Why I Haven’t Been Blogging #1: I got married.
So I have a handful of legitimate reasons why I’ve been away from the blog for the last three months. I’ll post short retrospective posts over the next few weeks, but today’s is about the biggie…
Kelly and Nate june twenty-eight two-thousand eight
It all rhymes.
What can I say about it, really? It was nothing less than the most brilliant day of my life. Kelly and I have made each other better, stronger people the past two and a half years. We’ve been there when we were at our most triumphant and our most vulnerable. Most importantly, we had that “spark,” and it’s continued to burn bright for us.
Our ceremony was near-perfect, with pretty much everything falling into place. As for the reception, if I was to give anyone advice for their wedding reception I’d tell them 1.) write up a brief list of all the events you want to happen and in what order and 2.) delegate, delegate, delegate. That said, it was a lot of fun with great food (hors d’ouerves style), great music, and loads of friends and family. The only major bummer? Kelly and I worked with a dance instructor for six weeks to create a fully original dance. Our song is “Maybe I’m Amazed” by Paul McCartney and we danced to that… and then “Yeah” by Usher. It was five spectacular minutes that blew everyone away… and we forgot to videotape it. I don’t have the heart to tell our dance instructor; I can barely contain my own disappointment as it is!
Anyway, our wedding is probably the number one reason I haven’t been blogging much in the last three months. I think there’s something in the whole wedding process for me in terms of writing; I’ll post my thoughts about that here, as well asa more thorough breakdown of the wedding day.
Stay tuned for more brief posts detailing what’s been keeping me busy these days, including the thesis reading, graduation, camp, a promotion, and what’s happening this week - our honeymoon and my shows at the San Francisco Improv Festival and Santa Cruz Improv Festival.
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Technorati Tags: wedding advice, improv festival, maybe i’m amazed
How does one get back into blogging?
By doing it.
Quite the no-brainer, eh?
In April, I found myself swept up into such a busy frenzy that blogging fell so far off my radar screen it crashed to the floor like a neglected cup of cold coffee meeting with an elbow. In other words, I stopped doing it completely. I certainly meant to get back into it but as I’ve quoted Steven Pressfield writing about writing, “It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.” That’s something I wanted to do and well, dear reader, there were plenty of distractions that bogged me down (those distractions are for another post.
So despite all of that, or in direct cause of it, here I am, getting back into the swing of things. Hopefully, I still have your subscription. Looking ahead, I have plenty of news from the past few months to fill you in on plus I hope to blog during two upcoming improv performance road trips. Let’s take a journey together and see where we end up.
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Technorati Tags: improv, blogging, writing habit
So where have I been?…
I’ve been a lot of places since posts on this blog dried up.
The last month has seen me wrap up the MFA program, walk at graduation, finish up one job, get promoted at another, finish a plethora of wedding details, wrap up the big end-of-the-year stuff at my jobs, and of course, a full week of being in bed sick as a dog. “Sick as a dog” feels a little cliche, so let’s go with sick as a sea lion after a shark attack. Actually, that’s a little morbid. How about, sick as a squid. Not that they get sick, but I think squids are awesome.
In a nutshell, dear reader, life caught up with me.
Over the next week, I plan to retro-actively toss up blog posts for missed moments like Your Monday Prompts and Your Friday Recommendations, plus other bits of reflection here and there (particularly about graduation, wrapping up workshop, and a few surprises, t00, like the announcement of my promotion at work). Look for a post that details all of the new posts soon, as well as future entries, of course.
Thanks for your patience, reading, and subcription.
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Technorati Tags: life caught up with me, retro-active blog, blog update
I graduated.
Today I can officially add this to my bio:
“Nathan Melcher earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Minnesota State University - Mankato. He feels pretty good about it.”
Huzzah!
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Technorati Tags: MFA, creative writing, mankato
We have our first winner!
The War of Art Contest, our first contest at Scrawlers.com, is over and we have our winner - Barbara Torris. Her story, Forgotten Magic, was randomly drawn from all contest entires and earned Barbara a free copy of The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Congratulations, Barbara! You can read Barbara’s Scrawlers stories here or check out her blog, TorrisTravels.
You can learn more about The War of Art in Your Friday Recommendation #11 from a few weeks back. The contest has inspired me to re-read this inspirational read, and I’m also listening to Pressfield’s fiction novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance, on audio tape during my commuting time.
Barry and I are eager to try out more contests at Scrawlers, offering prizes like The War of Art meant to help inspire young writers to find their muse. I know we’d like to see more participation in future contests, because we think it’s a measure of writer use of the website (as well as writer interest). What can you do, dear reader? Let us know what kind of contests would peak your interest enough to enter and of course, keep writing!
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Technorati Tags: war of art, steven pressfield, young writer, writing contest, scrawlers contest
Scrawlers presents: Contests
Scrawlers.com is pleased to be giving away the wonderful book “The War of Art” to one lucky writer. To enter the contest, simply write an inspiration-themed story and tag it with “resistance.” Enter as many times as you dare! Read more about the contest over at Scrawlers proper.
Random drawing will determine the winner of this contest. We plan to run a new contest approximately every month. The better the response, the better the prizes. Enter now!
TWoNF - 100-character bio
Perhaps the smallest change made over the past few weeks is the new 100-character bio. If you thought 100-words was limiting, try 100-characters. This is especially constraining when talking about oneself!
It’s easy to setup your 100-character bio. Just visit your bookshelf, where Scrawlers lays in wait, luring you to personalize your biography. Click the link. You know you want to.
Infuse some humor into your bio.
Or make it a little descriptive.
Just don’t write more than 100 characters!
If you wish to change your 100-character bio later, visit your bookshelf, click on “Manage Account” and then click on “Update profile.”
As consumers of the Internet, we at Scrawlers have been inundated with social networks and their inherent personalization options. Not surprisingly we’ve grown tired of the constant maintenance of our own accounts across the ‘Net. This explains why you find Scrawlers taking baby steps to Web 2.0. Rather than giving you every personalization option under the sun, we’re choosing to stick with our own brand of customization, which will hopefully lead Scrawlers to smell pleasantly different than those other communities.
“The Week of New Features” has come and gone. We enjoyed highlighting a few of the recent goings-on at Scrawlers. Rest assured there is more to come. Subscribe to The Scrawl to catch every new announcement as well as Nate’s excellent thoughts on writing.
Note: Maintaining a profile at Scrawlers requires that you sign up or login.
If you have any comments on this new feature, please email us.
TWoNF - Live word count
How frustrating is that damn 100-word limit? Air out your grievances in the comments, on your blog, or into your pillow. We’ll give you time.
. . .
Do you feel better now? Good.
The least we could do is help you keep tabs on that word count. Well, we’ve implemented a live word count feature that is sure to make your writing a little less frustrating. Check it:
Note: Writing stories at Scrawlers requires that you sign up or login.
If you have any comments on this new feature, please email us.
TWoNF - Favorite authors
“The Week of New Features” continues with the introduction of favorite authors. If you’ve taken the chance to read several of a particular author’s stories, it may be time to make her a favorite author. It’s simple to do, just visit her bookshelf page and click “Favorite this author” in the sidebar:
Just like story favorites, you can always click the “x” next to “Favorite author” if you ever change your mind:
Naturally, an author has fans. Visiting the bookshelves of other fans is another great way to uncover interesting stories at Scrawlers.
Revisiting your favorite authors is as easy as visiting your own bookshelf:
Note: Author favoriting requires that you sign up or login to Scrawlers.
If you have any comments on this new feature, please email us.
TWoNF - Favorite stories
Does a story at Scrawlers tickle your funny bone, scare you, make you wonder, or even make you cry? Maybe a particular story brought with it an excellent workshopping experience? Mark it as a favorite and never lose track of the words.
Every story, save for the ones you have written, will include a link in the tool section at the end of the story. Just click “Favorite this story”:
If later you decide the story is no longer your cup of tea, simply click the little “x” to remove it from your favorite list:
Now if you look at the dedicated story page, you can see all scrawlers who are fans of the story:
If another scrawler is a fan of a story you like, maybe visiting his bookshelf will lead you to other interesting stories. To visit the bookshelf of any scrawler, simply click on her name, whether you see at on a byline, in a notes section or in the sidebar.
Look at the sidebar on a scrawler’s bookshelf to see what stories he enjoyed:
You may notice that I have a list of favorite authors on my bookshelf. I’ll tell you more about that new feature tomorrow.
Note: Story favoriting requires that you sign up or login to Scrawlers.
If you have any comments on this new feature, please email us.
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About
Brought together by mutual interest in creative arts and web development, Minnesota duo Barry Hess and Nathan Melcher founded Scrawlers.com in 2006. Scrawlers marries creativity with a web-based outlet for aspiring writers and The Scrawl blog seeks to add fuel your creative fire.
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