The exercise, which I qualify as a success on many levels, resulted in the most post-active month on the site ever (January 2009 was the previous record holder with 15 posts).  The site activity also saw other great changes:

We got more people to visit, woo!

• A new Google Plus page (which you should definitively follow )
• The resumption of Equanimity posts
• A new netZoom format
• Some new site logos
• Some new site pages for the Regular Series
• A doubling in the number of visitors to the site

So what’s next?

Well, I’ll try to keep up with a post a day, but only if it allows me to keep up post quality.  I’ll strive to share interesting and fun things I find on the web, to post Equanimity updates on a more regular basis.  I’ll also look at how to better engage visitors, what with the last comment on the site being 5 months old. Finally, I hope to take a look at different other mediums available to me for posting (i.e. audio, video), something I’ve always wanted to do.

So, the next couple of months should be quite interesting.  I hope you’ll join me for the ride!

For anyone who’s curious, there are currently 8 chapters published, and the total number of chapters once fully published will be around 30.  Pretty crazy when you consider that I first envisioned the story to be no longer than 5 parts long.

You can find all information on the short story by visiting the Equanimity Page.

You can find the pages in the menu right below the banner at the top of the page.

I slacked off over the past couple of days due to being overwhelmed by uncontrolable external forces, so I’m going to be making up for it this weekend.  Expect a handful of posts to appear over the next couple of days, all of them interesting things I wanted to discuss over the past week.

And by the time Monday comes around, we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled program.

Enjoy

Click on me, you know you want to!

I was poking around Google+ this evening and found that the Create a Google+ Page link was staring at me, as though it was trying to get me to click on it.  I ignored it as best I could, but soon found myself with an itch I had to scratch.

Now you’re probably thinking that they’ll let any bozo on the web create a Google+ Page, and you would be right!  This bozo clicked the link, went through the motions of filing out a few forms, and after a very simple setup, I found myself with a Google+ Page for Folaji.com.

You can checkout the page by clicking on the following Link:

Folaji.com Google+ Page

The page is fairly bland at the moment, but that is to be expected.  I hope to update the page over the next couple of weeks with content from the site, as well as setup an automatic push of some sort for new posts (in the same way my posts are currently automatically pushed out to @FolajiBlog on Twitter).

Oh, and one more thing before I checkout for tonight.  I needed to provide a profile picture for the new page.  I didn’t have anything on hand (I’ve no logo for the site) so whipped the following up for now.

Folaji (temporary?) Logo

It remains to be seen if this logo will be temporary or permanent, though as a friend used to say:

“What is considered temporary usually becomes permanent.”

The new netZoom logo was announced last week, and now I’m proud to show you three more logos for other article types we find here on Folaji.com.

Enjoy!

Three New Logos for Folaji.com

New netZoom Logo

New netZoom articles will be shorter, and will be about one subject at a time.  This will allow me to write more focused articles more frequently, hopefully resulting in a better quality of articles overall.

The first of these new articles is now up, and you can read it here.

I hope you enjoy the new format, and also keep an eye out for the other changes coming up.

Lack of Posting Search Results

I admit that I have been responsible for such posts in the past, and now I find myself in a situation where I’m about to do it again.

And I wonder: should I even bother?

Truth is there are more than enough of these kinds of posts on the internet, and I don’t think any more are needed.

As such, I do not apologize for my silence, though I will reserve the right to repeat it in the future if need be.

In the meantime, as my favorite futuristic robot would say:

I’m back baby!

I Failed NaNoWriMo 2011!

As you can see from the graph above, I did not reach the goal of writing a 50,000 novel in 30 days.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disapointed in myself, but considering what I accomplished over the past month (a draft of 14k words and an epic story with a possible sequel), I do have some things to be proud of.

NaNoWriMo helped me learn about writing under preassure. I realized I could write almost anywhere I wanted to, and got better at ignoring distractions that would creep up and try to take my attention away from my writing.

I also learned that my biggest problem with writing wasn’t distraction, but rather procrastination. Once I got into a groove could sit and write for hours on end.

Getting into that groove is what proved most difficult, and it was then that I realized the most important lesson of all: there will be time to review everything later. The goal of NaNoWriMo isn’t to write a completely revised and publishable novel in a month, but rather to write 50,000 words in a month.

If you cannot learn to avoid what some ‘Wrimos’ have dubbed the ‘Inner Editor’, odds are you will spend the majority of your time rewriting the same passage instead of putting to paper new words that serve to push your story forward and increase your wordcount. As many have pointed out in various forum and blog posts: ‘You’ll have plenty of time to revise your work once the month is over’.

So, what’s next?

Well, I think I’ll put aside the draft for a couple of weeks and get the second half of Equanimity posted on the site. After that’s done, I’d like to try some video ideas, as well as see if I can finish my NaNoWriMo novel and maybe get it published.

Of course, I’ll be waiting for November 2012, where I hope to attempt the challenge once again!

The 11k word first draft I’m holding in my hands is really nothing more than a beefed up story board.  The paragraphs are short, dialogue is virtually missing, and the written words contain much more action than character development.

The story also starts in first person, ends in third, and contains a few dead ends along the way (that is, parts that I initially wrote but later ignored due to changes in the plot).

But that’s ok: no one said it had to be perfect… right?

So what now? 

Well my work is not over.  I’m still aiming for 50k words, and now I have something to work with. I’ll be taking the next few days as break (catching up on some much needed Arkham City gaming) and will start adding substance over the weekend.

It will be interesting to see how fast I can increase my wordcount between then and the last day of NaNoWriMo. I still have 39k words to go, but with a clear path between here and there, I think I can make it…

*fingers crossed*