Thursday, May 8, 2008

Joining the Blog World


Hello Readers,

Since Eliza has gotten home from college, we have been doing a lot of writing together. We use the method I learned from Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones) during the week long workshops I have attended with Ruth in Taos, New Mexico. The concept is simple. Choose a topic, write for ten minutes, no stopping, no erasing, just keep your hand moving. Most of all, ignore the inner critic who will surely weigh in with unhelpful comments. Then share. Writing must not be sequestered in a journal. Read it outloud!

We often go to The Nashoba Brook Bakery in West Concord to write. Today after I finished my large latte in the white ceramic cup and Eliza finished her Odwalla Orange Juice and we split the #9 (grilled sandwich with arugula, turkey, cheddar cheese, delicious honey mustard, and apple slices on harvest bread), we got out our notebooks, chose a topic and started writing. We flew. On to two more before we got up from the table. As I left I imagined sharing our writing in a blog. Eliza went right to work setting this up and we're ready to roll.

We will share writing, photos, reflections, pictures of our puppy, Calley, and anything else that might come up. We'll try to get David and Carrie to contribute as well. (4 Moccasin Hillbillies)

Now for some acknowledgements. Thanks to John and Sarah, Sylvia and Brad and my own brother Jack for showing us what a blog can be. Thanks also to my parents, Martha and Don, who certainly passed down the writing gene to their four kids. Thanks to Donny who told me about One to One which has sent me to class at the Apple Store each week and made me blog ready. Thanks to Ruthie, my writing buddy and life partner, and Jack, who will make us all famous.
We will post some writing and maybe even recent photos shortly.

4 comments:

Sylvia Elmer said...

Oh I can't wait for more! I can't wait to read your writing! Imagine, the whole family (potentially) contributing to a family blog. I love it. I was hoping you'd set up a blog with at least Calley pictures. This is even better!

John said...

Welcome to the Blogosphere, O'Neil's! I can't believe I'm actually acknowledged on the Internet. It feels like I've arrived.

Congratulations on getting started with the blog. It's a ton of fun to do and I am simply excited as can be to have another family blog to be able to check regularly.

A couple of suggestions. If you want to be a little safer, in the console, you can go to settings and select "no" for "Let Search Engines find your blog" and "Add your blog to our listings." This will give you a little security from random people reading your blog and learning about you as well as cut down on the amount of comment 'spam' that you get.

Also, under "Settings" -> "Permissions" you can add specific authors so that each of you can post and readers will be able to tell who posted.

Hope that's helpful.

Anyways, I can't wait to read more and hope to hear from each and every one of you!

jamclean said...

Congratulations, Barb. A void has been filled and I am excited!

Dogs and babies appear to be the family "hook."

Love abounds!

don said...

I'm quitting my job so I can blogify and skypeify full time. I mean, what else is there?
Technology for all to to all a good night?
(note: buy Google GOOG).