Early Spring Blooms Third Week of March

Early Spring Blooms Third Week of March
L. Warren, 2012

About Lisa's Collection


Lisa's Collection is a spare-time endeavor that's aimed at organizing my other spare-time endeavors.

I do quite a bit of online writing, and after building up a collection of material for quite awhile, I realized it was time to organize it a little better than I’d being doing.

So, I decided to start Lisa's Collection. Because I write on a variety of subjects, however, I realized that my writing really wouldn’t be sufficiently organized through the use of one blog. For that reason, I decided to make this site a “Hub” site, from which material on individual subjects can be found at the links provided. This site is my “miscellaneous department”, because most efforts to organize a wide variety of things require a “miscellaneous department” for whatever it is one is attempting to organize.

My original plan for this site was to let it be a foundation for later, more blog-like, activity; and in the meantime, post writing and whatever I thought might add a little something. When it comes to spare time, however, one can’t always count on having enough of it.

As a result, in spite of how long this blog has been in existence, it still remains fairly embryonic. It is, as they say, what it is.

(With the exception of "Life on Key", blog links may be temporarily disabled.)

Sep 25, 2011

Just Some "Inside-Baseball" ("Inside-Writing", actually) Thoughts As I Begin A New Phase of My Online Efforts

When I first began setting up what was then a few blogs for the purpose of organizing a growing collection of writing pieces, the first thing I did was set up "Lisa's Collection".  Since I'd written on a wide variety of subjects, I figured "Lisa's Collection" would make a good central blog that would act as both a "writer's blog" and a central point from which to operate between the different subjects and different blogs.  Over the years, "Lisa's Collection" has turned into a weird mix of all kinds of different things, as well as a case of way-too-much "inside-baseball" that's related pretty much only to explaining why the blog exists in the first place.  So, I haven't been all that satisfied or comfortable with that particular blog.  Then again, since it's been around for awhile, and since it has consistently been the place around which I've centered a lot of my online writing activites I haven't quite felt ready to take it offline.  With my online writing efforts being something I take seriously, but also something I've engaged in in what I think of as "skimmed time", I've always believed that adding some of that "inside-baseball" stuff has been a way for me to present some writing in some cohesive way.

As a freelance writer who also writes in her spare/skimmed time, I've always been trying to straddle some line between "professional" and "serious" and "personal".  What was once a fairly inner challenge (trying to straddle that line) has, over time, become something that would be pretty obvious to anyone who may run into my online writing.  More importantly, a lot of the "inside-baseball" stuff and the "laying-the-foundation-for-future-efforts" has grown into what looks to me like a giant mess of online writing, as well as way too much explaining and far too little actually accomplishing the aim of packaging up my writing in way that doesn't offer more of that "inside-baseball" stuff than it really needs to.

In any case (and in spite of the fact that this post is yet one more "inside-baseball" type of thing), after over-five-years since I began writing online, my overall collection of efforts has reached a point where I'm finally ready to do some real housecleaning and re-packaging.  A lot of the blogs that have been acting as foundation on which future efforts related to a subject can be built have now reached the stage where I can see what's what, what I have, and what needs to be done in order to make them more than just "foundations".

I've also reached a point where, although I do want to "renovate" and further build some of those blogs, I'd also like to "bury" some of them at least enough that they won't be in the foreground of my latest writing efforts and packaging.  I've already deleted a couple of them and have decided to instead incorporate their subjects into the "Lisa's Collection" writer's blog.

In any case, inside-baseball or not, I guess I thought it might make some sense to get these thoughts down here, partly because it always helps to get plans, to-do lists, and thoughts into writing; but partly, too, because as my overall collection of online efforts has grown (and become, perhaps, an increasingly blended mix of "all-writer-all-the-time", "all-writing-all-the-time" and "all kinds of other things"), I continue to feel the need to clarify and explain what the heck my efforts, aims, and intentions are.

I guess the thing is that sometimes I'm a writer and nothing but a writer.  Sometimes I'm someone who writes online (which is, but isn't always, different from being a "writer and nothing but a writer").  Then again, much of the time I write for reasons that have nothing to do with writing and something to do with any number of things other than writing.  

In any case, I'm entering a new stage of my online efforts (and introducing some new offline efforts as well).  This post is just an update that isn't likely to interest anyone other than me.  (Sorry about that, but we writers tend to be "expressers-of-thoughts", regardless of whether they're interesting to anyone else or not.)
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Not long ago I was reading advice about naming blogs. The individual, who clearly knows what he's doing when it comes to blogs, mentioned that people shouldn't give their blogs an "ego title" (which includes the person's name, rather than a less personal, more-to-point-about-the-theme, title). Of course, this advice was directed at anyone who hopes to earn money with his blog.

I cringed a little, though, because some of my blogs have "ego" titles. The thing is, though, it was not my ego at the root of my choice for some of the "Lisa" blogs I have.

When I started putting together blogs as way of finding a home for a lot of the writing I'd already done (with the plans of further developing them later), I wasn't particularly thinking of earning money from them. I was thinking of finding some way to organize my writing in what I hoped was an attractive "environment" that gave me the freedom to later add whatever I wanted to add.

Names like, "No Senior Coffee" and "Storm Clouds and Wind Chimes" just kind of came naturally. Then, though, I had some writing that only loosely fit into "categories", and I realized I had to come up with some cohesive name for each of those "categories". I was thinking almost in terms of names for file folders when I created the names, although, because blogs have a public nature, I thought I'd try to add something "catchy" to titles that were essentially "file folder titles".

So, along with the titles mentioned above, and along with "Dabblings in Verse", I have a whole lot of "Lisa" titles - "Lisa's Collection", "Lisa Light", "Lisa's Christmas Card", and on and on and on. I knew when I created the titles they wouldn't particularly be searched for by the public. My aim, though, wasn't really to have people search for them (in view of the fact that I wasn't try to make money with them). The plan was to direct readers to the blogs from other writing sites where my name is associated with my writing. In other words, all I wanted to do was categorize and make available my writing. I wasn't looking to become a famous Internet "presence" with it.

When I saw someone refer to personal-name titles as "ego titles" I did cringe because it occurred to me that anyone who sees some of my blogs may assume it was ego at the root of some of the titles. It wasn't, and I don't want anyone thinking it was. The "Lisa line" of titles is only a matter of "file-folder" thinking, as well as my disregard for whether or not anyone finds the sites without being directed to them by me.

I know that addressing this can come across as "defensive" of me, and that nobody really cares how or why I came up with any particular title. It isn't intended to. It's just that I'm "so-at-the- opposite-end-of-egotistical" it does kind of bother me to think that anyone - even a stranger - would believe it was ego at the root of some of the titles.

There's More to Organizing Than Just Organizing

When I first started writing on "what-you-want-to-write" sites it was a matter of "anything goes" as far as most writing sites were concerned. At the time, I hadn't been able to find full-time work because of the economy, where I live (which is "The Sticks"), family responsibilities, and my not having had a full-time job for quite awhile. I had no choice but take whatever projects anyone (who knew someone who knew someone else) would give me. I wasn't just working hard, but working hard to find yet more work. I was sick-to-death of writing stuff about things in which I had zero interest (and pretending to be interested). (Shh. Don't tell any of those people for whom I've done work that I really haven't had genuine interest in the stuff I've written for them.)

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy writing, and I even enjoy writing for other people. It's just that, as most writers will tell you, after awhile it isn't enough. So, it was a few years ago now that I began writing on writing sites. I enjoy writing on a few sites, and what I post on any of them depends on the kind of site it is.

The trouble is (without going into any specific details), ever since I've been enjoying writing online in my spare time (and picking up a fairly decent extra income at the same time), I've always kind of felt a little "off key" because, as much as I enjoy writing on writing sites; I haven't been writing the kind of material that's really what I want to write. People who spend much time on writing sites usually know that there's often debate (arguments) between those who write for money and those who write for love, or for art. My feeling off key has nothing to do with that particular (and ever famous) debate, because in a lot of ways I fit in with both sides of that particular writing coin. It more has to do with my own setting limitations on the kind of material I'll write on any site.

For example, I won't post anything I really care about on the Internet because I know too well how often some kinds of articles are stolen. I'm used to it. I do what I can about it. Still, I'm not about to post some pieces of writing in what amounts to an "up-for-grabs" venue. Then, too, there are things I'm just not going to write about. For the most part, I don't want write about objects. My wish to keep some personal business private means I'm not going to put on the Internet some things that I'd really like to write. The list of what I don't want to write goes on and on. So does the list of what I won't put on the Internet. As a result, I've found some kind of safe, middle-ground, of writing; and then I've adjusted whatever falls under the category to be as close to acceptable as it has to be on any given writing site. That's fine. I enjoy writing online, and I'll probably continue to use online writing as one of my spare-time endeavors. Still, the fact is, for several years now I've been trying to figure out what it is that has made me always feel kind of off-key when it comes to a lot of my online writing.

So often, when people are talking about how writers want readers for their work. I've always wondered if there's something wrong with me, because I plain, old, don't care if my work is ever read. Oddly, however, when I write I do write with the reader in mind; and all through the writing process, I'm imagining how a reader may react to the words I so carefully try to make click into place.

Also, there have been times when writing discussions have been about how writers want to keep getting feedback on their work, often in order to continue to edit and improve it. My thing has always been that I see each piece of writing almost as a kind of child of mine: I do my best to get it to maturity; and I send it out into the world, where it will inevitably sink or swim. Thinking of this brings to my mind the last scene in the animated version of E.B. White's Charlotte's Web, in which all Charlotte's spider eggs have turned into baby spiders that scurry away from the web she wove. (I know that making reference to "sink or swim" and spider eggs is mixing metaphors. Sorry. Sometimes I break some rules.)

In any case, over several years I've sent a very large number of "spider babies" out into the world; but as the real-life mother of grown sons and a daughter, I've learned that we remain parents no matter how old our babies are, whether or not they remain in the nest, or how far they roam from it. I don't know... As I've been trying to figure out what it is, exactly, that has been making me feel quite so off-key, it has occurred to me that no matter who, or what, we see as our "children", no mother just tosses them out into the world when they still need her and says, "Sink or swim, babies!" So why is it I've been so cavalier about tossing my own creations out into the Internet world and pretty much not been interested in ever seeing them again? I guess it's because, while they're mine, a whole lot of them are certainly not "Me" (at least not in terms of "Me, as a professional writer").

On the one hand, my spare-time "creations" are, most definitely, very much "Me, the person". The trouble is that "Me, the writer" judges my own (often more casual) writing through the eyes of someone who tends to think that only the most "professionally written" pieces of writing have a right to exist. The trouble is also, however, that "Me, the person" has a lot of things to say (for one reason or another. Not only that, but "Me, the person" just plain enjoys writing what "she" feels like writing. Sometimes the old "being of two minds" is easier than other times. Well, maybe it isn't so much "being of two minds" that's a challenge. Maybe the problem is more related to having one activity (writing) in which both of those minds are involved.

Sometimes, when I meet one of my better pieces of writing "on the street" I think, "Hey. This isn't so bad. Maybe I should like it more than I do." Sometimes, too, when I go out looking for any pieces of writing that I've never really liked, I'll realize that it never stood a chance because I didn't give it the time or chance that I gave some of its siblings. And so, I suppose, one reason I've for so long felt off-key is that I know I've sent so many of my creations out into the world without caring what happened to them. Oh, I have my writing and my projects that I very much care about. It's just that the stuff I put online is not that. The funny thing is, though, that we can think we don't care about our creations much until one day, we look out into "the streets" and realize that we are looking at something that is far more a part of us than we'd realized. I suppose, too, one problem has been that while I'll never really feel very much a part of the Internet "streets", I've been aiming to make my creations street-savvy because I've known I have no intention of becoming a part of their world.

I have my plans for how I'll approach any spare-time writing I do from here on out. In the meantime, though, I've decided to build a home for all my wayward creations, call them home, and do for them what I should have done in the first place.

Those of us who have been on writing sites recently know that these days duplicate content is being frowned on more and more. By setting up a home for my wayward creations I'll be turning them into duplicate content (if they haven't already been). I can't worry about who, out there in "Internet-Land" likes it, though; because my creations have, for too long, been fending for themselves. They need to come home now. They need me to start caring about them.

For now, their home will be on the blog, "Life On Key". I'm going to move them later.
When you start posting animated cats on the blog that's supposed to be for organizing your spare-time writing, it's kind of obvious you've been putting in a little too much work into what was supposed to be a spare-time thing.