December 5, 2011
What’s the Point of Pinterest?
For a while now I’ve heard people gushing about how addictive the website “Pinterest” is. The first time I went to it I completely didn’t get it. Then one day my cousin commented that Pinterest is like “organizing the internet,” and my little ears perked up. I love organizing things. I have a color-coordinated closet. I organized my DVDs by genre, time period, title, and color, until I got married and (with trembling lower lip) finally agreed to just organize them alphabetically and by genre so Adam could find them too.
Pinterest is basically an online inspiration board. I’ve seen authors, artists, interior designers, etc, have pin boards above their desks where they save things that inspire them: photos, scraps of fabric, favorite quotes…whatever. That’s what Pinterest is: an online pin board.
The reason I didn’t get Pinterest at first was because I was looking at the home page, which isn’t organized. Once you have your own profile page, however, you create “Boards” which are a collections of your “pins.” Here are some of my boards:
Some of my Pinterest boards. Clearly I need to add more pins!
For example, I created a board called “Things I Love to be Surrounded By,” which is basically a collection of things I would love to have in my dream home one day. When I see a picture on a website of, say, a kitchen that I love, I click “Pin it” and Pinterest makes a “pin” out of that picture and adds it to my collection. So now I have a collection of pictures to give me ideas for decorating my house in the future. Here’s a screenshot of some of my pins on that board:
One of my Pinterest "Boards" and some "Pins"
The cool thing, though, is that it also adds a link to that website along with the picture. In the past, I’ve bookmarked websites that I wanted to remember, but that means I have a billion bookmarks, and a link just isn’t as inspiring as an actual picture. Now I can go to my “Crafts” board and see pictures of all the crafts I’ve thought would be fun to do, click on the one I want, and instantly go to the website that has directions for it.
You can create as many boards as you can think of: craft ideas, books to read, thought provoking articles, pretty clothes, recipes, Christmas/party decorations, time/money saving tips…whatever! You can view other friends’ boards, too; I’ve gotten some great ideas for crafts to make, recipes to try, decorating tips, etc from friends’ pins. You can also search for pins: I searched for “Photo Wall” to get ideas for how to hang pictures in our new apartment, and this is some of the results:
Pinterest Photo Wall Search
I wouldn’t say I’m “addicted” yet, but I think it’s going to be a fun tool to organize and keep track of things that inspire me and websites that I just plain want to find again! One warning: the images aren’t filtered, so you do run some risk of running across risque images, particularly if you do public searches. If you’re mostly using it to organize your own websites/pictures and see what your friends like, though, the risk is pretty minimal. If you’d like an invitation to join Pinterest, just let me know!
October 6, 2011
Calling All Future Best-Selling Authors!
If you didn’t guess from my last post, I’m writing a book during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) again this year! I wrote here about the experience last year. I don’t know how, but I seem to have forgotten how hard it was, because I am SO excited to do it again! (In spite of the fact that we will be driving to Colorado the first two days of November and then trying to do things like, oh you know, find a place to live, take care of a baby, and still pass my classes.)
The goal of NaNoWriMo is to stop saying “Someday I’m going to write a book” and just do it. Last year (on October 30th) a friend asked me to do it with her and I decided on a whim to go for it. It felt a bit like running a marathon after two days of training, but after much blood, sweat, tears, mental blocks, twitching of my eyes, and aching of my wrists, I finished! (See my winner button?? *ridiculously excited grin*) Because I had to write so much so quickly (50,000 words in one month), it forced me to focus on quantity, not quality, which is perfect for perfectionists like me. As they say, a horrible first draft can be edited (and believe me…it was horrible), but you can’t do anything with a blank page. Having a set goal and some competition was exactly what I needed to stop saying “someday,” stop overanalyzing, and just make writing a priority. And it was amazingly gratifying to finish the month and be able to say I’d written a book!
Now, to get to the point of this post, I’m doing it again, and I’m looking for writing buddies to do it with me! If you have even a hint of an inner author begging to come out (and I am thinking of quite a few of you who I know do), why not give it a go? It is so much easier to keep going when you have the accountability of friends, so I hope some of you will do it with me! And imagine the amazing satisfaction of finishing the month and being able to say you wrote a book!! Once you sign up on the NaNoWriMo website, there are lots of fun things to keep you motivated and accountable, like charts where you can track your daily word-count progress, hilarious and encouraging pep-talks from published authors, forums on writing techniques, etc. The new site for this year will be up on October 10th.
There’s a famous Ira Glass quote (see video below) about how when you start doing creative work there’s a gap between your ability and your taste, and the only way to bridge this gap so your work becomes the wonderful thing you want it to be is to do lots and LOTS of work. NaNoWriMo is the perfect way to start doing that!
So…who’s ready to join me for a month of literary abandon?
Book Review: No Plot? No Problem!
Title: No Plot? No Problem! A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days
Author: Chris Baty
Genre: Non-Fiction, Writing
Verdict: **** (out of 5)
Written by the founder of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), this is a funny and encouraging guide for NaNoWriMo participants. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to stop saying “Someday I’m going to write a book” and forcibly kick it off your bucket list by writing a 50,000 word novel in one month (November). Hundreds of thousands participate in NaNo every year around the world, and I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys writing but is too much of a perfectionist to just sit down and do it. NaNo forces you to focus on quantity, not quality, because, as they say, a horrible first draft can be edited, but you can’t do anything with a blank page. If you’d love to write a book “someday” but the very idea of writing a book in a month makes your perfectionist self want to scream, faint, or huddle in a corner whimpering, this is the book for you!
The first half of the book is tips on preparing for NaNo: imagining your basic plot, fleshing out your characters, choosing a point of view, etc. The second part is a week-by-week guide for NaNo, offering advice and encouragement for the ups and downs of the month. This is the perfect book for anyone who dreams of writing a book “someday” but thinks they don’t have the time now, or who finds themselves paralyzed by perfectionism every time they try. The book is chock full of encouragement to keep writing, ignore your vicious inner critic, and relish the thrill of finishing the month and actually being able to say that you wrote a book!
