How Was 2010 For You?

           As my 2010 began I was getting the last of my first 100 followers.  I had set the goal in October of 2009 to get 100 by the end of the year.  Oh well, I was a few days late, but that was okay in my book  After a little over three months of blogging I was starting to grasp an inkling of how it all worked.

          After I got the 100, I set my next goal for 200 by April 1.  Blogging daily, I had gotten settled into a writing routine.  The followers came on a regular basis now that I knew more about how it all worked.   My second goal came before the April 1 projection.  That's when I tossed out to the readers the concept of the Blogging From A to Z April Challenge.

         This was my celebration and I wanted others to join with me.  And, by golly, they did.  The Blogging From A to Z Challenge was a success.  I made a lot of new blogging friends and picked up another 100 followers during the month of April.  This was the highlight of the year for Tossing It Out.

             Blogging was becoming old hat for me now.  I was churning out posts and making my daily deadline.  I was also starting to look forward to my first blog anniversary in September.

               When the one year of daily blogging date came I soon cut back to a three day schedule.  This works better for me and each post gets more readers than the daily posts did.  Of course, it still seems like there's never enough time to get  everything done.

               Once again I participated in NaNo and completed that challenge without a hitch.   This novel should actually see completion very soon.  Then it will be on to editing and rewriting and so on.

              On the non-blogging level I'm getting by fine.  My health remains good, but my job outlook is still bleak for now.  I've been enjoying my first granddaughter as she passes her second birthday and is not a terrible two child by any means.   My daughter who was getting married last December has delivered me a second beautiful granddaughter less than two weeks ago.  Life is simply grand.

               This year I will try to get something to happen to my first completed novel Time Light.  I also want to wrap up my father's project The Autobiography of a Nobody and my 2009 NaNo novel A Desert Place--I am a year behind on both of these.

                Is anyone up for another April Blogging From A to Z Challenge?

                How was your year?   What were the highlights?   What do you plan for 2011?


     Happy New Year!   

A Blog Blossoms

......continued from yesterday.

       I was now writing every day.  Blogging had begun to feel like a part time job that I wasn't getting paid for.  I was taking this job seriously.  When I wasn't writing my blog post, applying for jobs, or tending my Craigslist offerings, I was researching the art of blogging to learn what I needed to do to make my blog work best.  I did not have any schedule or particular plan.  I would just write something related to Halloween and post it sometime during each day.

         By my fourth post I signed up as a follower on Stephen T. McCarthy's blog and left him a comment so that he would know that I now had a blog.  He in turn became my first follower and left my first blog comments on my post of September 23rd.  Comments and a follower!  I was thrilled.

         On Sepember 28th I received my first unsolicited out-of-the-blue comment from Jennifer Hudson Taylor.  It was one of the most helpful comments I have received.  She suggested that I develop a blog schedule themed according to each day of the week.  I decided I would take her advice after my Halloween posting was finished.

          I soon began racking up followers and getting more comments on my blog posts.  My blogging enterprise was taking off.   However, I checked my AdSense request each day and still no approval.  I could not figure out what the problem was and my inquiries to Google went unanswered.  I did not understand, but I was starting not to care either.  It was becoming more about the writing and the potential that writing held for me.  Perhaps ads were not something I wanted on my site.

          My research was starting to indicate to me that AdSense did not really yield much income at all, if any.  Would I really want advertising on this blog that had become more about the writing than anything else?  I was faithfully composing articles that often involved a great deal of research at times and at other times were personal observations and memoirs.  The latter were the posts that seemed to elicit comments whereas the more informational posts were typically ignored.  I was starting to get a feel for the type of subject matter that was most likely to gain and retain readers.

          I was also becoming a part of a blog community that mostly consisted of writers, which was helpful to my writerly pursuits.  Having learned about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) that would be occurring in November I decided to sign up and attempt to fulfill a long time dream of writing a novel.  The discipline of daily writing and corresponding with other bloggers was taking hold.   I was exerting a writing discipline that I had never had before in my life.  
        On Halloween, October 31, of 2009 I announced my new blog schedule which I would be working on concurrently with writing my novel, A Desert Place.  I became regimented with blogging and writing.  By the end of November, I had completed the 50,000 words required to "win" the NaNo competition and had successfully posted and commented on a daily basis.  In a two month span, I had passed the fifty follower milestone and was getting comments on a regular basis.  I set a goal of 100 followers by the New Year.

        What happen to AdSense?   Who knows.  It didn't matter to me now.  I was more concerned with blog integrity.  Now I had a writer's blog and I felt that ads might convey the wrong impression.  I was more concerned about getting readers and having a presence on the internet.  The all important platform was now my quest.  I needed to establish my name and my reputation.

 .......more of the story later, but first.......

        Tomorrow I'll be joining Elana Johnson's Writing Compelling Characters Blogfest.  If you haven't signed up yet, you still have an opportunity.  Most of you probably are well aware of the great potential in increasing the follower count on your blog by joining one of these blogfests.   This one should be a doozey since as I write this the sign up count is already at 151 participants. 

          My contribution to this blogfest will be in line with my One Year Blog Anniversary as I discuss how I have used "compelling characters" in some of my blog posts.

           Next Monday I will complete the history of Tossing It Out in a Blog Boggled installment which will describe the techniques I used to gain followers and encourage readership.  It's more Blog Science--some strategies you may have already heard and some ideas that may be new to you.  I hope we get some information interchange going where we can all learn something about blogging that will help us to blog better.

Persnickety Penman: Actual Accuracy

            Last Wednesday I wrote about my relationship to Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson and I made a mis-statement which I have gone back and corrected.  Originally I stated that there were no direct decendants of Stonewall Jackson,  This is not true.   I was corrected by my aunt, Nancy Jackson, who is a past president of the Jackson Brigade.

         Actually Stonewall's daughter Julia bore two children before dying at age 26.  These two children had several more children and this line continues to the present time.  When I made my original statement I was relying on faulty memory which I backed up with an incomplete geneological chart which I have in my possession.  The chart does not continue on with Julia's offspring so along with the data from my misinformed memory bank and this chart I came to the conclusion that no descendants continued on Stonewall's line.

         This is only a blog post, but nevertheless I like to know that what I state here is accurate.  I suppose my mistake was a fairly minor offense, however if this had been done in a published article or a book this would have been quite serious.  A historian or an author of a nonfiction work would be subject to derision and loss of credibility to have made such a serious error as this.  Solid research from multiple sources is imperative when citing claims as factual.

         So what about fiction?   If a writer makes major errors in a work, the suspension of disbelief can be severely impaired if the facts aren't straight.  A glaring error might cause a reader to become distracted from the story and shake their head at the author's carelessness.  Especially if you are dealing with real places, people, or events, you should take care to research everything you can about those devices you are using in your work.

           In the novel I am currently working on, A Desert Place, I continually refer to an atlas to make sure my locales, highways, and travel distances are accurate.  I also refer to various online resources to obtain details about cities concerning neighborhoods, demographics, crime statistics, and other detailed facts in order to make sure that the feel  of the settings I use are realistic.  Whenever possible, since my story deals with events of 30 years ago, I have consulted meteorological  information sites to make sure the weather that I describe on specific dates in specific locales is accurate.   I am trying to create a sense that the story I am telling is something that might have really happened.

         When writing fiction, how far do you go to be detailed in accuracy?  Am I being too picky about my details?  What are some of the sources you like to use for obtaining accurate data?  Have you ever made a glaring inaccuracy in your writing that was funny or perhaps caused a problem?

No Mo Nano Fo Now

                    "Pencils down. Time to hand in your papers."  That's almost what it felt like--one of those college essay tests where you say some pretty good things and bluff your way through the rest.  But I made it to the end--50,314 words.  I met the proposed challenge but I'm not finished by any means.

          From the beginning I was certain that I could do it.  My plan was to write the novel, keep posting my blog everyday, comment on other blogs on a regular basis, and keep living my life as normally as possible and I pulled it off.  Granted I was at the advantage of not having to go to a full-time job every day and I certainly have to admire anyone was going to work and writing every night (or day).

         This was the challenge that I needed and thanks to my newfound enterprise of blogging I might have never heard of NaNoWriMo.  So call it God directing me or happenstance or what have you, this was a blessing and a real kick in the pants. I have often dreamed of writing a novel, have all sorts of book ideas written in notebooks and floating in my head, and I even once started writing a novel many years ago.  Previously I never had anything driving me.  The NaNo deadline did it.

             Here's what I've done and I would like some opinions about where I can go with this, especially from the Christian writers.  My novel, A DESERT PLACE, has some very Christian themes, however the story is gritty and deals with very bad people.

            The story line is concerned with a modern day Jonah figure who continually runs from God's calling. He becomes involved with a crime syndicate, stealing cars and dealing cocaine. Figuratively speaking he is swallowed by the evil beast of underworld crime until he finally breaks free, but only after a chain of catastrophic consequences.  I have avoided all profanity, but there is considerable drug usage, violence, and not overly graphic sex.

           Briefly, the synopsis of the story is this:  Joe (Jonah) Bloom goes to the remote New Mexico ranch of an old friend where he finds him dead from a bullet to the back.  Left there for Joe is a briefcase filled with cash and a satchel full of papers. Joe must unravel the mystery of who murdered his friend, what are the papers that were left for him, and who is the woman named Rosalita who is to be the recipient of part of the money. During the course of the story Joe reflects back over his past twenty years involved in crime, the entertainment industry, and eventually serving God. Did his friend die because of Joe's past ties with crime?  And when he finds Rosalita what light will she shed on the mystery?

           I explained my strategy of how I would approach the novel in my post of November 2 . I stayed with this strategy for the most part. Since the novel covers a period of thirty years I found it easier since I didn't necessarily have to write the story in a linear fashion. The novel starts in 1998 so I could establish the mystery that would lead to the climax. The majority of the novel is backstory of Joe's history of how he got to where he ended up and how his past is connected to what is happening when we meet Joe. His memory sequence begins in his last year of high school in 1979 and goes up to 1988 when he reaches a point in his life when he believes his problems are behind him. Then we move back to 1998 where the past catches up to him and the story comes to its climactic end.

          This approach didn't necessarily require writing in a linear fashion which in some ways made it easier to just write without planning.  There were several different life episodes over the decade that I wrote about so whenever I would get stuck I would just jump to another episode and write until I got stuck on that one. The disadvantage of jumping about without keeping careful notes and character studies is that at times I made certain errors which I hope I caught, but in the editing process I may find more that I didn't catch.  A few days ago I kind of took the advice that Carrie cited from John Irving about writing the last line first, except I wrote the entire last chapter, which I found helpful because it gave me a better sense of where the entire story was going.  After I had done this I started seeing themes in the story that were more apparent than I had previously seen.  I don't know if I would jump around writing something again, but when writing fast I think it works fairly well.     

           So now I have this novel that needs to be finished and since I've already come this far I think there is a greater likelihood that I will finish it.  Then after that I plan to actually start following through with some of my past projects while continuing to blog away.  You can click here to see an excerpt from my novel and I heartily welcome any critiques that you may have to offer.   

          So what about other NaNo particitpants?  Did you end up with something that you feel is marketable? What are you going to do with your project next?  Do you think you still need to add a lot more to what you've done in order to make it work?

          Also, since I am not very familiar with "Christian fiction", can one get away with gritty topics and how far can one go?  Or am I better off subduing my references to religion and shoot for a more mainstream audience?  Does the "Christian" label restrict and hinder your sales potential? 

         I'm tossing these questions out there because I really want to get educated so I hope some of you can toss me back some helpful answers.

over 3750 words on Saturday-- never did reach my 5000 goal for one day on just the novel