I'm trying a new skin especially for Halloween (ooOOoooOoooOoooo) and somehow in the changeover my sidebars went wonky. But I don't have time to fix it now, so if you pay attention to these things, bear with me.
In other news, there's not really other news. Just rolling along trying to hit a deadline for a manuscript edit. I also got three first drafts in practically at once, and am waiting on a fourth. Those will all require first reads and edits, and on top of that I'm trying to really look at some new stuff for planning out my next year. So this month is rather busy! If you're waiting to hear from me on a submission, hopefully you'll be hearing back this month or next, as I sit down and really go through the pile. That means reading all requested manuscripts in addition to reading samples that have been sent in. If you sent a sample and I end up asking for a full, though, of course the timing on that might take a little longer!
I've created an LJ feed for both blogs.
Readathon is the creation of Mrs. K, a teacher who I met online at a feminist Mormon blog I like to read (speaking of yet another meme going around that I haven't joined in on yet, the one about non-children's lit blogs you read). It's a great practical viewpoint, from someone who is in the classroom every day using children's books to connect to middle schoolers (is it 6th graders? I'm afraid it's slipped my mind).
She's got a great series going on girls in literature you should know, along with just a lot of good booktalk. So you should check it out and welcome her to the childlit blogosphere. Here's the feed:
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readathonblog Deliciously Clean Reads was recently started by
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whimsy , who I just "met" today on LJ but who happened to be in the same child and human development program with me at BYU, but graduated a couple years later. I'm sure we must have had a couple classes together at some point, because I was a transfer student and was taking intro classes at the same time I was taking upper level classes. But then, I graduated with 5000 other people in the college, so you never know. Large program.At any rate, the blog was begun as a positive review site for parents and others to discuss books that meet whimsy's definition of a clean read, which she clearly delineates. Unlike a lot of sites out there telling people books to avoid, this site shows people books that the participating reviewers are excited about reading.
I like this not only on a personal level--I too like a good clean read as a rreader, though I make exceptions for particular content when it's in service to the story--but I like it also on a professional level, because Mirrorstone dedicates itself to what you might call a PG-13 rating. We do this not out of focusing on what we exclude--we just like sharing really great stories, full of adventure.
Now, I think it's still possible to address really tough issues in a "clean" read, even for a teen crowd. But opinions differ on how that can be done and whether it can be done. Certainly I think Feed couldn't have been written in any other way, language and all. That was the whole point of the story, after all.
I once had a conversation with a couple of YA authors who asked how we handle this issue, and I had to answer honestly: I think usually my position is possible, even with some of the darkest subjects, but sometimes it's not, and you have to take those individual cases as they come. So I'm just speaking in generalities here. And I don't think that Holly Black or M.T. Anderson are adding language gratuitously. (Tangentially, I agree with Liz--link below--who noted that perhaps "clean" isn't the word we should be using for books that don't contain sex, because it's not so much that the other books are "dirty" per se, at least collectively. But it is an easily recognized terminology.) Complicated issue, that, which involves a lot more discussion than I have room for in this post. Speaking of feeds...
cleanreads And speaking of further discussion, that's exactly what they're doing over at YA Authors Cafe today--having an open discussion of how readers feel about sexual content in YA books. I didn't think there was an LJ feed for YA Authors Cafe, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover I was wrong:
yaauthorscafe.(All of this particular discovery came about because I discovered A Chair, A Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy. Who also posted an answer on her own blog to the sex in YA issue. Her feed:
yzocaet--that's teacozy backward, by the way.)That's enough for one night. Lots of fodder for discussion and thought out there.
I've started a mirror blog at http://slwhitman.blogspot.com just as an experiment. I'm not sure why. Mainly I hoped to try out Windows Live Writer and its ability to post to two blogs at once. I thought I might post to my MySpace blog at the same time as my Livejournal, but I can't seem to figure out how to get it to do that. Perhaps it just doesn't support MySpace. (
mistborn, if you know how to make it do that, let me know!)
Hm, that brings up the question of LJ-specific code in a post copied to another blog platform.
Also, though, Blogger has some capabilities LJ doesn't, such as being able to use a sitemeter to not only track where visitors are, but also how they came to your site, such as Google searches. That takes javascript, which LJ doesn't allow.
Probably unnecessary, but I'm having fun experimenting. :)
I don't think I"m going to bother to get a Flickr account tonight in time to turn in my shots, mainly because I didn't quite understand the full meaning of the challenge. For example, for #5, Up, I didn't realize you were supposed to do a straight up-from-the-ground shot. And I wouldn't have done it, either, because the ground was pretty muddy. Too bad I didn't get a shot of Cindy's shoes, which s
For "play," we saw a couple who was throwing a ball to their dog. My lovely new camera has continuous shooting, so "play" is not only me playing with my new camera, but a series of blurry shots of a dog playing with a red ball, behind the cut for the faint of bandwidth:
This is the bridge they must have thrown it from. See? Pretty far up there.
I do like the drag-and-drop feature of Live Writer, letting me just drag pictures from the folder to the post. I can't stand having to browse for every single picture. I'll reserve final judgement until seeing the final product, though, because who knows how it will process the picture upload. Will it only upload the thumbnails for the post, or a larger size that people can click on? How will LJ handle that differently from Blogger?
I saw several other interesting things at the park, including a girl playing with juggling sticks that I couldn't get a good shot of, and several signs I played with getting interesting angles of, though showing you the pictures will have to wait for a different post, because it's 11:47 and I still haven't done laundry yet for the week.
After our walk in the park, Cindy and I went to Literary Night at church, a yearly tradition for about 13 years. I wasn't going to go, but I'm glad we went, muddy jeans and all. Though the quality can vary widely, there were several pieces that were by degrees funny (on purpose), touching, poetic (and when the poetry is actually poetic at an amateur night, that's saying something), and narrative. One selection was even a children's book, by, it turns out, one of the committee members of the local SCBWI. I'm sure she and I will run into each other again next month at the western Washington SCBWI conference. Small world.
ETA:
Verdict: That sucked. It wouldn't publish them both at once--I had to switch between the two. Okay, doable, since it saves your text. But then it wouldn't let me upload the pictures--I had to input a lot of FTP info and such, and hey, might as well use my FTP client for that (though perhaps if I'd uploaded the pictures to my gallery first and then used the links as imgsrc tags, it might have still worked. That's the plan I have every time, because I want to keep my portfolio up to date, and then I get lazy and just upload straight to LJ). So I didn't even end up sending the post to the Blogger account.
Also, it (Live Writer, I mean) won't directly support LJ tags such as lj user and lj-cut, two codes I use frequently. Not to mention the inability to switch usericons. Perhaps I should have tried to post straight HTML rather than WYSIWIG, but I've heard that WYSIWIG is the whole reason people like Live Writer.
Anyway, probably not for me. I think I'll stick with LJ straight up. I like the interface (though I would love a drag and drop feature for adding pictures!) and it's less complicated. And I find that I'm just getting adult content invites from MySpace lately--ugh. I might try it a few more times just to see if perhaps it might grow on me.
and I don't get what the big problem is. I keep getting an error message that tells me files can be no larger than 40k. No problem! This one's 30k, and only 99x100 pixels, so that's not a problem, either. Anyone know why it's doing this to me?
By the way, favorite picture of the night of impromtu kitten-picture taking:
As you can see, he's coming out now, and even getting comfortable on top the bed. He's even tentatively venturing out to say hi to my roommate, though only when she's not walking (these 100 year old hardwood floors creak really scarily) or talking (he's not used to other peoples' voices yet, I guess).
Well, that'll teach me. Apparently I haven't gotten their feed on my friends page all week! There are several days' worth of posts now I haven't read. :( This has happened a few times on the LJ friends page, so I should know better than to rely upon it for blogger feeds. Perhaps this is more reason for me to head over to JacketFlap for such things, because they seem to get all the feeds just fine. I might do an experiment. I'm all about experimenting lately. Changing up the diet, changing up the habits, moving in with roommates, all sorts of changes lately!
Anyone else have this problem with the feeds on LJ? I don't think it's affecting my reading of people I've added as friends--just the LJ feeds of off-LJ blogs.
And then there's the whole breadth of the US and Canada, too, but I'm not going to do anymore Romper-Rooming, because it might be a little boring to anyone but me. (I see Amy, and Joey, and Megan, and . . . ) ;)
I don't even have a way of tracking these beyond the most recent 100 visitors, but that's okay. I just like glancing at the map every now and then and thinking how cool it is that people from all over the world can talk like this.
But the sidebar feels a little more like a sidebar now. You'll have to tell me what you think of the site here, after all the changes I've been making. I love that LJ now has a Seattle Expressions style--not exactly the dark feel of a grimoire, but I'm sure I'll tire of it and change to a darker style again sometime.
I've finally figured it out. It took a while because LJ doesn't allow javascript, so you have to do HTML only, but I've had it up and running all this week, and I'm simply amazed at how far away people are reading. (You can browse it yourself and see how fun it can be. Button is on my sidebar.)
Australia! Not one, but at least two people in Oz are reading. Plus a Canadian in Alberta... hm. Actually, I think I know who that is. Then there are readers all the way from Tampa to Berkeley to Tennessee to Long Island. I can't imagine what the person in Egypt found interesting. Also, at least one visit from each of Germany, France, and the UK. And Hong Kong, too. Very cool. No South Americans, but the rest of the continents (excepting Antarctica) seem to have at least one visit.
I figure the Somerville, MA person is a friend of mine, and I think I know who the Delaware person is, though I could be wrong. Actually, come to think of it, I might know who the Germany person is. I know I have lots of friends who read, though most of them have already friended me so the only time the tracker would pick them up is if they comment. (Comment! I love comments!) But there are about 40 of you out there who I never see except through this new handy device. Who knew there were more out there than just the handful who comment?
It's rather daunting, actually. Does this mean I have to keep doing meaningful posts and not just posts about my cats? The pressure!
But that's okay. I'm sure I'll come up with stuff to talk about. And as I've said before, if you leave a note in the comments letting me know other things you'd like to know about--questions that can be answered publicly that haven't already been answered or that wouldn't readily be answered by the submission guidelines, etc.--question away. It gives me direction for my posts. :)
- Mood:
tired
Anyway, if you didn't read it because it was too pale, it's now fixed.
(And how'd it get to be midnight, anyway? Well, that's what I get for leaving work at 10 p.m. I was on a roll, finishing up a project, and didn't want to leave until it was good and done. It's actually really nice to work there after everyone has gone home. So nice and quiet, so much easier to concentrate. And one project down!)
the_paper_nun, but it turns out that Adrasteia actually made it. At any rate, I love it! (And you have to watch the show to know why this picture is absolutely HILARIOUS.) And if you don't watch the show, go. Now. Best middle grade fantasy on TV right now. Season one is on DVD, and also on Itunes. Or you can watch it free on NickTurbo, too. Just go! :)
- Mood:
amused
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