Tags
#MNINB April Platform Challengers, #SinCHI, #WSChat, Beverly Lynn, BuddyPress, Camp NaNoWriMo, Custom Community theme, DreamWeaver, FaceBook, Gail Baugniet, Hanging 10, hashtag, Hawaii Chapter of Sisters in Crime, Makiki Community Library, MNINB, Not Bobbers, Passport In Time, Passport In Time Mysteries, Shaka, Sisters In Crime, Storify, The Syringa Gulch Survey, TweetChats, Twitter, WIP, WordPress, Wordsmith Studio
Weekend Recaps are…well…just that. In case your week…er, month… was a hectic one, here’s your chance to peruse what you may have missed. And it is also a chance for you to revisit the conversation(s). And what a week it has been!
This week has me housekeeping. No, not that kind. My dust-bunnies are sitting pretty–Another one of the Not Bobbers declared dust-buffaloes were roaming her range. That is the challenge of juggling a burgeoning writerly life and a steady job with benefits.
Blog housekeeping
I’ve been busy being admin to the Not Bobbers blog with the aide of the incredible Steering Committee. As you can see by clicking on the names that are hot-linked, we are adding author bios to the blogrolls of primary blogs, FaceBook author’s pages, and Twitter handles. Curious about that #MNINB lingo I’ve been slinging? Here’s a great way to get up to date via our FaceBook fanpage. Our new moniker? Wordsmith Studio. We are a consortium of writers so the .org was a good fit. Look over to the right widget bar under Contact, and you will see my new email address via 
wordsmithstudio.org. Keeps my writerly world separate from my other doings. Look for the official launch of our self-hosted website/blog this fall. We are currently tricking it out with BuddyPress and getting around to dressing it up for company via a Custom Community theme. Ambitious, yes. Pretty certain it will be worth the steep learning curve.
And if creating one new website wasn’t enough. I was named both VP and Media Maven for our Hawaii Chapter of Sisters in Crime. The latter title I share with long time webmistress, Beverly Lynn. Bev and I have been busy transitioning the old DreamWeaver site over to a WordPress location. Gail Baugniet, local SinC President, and I have been busy giving us a presence on FaceBook, Twitter, Storify, and the rest of the usual social media places. Follow us in TweetChats with the hashtag #SinCHI.
This is when I realize just how much virtual real estate I’ve covered over the past few months. Range Roaming. I have folks wanting me to consult as a strategic social media marketing 
planner. For now, I’m satisfied with helping those I know. I’m also comfortable in offering my newly acquired skills to members of our local Sisters in Crime before our regularly scheduled meetings. You will find me up in the computer lab of Makiki Community Library at 5:30 every third Thursday, an hour before our regularly scheduled meetings. I’ll also be available at the Sisters In Crime booth at the Library’s open house this month. For details, keep your eyes on our blog.
My other housekeeping efforts have been focused on Writing Space. We celebrated our 4000th view and can now boast of visitors from 50 different countries. Not bad considering July was a dark month and the first post was shipped April 16th. During my blogging black out, I took the feedback from our comments, stats, tweets, and FaceBook postings and retweaked the editorial calendar and updated/added some pages. If you look up top, you should see a About Writing Space, About Lara, and Write With Me.
Pen For Hire, Clips & Quips, Testimonials, Up & Coming are undergoing 
transformations under the hatch. I put them up password protected to give you all an idea where this ship is headed. A little anticipation before the reveals. I will be blogging about the logistics involved in these steps, have no fear. I just want to make sure someone stumbling across this site doesn’t unknowingly wander into choppy waters. I think we’re about done with the navigation metaphors.
So sailing right along. (Couldn’t help myself) I’d like to introduce a new category for Thursdays: Hanging 10. Hanging Ten is a surfing move and an expression that became popular in the 60s. The ten refers to a surfer’s ten toes all of which are to hang off the front of the board for the duration of the wave ride. A proper shaka for all of those who can master that move. A proper shaka will be in order for characters that inhabit my life. They will share their top 5 favorite charities and causes as well as their top 5 in a category of their choice. Hmmm. Knowing the wonderfully quirky friends I have, we could be in for quite a bit of fun!
Current Work In Progress
Passport In Time Mystery Series:
The Syringa Gulch Survey
My journals and writing folders have just come off the boat from the Mainland. The timing was right to pick up a project I had started over a decade ago. Camp NaNoWriMo will give me the push to have the first draft of this novel complete if not presentable by August 31st. Each Monday, I will chart my progress in the widget at the bottom of the blog. Stop in and cheer and jeer my progress. I’m counting on you all to give me the gumption to kill this one.
Howzit with you? Has this summer been according to plan? I was disappointed with mine until I realized what I had done. I roamed the range even more than what I shared in this eclectic post. These Weekend Recaps will more than likely be replaced by a newsletter this fall as I continue to tweak my editorial calendar. Feed back is much appreciated. A Hui Hou!
Wow. Just wow. That’s all I can say. You are one dynamite lady! I wish I had half your energy (and blog savvy!).
I felt like I was wading in molasses all of July, but then I turned around and saw all of the real estate I had covered and then I didn’t feel so bad. I just wasn’t ticking off the items I had planned.
And you know how much I enjoy watching your journey as you experiment and refine your blogging. I’m constantly learning from your MFA insights.
Many thanks for that. And a big Mahalo for stopping by.
Ha! What does MFA stand for here? Because if it’s the degree, I don’t have one. I’m hoping it’s something my writer-friend Lara Britt dreamed up?
Really? I thought you had an MFA. You were is so wonderfully literary. And I love how you mix that sensibility with the blogging format. Engaging. Not to mention your photography skills.
Blush. Thanks, LB. I still wish I had your get-up-and-go!
Congratulations, yet again Lori! Gosh, you are an amazing woman. You are doing so much for your community and our blogging community. I really appreciate your efforts. Just wanted to let you know. I haven’t been able to give much of my time at Wordsmith. I know you are just as busy as I am and maybe more and yet you still manage with excellence. I salute you!
It’s been a hard summer for most of us. Hoping that we are all ready to hit our stride this fall.
Hi Lori,
It was really positive for me to read your post. It’s such a slow process sometimes isn’t it? I’ve been reorganising and reshaping my website plus other online areas, I love the term “Virtual real estate”, and then had a temporary glitch with the hosting company and found my website set to earlier settings and all the work wiped out! Actually, I think that I might need to hire a coder to write a little something into the site. Here in England there doesn’t seem to be anyone who actually wants that job right now!?! So I’m in a bit of stuck-ness. The Camp NaNoWriMo sounds like such a good idea and I wish you the most terrific success with it.
I think the majority of us would like to push the button for a July redo, but only if it meant we didn’t have to relive it. I keep telling myself that all the set backs are to make things better in the end. I hope your story ends happily ever after. I’m sure England has been a bit out of sorts with the hosting of the Olympics and all. Hope for some normalcy soon.