Teaching Without the Paperwork

Any regular readers - or people who actually know me in real life - know that I'm a qualified teacher. I graduated in 2013 with a degree in Education, Religion and English. I've done my teaching hours. I've passed my exams.

But I haven't gotten a teaching job. I haven't registered to be a teacher - and that was a strategic decision, made on the basis of having to reach a certain amount of teaching hours within a couple of years...which I knew wasn't going to happen unless I started teaching immediately. Truth be told, I haven't actively pursued teaching as a career since finishing college, because I knew that I was going to be doing a Masters. I knew I wouldn't have time to teach and study, particularly not when I didn't even know what I would be studying.

In November, I was offered an assistant position in a web design course in college. It's a bit of a change from English and Religion, but more importantly, it came without a ridiculous amount of paperwork.

When I was on teaching placement, I didn't just have to teach. I also had to produce lesson plans every week - one for every class, each one unique, even if I was teaching the same material to different class groups. To add to the fun, I also had to send my Schemes of Work to my supervisors by Monday afternoon each week, for the week ahead. And each Sunday evening, my Reflective Statements for the previous week's lessons had to be uploaded for them to see, too.

Typically, a teacher should spend at least as much time preparing a lesson as they spend teaching it. That's an impractical demand, particularly for newly qualified teachers or teachers in training, but it ends up being something that has to be done - no complaining about it, because there's no one to listen.

Thankfully, this time around things are easier. No lesson plans. No schemes of work. No reflective statements. I don't have to spend six hours a day preparing the class for the next day.

This is, for all intents and purposes, teaching without the paperwork. This is liberating.

Web design is a funny ol' thing to teach, because in a few years it's incredibly likely that most of what we've taught the students will be obsolete, or at least less important. Heck, the only reason knowing how to code a website is important for the general user these days is if they want to set up their own website and edit the templates provided by Wordpress or Blogger. Just knowing what goes where, really.

See, unless you really understand the languages behind web design, you can't do much with them. If you don't understand the tags used in HTML, you almost certainly can't create a website that looks anything like a website. Trust me, I've been a student of the very same course I'm teaching and even though

tags existed back when I did it, we didn't use them. Even though CSS existed, we didn't use it. We had webpages that looked awful, and we didn't understand why.

The difficulty in teaching this sort of stuff in a week is that we need to teach the students what the tags do, why they're important, and how to use them. The last part is the most difficult one. With a little bit of time and playing around, students begin to understand that they need to close tags to make sure the page looks the way it's supposed to. They understand which tags they need to change. They just aren't sure how to start it from scratch. At least, I'm not sure they'd want to try.

And who can blame them? If I were on teaching placement, I'd have to come up with a reason for not teaching them to use everything all by themselves. The problem is, they only have a week. They have a week to learn something that's entirely new to them, and it seems that some the students don't even use computers at home. It's all mobile technology, these days.

Without a lesson plan to encourage teaching them everything from scratch, to have them create everything without a template (they've tried, then they were given a template to edit), and without the time to really let them at it, it's difficult to ensure that the students have learned anything.

The best we can do with a week - yes, a week - is to teach them to understand, and to try get them interested in web design. Some of them really have an eye for the design side of things, too, which was nice to discover. We can give them the tools to go and learn more. We can show them resources to use to create websites of their own. Sure, we can't ensure they'll actually continue. And we can't ensure they'll actually remember anything. But we can do an awful lot towards making sure they can come out of the class with a greater understanding of web design.

And all without the paperwork.

The End and the Beginning

Operation Overdrive has come to an end. Sort of.

I started this month with a big idea: to write a 75,000 word novel, posting daily blog posts, poems and videos. 31 days to do an awful lot of work, whether I did the novel or the daily posts. Attempting to do everything, that was where I fell behind.

And, life got in the way. But that's okay. That will happen.

I don't consider Operation Overdrive a failure, however. Quite the contrary. I think, with everything I did, it's been a success of sorts. I've managed to get back to blogging in a way that makes me happy. I've managed to put out a lot of poems, some of which were quite popular as far as my little poetry and prose blog is concerned, and I've managed to get back my confidence in front of a camera for my YouTube channel.

I've also discovered that I can't force myself to write a book if I only end up feeling guilty about not doing anything else.

Is this a problem for the dream of being a writer? No. It's a problem for any future attempts at NaNoWriMo in any way, shape or form. At least, not when the word count target is set to 150%.

The issue, you see, was trying to balance the workload when I was finding myself at my busiest, when I was working more hours in the bookshop, and when the sun was actually shining in Ireland. (Honestly - we had a weird summer.)

I know that I can write a novella in a week.

I know that I can write a non-fiction book using all of my spare time during a busy period.

I now know that I cannot dedicate a whole month to a book, while doing everything else in my life that I don't have any control over - like work, or babysitting, or burning up in the heat - because I will only tire myself out.

Part of the issue, for me, has been sleep, though. I haven't gotten much lately. We're talking the past couple of months. Since the sun started shining brightly in the morning, I haven't been able to sleep on past six most of the time. But this is after going to bed at twelve. I was drained, and that made me too groggy to start work earlier. The end result was guilt. Guilt at doing anything that wasn't writing. Guilt that carried over into the book. Guilt at trying something new.

And that last one? That's where the biggest issue for me was this month. I bought a new camera, my first DSLR. I wanted to take photographs. I wanted to practice, to get better, to really improve upon the very basics of photography that I had. And every time I did that - guilt.

Bad. Very bad.

That's why I left the book behind. I made a conscious decision, when I found myself incapable of writing the book because of how badly I felt for not doing it as much as I should have, to drop it. Not forever. Just until I get a couple of things in order. I have other books to write. I want to practice my photography more.

Operation Overdrive finishes today, officially, but the aftermath is this:

I want to write blog posts more often. I want to record videos more often, and I want to put more effort into them than a direct upload. I want to write poems with greater purpose for ParagraVerse. I want to set up a photography blog - and a business - and I want to get out more to take photographs. I want to write a couple of books that have been on my mind for a long time, and I want to continue to write my novel.

The month is over, but the desire to create, and the aspiration that I began with, they've only grown stronger.

Books for Writers

I have a habit of reading a lot of different types of books, but my non-fiction focuses on writing and business, for the most part. With that in mind, I thought it would be a good idea to recommend some books for writers, no matter what stage they're at. (Though, obviously, more established writers may find less benefit from these than relative newbies.)

1. Screenplay, by Syd Field

Not everyone will write a movie. Not everyone should write a movie. However, as far as stories go, getting a strong overview of how to write one for one medium is a good idea, so long as you're prepared to transfer the lessons to another. Syd Field's book is incredibly approachable, and it covers all aspects of writing a story. The actual screenplay aspect of the book is limited to particular chapters. The rest is applicable to writers generally, with exercises most books on writing fiction don't include at all.

2. The Millionaire Messenger, by Brendon Burchard

While I would consider it of greater benefit to someone writing a non-fiction book than it would be for a novelist, The Millionaire Messenger is an excellent way of ensuring you focus on the task at hand. It's an important book for understanding the value of your message, whatever it may be, and it can help inspire you towards greater things.

3. Write and Get Paid For It, by Terry Prone

The title alone is worth paying attention to, nevermind the how-to information in the book. Terry Prone's guide on how to earn money from writing is important for writers who actually want to do that, and while the most recent edition is before most of the major successes in self-publishing and ebook publishing, the advise is still applicable to writers today. (The last edition was published in 2010, but take it from someone who's been publishing for a couple of years, and from a long-time bookseller - it's now an "old" book.)

4. The Curve, by Nicholas Lovell

Not everyone believes the future is digital. That's a problem for those people. Nicholas Lovell reveals what he knows and believes about digital technology, "superfans" and the power of free in his book The Curve, published in October 2013. It's an important book for understanding the challenges you could well be facing in the future, and it's handy to be able to prepare for them now rather than waiting to respond to them as they happen.

5. Is There a Book in You?, by Alison Baverstock

Alison Baverstock has always been a go-to writer for me. She writes plainly (which is a plus - everyone can understand her!), and she writes about topics that are important for writers. This book, her first about writing, is a good tool for self-identity. Not only does it help address the issue for many people - whether or not they can write a book - it also provides tips from the pros about how to write. It's old, at this point, but it's still a useful book to read, especially if you're just starting out.

6. The Writer's And Artist's Yearbook

AND/OR

Writer's Market

While you only technically need one or the other - the former being for the UK market, the latter for the US market - they're both incredibly handy to have at hand. Keep in mind they update annually. While older copies are good for finding listings, and for the advice articles inside, you need to be sure that (a) the agent or publisher is still in business and (b) that the contact details and editors listed are still current. If new copies are out of your budget (and the library doesn't have them in stock), a good Internet search should give you the answers you need.

7. Teach Yourself: *Insert preferred genre/form here* (e.g. Write a Play, Write a Novel, Write Children's Fiction, Write a Romance)

Some people wouldn't dare recommend Teach Yourself or For Dummies books, but I find them useful for getting down to the bare essentials of a writing style or genre. Pick one, and give it a read, but don't rely on it for everything. The most important thing is to find out how to do what you need to, or to uncover the tropes of your genre, and then to discover more about it all by writing. That's the best way to learn.

For marketing advice... go to Seth Godin.

For life-hack advice... go to Timothy Ferriss, Chris Guillebeau, and Niall Harbison.

For my books on writing... click here.

For the Aspiring Authors Out There

More often than not, the piece of advice successful writers give to aspiring writers is this: write more.

That's the gist of it. Write more. Keep writing. Write until you have no more ideas left in your head, find some more, and write again.

The purpose of this exercise is to help you become more aware of the words you use, and to develop your "voice" as an author. It helps you build upon your writing skills, no matter how poor or strong they are. But what about the people who've been doing this for ten years?

I have another piece of advice: drop the "aspiring" part of your title.

Stop dreaming, and start making things happen. I don't necessarily mean publish a book by yourself right away, or submit a book to a publisher. Start with something smaller. Try submitting a short story, or a poem, to a literary agent. Pitch an article to a magazine or newspaper. Do something to get your name out there, and edit your online bios.

Why?

Let's look at it this way - you look a lot more professional if you say, for example, "Mum of three, working on my first novel" than "Mum of three, aspiring author". One says you're doing something, the other says you're thinking of doing something. Similarly, "Aspiring author, 16, student" says a lot less about you than "Young author, working on a book, 16, student".

Do you see the difference, yet?

If you want people to take you seriously, start presenting yourself seriously. The amount of people who want to support young authors and writing mums is astonishing. Yes, you need to keep writing. However, by living your dream instead of just wishing for it, you're much more likely to do something you can be proud of.

When I dropped the word "aspiring", I found the courage to set up a website and apply for a writing job (which I got.) A year later, I published my first book, and wrote an article for a magazine about it. It's all mindset and confidence. I improved as a writer by that simple act of identifying as one now.

Holiday Destinations

Travel is kind of a big deal for me, because I don't get to do it very often. I have big plans that are way outside my budget as it stands, but if I had to make a list of five places I'd like to see... well, that's exactly what I'm going to do now.

New York City

Beginning the Incredibly Clichéd List with NYC is no big surprise. I've never been to the States, but I've always wanted to go. We just aren't one of those families that had the money for a big holiday like that - sun holidays are expensive enough, and you can go on them and not worry about the whole Capitalist Nature of the place you're visiting. But New York? No, not a chance. Not one of us could have afforded to go there and justify spending money on most of what we wanted - which, from an Irish point of view, is a waste of a trip to New York. It's seen as a shopping holiday.

For me, though, it's more than that. I want to do the stupid tourist things. I want to see the city in the flesh that I've seen in comic books and movies for most of my life. I want to make this big Dream City a reality.

London

I've already been. I have to admit that right now. But I want to go back. I want to see the London Dungeons, and do the Jack the Ripper tour, and go see the big tourist attractions. Yes, my trip to London was amazing. Yes, I would do most of it again (the trip to The Who Shop was disappointing...). But we didn't have enough time for everything. So, I want to go back, and I want to do everything I missed out on. Even if it took me two weeks of being a Tourist-with-a-capital-T.

Barcelona

Again, I've already been. Twice, in fact. But I love it, and it was the last place we went as a family. I want to see the architecture again, and Monte Serat, and the Gaudi museum. Everything, really. I want to see the city, and relive some memories, and try some of the more authentic local cuisine. The Hard Rock Cafe is good, but it's the same everywhere you go.

Paris

I never thought a huge amount about Paris beyond it being one of the big romantic getaways for couples. But, and this is largely from reading Michael Scott's books, I've come to see that the city is full of this extra life. Take into account the fact that two of my favourite people from history lived in the city - Nicholas Flamel, because of the myths around his life, and Marie Curie, because of her contributions to Science and recognised achievements in Physics and Chemistry - and it's a package deal. There are at least a dozen other people and reasons I'm not even thinking about right now, and that's just more reason to go see the city for myself.

Rome

When I was college, I had three opportunities to go to Rome, and I could never afford it. Ever. I always regretted that fact. So, I want to go myself (or, you know, with someone - not the point.) Basically, I just want to be a tourist for a bit, and eat fresh pasta, and try catch a mass with the Pope, even if at that moment in time I'm not feeling the whole Christian-vibe thing.

And the rest...

It's bad, but Europe keeps calling for me to visit it. I want to see Amsterdam, and Auschwitz, and Berlin. I want to go to Stockholm, and Edinburgh, and Belfast (which, really, isn't that difficult for me to do!) The main thing holding me back is money, because full-time work at a rate higher than minimum wage just isn't a reality for me at the moment. But I want to make it happen. When I finish my Masters, I want to mark one of these cities off my list. I want to just get away for a while, get some experience in the world. I think, before I get bogged down in the world of Being an Adult, I need to do some soul searching abroad. It's cliché, and everyone talks about doing it, and I think, right now, I really just need to make it happen. No more fussing about over it. No more just thinking about it.

Childhood Reading and Beyond

I've touched upon this recently, but I think it's worth looking at again: when I was younger, I didn't read much.

My problem was stories. I couldn't find one that I liked. My primary school's library was horribly out-dated. In all the time I was in that school, I found only a few books that I actually enjoyed. The one to start it all?

In Deep Dark Wood by Marita Conlon-McKenna. It had magic. It had dragons. It was perfect for me. If I hadn't read that, if I hadn't realised that that was the sort of book I wanted to read, then I might not have turned into a reader.

Yep, you read that correctly. And you know what? No reading, no writing.

It was thanks to that book that I could find enjoyment in literature as I grew older. I found Harry Potter, which got me hooked straight away. I also read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, though I felt certain I was too young for it at the time (10-11). Still, I managed it, and I loved it, and it didn't make me lose my faith in God, which is all the better. (That's a whole other issue. Faith is complicated. Let's move on.)

From Harry Potter, I found A Series of Unfortunate Events. In secondary school, I found Darren Shan. I was also introduced to Garth Nix, with the Abhorsen trilogy. By the end of 3rd year, I'd also found an interest in Douglas Adams, and had begun reading Dan Brown.

That was when I began to change as a reader. I wasn't put off by "adult" books anymore. Over the next few years, mainly as I was getting settled into college, I began experimenting with other authors.

From my childhood, I knew I liked the paranormal, fantasy, science fiction, superheroes. These were things I could look for in the future. They were things I relied upon, these guideposts for reading. Yet, slap bang in the middle of all that were Lemony Snicket and Dan Brown, and that gave me the push towards trying other books.

John Green, Maureen Johnson, Andrew Kaufman, Philip Roth, all of these on top of the other authors I found myself following, like Barry Hutchison and Andy Briggs and Steven Erickson.

And, eventually, I found non-fiction.

I now balance my reading between fiction - still lots of YA, but delving more into books intended for older readers when one looks interesting to me (as before, it all comes down to story - I won't read an "adult book" just because it's intended for older readers) - and non-fiction. I read a lot of books on writing, and business, and lifestyle management. I've touched upon books on mental health, and science, and to be honest, I'm happier with my reading habits now than I've ever been.

And it all started with a boy, a girl, and a neighbour with pet dragons. Who would have thought?

Where I Grew Up

Specifics aside, Dublin is and always has been my home. When I was a toddler, we lived in a tiny little house on a hill in a suburb, the road diving off to the right as you left the garden, the driveway a nightmare. We shared a bedroom, myself and my two brothers, and it stayed that way for a long time, even after we moved into a new house.

This new house - the one I'm living in now, until I really begin to Adult it up a bit and move out - gave us a bigger bedroom, with lots of extra room to play with our toys. They were simpler days. Eventually, my older brother moved to the boxroom, and later to the attic, and rooms in the house switched around, to the point that I'm the only person to have lived in all four bedrooms in the house since we moved in.

How's that for a fun fact?

Residents to what my parents described as a "main road" - really just the busiest road in the area until you reached the real "main road" - we were suddenly surrounded by families with children. By the time we were old enough to be allowed cross the road by ourselves - that was a thing in the 90s, that you weren't allowed to cross the road by yourself until you were older - there were at least thirty kids prowling the streets, coming from our road and one of two cul de sacs in the area.

We were loud, some of the mass of children were troublemakers, but all in all we were just living the suburban life of playing with a football on the road and watching out for cars. We rode our bikes, played football, hung around on swing sets in back gardens and ran away from dogs together.

A far cry from the city we live so close to, everything in my childhood was quiet and restrained and peaceful. With the odd exception of Halloween and New Years, there was barely any trouble worth mentioning that didn't boil down to neighbours just not understanding that kids will be kids.

(Side note: one Halloween, some of the teenagers in the area, when I was only about twelve, build a bazooka to shoot fireworks from. Wasn't that a fun discovery, when one of their rockets exploded on the other side of a window I was walking past!)

This little suburban life is probably what led to me wanting to travel a lot as I grew older. It can feel too small sometimes, especially when the option suddenly presents itself to leave the suburb, for the big park a few minutes down the road, for the city that's just a short bus ride away, to either one of two shopping centres on a single bus route, or three swimming pools, or any number of newsagents in walking distance (we had our favourites, back in the days of ten pence crisps and penny jellies).

It was a small world to grow up in, but it was safe, and it was homely.

In Five Years

My friend Rebecca asked a question of people, sometimes, when she's trying to get them to really think about their lives. She asked them, Where do you see yourself in five years?, not just out of curiosity, but because of what their answer means to their current situation. If you see yourself married with two kids in five years, but you're currently single and childless, you either have high expectations for the future, or you need to really start taking relationships more seriously.

If you want to be doing something in five years - mothering, publishing, travelling - you need to be working towards that now.

For me, it comes down to a happy little mix of writing, publishing and travelling.

Don't get me wrong. I don't expect to become an overnight hit in the writing department. Writing books isn't how you make money from writing. The biggest earners, aside from the big bestsellers in the publishing industry, are usually screenwriters. Of the Average Joe variety of writer, screenwriters make the most from a single piece of work. (It's also the most competitive market - fun!)

But I'd love to be doing it. I'd love to be trying my hand at screenwriting, while continuing to write my books, and attempting something of a freelance career. It's a difficult life to get started in, nearly impossible to do while in full-time education as an Undergrad. student, but it's not outside of my reach at this point in my life. I have books for guidance on screenwriting and freelancing, and I understand the book publishing sector relatively well, and it's just a case of applying everything I have to that dream.

That's what this month is all about for me, with Operation Overdrive. I want to create my work-life balance now, with an over-the-top last ditch attempt before my Masters starts in September.

And that Masters is where the second part of my five-year-dream comes in: publishing. My Masters is in Multimedia, which will help build up a skill-set in digital image editing, video production, and audio production - among other areas - which I see as being vital for publishing in the future. I have my own plans, aside from wanting to work with a major publishing house in the UK or the US or even here in Ireland (though there are fewer publishers here), and I'm confident that once I get the ball rolling, I'll be able to sort out something big.

Obviously, my explanation here will be lacking in details while they're still being worked on, but I've already started working on what I want to do, and how I want to do it, and it's just a case of getting the background work in place before I fully commit to it all - including putting my energy into the Masters.

As for the travelling, that's where things get complicated. Conventional work wouldn't allow for travel, and neither would a low income, and I don't plan on living at home when I'm approaching 30. I could tell you all of the places I want to go - and I will later in the month - but that doesn't explain how I'm going to afford it.

The travelling aspect is where I get to see the world. I know I can't afford to do it now, not while I'm saving everything I've got for the Masters (because aside from the fees, I'd like to get my own equipment, like a new laptop, and a proper camera). But if I could make the travel part of my work, if I could use it as research, or as part of a freelancing job, then it makes the money put into flights and accommodation part of the necessary expenses.

It's a child's dream, I suppose, but growing older doesn't mean that those dreams have to go away. Growing older just means that I can make more sense of those dreams, and how to make them a reality. In five years time, I want to be doing just that.

A Writer For the First Time

Identity is a big thing, and it turns out that leaving all of your friends to go to a new school is an excellent way of realising that your identity needs to be a little more established than "in the same class as..." or "friends with..."

The one constant in my life since secondary school started - and we're talking almost eleven years ago, here - has been writing. You would think, then, that I considered myself a writer from an early age. Nope.

It wasn't even when I finished my first book. I was just a guy who wrote a book. I was calling myself an "aspiring author", whatever the heck that's actually supposed to mean. Aspiring, from Google's definition, means "directing one's hopes or ambitions towards becoming a specified type of person." Wikipedia defines author as follows:

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility for what was created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work and can also be described as a writer.

There's nothing specific about being an author, except that an author writes something. It took a while, but eventually, I did something that would change the way I looked at myself: I dropped the phrase "aspiring author", and called myself a writer.

Why? It's simple: I felt like an author only wrote novels, and I felt like it was about time I stopped dreaming of doing that. I decided that I would actually just write the books I wanted to, and to write the stories and poems that I felt I was doing quite a poor job at.

It was only a few years ago that my Twitter bio reflected this unspoken change in me. A friend of mine encouraged any writers she knew to stop it with the whole "aspiring author" business, and I found things so much easier after that. I set up my own writer website, and I made the decision to start publishing my books.

I went eight years or more dreaming. Since then, I've been living that dream. It's not glamorous, but it's what I wanted as a kid. I was a writer for the first time in my life, in no uncertain terms.

The Birthday Blog

It's official: I'm 23 years old. I'm beyond the age of realising I'm no longer 21. I'm no longer required to carry I.D. with me everywhere, even though I will anyway because bouncers everywhere are suspicious of anybody who doesn't have some form of identification (and even those that do.)

I'm at age where I should start making some of the biggest choices of my life. (You know, the ones that are left after deciding what to study in college.) This time last year, that would have terrified me. But I have a degree. I've graduated. I've gone on the job hunt, and I've been told that - because of my experiences in and out of college - I would have been hired on the spot for a dream job...if the company were hiring. (It was still awesome to hear that.)

And, I've changed dirty nappies. Nothing's really so bad after you've seen the contents of a dirty nappy.

I've been out of college and working on a more-or-less part-time basis for about nine months now. Give or take a few weeks. I've avoided schools, and I avoided making any major decisions in a rush, because I've realised the importance of making my mind up properly. This is the year I plan on beginning my Masters course. I took a long time to mull it over, and to earn the money to pay for it, and I actually made up my mind on something that I fell in love with the moment I looked at the course description.

It's a big step in the right direction.

The only other major decision I've made before now has been to actually set up the publishing house I've been talking about with friends for a year now, and been planning to do since...2007? Around then. I've taken my time to really consider that one, because it's a lot to take on. Obviously, it'll be a small operation to begin with. I need to be able to run it part-time while doing my Masters.

I have plans for it, though. I've considered the easiest ways to run the business while also doing a lot of other work, and all things going according to plan, I'll be laying the foundations for it over the next few months. It's incredibly exciting, and I finally feel like I understand enough about publishing and business to make a decent attempt at starting this thing.

I don't think I could have done it even a few months ago. The world seemed too...intimidating? I don't know if that's necessarily the right word for it, but things were definitely different. A birthday wasn't the big change I needed, of course, but I like to put a date on things. It's like how I use New Year's Day to make a fresh start. I would have used February 1st if I needed the extra month to prepare for what I had planned for the year, but I was good to go earlier.

To be perfectly honest, I don't see much else changing now that I've turned 23. I don't see myself suddenly dressing differently, or acting differently, or changing the plans I began executing only 6 weeks ago. I'm still going to be publishing the books I wanted to publish this year. I just feel like maybe I can live up the whole "must be mature" idea that I've put in my head.

And, just for the record, having Saturdays off work is amazing. This is the first time I've had one off since November, and that was because I had graduated the day before. And, well, I didn't want to risk having "grown-up problems" in work the next day. But today was just about lazing around the house, and having pancakes for breakfast, and getting to play Final Fantasy 13.

Then again, maybe turning 23 doesn't mean being mature.

Another Project?

Lately I've been toying with the idea of starting a new book review site. It's another big project, I know, and I have to consider how it would fit into my schedule. For anyone else considering the idea, themselves, here's how I see it breaking down in the preparation stages:

- I'll write several reviews in advance, to have them ready to go,
- I'll organise several pages of book recommends without reviews, and
- I'll arrange a time in my weekly schedule to post the reviews.

I've already done two things: I've drawn up a list of books I've read recently that I could review, and I've drawn up a list of categories I could put together lists of books for. The scheduling part is the bigger problem. Right now, my weekly posting looks like this:

Monday: a diary-entry story on ParagraVerse, from Andrew McCourt
Tuesday: a new poem, written especially for ParagraVerse
Wednesday: a new blog post here
Thursday: an older poem, perhaps one that's been on YouTube in the past (as is currently the case), on ParagraVerse
Friday: a new flash fiction story on ParagraVerse (currently working on writing prompt stories)
Saturday: a new blog post here
Sunday: a new article on my website

The only way I can see this working without posting too much every week is to remove one of those seven items. I know that the Sunday article will remain, as well as the diary entry and the Friday flash story. Most likely, I'll only post one blog post here per week, unless I have something to say.

However, this still leaves a problem. I have to actually read a lot of books for this, and reading series books just isn't going to cut it. Why? Because if I liked one, I'll probably like the others, too. Then, every review will end up looking similar. The reason my last attempt at a review site failed was because I became overly aware that everything was getting five stars.

That's just praising everything. That's not doing a good job.

So, I need to read more widely. That's the only way to avoid only reading the really good books. Obviously, I'd love to only read good books, but I think that might get boring for the reader.

Basically, I'm really considering, but I have my doubts. I don't want to come across as boring for liking so many books and really disliking anything. The fact that I very rarely don't finish a book doesn't so much say a lot about the books I read; I just don't like leaving them unread.

However, it's an idea. What do you think? Did you enjoy reading my book reviews when I used to post them here?

PS I managed to release 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block on time! You can find it on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HYMVZJ2

A Clear and Certain Plan

Later this month, I plan on announcing my publishing plans for 2014. I don't normally do that, but then I don't normally have the time to dedicate to writing from the offset.

Last January was an anomaly. I was lucky to get home early almost every night while on teaching placement. This gave me time to make tea in the comfort of my own home, work at my own desk and at my own pace, and free myself from the distractions that arise from the wonderful people I call my friends. (I would want to talk to them all the time - it's just easier to blame them for being so distracting than it is to accept that it's actually just my own fault. This doesn't count as a confession because it's in brackets. Obviously.)

With all of that in mind, I was able to write a book in the evenings, after I had my lessons planned for the next day. That book would become Planning Before Writing. I did not know when I started writing it that I would be able to publish it in March.

This December, I've already begun planning my publishing schedule. There are a couple of things I need to work on doing, still, and a couple of books that - when I announce the schedule - will be untitled, but overall I have a plan of what I'll be doing next year. This is unheard of for me.

What's changed? I'm not in college. I don't have exams to dread in May. I don't have essays due in throughout the year. I don't have teaching placement in January. Unless things change drastically for me, I'm looking at working only three and a half days a week on average - two in the bookshop, the remainder of the time minding my niece.

Effectively, my time is freed up completely at the time of the year when I'm most able to focus: January. It's been a need to develop that for the past few years, and last year I had the added bonus of creating a New Year's Resolution that would keep me writing consistently for a long time.

But let's just be clear on something: I didn't stick to it this year. There are days that I didn't write anything. By the time I'd written a poem every day for two months and blogged every day for that amount of time, too, I just ran out of things to say. Okay, not entirely true. I actually just hit a slump one week, and it took a while to get the ball rolling again. I'm still not entirely sure what happened, there.

What's different this time around is that I'm not just planning on writing every day. I'm not giving myself a big list of options to work from. I'm focusing entirely on one project at a time. It'll make more sense, soon, but effectively I'm giving myself assignments like I'd have in college, and using my time to create whatever book or article it is that I'm supposed to do.

This is my self-made work. It's all things I'm passionate about, things I've been wanting to do for a long time, now, and just never got around to doing. I'm approaching 2014 with a clear plan in mind, and I'm going to make sure that I actually stick to it. It's not just a hobby any more. This is work. This is business.

What 'Work' Means

When applying for a job, the typical CV includes a number of details that effectively break down as a simple introduction to who you are and how you see yourself. Let's look at my CV briefly, leaving out the details like where I live, and the specifics of where I work. Safety first online.

Hi there. My name is Paul Carroll, I'm twenty two, and I'm a recent college graduate. I have six and a half years' experience as a bookseller, I write books and plays, I consider myself quite empathetic towards others, and I took part in Drama while in college. I'm technically a qualified teacher, a detail I include to indicate that I have developed skills in communication, organisation and working with large groups of people in sometimes stressful situations.

Looking at that, it's not a bad introduction. However, if I had this in in the form of a CV, what it looks like is:

Hi there. My name is Paul Carroll, I'm twenty two, and I'm a recent college graduate. I have six and a half years' experience as a bookseller, in a shop where my time is valued at minimum wage. I write books and plays, but I haven't ventured into the world of traditional publishing. As the current understanding of what it means to be published is still changing, you might think I'm either afraid of failure, or that I am a failure. I consider myself quite empathetic towards others, which is my way of saying I'm sensitive to others and their needs; while this is useful when working with the public, as a personality trait it's underestimated. I took part in Drama while in college, something I can point out to show that I had a balanced work-and-social life, but that might also suggest I could bring the theatrics with me. That is not always the case. I'm technically a qualified teacher, a detail I include to indicate that I have developed skills in communication, organisation and working with large groups of people in sometimes stressful situations. My lack of a teaching position might indicate that I never bothered, or no school would hire me. The former makes it look like I changed my mind, which makes me look fickle.

With the added cynicism, my CV doesn't look too great. It indicates that I am undervalued but not willing to take drastic measures to change that. It suggests I chose self-publication for reasons other than the challenge of doing it all myself. It doesn't say much about what it really means to pay attention to how others are feeling, or how Drama helps to develop a sense of belonging to a group about which I was passionate. Furthermore, it doesn't say much about how I feel about the teaching world right now, or my position in it.

On the latter, I'll be brief. Teaching in Ireland is tricky at the moment. There are union problems. There's a new Junior Cycle programme on its way in. At least, that was the plan. These are all adding to the workload and food for thought for teachers, who must still prepare lessons for pupils, grade work, prepare exams, and - when industrial action isn't taking place - arrange meetings and out-of-school trips. It's all quite headache inducing at the moment, and I'm barely four years older than the sixth year students.

I'm not on a sub list for teaching at the moment as a result of a combination of the above paragraph and, more significantly with regards timing and scheduling my life, the time I spend working in the bookshop and minding my niece. The sub list is not a guarantee for work. Few people on it will work every week, fewer of them every day of every week, and fewer still will be lucky enough to find sub work as maternity leave cover. I'm not currently in a position to drop everything with an hour's notice Monday to Friday. Social obligations are less of an issue - friends would understand. It's the days I could be working in the bookshop, or the days I'm minding my niece, that would cause problems.

So, that's that. That's why I'm not currently working as a teacher.

However, even that represents only a limited understanding of what it means to be a teacher. Looking at my CV again, we can see a few key points jumping out: I'm a writer, with speaking practice, trained as a teacher. Those three points actually go together remarkably well.

You see, my college experience has helped shape me into someone who is quite capable of doing something I wouldn't have thought possible fifteen years ago - when I didn't know what it meant to be a published writer, when writing books wasn't even an option because I had never found a book for my age that told a story I really loved. (That came later.) What's changed is that I'm in a position to make my own work as a teacher.

Classrooms are important for group teaching. That said, they're only vital when the group is consistently larger than a dozen - at least on the class list. Nowadays, technology allows for group discussions through video conferencing (and conversing) software. Google Hangouts make talking to a group of people an easy to manage environment. But even with that in mind, the Internet and the advent of digital publishing and the decreased requirement for a "gatekeeper" allows for someone like me to redefine what 'work' means.

I've spoken about this already, but this is what I'm planning in 2014. I'll be back to working barely any hours in the week, still on minimum wage. I'll have plenty of time to myself during the week, time which I can use to revalue myself publicly. Lets face it, I have nothing to lose in trying to work on things I'm actually passionate about - not magazines and newspapers and stationery, not someone's problem with a book they received, or the finer details that arise from working under a brand name, but in a different company altogether.

Work shouldn't have to be about doing things at a pay-rate that belittles the trouble you go to for people, or the effort you put in to make sure everything runs smoothly. Work shouldn't have to involve doing something that doesn't make you happy.

Yes, I'm grateful to have a job. But it's not good work. Retail, especially at Christmas, is difficult. I'm at the end of six days working full time, leaving me exhausted and exasperated, and the closest thing I get to a Christmas bonus is €20 under my name for a Christmas party that hasn't even been arranged yet. This is after restocking and re-merchandising the shop for six days in a row. This is after customer complaints over transactions I wasn't involved in - too often not even from my shop. This is after customers failing to observe the store's opening hours. This is after recommending and/or locating books at least a dozen times a day - most likely more than that. That, for minimum wage.

I'd like to clarify: I understand the company's financial situation. I understand the rush at Christmas. This isn't about the job itself. It's about how much value is placed on the work I do, from where I'm sitting. I know that come January, things will go back to what could loosely be described as normal. I know I'll be back to working just weekends, despite having proved myself as being able to handle more than just the few hours I receive with the responsibility that's placed on me.

Having a job and being valued for your work are two different things. I know what it would take when I control my work to indicate that I am valued. I know the difference between the job I have in the bookshop and the work I'm putting into place for next year. I know what work means to me, and what I ought to be valued at, and I know how it looks from the outside. All I have to do now is make sure it's clear from the point of view of others when I'm working and when I'm not. (Here's a hint: if I'm typing a lot on my laptop, writing a lot on notepad, or looking intently at a screen - sometimes with a tablet and a pen in my hand - then I'm probably working. Even if you hear music blaring at the same time. It's called a 'working environment'.)

Daily Content and a Publishing Schedule

While reading The Millionaire Messenger (and yes, eventually I will stop mentioning that book), it occurred to me that if I really want to sell books, I need to do more than just write books, or writing articles or stories when I wanted to sell a book. Having brought up the book so much, and thought about it a lot, I got the idea to publish The Winter Folk over the period of December.

It was a no-end-in-sight plan. Not that it had no end, but that I wasn't doing it for a particular reason other than: (1) I wanted to do something nice in the run up to Christmas and (2) ParagraVerse has been awfully lonely, lately. So, I wrote it as twelve-part poem, to help make it last longer while my work schedule picked up.

As it happens, the poem created its own end.

In the writing of it, I began to think about how interesting I might find the story to write. In particular, I wanted to write the story of the Ice Queen. The world has seen Jack Frost. The world knows all about Santa Claus. But the Ice Queen... well, any time there's a queen or a witch who dresses in white and surrounds herself in ice or snow, she seems to be a villain.

Not for me, not this time.

So, that's what I'm writing now. The Ice Queen. It's a short story. I'm hoping to publish it for Kindle later this month. I'll need to design a cover, soon. And write the two flash stories I want to publish this month on ParagraVerse, too. All of this, out of a little wish to write a poem and make it last.

I hadn't even been set on writing this, until yesterday. And even then, I only thought about it. It wasn't until I actually sat down to plan a schedule that I also decided to plan the book. The schedule was for daily content online this month. I know I missed December 1st, but from then on out I've got things in mind. The Winter Folk helps by taking up half the days between now and Christmas. Thankfully, the poem also sparked a book which sparked a couple of other pieces that need to go online.

Somehow, the poem created a published schedule around itself.

It wasn't the practice I had in mind, but that's fine. At least I know in January, when I get to work on a campaign towards launching another book, I'll have an idea of how best to follow through on my ideas. Scheduling is definitely of benefit to me. It's basically the only way I'm managing this right now.

Anyway, my original plan for daily content, now fully completed, is seeing the following going online:

- 8 blog posts,
- 9 videos,
- 2 flash stories,
- 2 poems - one in 12 parts, and
- 1 ebook.

How much of this is written or prepared? Less than half. How much will be prepared in advance and pre-scheduled? More than half. And how much of it is going to be fun to put together?

I'm going to go with just about all of it.

What this all boils down to is releasing a lot of content that I find interesting, setting new challenges for myself on a regular basis, writing about what I know and, with the exception of the ebook, making it all free for anyone to look at. I think it's a fair deal, getting all of that for nothing and having no obligation to buy the story in the end. And if you enjoy yourself along the way, all the better. That is the point of this sort of stuff, after all, to provide some entertainment.

If all goes well, I'll keep up this sort of thing in 2014, and not just because I'll be releasing new books in the future. This is the essence of The Millionaire Messenger, I think, or part of it at least. The best way to reach an audience is to give people something for nothing, and tell them that there's also something they can buy if they want. The point, though, is that the "messenger" is passionate about what they're talking about.

I think in this case, that goes without saying.

(P.S. If you want to keep up with everything I post this month, Twitter is probably your best bet. You can find me @writeranonymous.)

Small-Scale Practice

One of my aims for next year is to post something online regularly. I don't just mean a tweet or a Facebook status. I mean a video, or a poem (or a piece of poem), a short story, a blog post, an article, an interview - something that adds some sort of value. If I could, I'd do it every day. And so, that's what I'm trying to do from this week on.

Monday saw the first part of a poem go online. Entitled The Winter Folk, it's my run up to Christmas poem. You can read the first part here: http://paragraverse.wordpress.com/2013/12/02/the-winter-folk-part-1/

Tuesday featured a video, uploaded to my YouTube channel. I'm normally adverse to posting my videos on my Facebook page, so if you're reading this you're seeing something I wouldn't have otherwise shared with you.

Wednesday saw part two of The Winter Folk go online, and automatically so. I made the decision from day one that I wouldn't have to worry about when I posted the poem. ParagraVerse would sort it all out for me. I just needed to share the link later in the day. Thankfully, the site has a few subscribers already, so they'll receive it without my having to do anything.

And today, I have a blog post. Friday will see part three of The Winter Folk. Saturday, who knows. It depends on how my time gets divided between now and then. The important thing is, I'm keeping up with my schedule of posting online.

Obviously, it won't be this easy when I'm doing it all the time. I won't always have a twelve-mini-part poem to post online, because it won't always be the run up to Christmas. I can, however, begin sticking to a posting schedule that isn't too difficult to main, by writing regularly. If I wanted to, I could make a proper schedule for when things roll out properly. I already know that I'd like articles up on Saturdays, poems on Tuesdays, and short stories on Fridays. But that doesn't say much about the rest of the week.

Essentially, though, keeping up posting online is relatively easy when you take a page out of Alex Day's book: create a lot of content in one day, and schedule it for release over a number of days and weeks without your having to be there. That's the kind of intention I have, simply because I find that the reason I don't do something is because I couldn't get to my laptop to type it up.

However, I can share from my tablet or my phone. I don't need to worry about typing something like a blog post or an article on them when they're already written and just going live at a particular time. I can still be there to respond to people's comments, or tweet about something else entirely, without having to concern myself with the practicalities of how and when I'll be able to write something on a given day. When I have Drama or work, that challenge becomes ever more difficult to address, and the end result is that I avoid posting anything online at all.

So, I'm starting small. I have The Winter Folk on schedule to publish, and this very blog post will be set up to post, even though I'll probably be at my laptop when it goes live anyway. Why? Because it means I don't have to stop doing what I was doing to write (or even just publish) a blog post that I could have easily written before and just didn't because it wasn't the right day. I plan on writing for an hour or so every day, no matter what, but I already know when that'll become impractical. On days like that, at least I won't have to concern myself with whether or not I'm producing enough regularly. Scheduling might be the key to keeping up regular posting. We'll see how it works out this month - my busiest in the bookshop - before rolling it out officially in January.

Learning From Home

With my graduation drawing that little bit closer, I'm beginning to notice how little I learn these days when compared to life in formal education. And you know what? It sucks. I hate not learning something new every day.

I've remedied this, slightly, by beginning to read the business and marketing books I've got on my shelves. I think I would have hated studying them in college and having to write about what other people did in those fields, and studying general principles of them - as opposed to having a look at literature as a whole, and studying religion both in depth and as a basic concept, and studying child psychology and education - but they're two of my favourite things to read about at home.

The books vary depending on my mood, but most recently I read through two of the books in the Teach Yourself (In a Week) series. One of them I read in a day - something like three chapters before work and four afterwards - instead of spreading it out over the week. More recently, though, I'm reading Brendon Burchard's The Millionaire Messenger.

Now, I'm under no misconceptions that I might become a millionaire in a short period of time. It's not a get-rich-quick book. What it is is a book that's getting me thinking, specifically about my strengths and experience, and in a positive light. I'm on a few chapters in and it's already had me pick up a pen and paper and jot down (in key words) everything I know about a topic, and begin writing a book because of that list. Best of all, though, is that I'm only getting started on the book.

One of things that's been missing since I finished up in college was a sense of direction. With modules, there's always something to aim towards, some assignment that needs doing, or an exam to...anticipate. While I'm glad to be free from the strict and horrible deadlines and stress that arise from such things - especially exams - I do miss having the defined course in front of me, and miss learning what someone else sees as being important.

Hence the learning from home, and reading through entire books on a wide range of topics under particular subjects. Basically, I have a need to learn something that hasn't gone away since my final exams. I'm glad for that, and even happier to have actually gotten back into the habit of reading regularly.

It's not just the business books, mind you. I mean, I'm not testing myself on any of this, but part of what made my course fun was having fiction thrown into the mix. So, I've been reading fiction. My home reading is non-fiction, but my lunches in work and every bus journey I take are devoted to reading. I'm half-way through book 4 in the Mortal Instruments series already, having also read a number of other books too, since September.

If I'm remembering my reading list correctly, since reading City of Bones, I've also read Everyday, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, and Numbers, with City of Ashes and City of Glass following them up. Before those, I read Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Severed Heads, Broken Hearts, and volume one of Morning Glories.

While it's not a huge amount, it's more than I had time to read in the same amount of time while I was still a student. My hope is to finish up the Mortal Instruments books soon, then give something else a try. If I have a lot of hours in December for the run up to Christmas, I know I'll have plenty of lunch breaks to fill with books.

What I'd love is to actually get myself into a routine of reading a book per week of fiction and of non-fiction, while also writing. However, the way things are working out of late, I haven't had much of a chance to set up a weekly routine. It had been my hope at the end of the summer to have a full schedule lined up for myself, but work hours haven't been regular enough for that. (And, I'll admit, I've been lazy at times.)

Generally speaking, though, I think I'm getting on to a good start in terms of reading, and my new writing project could set me on the path to writing more regularly as well. I've done just enough work on it that abandoning it now is just wasteful, so that's a relief. That said, I'm only 12% into it. Tomorrow night might see me add another chunk to it, but it won't be much. Still, early starts and (almost) daily contributions to the book will see it finished in no one. Just like Planning Before Writing before it, this book can be done in bits and pieces, steadily over a period of time, without me worrying about losing my place.

And here's my question for you: are you reading anything interesting at the moment? Any Young Adult or Business recommendations you can make?

Planning Before Living

As my teaching placement in January came to a finish, it began to feel extremely real that I was leaving college. It was a nervous and exciting time, but it raised a question: what do I do now? I knew there was one thing I definitely wanted to do: I wanted to get a Masters degree.

Two problems then arose:
- What do I want to study in? (And where?)
- How can I afford it?

The second problem was much more easy to address: I can't. Working weekends only, it is literally impossible for me to save up the average full sum required to sit a Masters course in Ireland. For the whole summer, that's all I was able to manage in work - not because I wasn't willing to work, but because the hours weren't there.

Now, I'm in a position to receive a few more hours per week. My boss is currently out of commission, and so we can't mention anything further to him, but my colleagues and I have been talking, and it makes sense to us that I work four days per week - not just a few hours on a Saturday, and a full-day on Sunday. Even if I managed to work just four days in the week, I've worked it out that I can still save up for a course to begin in September 2014.

That's without giving up on comic books, the cinema, magazines or other various expenses that pop up, too, which effectively means that I'm in a position, all things going according to plan (and a plan that makes sense to six people, myself included), to begin a Masters this time next year.

But that still leaves the other problem: what course would I actually do?

Part of me is considering Chaplaincy. Another part of me is considering Creative Writing. There's even a part of me that would love to go on to study Counselling. Each have their own pros and cons to consider, and I'm sure when I seriously start looking into courses things will only get more complicated. Now that I actually feel like I'm in a position to actually afford it, I can actually consider things beyond just what I'd like to do in some hypothetical universe.

Here was me thinking that I was done with college. Ha!

Life requires a lot of planning like this, though, I've come to realise. I know that while taking an extra year of study, I may have to face reduced working hours. It's also a massive chunk of money I can't put aside for saving, or use to travel (like I've wanted to for years, now!). I'm still planning to go away next year for a few days, but I do have to seriously consider the costs of everything before I go ahead with it. That's not just about the travelling; I mean everything that isn't already on my list of expenses.

As well as planning my expenses and income, I've also been looking at a few different things, from video schedules to writing plans, and considering the best course of action to take on a number of different projects. From one that currently looks like an interactive fantasy story, to a web series on YouTube, to a content-filled blog, I've got a lot of work ahead of me for so many different projects. I don't think I'll run out of work to do over the next few months, at least!

It seems like a lot to plan, but it also seems strangely necessary. Not because I might go against my plans, but because I'm not sure I could keep myself focused on one specific exciting thing for long enough to get truly involved in it. I know that once I get it into my system to write a particular thing, or record videos every x days, like I did with my daily-blogging and daily poetry exercises, it'll just be part of my life.

And isn't that the point? To read, to write, to create, to earn, to study. Isn't that the point of all this planning, that it just becomes life?

A Wee Holiday

I don't dare to look at the date on the last published post on this blog: I gave myself a wee holiday from the Internet, and forgot to come back. So, here I am, in the cyber flesh, somewhat overworked as the change-over in work continues to baffle me with builders and deliveries and my transfiguration from man to newspaper ink as we put the little pieces of the Sunday Times together.

Evidently, I don't holiday well. Holidaying should imply rest, or at least doing something that isn't work, for a period of time. Instead, I was just away from my laptop, barely tweeting, not telling Facebook the ins-and-outs of my life, not blogging or vlogging or Google Plussing. I haven't done much by way of social media interaction since sometime in August, and I suppose I should apologise for that. Except apologies are over-rated when they don't have an explanation behind them, so here's how things happened.

The week following my last blog post - if I'm remembering when that was, exactly - was all a massive setting-up process for a weekend of Shenanigans and Buffoonery at my house. We had a Family Thing. That's about as much detail as you'll get on that. Needless to say, though, that the prep-work and everything else involved and the fact that I had all of this going on and a complete lack of willingness to talk about it online pretty much left me with nothing to blog about without pulling a random topic out of my...notebook. Let's say notebook. It's more family friendly.

Following the Weekend of Madness, which included some time off work, I ended up with a lot of hours in the bookshop as we went through with a major aspect of our change-over. I was also walking to and from work every day, which meant that from around eight until seven I was out of the house or getting in/out of my uniform. Somehow, I managed to maintain a weak semblance of a social life while doing all of this, going to the cinema a couple of times and having dinner out (the joys of KFC...which I can't see myself wanting to eat for a long, long time now) and actually talking to people.

At one point, I had some fun putting together a list of things I'm actually good at. I have a little portfolio in my room, now, which I want to keep adding to. It felt good to put it together, to make things seem a little bit less crap and a little bit more...possible? I suppose that's how it feels. Like things are possible. The big bad scary world of post-college life is a little less terrifying with a good idea of what I'm actually capable of now sitting in my bedroom.

During my time away from the Internet, I also managed to get myself back reading. I've even made the executive decision to make videos about the books I'm reading, since I don't make videos often enough.

And, of course, I've picked up The Sims 3 again. Something about living vicariously through digital minions is oddly fulfilling. At the moment, I'm playing using a married couple of a fairy and a wizard, just for the fun of it. It does mean that they share different beds (she sleeps in a fairy house outside...) but they're also capable of running a house rather efficiently. She can use her fairy magic to repair broken objects without fear of death, and he can magically upgrade objects without...well, fear of death, again. I lost a Sim in an earlier game to an electric shock. Thankfully, it's just a game...

While I've been contemplating many ideas for stories in my time away from the Internet, I've been keeping the writing to a minimum. It hasn't exactly been fun, not writing, but from this blog post on I'm getting things going again. I'm back from my wee little holiday, and it's time to get to business.

Subscribers, wha'?

On Friday, I launched ParagraVerse, my new prose and poetry blog. With that, came Bed, my horror flash fiction story. Today, the first Tuesday since the launch day, I put up the first poem to the site: The Stars Went Out and Left Us Behind.

What I have noticed in each case is that (a) I have gotten a few 'likes' from other Wordpress users, (b) I have gotten at least one comment per post and (c) at least one person has subscribed each time. And just for the record, these aren't bragging rights.

In fact, the only reason I'm highlighting this is because people ask me (rather often, in fact) which blogging platform they should use. While Blogger is fully Google-integrated, it's labels don't do much for helping other Blogger users find your posts. I've also found that it's a slightly longer process to subscribe to someone's blog via Blogger.

Wordpress, on the other hand, while not totally Google-integrated, allows for other Wordpress users to find blog posts more easily. (This is true of Wordpress.com, not of using the .org self-hosting option.) What this means, of course, is that more people you don't know can find your post more easily just by searching a tag, or by seeing your post pop up in the Freshly Pressed section of Wordpress.com. Subscribing is also a much quicker process.

Let's make it clear: I didn't set up ParagraVerse for subscribers. I set it up to share prose and poetry. However, subscribers are a sign to me that people are interested in reading what I've written. I don't, and won't, display my subscriber numbers (unless running a competition when I reach X amount of subscribers - then I'd need to display it to prove it) because the subscribers are, to me, the people who want to read my work, not the number I can show people who come to the site.

The advantage of having subscribers, of course, is that the task of sending your work to people is done for you by their action of subscribing. While I will always post a link on the various social media sites I use to new poems and stories, not everyone who reads them is necessarily following me on Facebook, Twitter or Google+.

And, while I'm talking about it, I'd like to openly thank everyone who has thus far (a) subscribed, (b) commented on, (c) liked and/or (d) read Bed or The Stars Went Out and Left Us Behind. It means a lot to me to receive such positive feedback after so little work has gone up. I hope you'll stick with me as I add to the collection of stories and poems over the coming months.

Creative Block?

Okay, that title might be pushing it. I don't quite have a block on my creativity as much as a severe case of The Lazies. I'm still getting ideas and planning stories, but I'm not doing anything with them.

And that, as you can guess, is a problem.

So, I'm going to spend a wee bit of time in the morning trying to get my creative gears going. I may end up doing some crafty stuff, like drawing or Celtic designs, but I'd like to get some poetry written and a flash story written, too. Basically, anything to get myself doing something with my time.

It's been too easy to play Pokémon Yellow all day, and follow it up with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's my childhood all over again, except I can do it all day long.

(As it happens, I did something earlier, but it will remain, for a wee while, a secret. It's not done yet, so I don't really want to show it around. I'm calling it a prototype.)

We watched a movie today, though. Myself, my brother and my dad all sat down and watched Jack the Giant Slayer. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Funny, adventurous, and with clever twists on the story we all know. If you haven't seen it, I would definitely recommend it. It's especially good as a family movie (and I don't just mean families with young children!)

Anyway, I'm going to keep this short. There's tea to be had, stuff to be read, and if the television is free, Buffy to watch. Tomorrow, I'm going to beat The Lazies to death. Creative block my arse.