November 2008
WORDPLAY
Official JOAN REEVES WEBSITE Newsletter
"I can't write 5 words but that I change 7." Dorothy Parker, Writers at Work, 1958.
Volume 7 No. 11
GIVING THANKS
"Thanksgiving, to be truly Thanksgiving, is first thanks, then giving." -- Unknown
November is always the month to reflect and give thanks. Thanks for the freedom to gather and vote on Election Day. Thanks for the men and women of the Armed Services as we celebrate Veteran's Day. They sacrificed that we might have the freedoms we enjoy. The 27th brings the official Thanksgiving holiday. I hope you'll take that day to count your blessings and celebrate with your family and friends.
WHAT'S NEW ON THE WEBSITE?
Greetings: Note for November with the unveiling of the Authors Guild new blog feature. I'm trying it out. Click the tab that says WORDSLINGER. I titled it in keeping with my theme of slinging words and so it would be similar to my other two blogs.
In the future, I'll post each month to WORDSLINGER about designing a blog from the ground up. So if you haven't had a blog before, read this series on how to do it right from the get-go.
The Pleasure of Reading: Interview with Romance author Anne Marie Novark.
The Joy of Writing: 6 Common Sense Rules for a Happy Writing Career
Wordplay: Ah, yes, this newsletter that you are reading. Share the info and tell a friend.
The Archives: An article usually appears on its originating page for two months. After that it's moved to The Archives.
Work in Progress: 11 of 12: a pep talk for you - and me too.
Previously Published: Feature Article: Part 3 of 3 entitled WHERE TO SELL YOUR RIGHTS in the series KEEPING AND USING YOUR RIGHTS.
Parts 1 and 2 remain in place below the new article. If you own rights to your work, be sure and read the latest in this series. Learn how you can make your words pay beyond that first sale.
Written Wisdom: November's theme is Thanks and Appreciation. Look for quotations from G. K. Chesterton, William Faulkner, Ian Hart, Albert Schweitzer, William Shakespeare, Shawnee Chief Tecumseh, and Brian Tracy.
Below, in LET ME ENTERTAIN YOU is an article in honor of the Authors Guild new blog platform: A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BLOG.
That's all, folks. See you all in December.
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LET ME ENTERTAIN (and possibly educate) YOU
BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BLOG
Since Authors Guild has created a blogging platform for its website, I thought I'd give everyone a little history lesson.
A few years ago I wrote a lengthy article called BLOG: HOT TREND OR TIME WASTER. At the time, I didn't even have a blog. Now, with the addition of the Authors Guild Blog tool, I have three. If I hadn't abandoned the blog I wrote for Performancing (due to constant plagiarism by Internet scum), I'd have four. These are my personal blogs. I also ghost write blogs for clients.
In my original article, I traced the history of the blog. Today, it's hard to imagine that some may not know what a blog is, but it's true. There's a big part of the world that still isn't wired in, and doesn't want to be.
If you know someone like that, and we probably all do whether it's a grandparent or a coworker who shuns the cyber world, here's a primer you can give them.
Blog, or Weblog for those who still may be unfamiliar with this online journal, falls under that “Good News, Bad News” heading.
Good News
The good news is that, used well, a weblog can be an effective business tool to promote your brand and foster name recognition and credibility as an expert. It's a social tool for building online relationships and communities.
Bad News
The bad news is that blogs can be addictive, as highly addictive as Free Cell, Solitaire, or Cubis. But far more educational and entertaining.
Weblogs are defined as a web application which contains periodic posts on a common webpage. They're usually posted in reverse chronological order with the newest at the top.
History
In the beginning, way back in the early nineties, they were labeled web log to avoid confusing them with a server log. Several internet sources cite Jorn Barger as the creator of the term weblog in December 1997.
Dave Winer, who runs the Scripting News weblog, states that Tim Berners-Lee at Cerner Corporation, a particle physics laboratory, created the first weblog. (If you’re interested, the content of this site is archived at the World Wide Web Consortium.)
In February 1996 Dave Winer (link was http://newhome.weblogs.com/historyofweblogs but is no longer active) started his weblog as part of the 24 Hours of Democracy website.
In April, he added a news page for users of Frontier, a software program, and that page became Scripting News a year later. It’s still one of the longest-running weblogs on the Internet. Winer’s and Berners-Lee’s weblogs were like most of the early weblogs--political, business, or software related. The weblog began to mutate when people began using it as a personal vehicle for recording their thoughts, actions, and opinions. Weblogs became Personal Web Publishing Communities.
In 1999, Peter Merholz changed the word weblog and, for all practical purposes, changed society. Merholz, a founding partner of Adaptive Path, a user experience consulting company, has a blog that contains “Links, thoughts, and essays from Peter Merholz.”
In his entry Play With Your Words May 17, 2002, he told how he created the word blog, a phrase meaning “we blog” from weblog. “...it's weird to experience how my love of words and wordplay has actually made an impact. Sometime in April or May of 1999 (I can't say for sure when I exactly did it), I posted, in the sidebar of my homepage: ‘I've decided to pronounce the word "weblog" as wee'- blog. Or "blog" for short.’
I didn't think much of it. I was just being silly, shifting the syllabic break one letter to the left. I started using the word in my posts, and some folks, when emailing me, would use it, too. I enjoyed it's crudeness, it's dissonance...
As I wrote Keith Dawson after he added "blog" to Jargon Scout: ‘I like that it's roughly onomatopoeic of vomiting. These sites (mine included!) tend to be a kind of information upchucking.’ Blog would have likely died a forgotten death had it not been for one thing: In August of 1999, Pyra Labs released (the software) Blogger. And with that, the use of Blog grew with the tool's success.”
Present Day
Blogs had been around since then, but around 2004, they seemed to explode. Everyone, and her dog, has a blog. Check out the blog of Jasper, a black Labrador, if you don’t believe me. And that’s just one of thousands of hits Google shows. There are cat, parrot, rabbit, etc. blogs.
If you can think of a subject, there’s probably a blog for it with more being added each day. If you aren't visiting blogs, check them out. You may find them a great way to stay in touch with a special interest or the world at large.
If you aren't blogging, then you're missing out on a lot of fun, not to mention being part of a larger community. Give it a try. It's easy.
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"That's all there is, there isn't any more." Ethel Barrymore, curtain call in 1904
