I lift this from the Guardian, which I buy on Mondays for the media pages. The only weekday I take a national paper.

It had to happen; so why not me, or many of the rest of us?

Not me because I like to row without a rudder in storm, in the dark in a storm, or becalmed. I have no idea where I’m going, and hate going in the same direction for long. Which explains how my six blogs turned back into one which in turn has split into 35 pieces – some distinct, some not.

Julie Powel wins some prize for ‘Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes and 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen’

This which started life at http://www.blogs.aslon.com/001399

She says ‘the medium really liberated me and motivated me to do the work and not obsess over the details. The community aspect of blogging and the interaction with others kept me honest, kept me writing and kept me from sinking into my habitual self-loathing.’

I should start putting what I try to call ‘my efforts to get published’ online and see where they go.

But in Diaryland?

I’ve been here since September 1999, not that much last year though, but for most of this time.

Chair of judging panel Cory Doctrow – http://www.Boingboing.net

Judge, Paul Jones, iBiblio gives the advice ‘a great blook (sic) is not a blog shovelled on to paper. Julie and Julia successfully makes the transition and grows as it goes, having learnt from the blog readers.’

I should do as I’m told, listen to how readers respond

Hi ‘the-moo’ (or should that be, the-noo). What do you want of me today? A virtual visit to the North East, I can’t see me getting up there in person just yet.

I’ve done this in skip loads – look for how long I have written up sex, every growing inch of it in a lifetime. Find those entries that have been read many hundreds of times: the archived pages accepted, they are the thirty dirtiest, drawn out indulges I’ve managed to express here.

Bob Young established the prize to promote – http://www.lulu.com

It offers anyone the change to upload their manuscript to the internet and publishes books on demand when they are ordered, and partly as a means of honouring a new form of writing.

There were 89 entries for ‘The Blookers’ from a dozen countries

Why didn’t I enter? I must have been offline at the time, silent. What would I have offered?

Cherie Priest wrote ‘Four and Twenty Blackbirds’ offline then published it in instalments in Livejournal.

This is where I temporarily crossed 18 months ago at the behest of someone who now is a published author and was an early days mate and stalwart in Diaryland.

Perhaps it is time to go

Diaryland did it first for me, trailed all kinds of ideas, but they have been developed better elsewhere with a model that makes money, gets publicity and delivers templates that five years ago we buddied up together to create in bespoke form.

Others:

Biodiesel Power by Lyle Estill

http://www.biofuels.coop/blog

Hackoff.com: An Historic Murder Mystery Set in the Internet Bubble and Rubble by Tony Evslin

http://www.blackoff.com

Encourage me, it works

BBC TV NEWS picks up this story in the evening

– lifted from the Guardian it would appear, though the same news can only be interpreted in a few ways.

I should have done something with the first Writing Marathon online that I’m aware of – the one I initiated four years ago. The trickles may have turned into a tidal wave by now.

The Blookers

Conventional publishers are taking notice.
Millions of voices, millions of words.

Arthur Collins spotted Eggs, Chips Beans … thousands of people were reading it. So I should get Skieasy up.

‘Deserves recognition and deserves reward,’ says Prof. Paul Jones.

California, where blogging was born.

(Sorry, people have been keeping diaries and journals in various forms for centuries. The internet is simply a medium, like paper, audio-cassette, video or DVD)

Heading for the end of traditional publishing.

But bloggers don’t have editors, so their will be misinformation.

‘Personal, meaningful, meaningless.’

See, TV says so little, radio says a little more, but you’ve got to read it in a paper or online.