) or else the people in the chat won't see what you're saying! This is because during the chat we filter everything else that's going on on Twitter so we only see that one hashtag. We do this using various different methods. Some of the most common ways:

• Twitter itself! You can search for a hashtag and then click on it. Now you'll only see what people using that tag are saying. (Click here and you'll only see stuff about #Bloggiesta.) 
• Tweedeck, which is an app where you can create many customized columns to see different things going on on Twitter at the same time
• Hootsuite is very similar to Tweetdeck in that you set up all sorts of columns with the hashtags you want to follow.
• Tweetchat.com where you can log in using your Twitter name, plug in a hashtag and then only see that conversation. 
• Twubs.com, same sort of set up as Tweetchat but seems to have less bugs lately.

I'm sure there are many more, but these are the main ones that I'm familiar with and the ones that I see most people using. I've become a big fan of Twubs for chatting. It's easy, you don't have to set anything up, and it seems to refresh pretty fast, which you need it to do for chats!

The cool thing about these (except for using Twitter itself and now I think bout it, it actually might do this too!) is that they will plug in the hashtag for you, for the particular chat you are in at the time. Which is great because remember what I said about forgetting the hashtag? If you do, we won't see you!!! And it's a pain to type that over and over especially because the chats move so so fast, you can barely keep up with them as it is. 

Another thing most official chats are doing these days is using the Q and A format. The person hosting will ask a question using Q1 and Q2 and so on. This helps the question to stand out in all the stuff that's going on. Then everyone responds using A1 and A2 and so on. It just helps the chat be somewhat more organized. 

Other than that, there's really nothing to it! You just jump in and talk to people, respond to the questions, reply, retweet and favorite as you desire!

So my Bloggiesta challenge to you is this:

• join Twitter! If you've been on the fence about this move, just do it. Do it now! And then come and chat with us.
• if you've never participated in a chat, now's your chance. We have SEVEN Bloggiesta chats happening this week! SEVEN! Try it, you'll like!
• if you have chatted before, but haven't used one of the above platforms, pick one and give it a shot. Let me know what you think!
• if you are expert at chatting, then be sure to join us for as many chats this week as you can to help us keep the convo going. Also, you can volunteer to host one for next time!
• comment here with your experiences with any of these challenges. If you're feeling shy on Twitter, let me know. I'll follow you and talk you through things!

Here's the Twitter chat schedule for the upcoming week. We have themed days planned, but of course, we'll pretty much talk about anything:

• Monday March 23rd at 4:00 p.m. Eastern: PEOPLE: Giving and Getting Comments and Followers
• Tuesday March 24th 7 p.m. Eastern: E-PRESENCE: Social Media Savvy
• Wednesday March 25th at 12 p.m. noon Eastern:DISPLAY: Side Bars and Page Layout
• Thursday March 26th at 9 p.m. Eastern: REVIEWS and Other Content Ideas (guest hosted by Jessica from The Bluestocking Society)
• Friday March 27th at 9 p.m. Eastern: ORGANIZE: No Stress Allowed (guest hosted by Amanda from On a Book Bender)
• Saturday March 28th at 2:00 p.m. Eastern: Books and Reading (guest hosted by Rachel Noel from Purple Owl Reviews)
• Sunday March 29th at 3 p.m. Eastern: Feedback and Free for All

Also, I thought it would be fun to list past challenges on Twitter, especially if you are thinking about taking the plunge and joining it for the first time. 

• Promoting Your Blog Using Twitter from Katie's Book Blog
• Top 3 Social Media Sites from Katie at Doing Dewey
• Twitter List Tutorial from Rebecca at Love at First Book
• Social Media Etiquette from Wesley at Library Educated

And while this is not a past Bloggiesta challenge, it's another tutorial from Buffer Social about chatting on Twitter that you might find helpful (thanks to Amanda for the heads up on this one!).

Have fun and see you at the chats!

In Which I Have Another Fan Girl Moment and Also Prove Letter Month Was Worth It

Well, actually I knew writing letters was worth it already, but last night when I got this tweet, I was so glad I decided to write a fan letter as part of my letter line up! Here's what it said:

@SueySays Suey - I got your letter! Thanks. I'll reply when I've done some decent work on the new book. It's killing me. THANKS AGAIN- mz
— Markus Zusak (@Markus_Zusak) March 7, 2012

Writing a fan letter was far from anything I've ever done before. It felt weird. Fun, but weird. And now, it goes without saying, that I'm so glad I did! Seriously, everyone, sit down and write that fan letter you've been thinking about! I need to think who else I can write to!

Anyway, I feel sometimes like I overdo the fan girl thing regarding this author, but I couldn't NOT share this last interaction! So, hopefully you'll excuse me while I happy dance all day long. :) This guy continues to show that not only is he a brilliant author, but also a genuine nice guy who cares about his fans and that he's a real guy who struggles with things... like getting this next book done! And in no way do I think I'm singled out and "special" or something, because you'll see if you look at his Twitter feed, he responds and thinks up a personal thing to say to everyone who mentions him or his books on Twitter. But that being said, it sure does make one "feel" special anyway. Know what I mean?

So yeah... I just had to share. Now back to your regularly scheduled blog posts........

As Seen on Twitter: Music and Reading?

A couple of days ago @bookladysblog (The Book Lady's Blog) posed this question on Twitter:

Do you listen to music while you read?

This question may have been addressed here before, but I, as a person who loves both music and books, always find it interesting! And I would find it interesting to see how my readers would answer the question too!

Now, as nice as silence is, and it is nice now and then, I, for the most part, don't like it. My house is usually rockin' with all sorts of noise, from live guitar and drum playing going on downstairs, to World of Warcraft/Zoombies/Minecraft and/or other video games, to blaring TV shows, to blasting iPods hooked to speakers.  Not to mention the general kid sounds that go with it all.

Thankfully, I don't mind all the ruckus (except for fighting noises on the video games... ugh) and this is what I'm usually reading too, if you can call that music.

But now and then, I find myself alone in the house, with the silence. Do you think I'll sit and read to the silence? Not likely. I enjoy background noise and will often turn on a Pandora station or some other playlist on the computer to keep me company. And it doesn't necessarily need to be instrumental either, but I do notice that songs with words will make me stop now and then to sing along. But for the most part, even that's okay.

Also thankfully, I can read while the TV is on in the same room if someone else is watching it, but if I'm watching it and I try to read during commercials, yeah, that usually doesn't work so well.

So, what about you? Do you listen to music while reading? Or do you need the silence?

As Seen on Twitter: Never Read for Enjoyment... Say What?

Today on Twitter, Katy ( who blogs at A Few More Pages and tweets from @afewmorepages) shared this quote which caught my attention:

"You should never read just for ‘enjoyment.’ Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends’ insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick ‘hard books.’ Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for god’s sake, don’t let me ever hear you say, ‘I can’t read fiction. I only have time for the truth.’ Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of ‘literature’? That means fiction, too, stupid."
                                   -- John Waters

First of all, I had to look up John Waters, not being at all familiar with him. I guess he is a film dude and comedian? And he says some pretty blunt and controversial, but funny, things? Yes? I have no idea.

Anyway, this quote is interesting to me for many reasons.

Reason #1: First it says we shouldn't read for enjoyment, but to be smarter. At first I thought this was an argument against fiction, but the rest of the quote contradicts this. I, for one, mostly read for pure enjoyment. However, I think it makes me "smarter" (a relative term) by default. Reading, no matter what it is, just does that, don't you think? But still, can't our goal be to read just for enjoyment? I think so yes.

Reason#2: Pick hard books. I do agree with this one a little... I think we need a bit of a challenge now and then. Of course, "hard" will be different for all of us, don't you think? So we shouldn't judge what people are reading thinking it's a silly easy book.. because for them, it just may be hard. It's kind of like what the kids learn at school... just right books, and books that are too hard or too easy. We all know what that is for us.

Reason #3: "I can't read fiction, I only have time for the truth." Wow. I heard this one just recently and it was interesting to try and argue against this mindset. It makes me sad. Non-fiction is great, but so is fiction. I say, there can be a nice balance between the two, and that you CAN still learn stuff from fiction... LOTS of stuff.

Reason#4: Literature is fiction.... fiction is literature. What? Do some people confuse these terms? Do some people really consider literature as not fiction? I don't get this. What is literature then if it's not fiction? It includes fiction... and everything else of the written word. That's what I think anyway.

So... what do you think? Do you agree with this quote? Disagree? A little of both? What do you say to people who seem to have the attitude that John Waters is "upset" about?

Thanks to Katy for a tweet that made me think today!

As Seen On Twitter: An Intro and a Question

I'm staring something new around here! I'm not sure I'd call it a feature, but sort of I guess. Whatever it is, it's going to help me with discussion ideas, and I'm calling it As Seen on Twitter. (I tried to make a button. It'll do I think.)

First of all, let me restate (because I think I've said this before) that I have a love/hate relationship with Twitter. This particular idea has bloomed from one of the things I love about it, and that is the stuff I see there oftentimes makes me think and ponder about an issue or question or idea which makes me want to expound on it, something not so easily done over there on Twitter.

But I can do it here!

And over here I'm hoping, of course, that you will comment and talk with me about whatever it is, which doesn't necessarily happen over there (one of the things I dislike about Twitter... trying to make myself "heard").

This is all assuming that ideas that are thrown out over on Twitter are free for the taking. Right? Am I right? Perhaps this should be a topic for discussion in and of itself? Is there such a thing as "stealing ideas" if you tweet them? If someone ponders something over there, can I take it and ponder it further over here? I've decided yes.

My plan is to use Twitter's favorite button much more often if something peaks my interest. Then I can easily link back to whoever gave me an idea... whether it be someone I know and follow, or someone I've never heard of before. This will also let me know which tweeters seem to always be saying interesting things! I would find that fun to track. Doing all this will make me interact more too, force me to click around on new blogs and get to know my followers and followees better! That's a good thing too.

So here's my first As Seen on Twitter, just for example!

This  morning @LizB (A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy) asked a question that we pondered at length awhile back in book club. What's the difference between the genres paranormal and supernatural?  Yeah I say! What IS the difference anyway?

Here are my very very simplified definitions:

Paranormal: a story about characters who are NOT normal... they are creatures who do not exist in our world such as vampires, werewolves and such.

Supernatural: a story about characters who are "normal" but have a supernatural power.... so they themselves might be found to exist in our world, but their powers would not such as Odd Thomas or the girl from Inkheart.

I think most books in these genres cross over a lot, thus the confusion. Someone replied on Twitter that paranormal has romance. I say, they both do. And usually they both have normal people with powers, and the paranormal creatures. So, the two really can't be separated.

So, how would you define them? Do you think I'm close or completely off? Ready, set, discuss!

What's My Brand?

Last week we had a fun #Bblog Twitter chat about branding our blogs. Here's some of the things I learned:

• branding is important to set ourselves apart from the masses of book bloggers
• we need to use the same name and graphic across all social networks
• we need to be consistent with our blogging
• we need to establish a voice or personality
• our blog look should reflect that personality
• creating a niche for ourselves will help us stand out

One of the things we talked about was to survey our readers to see if our idea of ourselves matches our readers' idea of us. We talked about how doing surveys was fun but scary. You know I love to do surveys and have never really thought of them as scary, but this time, it really IS scary! That's because I seriously want to know how I am perceived out there in blogging land, yet to ask feels like I am fishing for compliments or something.

So just know that's NOT what I am doing by asking these questions. I am really only wanting to know what  sort of "brand" I'm creating.

Now this whole brand idea is so funny to me because, I'm sure like many of you, I just started doing stuff and somehow, hopefully, it's all meshed into some overall big picture that all makes sense. Maybe, I don't know. But I had (still have really) no idea what I'm doing and like many said on the chat, I just do what feels right and take it from there. 

But hopefully by doing what feels right, a personality or "voice" of some sort is coming through. And that's what I want to ask you all.... is it ? Or am I just clueless?

So here are my (scary) questions, which I hope you'll all take the time to answer this next week! (I'll be away some of the week family reunioning, so I expect to come back to TONS of lovely responses!!)

I'm sure there's tons of other things I could ask, but I'll leave at that for now. And please comment with anything more you'd like to add that the survey didn't address!

(P.S.  Do try to join us at the chats! I have a feeling I'm going to learn lots from these things and probably every time it will spark a post idea of some sort. I'm sad I will probably have to miss the next one though which is actually Thursday morning at 10:00 AM Eastern.)

Twitter Chatting and Challenge Hosting

Have you ever followed a Twitter chat event? Whoa, talk about eye/hand/brain coordination! For those new-ish to Twitter, this is kind of like the old chat room experience, only it's through Twitter, where you chat about a certain subject for a certain amount of time, and use a hashtag (#) so it's easy to follow only those tweets. Sometimes we call it a Twitter party too! (I feel silly explaining as if I know so much about it!) Anyway, this past week or two I have suddenly seemed to discover this whole phenomenon.

For instance, on Wednesday evening it was the launch of a new Twitter chat meant to be a conversation between book bloggers called #Bblog. (Of course any book loving person can participate) Luckily, I was able to join in for a fun conversation about reading challenges. An ironic topic for me since I just dumped a bunch of them this last week. For the schedule (which looks like it's growing quickly) click on over to their dedicated blog.

Also, just yesterday afternoon, I followed (and sort of participated) in the #followreader chat, which I've seen before but hadn't really paid attention too. This time, there was a roaring discussion about the relationship between bloggers and authors and publishers, and ever interesting ongoing topic. Also, I topic I have pretty much no clue about, so it was fun to see what so many thought and what they had to say. It has it's own blog too, where the Twitter convos are even archived.

Then, of course, a few weeks ago there was that wild Twitter party for those involved in Armchair BEA. That was fun. I would suggest, if you decide to try coming along for a Twitter chat ride, that you use something like Tweetchat.com.... very easy, plus it adds the hahstag automatically for you and it makes it much more possible for you to follow the conversation.

Anyway, one of the things we talked about during the #Bblog chat was what makes a good reading challenge host. It's something I've been wondering about since just this year I started a challenge of sorts meant to support local authors, and last year, Jessica from The Bluestocking Society and I started the Printz Project. And I haven't really done much about them since, except wonder what I should be doing about them!

So here's what I'm thinking. Little mini challenges for each one of them.

For the Support Your Local Author Challenge, I propose that current participants make a page (or post and link to it somewhere on your blog) that lists all your local authors you are interested in, and the books under each one that you hope to read. Then as you review the books, link your reviews to that page. Perhaps many of you have already done this and I just haven't been observant! Natasha from Maw Books has her list here. And I've just created my list here. (though reviews aren't linked up yet as of this writing.) Currently this challenge is a little heavy with participants from Utah (since those bloggers sort of know me) so I'd love to see people from other places, especially, get a list going so I can see who your local authors are!

The mini challenge idea for the Printz Project is simple. Read two Printz books by the end of the summer! I got all excited about this project, and then I don't think I've read a Printz book since! So I especially need to pick it up and get back on the wagon.

Let me know what you think, if you do one of these minis, and if I should figure out prizes to go along with. Here's hoping I can be a better challenge host!