Mental Meanderings

Sponsered Items

I've on occasion used the Sponsered Items area for various things, promoting other peoples contests or items etc. and way back a contest of my own but I've never really used it for my own writing. Yesterday, I was tidying up my port a little, archiving older poetry to my Never Again Folder and removing some of the paid to review items etc. I decided I wanted more feedback on a couple of my poems so I topped up my GP balance and set two of my poems as Sponsored Items.

In the past I've not had the chance to really see how effective it is because as I said, I've sponsored other peoples items and one contest of my own. It was lovely to wake up this morning to find half a dozen new reviews for the items I'd sponsored although not quite so nice to see my swiftly depleting GP balance. What's even better is that for the most part I got some great reviews. I'm looking forward to getting many more.

Lately I've been thinking of getting more involved in the community here at WDC. The site offers so much and sometimes I feel like I don't return that as much as I could. I rarely review because I keep getting bogged down in everything else I do in a day. Lately I haven't even been writing much and entering contests.

Part of what I want to do as a writer is to write short stories. I've never really gotten the hang of the art that is short story writing. I'm long winded (you may have noticed ) and it's hard for me to know what to put in and what to leave out. I can't help but feel that becoming adept at short stories will immensely improve my novel writing.

As many of your know I also write poetry. I'm not interested in being a poet but writing poetry is another way to improve in the craft of writing. Poetry forces you to really break down your message, expand your vocabulary, focus on rules (and sometimes how to break them), and crystalize images and emotions. I've always felt that each poem can only be written one way, no two poems are ever alike because each poet is uniquely different and each approach to a poem creates a huge difference in the end result.

So, on my list amongst the millions of other things is to write more poetry and short stories. Of course, again comes the question of priorities. Obviously, I can't do all things all the time. Today my priority is to catch up on Tor's Journal. He's next on my list, for those of you who've been following along with the same Member Blogs as mine you might have seen Scarlett mention my blog raid, then Dan, well Tor is next and then Nada, Mavis, CC and Forever.

So, I better stop writing this journal and get started on Tor's because I also have to get into some housework (you can't see my living room floor under all the toys). All the best to everyone, and if you've got something you'd like more feedback on, I definately recommend the Sponsered Items. And if you have something but don't have the GPs to sponsor it, let me know and I'll see what I can do for you.