An addiction to blogging?

(Image Credit)

I'm doing a little remodeling around here. What started as a Novel of Life is now my life--whether you read this as a novel or just a reportage of events is ultimately up to you.

Thank you Karlo for writing a review of Lethe in Vegas.

Thank you everyone who read my novel and thank you everyone who stopped by.

The Novel of Life lives on Wordpress.

Currently I have eleven blogs and I intend to keep them updated--to the best of my abilities.

Here is a list of my blogs and a short description.

1.The family history of Lethe Bashar, my alter ego. You could say the Novel of Life began with Family in Decline. I wrote it about five years ago. It reads like a soap opera of divorce, teenage angst, and a parent's disease. Uplifting.

2.Lethe runs away from rehab and takes a Greyhound bus to Vegas (reviewed recently by Karlo at the literary site "Mis-readings" but I told you that already; it's not everyday I get reviewed). There is a graphic novel based this section of the novel. Gerardo Gonzalez is the epitome of talent.

3.Lethe drops out of school in Spain. I lived in Spain when I was sophomore in college, and while it's true I did drop out of school, some events in this novel are the work of my fertile imagination. In fact, if you look back in the archives of this blog you'll find the rough drafts of my novel. The novel is buried under the dust and debris.

4.The audio podcast for Lethe's adventures in Spain. Recording these chapters has added a dimension to the novels, for me, at least. I get to give dramatic readings of my own work!

5.
I call this blog "The Blog of Innocence". I post personal essays on this blog and when I'm too tired to write essays I post lengthy quotations from the books I read. Sometimes I talk about the quotations.

6.The audio podcast for the Blog of Innocence. Lately I've been reading my poems. Along the same lines as reading my novel--I get to perform.

7.Literary Critic is a video blog or vlog in common parlance. Speaks to my fascination with the audiovisual buffet of the Internet. I still put up videos, I just don't read as many books as I used to. The Internet has done a number on my concentration. Lately I've been constitutionally incapable of finishing a book. I think I'm just going to sit in front of the camera next time and talk to it, YouTube style.

This is not an addiction. Blogging is a way of life.

8.And then there was my love affair with the micro-blogging platform Tumblr. Very low maintenance. You can post whatever you see on the web--or rather re-post it. If any of you read my introspective essay on Net plagiarism, now you'll know where all that guilt is coming from.

(I don't consider twitter a blog, but if you wanted to know my twitter address . . . )

9.My poetry blog. I only post poems. Live Journal is good for rejected poets. We console each other. Like in the middle of the night when I can't sleep and I post a poem to all my friend's pages.

10.My latest invention. This is my professional blog about corporate blogging and SEO. SEO: Search Engine Optimization. I get paid to tell people how to improve their website/blog. For example, you may have noticed, if you visit my blog often, that I removed all the external links on the sidebar. This is not out of malice. In fact, I spent a long time acquiring relevant links. But it's not good SEO. External links will send people away from your site. If you want them to stick around then keep things simple. Less clutter. More conversation.

11. I almost forgot "Lethe's blog," the blog you are reading. This used to be the Spain section of my Novel of Life. I imported the entries to a Wordpress theme. I originally thought I would put the rough drafts of the novel on this blog and the final drafts on the Wordpress blog. But after researching SEO, I understand that duplicate content negatively impacts your blogs. So I've decided to make this blog, the one you are reading, to be a simple, straightforward account of my life. Not a fictional account. But the real life of me.

I also run a literary arts webzine called "Escape into Life". You may have seen me advertise it on the sidebar where it says "Submit your work". I would like to create a community where writers and artists gather side by cyberside.

Am I addicted to blogging? More than likely. But I'm addicted to so many things. We'll leave that for another post.

Jeeeez, I was talking about coffee.