Housekeeping

Last night and today were mainly spent doing housekeeping – in both senses of the word. Today was cleaner day with dusting, bathroom, vacuuming and washing the tile floors. It was also sort out website and internet stuff day.

Firstly spam. I hate spam. Every day the spam grows in my comments section. This is why I have been moderating comments. I have spoken to my friendly house elf… um IT guy… um hubby, who has advised me that I can add a spam filter. I am leaving him to deal with that. Delegation! So to you spammers, ha! Foiled again (I hope).

I have also been trying to increase my internet footprint. Having been working with the public  for over 25 years in my initial profession (in my alternate life), I know the value of marketing your product. Now this applies to my writing (and art). I must admit though, it feels very strange marketing myself.

I started with my proto-website which was a quick slap-dash affair, just to get something out there. This has now been replaced with this site (which is still under construction, so please forgive me). Concurrently, I started up my first blog Off the Artboard at blogger. This had two ‘pros’:

The first was to practice my writing – everyday! I had set myself this task in an effort to practice my skill at writing and to get into a routine of doing so. Since then, I have read many articles on writing, by both scholars and authors, most of which extol the virtues of writing – anything and regularly. Most days I achieve this goal. (tick !)

The second was to possibly get my name out there so that one day, when (hopefully) my great opus or that book ™ is completed, I may have made some contacts or, more importantly, have some readers that would recognise my name and possibly give that book ™ a read. One can wish!

Recently, I have been finding more articles on this subject. I see blog after blog from authors , publishers and editors recommending things like blogs (tick), websites (tick), Facebook (tick) and twitter (now succumbed . Tick) to interact and get to know our readers. (Ah, another thing I learnt many years ago, in my other life – communication!) Links can be found in the info  bar under the banner picture. Feel free to share, share, share!

This morning, my dearheart (and resident IT guy) helped me through the minefield of forwarding/reposting (?) blog entries so I won’t have to do it manually. Some sites however have not been friendly in this regard (not naming names… ugh), so I will still have to manually add links on some. Hopefully this post will forward to twitter and google+

I have also added other methods to follow my blog, both here and on my original blog site Off the Artboard. May I draw your attention to the column on the right ?

If you have made it this far, thank you!  I am now off to try to write and discuss some artwork for a friend’s upcoming book.

Have a great day.

 

 

Housekeeping