Gene’O: Personal Pages

credit: Myxer.com

I have never published a piece of commercial fiction or a peer-reviewed article, but I am a professional writer. I have supported myself for most of my working life by writing every day. I spent the first few years of my career as a news reporter and editor of weekly newspapers. I have worked as a communication specialist. I spent five years as an IT technical writer. Most recently, I have been struggling with the one piece of fiction I would like to see finished before I am too old to enjoy publishing it.

I am also a theorist, a strategist, and an organizer. A graduate degree in Political Science will do that for you. Earning that degree also required me to write every day, btw. I am also a Geek for Life. That means I value playfulness, humor, popular culture, technological cleverness, and close friendships.

Diana and I are not new to blogging. I have blogged around quite a bit. I walked away from it years ago for reasons that don’t really bear discussing. Here is why I decided to give it another try:

1. We’d never actually tried blogging as a team before.
2. We’d never been able to have blogs that offered readers so many ways to follow and so many ways of giving us feedback.
3. We’d never had the number of friends expressing an interest in blogging that we do now.
4. Blogging is a lot of fun, especially once you attract a few readers.

I believe in ethical blogging and good manners. I also believe in helping less experienced bloggers along whenever I can. When I go reading blogs for things to feature on my own pages, I ask myself two questions:

• Is this a well-put-together, interesting piece?
• Is this something I can share with my friends, family, and colleagues?

If I can’t say “yes” to both of those questions, you won’t see it on any blog I am responsible for. I want to make friends in the WordPress community, and share things I find on WordPress with my readers. But I write for friends and family first, because without their support, I never would have created the Writing Catalog and Sourcerer to begin with. Here is an index of my personal pages: My Tolkien bibliography (I blog about Tolkien frequently). My long-term writing list (for when I need a quick idea). A page I created entirely for humorous effect.