Blogging - Fictional Worlds

My time here at Orble is at an end. I hope you will follow me to my new home at Dianna's Writing Den . I will continue to be writing about writing there for many months to come.

Thank you to everyone who has made my time here at Orble amazing. I will check in periodically to stop by my favourite Orble blogs.

Sayonara and a good 2011 to all of you

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Posted By: Dianna G - Category: Blogging

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Moving

December 17th 2010 12:54

I am beginning an intense project that will take up most of my time over the next few weeks: moving Fictional Worlds. For the time being I will only be posting the regular scheduled prompts and interviews.

I have chosen to leave Orble for several reasons. This is a very sad decision for me to make and with it comes the end of an era (at least as far as my writing journey is concerned).

When I first joined Orble, I was immediately struck by the community. My very first blog post was given a warm welcome from a blogger named David, who has been gone from Orble for over a year now. I quickly made some friends here and it is those friends who kept me at this blogging thing-people like Katyzzz (http://www.mspaintart.com/) and Jeanne Really Long Link These people will always have a special place in my heart and I feel that they have been incredibly important to my blogging journey.

Since joining Orble I feel that I have seen the strength of the community fade, on both a small and large scale. While some key people have remained and continued to make Orble a great place, many have left and the new bloggers have not necessarily been up to par. One particular incident that struck me was when a new Orble blogger sent me a personal message asking for advice on her blog. I went to her blog to find that she had not proofread her work and had left it full of spelling and grammar errors, and that on top of that her blog had no focus and no real meaning. She was very offended when I told her to correct her spelling. I remember a time when, in general, Orble bloggers knew how to spell. I would like to think that they still do. I am starting to worry that this is not the case.

I sincerely hope that those of you who have joined me here at Orble will continue to follow my blogging journey. I also hope that those of you here at Orble who remain will know that I do not speak with the intention of slandering Orble in any way. But I do feel that it is time to find a place of my own, even if I have to carve it out of the web.

I would like to say thank you to Orble, to Jon, to Katyzzz and to Jeanne for showing me how great blogging can be. Thanks for all of your support. I hope that my relationship with Orble will continue to be beneficial to both of us even as the moving process occurs. It is with great sadness that I prepare to take my leave.

But it is also the holiday season, a time of change and a time to remember. I will never forget Orble nor my friends here, and I hope that the new year will bring me a wonderful new place and many new successes.

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Posted By: Dianna G - Category: Blogging

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The Danger of Blogging

September 20th 2010 12:08

Fictional Worlds has been my blog, my writing spot, and my safehaven for expression for a little over three years now. Until recently, nobody I knew in real life read my blog; I didn't want to build readers that way. I built readers through online forums, Orble's community, and sheer force of will. The reasons why I kept my blog away from the people were several.

The first is that I wanted to build an unrelated reader base. I wanted people to find me who didn't know my name, who didn't know that I existed. My first comment on my first blog here was from a complete stranger, and that's how I wanted it to be. Part of this was also because I know a lot of people; I could have a hundred readers without having to search for them. I felt it was more authentic if I struggled to find my first reader, and my second, and my fiftieth.

The second is that I didn't think most of the people I know would take it seriously, especially the non-Nano writer folk. I do have friends who have written books. I thought that my more serious writer friends would scoff at my blogging efforts. I thought they would say 'why write a blog when you haven't even gotten a book published yet?' And while I have a thousand answers, I wasn't ready for that. The writers who I know and respect but who I am not close to are the ones I'm talking about here.

The third and final reason is that I wanted this place to be an outlet. Fictional Worlds is about writing, and writing is deeply personal for every writer. I could write a thousand posts about short stories and novels without once worrying about what my friends might or might not see on my blog. Poetry, on the other hand, is even more deeply personal for me. Most of the poetry I write reflects current situations in my life; very little is narrative poetry. All the best poems that I've written-and that I've posted here-were written in response to events in my life. I've felt comfortable posting anything and everything here.

Well, I've set up a Fictional Worlds feed on my facebook. I've added close friends to my Twitter feed, where I show off new blog posts. While I haven't out and out told most of the people I know in real life to check out my blog, a lot more of them have that option than they did before. People I know in real life are getting to know more about my online life.

What does this mean for Fictional Worlds? Probably a lot less poetry. Nothing else will change. My weekly prompts will go back to being mostly short fiction. It's a mixed blessing. I'm glad that people I know and care about are reading my blog; I'm glad that they care enough to check it out. But Fictional Worlds can be my sanctuary no longer.

My soul will always be bare here at Fictional Worlds; writing is deeply personal. My soul shows through in my passion for my words, my passion for my stories. But there are some things best kept hidden. Someday all the poems from the darkest places of my soul will be shown to the whole world; today is not that day.

There is one last poem prompt planned for this week and then we will begin a new era of short fiction here at Fictional Worlds.

P.S. I wrote this post yesterday, and a few hours later I read this post: But Who is the Enemy? Funny how similar themes show up in the writing world...

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Posted By: Dianna G - Category: Short Fiction, Poetry, Writing Exercises, Blogging

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Thoughts and Questions

September 10th 2010 12:01

While I do have big things in progress for Fictional Worlds which I'm hoping to reveal over the next two weeks, I don't have much to say today. My first week back to school, while awesome-for a week of school-has been more tiring than I would've expected.

I've started working-albeit slowly-on my Pre-Nano workshop in October. It will consist of three weekly worldbuilding exercises-probably Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, or perhaps one on Monday, one on Friday, and one on the weekend-and a weekly prompt. I'm probably going to focus more on plot this year, with a couple of characterization exercises; this workshop will be for those of us working in a familiar world

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Posted By: Dianna G - Category: Articles/Ideas/Prompts, Writing Exercises, Blogging

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We Interrupt this Program...

September 7th 2010 12:49

...To inform you that the posting schedule here at Fictional Worlds is changing. With the school year's arrival many things are changing for me. School becomes a factor taking large amounts of time out of my day. Homework becomes a factor. In spite of that, I will be increasing my weekly output.

How is this possible or recommended? I'm cutting back on partying and on social events, perhaps-probably-even socializing in general. I need to spend more time on my writing and I need to make school my second priority-second only to my writing. It's time to get down to serious business; I want to send a novel out to agents the moment I'm eighteen and can sign a contract myself. Realistically I have a long way to go before I'm ready for that; people bother me

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Posted By: Dianna G - Category: Articles/Ideas/Prompts, Writing Exercises, Blogging

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