Tag Archives: blogging

Writing every day.

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Nablopomo

Visit NaBloPoMo

I’m doing NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) again, and will try for monthly.  It’s a movement to encourage bloggers to post every day for a month, to make it part of a routine.  This encouragement takes the form of various blogrolls for members to visit and encourage, daily writing prompts, various groups to join, etc. 

Writing daily is important to me, although it tends to go by the wayside when things get busy.  I keep a couple of journals as well as this blog, and NaBloPoMo is just one more way to keep me focussed on this practice.  I did a lot of writing in my salary-days:  research reports, regulatory writing, white papers, marketing briefs, and innumerable presentation decks (although I’d argue that those don’t really count, if anyone’s counting.)  But writing from my head, generating my own ideas, organizing them coherently and making an argument or taking a position of my own (and not on behalf of a business unit or corporation) is a whole new ballgame.

I am interested in the writing process.  My personal blogging seems like the poor cousin in a way as I rarely edit beyond punctuation and spelling. And maybe a bit of paragraph reorganization.  But I’d like to work more on this, planning my posts in advance and spending more time crafting them coherently.  It’ll come with time and practice, I’m sure.

 

A little housekeeping.

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For those of you who read the blog either via email or in your feedreader, improvements to my blogging platform (Posterous) mean that I can now put a list of links in my sidebar.  So if you go to my main page (blog.berkman.ca) you will see, down the right-hand side, a rather lengthy but categorized list of my favorite links.  

At the top of the right-hand bar, you’ll see a search field that lets you search my blog by keyword(s), and just below that a list of tags that I have attempted to associate with each post.  So, for example, if you wanted to see posts about my family, you can click on the “family” tag and it will bring up all the posts that I have (remembered to) tag as such.

Thanks for continuing to read my ramblings.  Always feel free to comment on anything you read, either directly at the blog (just click on “comments” at the bottom of the post) or via email or a phone call!

It’s Monday…what am I reading?

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I’ve got some book reviews to write on my completed reads, but here’s my Monday list.  I’ll update this post to add links to the reviews when I”m done.

In other reading news, I joined Goodreads this weekend.  It’s a great (free) way to keep track of what you’re reading, get some new ideas on books to read (not that I’m ever at a loss for those), join a book group (or three) and follow authors that you enjoy.  If any of my readers are (or become) members, I’d love to have you as a Goodreads friend!  

I also got a flavors.me page to aggregate all my accounts and direct people easily to my various pages etc.  It’s now at berkman.ca.  The pointer for this blog is now either blog.berkman.ca or berkman.posterous.com.  Sorry for the confusion!  The Facebook feed at berkman.ca is not working at the moment, but if you’re my FB friends, nothing changes.  If you have no idea what I’m talking about, don’t worry about it!

Back to books!

Completed this week

 

Best Laid Plans – Terry Fallis   – review here
The Pact – Jodi Picoult  – review to come
 
In Progress
 
On the Pile

The Canadian-flagged  books will make it to my Canadian Book Challenge page once I get the reviews up.

I write like….

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I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

This little quiz has been circulating for a while….it analyzes word choice and writing style.

Brown’s certainly engaging and I’ve enjoyed his novels immensely.  (And yes, my fellow Catholics, I KNOW it’s fiction.  Lay off.)  Now if I can just turn some writing into big bucks like Brown, I’d be a happy camper!

Oh, and Margaret Atwood did the quiz and tweeted that she writes like Stephen King!

Tuesday miscellany

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Last night’s presentation of London Assurance by the National Theatre in London was great fun.  It’s the second HD satellite broadcast of their plays that I’ve attended and I really enjoy this format.  It differs from both live theatre and film, an interesting hybrid of the two genres, giving the immediacy of live performance and (some of) the detail/camera angles of film.  I definitely want to catch an opera in this format, and plan to attend next seasons plays.

Alex starts his first day of work today. He’s in his second year working at a local day camp, and this week is devoted to staff training. He’s been at loose ends for the last two months and this will get his days ordered a little bit.  

I’ve got a number of things to get done today:

  1. Costco – need items to make sandwiches for reception after a funeral tomorrow
  2. Optician – get broken glasses repaired/buy new frames
  3. Library – return books and pick up holds
  4. Pharmacy – call in prescription
  5. Quilt – continue piecing and press
  6. Genealogy courses – finish Methodology assignments/exam
  7. Fold laundry

I’m finding that if I don’t write it all down, the day drifts on and I forget what I need to be focussing on.  I spent a couple of hours on my quilt yesterday and got most of the first set of 96 pieces sewn (two triangles into a square).  I want to finish up that set and press them all before moving on.  

For those of you who are reading this via email subscription, feel free to click through to the blog itself to leave comments on my posts and to visit my other pages.  I have one with a set of links to favorite websites, one each for my Twitter and Facebook feeds, and a list of recent reads (via my amazon estore).  

Blog housekeeping.

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I’ve done a bit of interior decorating to take advantage of some new features offered by Posterous, my blogging platform.  Other than the new colour and design template, you’ll notice some tabs at the top of the first post that lead you to new pages.  My blog posts will continue to appear here.

Links I Love is just that:  a list of sites that I subscribe to in my feed reader (I use Google Reader) and that may be of interest to my readers.  They are categorized by topic, although many of them fall into multiple categories.

Twitter Feed shows my recent tweets (@jannie_b) on the Twitter micro-blogging platform. It takes you out of my blog so you’ll need to use your Back button to return.

Shop with me is my amazon.ca e-store with some recommendations for books and music.  Full disclosure:  I get a small commission from purchases through this page.  There is a link back to my blog on that page.