Blog Fiction I'd Like to See: Halloween Edition

I think Blog Fiction has a lot of potential. Most of it is still untapped. This post is going to be a little self indulgent while I list Blog Fiction that I would like to see and read. There are several attempts at vampire based blog fiction. Here are some other Halloween inspired Blog Fiction ideas. Feel free to steal and modify as you wish.

Ghoul Respect.
What's a ghoul? Ask yourself. What is a ghoul. I know what a ghost is. I know what a vampire is. I know that a zombie is. What about a "ghoul". They aren't portrayed uniformly across our literature and pop culture - if they're portrayed at all. Zombies get tons of movie deals. Vampires had their own TV series and spinoffs. Ghouls? Nothing. Does that affect the self esteem of ghouls? I'm thinking a blog where a ghoul laments the lack of respect and recognition for ghouls, and tries to raise their profile so kids are just as scared of ghouls as they are the "boogeyman". Unfortunately, plans always go awry.

Sample Post
I've given up on selling my screenplay, "Nation of Ghouls". If I hear one more hollywood guy tell me that "audiences are grossed out by ghouls eating dead bodies", I'll kill him and eat his body.

So, Today I decided that if I'm going to scare kids, I should take a more direct approach. With the help of a friend I constructed a large sign that read, "Beware of recent Ghoul sightings." We put it up next to a graveyard that was actually near a school. The plan was to hide behind a tombstone then pop out and scare small children.

Things didn't go as planned...

My first victim was a 6th grade boy. I jumped right in front of him so he could see my hideous face and yelled, "I'm going to eat you little boy."

He stared at me for a second and said, "nice costume, perv".

"What? Hey, I'm freaking scary man."

"Whatev-" he said and continued walking.

I shrugged it off and saw my next victim. A little girl. Couldn't have been more than 7. When she got near, I jumped behind her and yelled out loud in my scariest deep voice. She turned around, screamed, sprayed me with mace, and shouted, "I need an adult!"

At that point the 6th grader from earlier came around the corner and said, "leave my sister alone, you perv", and kicked me in the nuts. He proceeded to kick me repeatedly. I tried to defend myself, but I couldn't see through the mace spray. I think he busted a rib. I may not be able to die again, but I sure can still feel pain.

Witches
How about a blog about modern day witches? No, I don't mean Wiccans. I mean real witches - the kind flying around on broomsticks and brewing potions using "eye of newt" witches. After all the burnings they decided to lay low and not use their powers overtly. The thing turns out though, there are different covenants of witches who are always fighting covert wars with each other. Kind of like a cross between gangs and the mob, but with magic. Although, the blog doesn't concentrate just on those wars.

I have no sample posts for this. But come on. Witches, spying, wars, surely there's enough material there for a good story.

Living with Zombies
Ok, this is pure comedy satire, inspired by Shawn of the Dead. There is a worldwide Zombie attack, but it was manageable. As it turns out, Zombies walk incredibly slowly so they aren't hard to take down. So we follow the blog of a typical person living in a city that is dealing with constant zombie attacks.

Sample Post
Today on the way to work a guy holding a can got really close to me. I didn't know if he was a zombie or a homeless guy asking for change. The PSAs on TV say I shouldn't take a chance so I hit him with the baseball bat I carry around for just such an emergency.

When I got to work I found out that my office mate had gotten infected at the mass zombie gathering the previous night. Sweet! I got an office all to myself. Go Zombies! Unfortunately, I was told I now have to do his job as well as mine... Fucking Zombies!

Well, that's a few of my halloween inspired ideas. Yeah, they could use some fleshing out, but damn it, I'd read those that blog fiction. Happy Halloween everyone.

Review Poll Results

A couple weeks ago I asked your opinion on whether or not I should do literary reviews of Blog Fiction. Well, apparently, the polling service I used only lets you run the poll for 2 weeks. I originally wanted to run it for a month. That'll teach me for using a free service. Fortunately, I had checked the results before it disappeared. The final count was:

75% In favor of reviews
12.5% Not in favor of reviews
12.5% Don't know, but just like voting in online polls

Unfortunately, only 16 total people voted. So I have no idea if that's representative. However, with no evidence that it isn't representative and based on the comments, it looks like the response was overwhelmingly positive.

Therefore, I will be doing reviews in the future. However, I'm not sure when the first one will come out. It will be a while because I want to make sure that any review I do is fair, well though out, and useful. It's very time consuming to do a full meaningful review.

Thanks to everyone who voted and left comments. Your feedback was invaluable.

NaNoWriMo Follow Up

I want to thank everyone who commented on my last post. In spite of my intentionally controversial(i.e. link bait) title, all the comments were civil, reasoned, and well thought out. I'm proud to have attracted such civil and reasoned readers. Just wanted to respond to some of the points that were raised by those who disagree with my assessment of NaNoWriMo.

First of all, I wanted to reiterate my biggest gripe with NaNoWriMo. It is people who are already writing that shutdown their current writing to do NaNoWriMo. If it wasn't for that, I'd just ignore the whole thing. Some pointed out rightly that the original intent of the competition is to get new writers to write. Based on the format of the competition that makes sense. So really, my problem is that people are using it for something beyond the original intent. The whole thing is turning into a beast that shuts down part of the internet for a month.

Another thing a lot of people said was how much they liked the intensity of writing in 30 days. Also, the interaction with others when you're all in the same situation. To that I would just say that just gives all the more reason to run the competition year round. Every 1st of the month a new batch of competitors could start off.

I also heard about established writers participating and people getting their NaNoWriMo novel published. To those people I would caution against using NaNoWriMo as a crutch. Waiting until November to write is using NaNoWriMo for something for which it wasn't intended. I have to assume that any novel coming out of NaNoWriMo sucks before going through massive amounts of editing. So in the end, is it really worth it? The only thing I can see an established writer using NaNoWriMo for is to try and work past a dry spell of creativity(Again, all the more reason to be year round).

There were some good arguments in favor of the competition, but not enough to sway my opinion, but enough to soften my opinion of it. In the end we'll all have to agree to disagree. Though, I will ask if we can all agree on one thing. Typing "NaNoWriMo" is incredibly awkward. :)

NaNoWriMo Sucks

That's right. I said it. NaNoWriMo sucks and I mean it. So what has NaNoWriMo done to draw my ire you ask? Well, what hasn't it done? It sucks up the time of talented writers, I don't see how it accomplishes the sponsor organization's goal, and it's acronym is incredibly difficult to type.

After spending a paragraph bashing the thing, let me slow down and explain what NaNoWriMo is. For those who don't know, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. It is an imaginary competition where all the entrants try to write a 50,000 word novel in 1 month. If you do that, you win the imaginary prize. If you think it sounds silly, I swear I'm not making it up.

The way to win NaNoWriMo is by writing 50,000 words by midnight on November 30. Every year, there are many, many winners. There are no "Best Novel" or "Quickest-Written Novel" awards given out. All winners will get an official "Winner" web badge and a PDF Winner's Certificate.

The purpose of NaNoWriMo is to get people to write. Just write something.

NaNoWriMo is all about the magical power of deadlines. Give someone a goal and a goal-minded community and miracles are bound to happen. Pies will be eaten at amazing rates. Alfalfa will be harvested like never before. And novels will be written in a month.

Part of the reason we organize NaNoWriMo is just to get a book written. We love the fringe benefits accrued to novelists. For one month out of the year, we can stew and storm, and make a huge mess of our apartments and drink lots of coffee at odd hours. And we can do all of these things loudly, in front of people. As satisfying as it is to reach deep within yourself and pull out an unexpectedly passable work of art, it is equally (if not more) satisfying to be able to dramatize the process at social gatherings.

So getting back to my issues with the competition. The most annoying thing is the distraction it becomes for my favorite writers. Every year this dreaded contest draws the attention of my favorite bloggers to NaNoWriMo and away from their blogs. I enjoy their blogs, and I don't enjoy 50,000 word novels that are hastily thrown together in less than 5 weeks. On top of taking away my favorite high quality reading lists, I don't think NaNoWriMo helps those writers much either. The purpose of NanoWriMo is to get people to write, but bloggers already write on a regular basis. So why are bloggers shutting down one writing operation to open up another writing operation. Each about as useful as the other in terms of improving writing skills. I just don't get it.

If someone were to defend NaNoWriMo, I suppose they would say that it encourages writers to write and finish their novels. This is where I start questioning the whole premise of the competition. Really? A writer needs to be encouraged to write his or her story? Anyone who needs an imaginary competition to start writing may want to consider another line of business. Most writer's I know have a story inside of them just aching to be told. They have to write it. They can't not write it. You'd have to pull the pen from their cold dead fingers before they'd stop.

That kind of tenacity to write is needed because writing the novel is just the first step. You now have the hours of self editing and rewriting to go through. Then the professional editing comes. Then the marketing of your book. You have all those inquiry letters to write and rejection notices to read. So, if a writer has to be encouraged to do the first step - The fun one - what are the chances they'll ever get around to the rest of the steps?

Finally, I want to reiterate what I said before. NaNoWriMo is a pain in the butt to type. I'm serious. Try and type it 3 times in a row. It's hard. Map it out. Here's the button combination to properly write NaNoWriMo on a qwerty keyboard.

1. Hold left Shift
2. (N) Right Index,
   
3. Let go of left shit
4. (a) left pinky
   
5. Hold Left Shift
6. (N) Right Index
7. let go of left shift
8. (o)Right Ring
9. Hold Right shift
10. (W)Left Ring
11. let go of shift
12. (r) right index
13. (i) left middle
14. Hold Left Shift
15. (M) right index
16. let go of shift
17. (o) right ring

Wow! 17 steps just to write their *abbreviation*. You also are alternating shift buttons between hands. That is incredibly awkward. I know it seems like a petty thing to complain about, but they should've known better. When you're a online writing competition, you would think you'd make it easy for online writers to talk about you.

Oh yeah, and one more thing about their name. It's not even accurate. The National Novel Writing Month is actually an international event. So it should be InNoWriMo. Which actually is slightly easier to type since your left pinky doesn't have to leave the shift key between typing the 'I' and the 'N'.

Now, not everything about NaNoWriMo is bad. Some authors enjoy the intensity of trying to write a first draft in a month. Other's also like the interaction with other author's in middle of writing a novel. So why not make those tools available all year round? Let author's register the day they start and then give them 30 days to finish. They then can intereact with other author's who are writing all year long. Nobody has to wait for November anymore.

Here's way to improve it. I do not believe that the problem with the modern publishing industry has anything to do with the lack of crappy novels being pushed out. If anything, it's the lack of people reading good novels. Competing with movies, video games, and comic books is hard. However, if you can get a person to read that one book that they really like, you can turn that person into a life long bookworm. I say we need a competition that increases and encourages readers, not writers. Put in crass economic terms, we need to increase demand, not supply.

Here's my idea for a new yearly competition. Instead of challenging people to write 50,000 crappy words, challenge them to read 500 pages of any novel or novels they so choose. Add in some rules. For instance, if you're reading a paperback you have to read 2 pages to count as 1 hard cover page. This competition virtually guarantees that all participants who "win" would have to read at least 1 novel and maybe part of another. Now how sweet would that be? Readers can share what books they read. Part of the requirements for "winning" could be that you have to write a 250+ word review of what you read. You know, to prove to your fellow readers that you actually did it.

Finally, the last thing I would change about NaNoWriMo if I had the power to do so would be the name. I would rename National Novel Writing Month to be International Novel Month - abbreviated INM and pronounced "In Me". This has a number of improvements. First of all, the abbreviation is easier to type. You can use just hold the left shift down the entire time, type with the other hand(Middle-Index-Middle), and then let go of the shift key. 5 steps only instead of 17. Also, Saying it requires fewer syllables, 2 instead of 4. The name also lends flexibility. Whether the competition is a writer's or reader's competition, the name still makes sense. Finally, it reflects the fact that it's international not just national.

Anyways, if this post convinces just one person to skip participating in NaNoWriMo and instead work on their blog or plotting out a good novel, then my goal will have been accomplished. I know I'm probably on the other side of popular opinion so, please, feel free to flame away in the comments.

Nothing New Today

I've been ill the last few days. I haven't been reading, writing, working - not even moving for a couple of those days. Anyways, this is just a long convoluted way to say that posting will be light this week while I try to catch up with everything. Originally I intended to write something cranky about nanoWriMo. Look for that at the end of this week. In the meantime, please take the poll from last week. I'm still running it and would love to hear your opinions.

Reviewing Blog Fiction (100th Post!)

Congratulations to me. This is my 100th published post on this, the Blog Fiction blog. It also marks 1 month short of a year that I've maintained this site. In that time, I'm proud of the things I've done to help promote the genre. I've maintained the Blog Fiction forums. I created the Blog Fiction Widget. I've maintained the list of all the blog fiction sites that I know about. I've also tried to keep up with all of the latest blog fiction news.

Among the things I haven't done is do actual reviews of blog fiction writings. Sure, I've critiqued site layouts, but I've never critiqued people's blog fiction writing. Even in the case of the Ten-Sided disaster, I only critiqued their lack of working together - not their individual writing styles. I never did literary critiques because I never felt qualified to do it. I don't have any formal writing training. I've also never been published in anything. It felt presumptuous of me to think that I could offer advice to other writers.

So, that is the thing I wanted to ask everyone. Would you really be interested in my opinions on the writing of any blog fiction sites. Really, my only qualifications to offer reviews are the following:

• I have a blog about Blog Fiction
• I've read a lot of blog fiction and even tried to write some myself.
  

So, is that enough for you to take my word that maybe a story is too slow paced. Or to say that the character's of a blog fiction don't feel real. Please take the poll to the left and let me know. Also feel free to leave a comment to let me know why you voted the way you do. I'm going to leave the poll up for a while.

In the meantime, I feel like celebrating my 100 milestone South Park style.
("For reviews, against reviews, WHO CARES! 100 posts.")



UPDATE: This is how this post was supposed to look. Blogger really screwed up my javascript so you only saw about 1/5 of the post earlier.

Common Blog Widgets I can't stand

Sometimes it feels like a memo goes out once a week to all bloggers that says, "any sidebar space not filled with a widget will be confiscated". I say this because so many bloggers fill up their website with some of the silliest widgets and functions. That alone wouldn't annoy me. The problem is that so many of them they choose to fill their sites with are either annoying, distracting, useless, or all of the above. Here is a list of some of the most egregious offenders.

*disclaimer* The opinions below are that of DustinM alone. They are his personal opinion reached by years of reading blogs, and not the result of any type of market research or polling. So don't go pulling any of these widgets off your website just because of what's said here. Pull them because they deserve to be strapped onto a rocket and aimed directly at the sun.

Showing location of the site's readers
So let me get this straight. Of all the things you think your reader should know, you thing they need to know where each other are from? Sometimes not even all of them, just the most recent visitors. Great! I think it's awesome that people from Mongolia and Peru read your website, but I really don't care. I just want to read your article about the "10 best firefox add-ons".

Pictures of readers
Here's a weird stalker-ish inducing widget. I don't know what the logic here is. Apparently, not only do I get to know where everyone is from, but now I get a picture of what they look like. Personally, I think these last 2 widgets were the invention of the mafia trying to find guys in the witness protection program:
"Hey Vinnie, ain't dat da guy dat sold out Uncle Tony to the feds"?
"Yeah, yeah that's the scumbag. How'd ya find 'em?"
"Well, I needed to change the brakes on my '08 Taurus and found this blog about how to do dat. Apparently, our guy needed to do the same ting... 'bout 5 hours ago."
"Does the site have one of those annoying widgets that tell you where everyone's from?"
"uh... yeah, says right here. Mount Claire, California"
"Excuse me while I go make a phone call".

8,000 directory backlinks
Yeah, blog directories are great for creating incoming links. Unfortunately, some insist on a backlink to the directory. That's fine, but why would you put that in your sidebar? Nobody is going to want to see those. Put them in your footer where they belong so they can be promptly ignored by your readers.

PageRank Bragging
I am so thrilled that google thinks your website is a '4'. For the .05% of your visitors that give a rats ass what your pagerank is, now know what it is. Not because you display it like a badge of honor, but because the .05% of the people that care about it already have the google toolbar that tells them the exact same thing. And the toolbar told them much quicker because they didn't have to sift through 2 or 3 screens of directory backlink images.

Anything that flashes so fast and bright it causes epileptic seizures.
I don't care if it's a banner, widget, Advertisement, or the freakin' pope. If the damn thing makes my screen look like a vegas slot machine I'm going to click off your page faster than you can say "boss over shoulder".

Annoying popup ads on keywords
If anything destroys the internet. It's not going to be a lack of net neutrality or email spammers that do kill it. It is the unholy troll that thought to combine annoying "pop under" ads with "preview pics". If you don't know, a "pop under" ad is where the ad software goes through a site and underlines certain keywords with a dotted line. If a reader clicks that word they will be taken to the paid sponsor's site. That alone is not too annoying. However, some genius decided the dotted line wasn't enough. Now anytime I move my mouse over a link some flashy picture pops up OVER the text I'm trying to read. It turns my casual reading into a boxing match:
"shit, I can't read that text now. There's no close button. Oh I'll just move over this ad. Ah... now I can read it... Time to scroll down the page. Why can't I scroll? Oh my mouse is over the picture. I'll just move it and... crap now it's over another ad... Finally, I finished scrolling. Hey, check out that link, I think I'll just... fuck! it's covered up now!"

Latest comments box takes up an entire side
Look, you can have a widget that displays your latest comments. I think that's cool. But keep in mind that it's not something worth taking up an entire page worth of a sidebar. 90% of all blog comments are along the lines of one of the folling:

• Dude, that is so true.
• You don't know what the hell you're talking about.
• Luv your site. U should check out mine at http ://www . my-super-dupersexy-girl-friends-acting-naughty . com

Also, if you're a female blogger, you'll have this added gem.

• We should so hook up!
  

You really don't want those things clogging up more than a tiny space in your sidebar, do you?

Blogroll to unrelated topics
Links are great. Your site can't possibly contain everything a reader needs to know about a topic. That's what wikipedia is for. So, you offer links to similar websites. Or, at least, they SHOULD be similar. If your site is about home gardening, why the hell do you have links to sites about buying real estate? Just because some yahoo offers to exchange links with you doesn't mean you have to do it. Exchange links with relevant sites or at least maintain 2 different blogrolls. One labeled, "Useful links" the other labeled, "Stupid links".

Hit Counter
It is TWO-Freaking-thousand-and-EIGHT people! Come. on! 1995 called, they want their widget back! Nothing says "I can fake being popular" like a hit counter. This widget was useless even when it was new. Sure, this site has 2600 hits, but is that since last week or last year? Or is the site brand new as of yesterday, but some little shit hit refresh on his browser 2500 times. Thanks to a lack of timeframe and easy manipulation this widget tells your readers nothing about your site. Please! let this widget go to heaven where he can reunite with his grandma and grandpa, websites with frames and java applets.

By the way, sorry about all the swearing. I normally try to keep things PG, but these annoying widgets really get to me. What about you? What blogging widgets make you swear?

Determining your posting schedule

A couple weeks ago I wrote a column giving advice on how to avoid abandoning your blog fiction. The very first tip was "Decide on a manageable posting schedule". Reading back, I left out how to determine that manageable posting schedule. Determining your posting schedule is simple. Rather than just haphazardly guesstimating about how many posts you can do, I created a formula to figure out how many posts a week you should do.

It boils down to a simple formula. Look at your life. How many minutes a week do you have to spend on your blog fiction(call this 'T', for Total time)? Subtract the amount of time you need to spend marking and maintaining your site(call this 'M' for Marketing and Maintenance time). Now, Divide that number by the amount of time it takes you to write a single post (call this 'P' for Posting time). What number you have is the number of posts you can realistically make in a week. Formula: Number of posting per week = (T - M) / P. For example, if you have 480 minutes(8 hours) a week to spend on your blog. You intend to spend 1 hour(60 minutes) of that promoting your site. And finally, let's say it takes you 3 hours (180 minutes) to do a post. In the end, it comes to (480 - 40) / 180 = 2.44 posts a week for our imaginary author.

Obviously one would find it difficult to write .44 posts. I would always round down. That way you know what you can almost always accomplish. The worse that can happen is that you'll start getting a backlog of posts and you can take a vacation once in a while. Short post today, but this formula is something I'm going to use the next time I start a blog fiction and thought others might find it useful.

(T - M) / P = N
T = Time to spend on Blog
M = Marketing and Maintence
P = Amount of posting
N = Number of posts per week

September News Roundup

Some Interesting News Bits happening in the Blog Fiction World. Some old, some recent, all of it was news to me in the last month. I know I usually post this on the last or second to last day of the month, but my day job has been reaking havoc on my blogging and reading time.

GGR hiatus
Purhaps the saddest news of the month was the announcement that Giant Girl Rampages is going on hiatus until further notice.

We're not ruling out Melly's eventual return, but we're not making any promises either. We've been working behind the scenes to recruit a new team of writers/illustrators with the time and energy to pick up where we've left off, but dream teams are hard to come by.

New Blog Fiction sites:
There are 2 new sites in the blog fiction list that are still active. Time Traveler blog is one of them. The other is in french-so I THINK it's active.

Lord Likely gave me 500 credits
Three cheers for Lord Likely!!! (Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!) He was kind enough to give me 500 advertising credits for entrecard. If you have an entrecard please go to his site and drop it on him to thank him. (stop and read his site too - it's hilarious for anyone who deosn't mind the "adult" humor)

Muse's Success launch.
It looks like there is another alternative to Web Fiction Guide and Pages Unbound. Muse's Success is still pretty young, but it's mission is ambitious: "create a catalogue of each and every web based novel (or serial) available on the World Wide Web. In addition, we allow our visitors to review stories within our catalogue, and also provide a community in which authors and readers of web based novels can interact and communicate." I'll be watching it to see how it will differentiate itself from the other internet fiction rating sites.

Tech Babe and Jason X meet.
Some interesting developments over at The User Pool. For quite some time, the fictional characters Tech Babe and Jason X have existed quite separately in their own little worlds. They only conversed in the online world by leaving and responding to each other's comments. In recent postings the characters recounted meeting each other in real life. Could this mean there could be some future drama between the two? I don't know. It would be very interesting to see though.

Did I miss anything? Have your own September news? Let me know in the comments.