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Sunday

A to Z Blogging Challenge post planning begins


Are you ready for this? The A to Z Blogging Challenge begins in one week, with the first posts appearing on Sunday, April 1st.  

OK, many participants skip Sundays to make their 26 alphabetized posts last all month. 
Those folks will likely start on Monday, April 2nd.

Gulp! I’ve signed up to do six blogs this time.

Are you following these blogs yet? That’s the only way to track whether I complete the 26-post challenge this year in a six-fold saga of blogging extremism.


Yes, that sounds like a lot, but I’m gearing up already.

Most of the major blogging platforms allow users to pre-set posts for future publication. I’m surely doing that. When my calendar turns to April, the first few posts should be ready to go.

I’ve listed many of my alphabetical posts in a spiral notebook, devoting a page to each blog. I’m jotting down ideas and picking out materials I want to use. I’m snapping, searching and saving related photos from A to Z.

On a couple of my blogs, I hope to invite anecdotes, photos, or article links from fellow writers as well.

Some folks may be surprised to see their published articles promo-linked, as the month of April rolls by. Stay tuned, as you never know whose work may be highlighted next!

Reminder: It is illegal to republish others’ work without permission. 
Web writers generally welcome title-links, and short summaries (under 100 words) are usually fine. 
But cut-and-paste copying of poems and entire articles in blog posts, on websites, or even in email forwards actually violates copyright laws.

The A to Z Blogging Challenge does add considerably to a web writer’s monthly workload, but I love participating. This process jump-starts my blogging engine each year. So I am revved up and ready to go.

Wanna play?

You can sign up online to join the A to Z Blogging Challenge for 2012. Be sure to check out the Facebook page too. If you do sign up, you will want to add the A to Z Blogging Challenge graphic and link to your blog.

Feel free to follow on GooglePlus and Twitter. You are also invited to join this writer's fan page, as well as the Chicago Etiquette Examiner, Madison Holidays Examiner, Equestrian Examiner and Madison Equestrian Examiner on Facebook.

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Saturday

Best writers ban the blush with careful fact-checking

“Just the facts, ma’am.”

Remember that famous line from Los Angeles’ Sergeant Joe Friday (played by Jack Webb) on NBC TV’s “Dragnet” crime drama?

NBC's Dragnet - Jack Webb and Harry Morgan
Facts count for plenty, particularly for writers.

Fact-checking may even trump proofreading, although both are key steps in good writing.

Even press pros occasionally err, printing fiction in place of fact.

In February 2012, the Madison Capital Times ran a political story, based on a news release they received. According to the story, U.S. Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), and Wisconsin State Representative Steve Nass (R-31st District) teamed up to urge the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to remove archived posters from the 2011 Madison Capitol protests.

Alas, the story was a hoax, allegedly created by a Madison political cartoonist with Photo Shop skills. But the mistaken story ran for close to 40 minutes on the Wisconsin newspaper’s website before editors discovered its fraudulence.

Internet and other pranks abound.

Urban legends, rumors, and hoaxes can put writers in hot water, unless we do our homework. Several sites can help writers confirm whether stories are fabricated or fact. These include Hoax-Slayer, Internet Hoaxes, On Guard Online, and Snopes. The best course, of course, is to go straight to the source.

Here’s a news flash: A story isn’t necessarily true, just because it appears online, in a press release, or in a widely circulated email.

Remember these headlines and panicked viral messages?

  • Alligators in city sewers
  • Facebook charging for use
  • Grandma drying her poodle in the microwave
  • LIFE Cereal’s Mikey dead from eating Pop Rocks with soda
  • Microsoft purchasing the Catholic Church
  • Spiders under toilet seats in restaurants
  • Walt Disney cryogenically frozen
  • Yearly celebrity death rumors

Credibility counts.

Although writers of every stripe may produce publications offering opinionated exaggerations with impunity, printing blatant falsehoods definitely damages credibility. It pays to check the facts before publishing.

Not long ago, I submitted a story after careful fact-checking, only to find that an editor had altered my title slightly, leading to a changed meaning that brought a few pointed readers’ comments. Here's how the title appeared upon publication:

"Former Murdoch CEO Rebecca Brooks' Horsegate Mount was No Hack"

By capitalizing “No Hack,” the editor inadvertently led readers to believe that was the horse’s name. But it wasn’t. In fact, the horse in question was named Raisa.

Whoa!

Every week, a certain celebrity news magazine arrives in my mailbox and bears an entire section of editorial notes to correct factual errors from the previous week’s issue. If I did not receive an annual gift subscription to this gossip rag from a relative, I would surely not subscribe.

Let’s try to keep fiction in the right department.

If I want to read fiction, I will stop at the library. I might browse the new novels section at the local bookstore or on a bookselling website. I’d be willing to be other readers feel the same way.

Any long-term writer probably has at least a few gross gaffes that elicit cringing with each recollection. What’s the worst editorial “oops” you’ve ever had? OK, don’t answer that.

Image:  
Dragnet TV still
NBC TC
Public Domain/Copyright Expired

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Thursday

Daydreaming on Poetry


Do you love poetry?

I do. I love to read well-crafted lines of verse. I chuckle at limericks. I ponder terse haiku and senryu poems. I sigh over beautiful ballads. I simply adore sonnets.

Poetry offers even the most prolific news writers or serious financial columnists an opportunity to drop their deadline pressures and stop to daydream a bit.

Occasionally, a writer may even find poetry to prove somewhat profitable financially, although that often doesn’t come to pass until after the poet’s mortal demise. Is it possible to earn a livelihood, while living, in writing poetry?


Consider these quotes on poetry:

“A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
- Oscar Wilde

“A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.
- Wallace Stevens

“Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.”
- Plato

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”
-  Leonard Cohen

“Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.
- Plutarch

“Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Here’s one of my all-time favorite quotations on poetry:

“Always be a poet, even in prose.
- Charles Baudelaire

Maybe that’s why I keep an entire blog, simply devoted to poetry.

Do you dare to dabble in poetry?

Are you overdue for a little poetic daydreaming? Aren’t we all?

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Daydreaming
By Eugen von Blaas
19th Century
Public Domain Artwork
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Please FOLLOW this blog to receive free e-mail updates whenever this columnist publishes a new article. Feel free to follow on GooglePlus and Twitter. You are also invited to join this writer's fan page, as well as the Chicago Etiquette Examiner, Madison Holidays Examiner, Equestrian Examiner, Madison Equestrian Examiner, and Working in Words on Facebook.