I'm a winner, and 15 great blogs

I was thrilled this morning to discover that fellow blogger Beverley BevenFlores had given me the One Lovely Blog award. Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

I enjoy writing this blog for so many reasons, but mostly for having conversations with others. The blog keeps me accountable to my writing, and helps me share what I learn, my triumphs and my challenges. I love writing it, but it’s especially great when I hear from others that they like it too.

The best part of this award is that I now get to bestow it on 15 more blogs. I’d love to award Beverley BevenFlores again, because she has a great blog. But I think the idea is to pass it forward.

For the bloggers below, congratulations! Please write about the award on your blog, award 15 more, and let them know in an email or comment on their blog.

1. Elana Johnson, a young adult author with great insight into the writing world.

2. Writer Unboxed, a collection of published authors who offer great advice and encouragement.

3. Anita Nolan, a children’s book writer who is in touch with the latest news in the publishing industry.

4. Rachelle Gardner, a literary agent with great advice for all writers.

5. Pub Rants, another great literary agent blog filled with industry insights and advice on query letters.

6. Literary Rambles, writer Casey McCormick has a not-to-be-missed set of agent spotlights that are indispensible to anyone doing agent searches.

7. Kidlit.com, another agent blog for Andrea Brown Literary’s Mary Kole.

8. Storyfix.com, great articles on the craft of writing from author Larry Brooks.

9. Cec Murphey’s Writer to Writer, great tips on the nitty or gritty of writing, like grammar.

10. Paperback Writer, fun articles about the writing life from author Lynn Viehl.

11. Guide to Literary Agents, a blog guide for writers.

12. Writer’s First Aid, a blog by author Kristi Holl about easing the pains of the writing life.

13. Market My Words, a blog by author Shelli Johannes about marketing children’s books.

14. Jordan McCollum, a romance writer on her writing journey.

15. Write to Done, a blog by Leo Babauta about motivation, inspiration and all the other things writers need.

Check out all these great blogs. They’re all in my Google Reader and I read them often.

Great blogging, and Write On!

Blog Action Day

I was going to do something writer-related this morning, I really was. Then I glanced at my Google Reader and saw a cool post on A Writer’s Edge about the blog participating in Blog Action Day. I watched the YouTube video (see below) and thought, Cool! I want to do that.

Next I went to the Blog Action Day website to register my participation and they asked a simple question that took me about two hours to finally figure out I couldn’t answer: How many RSS subscribers does your blog have?

I figured WordPress would have this information. I mean, it’s good information for blog owners to be able to access even if you’re not signing up for Blog Action Day. But it turns out that — if my two hours of research is right — WordPress used to have this information, then switched it off and eventually replaced it with what WordPress has now: subscriber stats for each blog post, but not total subscriber stats for the blog as a whole. Cool, huh? Uh, no.

Isn’t subscriber stats for the blog as a whole much more useful than stats for just one post? Or maybe having both would be best. At least for those of us who want to participate in Blog Action Day. (By the way, I ended up putting “don’t know” in that field when I registered.)

I don’t mean to criticize the people who keep WordPress going. I’m using the free service and I love it. It’s easy to post, easy to maintain, a little clunky here and there, but hey, it’s free. And one of the things I like best about WordPress is that my readers don’t have to login to anything to comment, which I find frustrating with some other blog tools. And for all of this, I am grateful and say a hearty Thank You to the WordPress team. However, if the WordPress people are reading this, if you can bring back the Feed Stats I saw in my research that I think you had in 2006, that would be sooo awesome, and I don’t think I’m the only WordPress user who thinks this.

In my research, I did find out that I have a number of readers who subscribe to this blog, judging by the single-post stats I looked at. And, for those of you who do, thanks! I’m glad you found me and I hope you’re continuing to get something good out of Day By Day Writer.

Now, onto what started all this: Blog Action Day. I hadn’t heard of it before, but it sounds awesome. Basically, on Oct. 15, all the blogs that have registrated will talk about one subject, this year, climate change. Whether you believe we’re killing the world or it’s just nature moving along her course, I think there are things we can do to clean up our act. I don’t know if we’ll save the world with it; I’m no scientist, and the data we have seems to go both ways. But it seems to me that if steroids in our food is hurting us and pollutions in our air is giving our kids asthma, that’s a good enough reason to clean up. Hey, what does it hurt?

So, on Oct. 15, I’ll blog about that with a bunch of other blogs around the world. (Might even cheat and write it early and set it to post on Oct. 15 so I don’t forget.)

If you’d like to join in or just learn more, check out the video: