Happy New Year everyone!

With 2008 over, I decided to take quick stock of things with respect to my writing and blogging.

Writing

I spent all of this past year working on my current fantasy novel. I've been documenting the progress in a weekly series, so I won't go into that angle of it too much. The fact that I only worked on one "thing" is kind of disheartening. I've been thinking of trying my hand at short fiction, but most of my ideas tend towards a larger scope, so the novel format is really the best. But the idea of starting and finishing something in a reasonable amount of time is alluring.

I'm not one for New Year's resolutions. I'm already doing the things I want to do—writing, reading, cycling, programming. But were I to make a commitment of that kind it would be to finish my current novel. That, and to author more content-rich blog posts. I've been slacking a little lately only because I've been trying to focus on my writing. Blogging is great, but it's an aside and not the real purpose here.

Blogging

Of course, now I want to briefly look at my blogging progress. I started blogging in June of 2006. That first blog is still out there, and really just morphed into this one when I acquired the domain name that goes along with my real name. That happened in January 2008. Since then, I've penned 157 posts (this makes 158). Probably a third (or more) of those are from my weekend links and writing progress series. Also, I recently started a new blog, called itscodingtime.com, which focuses on technology and programming "stuff". It creates some more work for me, but I've increasingly needed a technical online presence and a place to organize my software engineering pursuits much like I organize my writing pursuits with this one.

So, a good year, I think. But there's more work to do. Good luck with your own pursuits and make 2009 a good one.

If you're using BlogEngine (like me), then you'll be pleased to know that version 1.4 has been released.

Al Nyveldt has come up with an upgrade guide to ease the transition.

Last, if you need a few reasons to upgrade, here's a taste of what's new:

• Universal database provider (MySQL, SQL Server, VistaDB, Oracle etc.)
• Drag ‘n drop widget framework (prototype video)
• Author profiles using ASP.NET profile provider
• Subcategories
• Password encryption
• Better performance
• Tag selector in control panel
• Semantic formats (FOAF, SIOC and APML)

I'm planning my migration strategy, the first step of which entails finding time to do it. Remember to backup EVERYTHING before you get started. Better safe than sorry.

Whenever I’m reminded of the need to remain focused I’m in turn reminded of a famous line from Star Wars:

“Stay on target… stay on target!”

Of course, this line was spoken by a character known only as “Gold Five” during the final assault on the Death Star shortly before he’s blown to pieces. Gold Five was too focused, and didn’t see those Tie fighters coming.

Staying focused is important. Not only that, but fulfilling your end of the deal is important also. In blogging, we have a sort of contract with our readers. Sometimes, bloggers get off-topic. That’s OK sometimes. But then they do it again. Unless your blog is truly about whatever, I firmly believe in more or less sticking to the focus of the blog. I certainly don’t want to read about football on a fantasy mag editor’s blog or politics on a fantasy author’s. I get plenty of both from other sources.

Not only that, but certain topics (like politics) can get pretty heated. About a week ago I was reading about a publishing dinner party (I wish I could dig up the link) in which two of the guests started talking about Obama and McCain. Next thing you know the two are jumping over the table and engaging in a not-so-sporting match of fisticuffs. We’re entering the silly season of politics, so expect more of that.

But I, for one, refuse to waste my time reading blogs that promise one topic then deliver another.

I’m using my own attitude as a reminder to myself to “stay on target… stay on target!”

With that, this rant is concluded.

If you've noticed a "Listen Now" button at the top of my posts then you know I've signed up for Odiogo, a podcasting service that auto converts your text blog entries into mp3's. There's a separate feed that contains both my text and audio blog entries for now, but I plan to integrate the mp3 link into my regular ol' feed so that both are in one place sometime soon.

I like the service, though I'm not sure anyone really wants to listen to my posts as opposed to just reading them. But who knows... podcasts seem all the rage these days (right up there with Twitter ;-) ), so maybe this is the wave of the future and I'm riding the crest baby!

Thanks to Al Nyveldt for providing a most useful extension/widget to track my most popular posts.

You can see what it looks like to the right. I had started with just the "Top 5". That quickly changed to the "Top 7" just because I figured why not show a couple more than just 5? Of course, 7 is kind of an odd number. You don't see Letterman doing a "Top 7", after all. So, I bumped it up to the current number that it is now, 10.

The widget is great. It allows me to showcase posts beyond those that show up on my home page while also giving me and my readers a quick look at how many views each post has gotten.

The interesting thing about displaying my popular posts is seeing how they almost jockey for position. Just days after I bumped the display count to 10, one of the posts fell off as newer entries (here and here) overtook it. It seems to be staying fairly consistent now, with several of my various posts about Tor's Free E-book Giveaway scoring the most views. I expect it to continue to change, though, as fresh posts overtake the "stale" ones.

If you have such a feature available via your blogging software, I highly recommend making use of it

Thought I would spread the word: there's a particularly nasty vulnerability that was discovered in BlogEngine.NET (the blog engine I use on this site). A patch is available via either a patch file or a complete code download (BlogEngine.NET is an open source project), though the patch link wasn't working when I tried it. I got the whole download instead and re-compiled the necessary changes. So, my site is patched and no longer vulnerable to that particular attack anyway.

You have to give the development team of BlogEngine some credit--they jumped on the problem fairly quickly and made a fix available. As a software engineer myself I know all too well how easy it is to let such things slip by. We recently had the issue of SQL injection attacks brought up in my development team; fortunately we had our bases covered on this one. But, as a precaution, we're going through a full security audit of our entire code base. One can never be too careful these days.

Critical Security Patch Available

Agent Kristin of PubRants fame talked yesterday about web sites and blogs, and if unpublished writers should have either or both.

Something I've often wondered about is whether or not an agent or publisher bothers to look at a writer's site. I know I've read in the past about specific ones who do not; Agent Kristin lays this question to rest (inasmuch as she's concerned, anyway):

"When reviewing sample pages where we like the writing, we’ll often give the writer website a glance and see what’s there. I don’t bother if the sample pages haven’t caught my interest."

She goes on to offer a few tips:

"Don’t have a website/blog unless it can be a professional one. The homemade sites look it and just make me cringe. It won’t keep me from asking for your full (or if I like the novel, offering representation) but it’s not putting your best foot forward and that’s never a benefit."

This is a given. We're not aspiring to become professionals--we already are professionals; we want our web site or blog to reflect that. Choose colors that are easy on the eyes. Use a layout that makes sense. There are a ton of resources available on the web that discuss how to choose color schemes or even ones that generate one for you. If you're using WordPress or Blogger or, if you've chosen to be a little more adventurous like me and opted to use BlogEngine.NET, choose a theme that both complements your message while maintaining a professional look.

Content? Agent Kristin says:

"...the standard. About you, what you are working on, any cool interests you have that might inspire your writing, workshops you are doing, critique partners or anything about the writing process."

And the most important aspect of our blogs and web sites:

"...remember that the writing you have there needs to be representative of you and your good work. It doesn’t have to be perfect but you shouldn’t blog if the writing doesn’t represent your “usual” quality."

We've all read about the job candidate whose prospective employer decided to take a look at their blog... keep the content professional and relevant but, more importantly, put your best quality out there. If you're still learning the craft (we all are), think of your blog as a way to hone your writing skills. Use the same attention to detail when writing blog entries as you do when writing your "stuff". Do a rough draft, revise, proofread. If you happen to be looking through an old post and notice a typo or some other oddity, fix it. Our blog entries remain forever, indexed by Google and other search engines, so who knows when someone is going to access that post you wrote 2 years ago. Make sure that first impression is as good a one as if that person landed on your current home page or latest blog entry.

Now I need to practice what I preach and do some proofreading of my own on this post.

Good luck with your writing.