Arguing with a brick wall

I will involved in a discussion through a Facebook group "Guy Who Threw His Shoes at Bush" about whether it was respectful or not to have done so to a leader of a country. In case you do not know, the name of the man who threw the shoe is Muntazer al-Zaidi and he is a journalist. The reason I bring this up is because it had my creative brain thinking - well at least 1 or 2 of those who were posting did. Not because I thought wow that is something I had never thought about before - it was more the fact that not only did they have a completely different perspective from me but they had long, very long, reasons to back it up. From the beginning of what became a very heated discussion I found certain flaws in their argument, not because I disagreed with them, but simply because they put something on a pedestal and then proceeded to insult anyone that disagreed with their point of view. Which is how I come to call this post "arguing with a brick wall".

I wrote a poem about it, which of course once I posted it was ripped to shreds: called Into the Wind. Though in the end that was more amusing than anything else, as truthfully this poem was a 1 in the morning sort of creation. I admit it is not one of my best poems but I felt like everyone was hitting their head against the wall and in some cases simply throwing up their hands and walking away: so I 'had to' say something about it. To the one that commented about the poem, it is full of "predictable lefty dogma" with "Utopian touches". I did respond to their feedback, which included thanking them for their feedback.

While tweaking the poem, with the help of my friend, I was reminded of another poem I wrote a while back and then recently re-posted when I made some changes to it called Walk the Line. I started this post because I realised I should share what brought about this poem. Like Into the Wind, this poem does not have to be only stuck and centred around my initial thinking. Others may read them and get a completely different image from them. I will not be unhappy or upset. I spent a little too long at University pulling a part too much literature, which in many ways took the fun out of it all. That is one of the reasons you can not really find much information on my blog of poetry about what inspired each poem. I want others to decide what they think it is about. I would also love to know what others get from what I have written and what imagery came to mind when they read it.

Walk the Line came into my life after I encountered a blog called Baghdad Burning, whose author called herself Riverbend. I found this blog when the book, which contains many of the earlier posts came across my desk. It was about her life after the US and other coalition forces arrived in Iraq. The last post was after her family left Iraq in October 2007. One of the main reasons that this blog has left such an impact upon me is because Riverbend has an amazing ability to see from many perspectives. She strives to not be 'anti' and shows true sorrow at all the lives that have been lost on all sides of this war.

I mainly read the book of the posts and then the 2nd volume that was published because the writer who brought the posts together also added information along the way about events that were occurring while Riverbend was posting. The 1st volume in 2005, won 3rd place for the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage and in 2006 it was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Burning.

The most amazing thing about the thread was that someone else also posted a poem called Saracen, which is raw and beautifully written.

Keeping up with what I am following

As I have sought to follow more and more blogs. Especially the ones that contains poetry and stories of other authors, it has made me realise I need a better way to manage all of these blogs. The thing I have found with Web2, and helping others to understand Web 2.0, you need a reason to set up a tool so it works for your needs. Part of finding a reason is to not feel guilty about the time it may take to set it up. I know enough about Readers that I knew it would not be too hard to set one up, I just had little use for one before now. So the other day I made the time to set one up.

I already have many Google Accounts but through my job I had heard some great things about Netvibes - so I have gone with Netvibes. This does not mean I will not look into Google Reader it just was a good opportunity to look at a different tool.

I like what I have played with so far. I have created different tabs for my range of needs. So far I have set up things like friends' journals and creative blogs. When trying to decide what blogs belonged in each tab I made the decision to put a blog I discovered Don't Be A Slut in with my friends' journals. This decision was based on the fact that this is more like a journal of the author's life and the lessons she hopes that others, especially women, can learn from.

One other thing I have learned from my experience with delicious and helping others set up their own accounts: with Web2 you need to draw a line in the sand. By this I mean that Netvibes indicated that I had not yet read any of the blog posts, even though in many cases I had. I clicked them all to indicate that I had read everything so I can from this point on I know when each author posts something new. This does not mean I will not go and read a blog and older posts, it just allows me to do so when I have the time to.

The Commons: past, present & future

In the last couple of days I have added a widget to promote Creative Commons. I have done this because as a creator who posts their work online this movement has given me tools that let me clearly communicate what I am comfortable with others doing with what I post. I wonder what the next 6 years will be like for Creative Commons: I hope they do succeed in breaking down needless barriers in science and education. The following takes well over an hour to watch - though you should not let this stop you :-)

The Commons: Celebrating Accomplishments, Discerning Futures*


*this will also link you to the video on YouTube

Widgets and Gadgets - oh my...

While trying to add code from a widget that allowed others to save/share/bookmark my blog I also added another subscription widget. Now there is more than one widget that lets you subscribe on both of my blogs. One thing I have noticed is that the template for this blog Behind Dreaming calls a Widget a Gadget - there is really no difference between them but it is a thing worth noting.

While adding the code for these to widgets I also noticed that Blogspot now have more widget options. I can let people become Followers of my blog. This made me think that if I was not willing to follow both my blogs why would anyone else - so I am now following myself. I am already doing this in twitter because I have both a work and personal account.

Another widget is My Blog List which is also known as a Blog Roll. I am so glad I did not have to figure out the widget code for that one, as I was intending to figure out how to add a blog roll to both my blogs.

Though the thing that surprised me is that I had forgotten to add the Archive Widget to Behind Dreaming. That was an oversight on my part and it now has one.

I thought it was worth mentioning where you can access the widgets that I have added. One of the main reasons being that I have seen other blogs mention them, but not actually where you can find in some instances the code or if they are simply part of the options that comes with the blog account you have.

The Writer's Guide to the Galaxy?

The Australia Council for the Arts have created a resource for writers in the digital world called The writer’s guide to making a digital living. I am slowly working through this guide and it has already provided with food for thought. Even if you are not from Australia this guide is worth a look. The poster that you can also get from here New WRITING Universe is a brilliant snap shot of different paths for writers in the digital world.

If you want to know more about Creative Commons from an Australian perspective then I recommend following Elliott Bledsoe's Creative Commons blog. It was through this blog that I found out about The Writer's Guide to the Galaxy?

There is also the option to get updates directly from Creative Commons Australia via twitter.

How Facebook is helping me to find a new audience

I have been feeding my blog of poetry into the Facebook application My Notes for a while now. This has been a great way to make others I know aware that I have a blog of poetry.

I have now also discovered another application in Facebook called Blog Networks. Actually I have known about it for a while - I simply had not really explored its potential until about a week ago. This application has allowed me to list both of my blogs and say a little about each one. I have also found myself communicating with others who have simliar blogs. The added bonus of this application is that it has given me fantastic blogs to bookmark in my delicious account behind-dreaming, as well as adding many to my favourites in To Write is to Dream.

I wonder how far this application will take me. It has already reminded me that by having a blog I am part of a community and I should do more to support others.

delicious

I think I am finally getting some interesting blogs added to the behind_dreaming delicious account.

I think the next thing I will need to think about is looking at each site and the authors' writing style and giving better keywords to describe the site in delicious. Right now I think I have used the tags poetry/poet, blog and writing a little too much :-)

Slowly I hope to add to this account more sites that give advice to writers from all walks of life.

Finding a template that suits your mood

I started a few months ago wanting to find a template for my blogs that fit the mood of each blog.

The most important blog being To Write is to Dream and finding the perfect template for that in the end meant a lot of searching. I kept thinking I wanted a background with clouds and so I used that as a keyword in my search. I ended up finding the floating template that I am currently using - however there was a problem. The image used as the background would break if you viewed my blog through IE or had a larger monitor and so forth. I knew that the template was what I wanted and could figure no easy way to fix the image problem.

At the same time I wanted to make it easier to browse my blog. The first widget I used was the cloud tag widget and I have included this widget in all my blogs. However, this still did not seem enough. The answer to how I could make my blog more searchable came when I found the template for this blog Behind Dreaming. This template had tabs that I could name myself and add URL that I wanted. Further stil,l there was a widget that meant I could search the blog's content. Now this is where I admit that I took the code from this blog and added it to my main blog. However, by doing this I had created a new problem. The black colour of the tabs and search box also came with the code as it was a part of their images.

I would like to say at this point it was my genius that helped me figure out how to remove the black images - but I am a wee too honest to let the occur. The links to the images broke within this template and of course within the code I had transferred across. It made this blog look silly but meant I now had the tabs and search box looking perfect for my main blog. So I was very happy on one hand and annoyed on the other. I found where the creator had moved the template images and replaced all the links. I then left main blog alone with the broken links. Now I was truly happy.

So a note at this point: you should save your templates for your blog somewhere else, especially the images embedded within the template. There are different accounts that you can store the images like photobucket or if you have a paid LiveJournal account.

The last stage of creating a blog template that suits the mood is to think of combining a template you like and then changing things like colours and images to fit what you want. This is why you need to back up your template. The other night I have a moment of clarity and realised that the perfect image for the background of my main blog To Write is to Dream was something my friend had taken. After going through many of Graeme's photos we selected the one we thought worked best. If you like the background image then you can see more at Araquel's Pictures, which I have directed you to the landscapes.

This same friend kindly has provided a link to the high res image from one of his accounts. So thank you Graeme for allowing me to use the image and also providing access.

Portfolio - 1

There is a certain amount of damage I do to my writing by trying to maintain a blog of poetry. By posting over 40 poems I have taken away from what I could strive to have 'published'. Not that I am saying that many of those pieces are ready, but there are few that I believe have potential.

The question I need to ask myself is should I stop posting when I love doing so? I want to not just call myself a poet, I also want to know that it is not just a dream I once had many years ago that I never grew out of. I know that my poetry has grown; but it is not hard to move on from the darkness and anger of ones teens, it is called growing up.

This post is not - this is how you create a body of work to submit for publication. The post is trying to figure out where to go from here. Where do I separate what I post from that which I put aside to try and have published?

Where to from here? I have grown fond of my blog of poetry and I do not intend to stop. I just have to find time to write more. Then I need to resist trying to share with all of my friends in such an open forum.

Though truthfully only 2 of my friends have felt comfortable pulling my poetry a part, at least in this forum. The thought of telling me how to change my poetry scares most people. So I am lucky that I have 2 people in my life that have found ways to teach me things, while not losing sight of the core of what I write. Thank you to them. I will prod both and point out I posted my thanks so they know that it is them that I am talking about. I have other people in my life that have the ability to guide my writing, they just have not done so via my blog.

If anyone stumbles upon this seemingly hidden blog and knows the answer to the question: how does one maintain a blog of poetry while at the same time grows a portfolio of work that has the potential to be published? - Can you let me know.

Finding inspiration

All around us there is beauty. The trick is to both stop and take it all in while also capturing what you are witnessing. I am starting to finally realise that writing, even with very few words, is how I express the quietness from within. I like to watch the world and I need a way to speak up.

Another reality I face is that my job requires a lot of creative thinking. Where I am often mapping out plans for what needs to happen now and years into the future and I love the challenge and freedom I have been given. Yet because my job requires so much creative thinking I arrive home at the end of the day and do not want to think anything of great depth. So I waste hours doing nothing, letting myself escape from the world.

How do I find time to write? I have learnt that during the day to allow myself treats. When a line, an impression, or something else comes to my mind like a dripping tap: I need to stop and listen. It does not take a perfect moment, simply a moment in order to capture and let it wash over me. This means the tapping stops while not letting the moment be lost.

I have also tried to find tools that allow me to capture those thoughts. I have scattered Word documents that I may never open again and I also scribble notes on paper. In the last few months I have grown to love the small white board at my desk as it allows me to place tiny pieces into a corner of the world. In small ways Twitter has allowed me to peck at thoughts - to bounce between the ideas of creating systems for work and bewilderment at so much that happens in life.

I do not neglect my work to write, however I do find time to treat myself and allow myself to write ideas down. I am most importantly honest with my colleagues that some times I get captured by my writing, even while I am at work.

Treat your self and do not feel guilty for who you are :-).

Twitter and poetry

I find the more places I feed my writing into the more I try to think of things that fit into the arena I am feeding into. Take Twitter as an example. I have 2 twitter accounts: one for work and one for non-work tweets. I feed my personal twitter account into my livejournal and I know I have friends there that I am connected to. I also have to admit it is much easier to write a few tweets a day then it is to write one post in my livejournal. Whether any of the tweets mean anything as a daily feed - well I guess time will tell. One of my friends that I am connected to through my livejournal has begun to follow my my personal tweets.

Back to how Twitter has made me think about what I am writing - well I created a twitretry. I have to admit is is pretty bad compared to my other poetry. But writing a tweet that is a cross between it and poetry was a lot of fun. Maybe next time the twitretry will be a little, well more, um poetry like :-)

The term twitretry was coined by Neal Barber - thanks Neal

Where the idea began

I have to admit that the idea for a blog of poetry began with an idea someone else came up with: Barbara Flowers who contacted others about creating a place online for people to share the writing. As each writer created their own blog Barbara would all these blogs of writing to one central place - this central blog is now called the Writers' Blog, and began as the Queensland Writing Blog. There was also the possibility for meeting in person, but that never occurred and now I live in another country.

I have realised I have never thanked Barbara for starting me on this journey and I think it has been a very thankless task. That is bad on my part. Part of this post is to tell others about the Writers' Blog and suggest that if you are intending to start a blog of writing that this blog is worth looking into.

Thank you Barbara for helping me find a voice :-)

The challenge of Sonnets

I mentioned in a previous post how poetry challenges that a friend had given me. I went on to talk about the limerick challenge I gave myself and linked to one that I had written called The IRR within DR. I wrote this as a present for a friend and so the title can really only be understood by people who work in the sort of job I do. If someone really wants to know what it means ask :)

I also mentioned Sonnets though until now I have not posted either of the Sonnets I have written so far. They are both in the style of an English Sonnet and the one I posted on my blog of poetry is the 2nd sonnet I wrote and this is called Endure. I am still not sure if or when I will post the first as it needs other sonnets to go with it before it is complete.

I have found sonnets much easier to write than limericks: though I think this may because I over think limericks. This experience has reminded me how little I know about poetry and that I need to spend more time reading the work of other poets. However so many times I find myself looking at poetry that is nothing like what I write.

Poetry Challenges

A comment left by a friend was the first stage of the eventual 3 challenges that I would undertake. The first response I made was to outline the haiku challenge and I then posted next some of these haiku. Now to clarify something before someone comments that the haiku I have written are not actually traditional haiku: my response -- I was given a structure and style to follow and I believe based on that structure I have succeeded. As for traditional haiku, the main problem I have is that I do not understand Japanese. I see that as a challenge to give myself - learning to understand what is required of a haiku that is not written in Japanese.

The other two challenges brought about the poems titled Change and Swinging Moods. I found all three challenges a fantastic way to take my writing in directions that I had never thought to do so before. It has been a while since I have challenged myself as my friend sought to do so and the next challenge I gave myself was to write a sonnet. About 24 hours later I had completed my 1st sonnet. Is this perfect, well I did surprise myself and what I did write I have not posted as it is I believe one of a series of sonnets that only time will allow me to finish. The 2nd sonnet I have written may be posted when I am ready.

The other challenge I found myself putting my hand up for is a limerick. I have never found limericks easy to write. I believe my main issue is that I over think what I am writing.

After experiencing all these challenges I believe I will keep writing sonnets, not sure about limericks and beyond that I will just have to wait and see.

Feeds: sharing your blog through another site

Placing an RSS feed of your blog in other areas where you and others you know spend time online is a good way to make others aware of your blog. This can be done with many types of social networking sites that you may be currently using.

For instance, I spend a lot of time on Facebook and I wanted to be able to share my poetry that I post on my other blog To Write is to Dream with my friends, without expecting them to go to my blog all the time. I discovered that within Facebook there is an application called Notes, which you can post to and share with others your are connected to. Once you go into your Notes Settings you can import notes from an external blog. At this point add the RSS feed from your blog and save.

I know you can also create feeds that will appear in your Facebook Notes from other types of sites like a LiveJournal. However Facebook only allows you to add one blog feed to your account at a time. Once these notes begin to be imported someone within Facebook can add a comment to the post in Your Notes, though this comment will not then appear on your blog.

Delicious and external links

Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages from a centralized source. With emphasis on the power of the community, Delicious greatly improves how people discover, remember and share on the Internet. (http://delicious.com/about -- accessed 14 August 2008)

I have created a behind dreaming delicious account for all the online resources I refer to in my blog Behind Dreaming. Other online resources that I also find useful in relation to both my blogs will be added to this account, even though I may not refer to them directly. The main benefit of creating a delicious account is so I do not need to clutter up either of my blogs with all the external resources I want to share.

If you want to be able to also create an external list of resources for your blog then you will need to go to the delicious site. If you do not already have an account at this point you will need to create one. Delicious provides code for what they call a Tag Roll that you can add to your blog. Once this code has been added the tags, for each resources that you have bookmarked in your account, will appear on your blog as a cloud tag. Each of these tags link a list of the resources that have been bookmarked with that tag within your delicious account. Just remember by selecting one of the tags you will be now be in delicious, so I have bookmarked Behind Dreaming in my delicious account and have given it the tag homepage so someone else can get back to my blog.

Let me know if you need instructions about how to actually add the code to your site.

What CC licences I have selected

Across this blog and my blog of poetry, I have chosen 2 types of Creative Commons licences. The second choice I made was whether I would apply a CC licence across the whole blog or on each post within a blog.

The blog Behind Dreaming is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License and has been applied across the whole blog.

While the blog To Write is to Dream... has a CC licence applied to each post within the blog. Some posts have had a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License and others Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

The choice of applying a licence on a single post instead of across a whole blog comes down to the fact that almost all of the posts within my blog To Write is to Dream... are poems that I have written. These poems are each works by themselves that I have chosen to make available through a blog. I started applying a single CC licence across my whole blog of poetry but ran into problems with a few poems where I want to know if someone else wants to remix them. One of these poems that made me glad that I have more than one option when it comes to CC licences is It is not fair.... This poem was difficult to write and I posted it on the blog because I did not want to hide it away any longer as I felt it was something I had to say, especially if it takes me a few more months until I am ready to work on it again.

The last issue for me is still really a question I have to find the answer to and it is around the area of a CC jurisdiction. I am Australian who is now living and working in New Zealand and I have no idea how long I will be in New Zealand for. I posted my 1st poem on my blog of poetry on August 3 2008. The chose I made was to apply an Australian CC licence on both my blogs. My question specifically is what jurisdiction should I apply to my blogs while I am living in New Zealand if I am Australian? I will see if I can find an answer to my question about jurisdiction and will post it here.

• To read about what Creative Commons is read my post Creative Commons: Share, Remix, Reuse - Legally or go directly to the Creative Commons site.

Creative Commons: Share, Remix, Reuse — Legally

Before I go into why I have chosen to use Creative Commons (CC) on both my blogs I thought I should explain what it actually is and where to find more information about CC licences.

Creative Commons helps you publish your work online while letting others know exactly what they can and can't do with your work. This means as a creator I can define how what I create can be shared, remixed and reused legally by someone else. Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved." Most of the information within this blog post has been copied directly from http://creativecommons.org/ in accordance to the CC licence they have chosen: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

I think any questions you have will be answered by going to the Creative Commons site and/or contacting those responsible for CC within your jurisdiction.

• To read about why I have chosen to use Creative Commons go to the post What CC licences I have selected.

Focusing a blog

When I began my blog To Write is to Dream I only wanted the blog to contain my poetry. My aim was to create a space where anyone could make their own mind up about each poem. This is another reason I rarely leave comments about the poems I post.

In the last month or so I ended up taking the extra information that on a few occasions I had added to a poem and pasting them as a comment. This means that it now appears like I have added some comments after the fact. Maybe down the track I will add a note to explain that the comment actually happened earlier (I will just have to wait and see).

As for other people's comments: when someone comments about the structure then I simply take a look and I make change if I agree with them. I believe the comment that someone has left will help others figure out the changes I have made. There has only been one occasion that a comment left me rethinking a whole poem. Initially this was titled Touch, which then became Touch (revised) and both are on my poetry blog. I am still not completely happy with the results so there may be a new revision sometime in the future. However, you will not find the comment on the blog as it was made in another location where I feed my poetry blog to. I will go into feeds in another post.

Why decide to focus my blog only on my poetry? Well I have noticed that blogs can end up being about many things and when that occurs they become hard to use. The added bonus to this sort of focus is when I added things like a cloud tag this only lists the keywords that describe the topics of each poetry. These keywords are a form of commentary, but are needed to allow a reader to pick and chose the topic of a poem they read.

The main thing I wanted to avoid is becoming a person who starts a blog and then lets lapse and I know many people who have done just that. The biggest bonus of this whole experience is the only writers block I have had in the nearly 2 years I have been working on To Write is to Dream is poetry blocks.

To Write is to Dream....

I have realised that it is almost 2 years since I created my 1st post on my main blog To Write is to Dream. My main blog is where I post many poems I write, which I want to share with my friends and family. By placing these poems in a public forum has meant I also need to think about when I am truly ready to share each poem with the world. Working on To Write is to Dream has been both a challenge as well as something I have never regretted doing.

So many times I have wanted to comment and go beyond the original intention of the main blog. The reason I have only commented a few times is because in the beginning I made a decision about what my blog of poetry would be. To go beyond that would only take away from why I created a blog of poetry. This decision was to leave it to you to decide what impact my poetry has left upon you. I never wanted to tell you what to think, I just hoped you would tell me what you think about what I have written.

Nearly 2 years after I began this journey I now know it is time to share with you why I started this journey, what I have learned and to look into what is yet to come.