Thank You, Dear Readers: On the Occasion of Madam Mayo Blog's Eleventh Anniversary

Images courtesy of Pulp-o-Mizer

Methuselah of Blogdom here. Why am I still blogging? I am heartened to say, dear readers, that I know you're there, more of you each year, and I appreciate your visits and your comments (as always, I welcome comments via email.) As for the granular whys and wherefores of this blog, I wouldn't say much that I didn't say last year, on its tenth anniversary, which echoed much of what I had to say on its eighth anniversary. The latter link goes to my talk for the 2014 AWP Conference panel on "Homesteading on the Digital Frontier: Writer's Blogs." To quote from that:

"Madam Mayo" is not so much my so-called "platform," but rather, a net that catches certain special fish— the readers who care about the things I care to write about. 

As ever, I aim to provide posts on a variety of topics that might be, in turn, of use and/or interest for my writing workshop students, and/or for Mexicophiles, and/or for Far West Texasphiles (is that a word?), adventurous readers, and myself. 

One of my many motivations for blogging is to iron out my own thoughts, especially on subjects that tend to come up in my correspondence with other writers and in my writing workshops, for example:

(What do you mean, "reading as a writer"?)
One Simple Yet Powerful Practice in Reading as a Writer

(How do you keep up with email?)
Email Ninjerie in the Theater of Space-Time

(Where do you find the time to write?)
Thirty Deadly-Effective Ways to Free Up Bits, Drips & 

Gimungously Vast Swaths of Time for Writing

(What do you think about social media?)

Adios Facebook!

Six Reasons Why I Deactivated My Account

You will also find posts on my work in-progress and anything relevant to it (at present, a book about Far West Texas):

A Visit to El Paso's "The Equestrian"

Book review: 

Pekka Hamalainen's The Comanche Empire

The Strangely Beautiful Sierra Madera Astrobleme 

(What's an Astrobleme?)

Peyote and the Perfect You

Top 13 Trailers for Movies with with Extra-Astral Texiness

The Harrowingly Romantic Adventure of Trade with Mexico

in the Pre-pre-pre-NAFA Era

Notes on Artist Xavier González (1898-1993)

Once in a zera-striped-chartreuse moon of Pluto I touch on nonwriterly topics:

12 Tips for Summer Day Hiking in the Desert 

(How to Stay Cool, Avoid Actinic Keratosis, Blood, and Killer Bees)

Yet one more reason to check in with this blog is for announcements about my publications and interviews:

Catamaran and Tiferet: 

Two Very Fine Independent Literary Journals

Biographers International Interview: 

Strange Spark of the Mexican Revolution

New Thinking Allowed Interview by Jeffrey Mishlove
and a Review by Michael Tymn

Ax of Apocalypse: Strieber and Kripal's Super Natural

To share my talks and podcasts:

For the 2016 Women Writing the West Conference: 

On Seeing as an Artist or, Five Steps to a Journey to Einfuhlung

For the American Literary Translators Association Conference: 

Translating Across the Border

> More talks here.

> All Marfa Mondays Podcasts here.

> All podcasts here.

And, something I especially relish, to learn about and celebrate the work of other writers:

Ellen Cassedy and Yermiyahu Ahron Taub on Translating 
Blume Lempel's  Oedipus in Brooklyn from the Yiddish

Shelley Armitage on Walking the Llano: A Texas Memoir of Place

> More interviews here.

P.S. For those of you who are writers / bloggers, herewith the top five things I would have done differently back in 2006 had I known what I know now:
1. Use WordPress
2. Post once per week, something verily crunchy, otherwise take a vacation;
3. Post interviews with other writers more often;
4. Maybe tweet the link to a post once or twice; otherwise do not waste time with social media;
5. When possible and when there is substantive content, upload the bulk of that content to the webpage, not the blog itself (because of those scraper sites).

(Your comments are especially welcome on this subject. Write to me here.)


P.P.S. Yep, one of these days I will move the whole enchilada over to WordPress. It's still on my to-do list... [UPDATE JANUARY 2019: This blog is now on self-hosted WordPress at www.madam-mayo.com]

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Getting Started with Blogs and Websites

Top 10+ Books Read 2016

What the Muse Sent Me About the Tenth Muse, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

A 9th Conclusion After 9 Years of Blogging

Last year, for the Associated Writing Programs Conference in Seattle, I gave a talk titled "Writers Blogs: Eight Conclusions After 8 Years of Blogging." I leave those conclusions unchanged, but now for the 9th anniversary of "Madam Mayo," I add a ninth:

9. Q & A's are fun to do, always surprising, and very informative, both for me and my readers.
Ergo, look for more of these. 

Herewith a few Q & A's from the recent and not-so-recent past:

Q & A with Michele Orwin, Founding Editor of Bacon Press Books 

Q & A with "Heron & Crane" Podcaster Chris Gondek

One Q and 1 A with "Listen Well" Podcaster Margaret Dulaney

Q & A with Tod Goldberg of Literary Disco Podcast

Q & A with Rice Freeman-Zachery on Creative Podcasting 

Five Quick Questions for Mexican Writer Agustin Cadena 

(P.S. I've done scads more interviews—  lengthy ones—  for my podcast series Conversations with Other Writers and Marfa Mondays and, of course, I also mention these on this blog. Stay tuned for the Marfa Mondays interview with Texas historian Lonn Taylor.)

+ Your COMMENTS are always welcome. You are also very welcome to sign up for my free newsletter.

Writers Blogs: Questions and Observations Post Panel at AWP (Associated Writing Programs) Conference in Seattle

Apart from getting my picture taken in the book fair holding a loft a giant stuffed fish, late yesterday afternoon I was on the panel chaired by poet Zack Rogow with novelist Charles Johnson (standing in for E. Ethelbert Miller) and another extraordinary poet, Mark Doty.

Doty gave the lie to my rather cavalier assertion that blogging about oneself was narcissistic. I still have zero interest in blogging about my personal life (so far, no tweeting about my food, either!!), but Mark read from his blog a piece about his personal life, a painful story about how his house "bit him," pure poetry, and all I can say is, I salaam.  Do read more over at Doty's blog.

Charles Johnson paid homage to dear Ethelbert, who has long been an angel of both Washington DC and national literary culture.

Zack Rogow's talk, about his go-to blog, Advice for Writers, started out with practical tips for bloggers and ended with a reading from his blog of his new translation of Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo," the poem that ends with one of the most jarringly perfect last lines.

My talk was "Eight Conclusions After 8 Years of Blogging."

To get a sense of the level of things, I first asked the audience, maybe 150 writers, how many had blogs? Up went the overwhelming majority of hands. How many had been blogging for more than 2 years? A sparse scattering. Five years? I counted two hands. Oh my goodness, I felt like Methuselah.

As for the questions, what struck me about many of them (both during and after the event) was their anxious flavor, the concern about the variety of problems a blog could bring a writer. There are valid concerns, of course, and it's good to get one's mind around the genre, or at least take its temperature and a sounding before doing a cannonball into the deep end. But it seems to me that what we basically have here is the very same fear around any writing, any publishing. It's all just "monsters under the bed" stuff, after all. Or, as Rose Rosetree calls it, STUFF, that is, astral clutter, including frozen blocks, in one's personal energy field.

Speaking of clutter, one of the many appealing things to me about blogging is that it doesn't require physical space except for, say, a place to plunk one's laptop while typing. All of my book projects, on the other hand, have each produced a mountain of research files and then contracts and then marketing materials and such, plus a little (well, not so little) library of related books. Finding space is a challenge.

More anon.

COMMENTS

The Writers Center's Kyle Semmel Talks About Blogs

Check out this piece in DC's Examiner.com. More anon.

Pushing the Electronic Envelope

The American Independent Writers Association (which used to be Washington Independent Writers) has announced a Saturday Seminar at George Mason University in Fairfax VA on September 6, 2008. Here's the scoop:

WRITERS — PUSH THE ELECTRONIC ENVELOPE:
Sharing Your Writing and Selling Your Work in Cyberspace

The proliferation of online tools, social networking sites, and Web markets has created a lot of opportunities – and revenue streams – for writers. But along with the possibilities may come some confusion. Do you need a website? What is Twitter? What’s the difference between a blog and a vlog? Why do writers need Facebook?

In this all-day seminar, we’ll walk you through some of the most popular and writer-friendly Web tools to help you find new work, promote your services, sell your book, and build your platform.

Breaking into the Blogosphere: Blogging, Vlogging, and Microblogging

Writing for the Web: What You Need to Know to Sell to Online Markets

Social Networking: Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and More

What Every Writer Needs to Know About Professional Websites

Member cost is $89, Non-members cost is $129, and Students cost is $49. To RSVP, call (202) 775-5150, send an e-mail to rsvp@washwriter.org, or register online at www.washwriter.org. Please mention the event for which you are responding and your membership status.

P.S. Last winter I chaired the panel on blogging for their winter fiction seminar and also did a workshop on same for the Maryland Writers Association. Here's the handout (with links): "Writers Blogs: Best (& Worst) Practices". More anon.

Writers's Blogs: Best (& Worst) Practices-- The handout, now on-line and packed with links, from my workshop at the Maryland Writers Assoc. Conference

Now on-line: the handout from my workshop on writers's blogs at last Saturday's Maryland Writers Association Conference.

On the Occasion of "Madam Mayo's" 2nd Anniversary: Five Lessons Learned About Blogging (So Far)

So, it's the end of March; I've been blogging steadily for two years. Why did I begin? For a bit of an adventure, and to promote my then-hot-off-the-presses anthology of 24 Mexican writers, Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion. So, like most literary bloggers, I waded in somewhat naively and self-servingly (if promoting an anthology of 24 Mexican writers can be called self-serving... humph... no, I think not. Would somebody please award me the Aztec Eagle now?) Here are the five lessons learned--- thus far:

#1.Blogging isn't necessarily "blogging"
By which I mean, a lot of people, especially literary types my age and older, have set ideas about what blogs and the so-called "blogging culture" are--- and they are missing the whole point. It's a literary genre, kindasorta, but it's also a delivery system, the whole Web 2.0 social networking technology-phenomenon--- in sum, we do not yet have the precise vocabulary to describe this. I've told writer friends who resist blogging (with that inevitable oh-so-subtle curl-of-the-lip), if you have a newsletter--- and many do nowadays, as adjuncts to their websites--- you already are "blogging." Just call your newsletter a blog. And if you have some resistance to that, well, then, call your blog a "newsletter." Call it a cupcake, whydoncha! Apropos of which: "To Blog or Not to Blog, That is Not the Question".

#2. Good blogging is more than flogging.
I don't read "flog blogs"--- the thud of "me, me, mine," is deadly. The best blogs offer quality writing and quality information--- however quirky a combination (e.g., Phronesisaical's politics, philosophy, international affairs & fruit) or specialized (e.g., Seth Godin's Blog on marketing). (That said, um... why take ads when I can advertise my own books? Yes indeed, look over to right side of this screen for all relevant links.)

#3. My blog is not a log or diary of my life; neither is it a forum or a community bulletin board. It's a filter.
You want to know what blogs to read? Come see what I recommend here and here and here. Want to find out about some extraordinary books? Try this 1,000-year-old apparently true adventure that almost defies belief and Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and all 10 of these. And how about this mind-blowing (literally) video, this Icelandic movie and this sleep-inducing CD and the magic Baby Muse... I blog about my books, events and workshops (yeah, I'm flogging) but also, generally, my interests, my tastes, what I want to share (e.g., "All Hail E.T., Minister of Information!") and celebrate (e.g., Mexico's beloved English eccentric's masterwork, "Las Pozas"). If you don't like it, fine, there is an ocean of blogs out there, wade in. Why not start your own?

#4. Blogging (and balancing blogging with my other writing, and the ever-roaring cascade of e-mails, etc, etc.) requires increasingly advanced time-management skills.
As I noted in my recent post, Time to Blog & Read Blogs & Everything Else Everywhereallthetime, apropos of writers' blogs, "...it seems to me that, as artists--- artists who live in this world of unimaginable quantities of information 24/ 7--- we need to develop a set of skills we never knew we needed." I've learned a lot about organization and productivity (two of my gurus are Regina Leeds and David Allen) but I know I have yet to learn more than I can probably imagine--- and this would be true whether I were blogging or not. That said, I rarely watch television or use a cell phone, and I've moved this blog to a more regular (if flexible) schedule: posts on Mondays and in-between more often than not; guest-bloggers generally on Wednesdays.

#5. Lists are good. Links are even better. Lists of links, yay!
I love my guest-bloggers. Check 'em out. (Coming up in the next weeks: Leslie Pietrzyk, Graham Mackintosh, Daniel Olivas, and more...) Like I said, it' all about Web 2.0. More anon.

--->For the archive of Madam Mayo's posts on blogging, click here.