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By Gary, July 24, 2009

I’m writing this from one of our public library study rooms here in beautiful Springfield, MO. My “real” office at home was offline all day yesterday and I was stuck at home — but maybe I can use that experience to impart a useful tip. But first, a little background information is in order.

We had something like 15 hours of severe weather come pounding through our neck of the woods overnight on Monday. For that time, we were ALWAY under either a tornado warning or a severe thunderstorm warning. For those of you who live outside stormy regions of our world, a weather “watch” means conditions are right for bad weather; a “warning” means that sucker’s here.

Two tornadoes went through our town, neither very close to our old house. But one of them blew down my son’s privacy fence and scattered his neighbor’s trash all over his (my son’s) yard.

Several nearly-100-mph straight line wind gusts blew by also, as well as some serious (golf ball sized to baseball sized) hail. It was a less than fun night in the Ozarks. Two people died as a result of those storms, many homes were damaged or destroyed, and things were a mess all day yesterday. Which brings me to the point of all this: We lost telephone service, along with our DSL — meaning I had no way to get online from home yesterday.

I happened to be stuck around the house all day anyway waiting for a plumber to repair a sump pump problem that came about from the storm. So I couldn’t get to what I like to think of as my instant, public office space: A private study room in one of our public libraries, with free WiFI.

Hence the title of this post: If you haven’t done so yet, you might want to scout out a public place where you can spend serious time online for free if you’re doing writing or business on the Internet. Perhaps you already have. There are many cafes, coffee shops, and libraries all over that offer such space. If you haven’t found that sort of backup spot somewhere handy, you really should.

Thankfully, our DSL/phone service is now back, so I probably won’t spend long here, because I’m a lazy old bald guy who loves blogging from his favorite recliner more than this stiff library chair. But it was nice to have. Find something like that for yourself.

Technorati Tags: public online access, writing for the Internet, working online, working from home, writing tips at garyspeer.com

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By Gary, July 23, 2009

How many of you out there have ipods or something similar and listen to music (or even watch videos?) while you write? Do you prefer some other sort of noise or activity going on while you write? Or do you insist on a nearly silent, isolated work environment when you’re writing.

Whatever works for you and helps you write is, obviously, the best thing for YOU. I feel your pain if you require a lot of silence and isolation to be able to write. That’s pretty hard to find in our world these days.

Lucky you if you’re able to focus and accomplish your writing in the midst of chaos. I’ve mentioned before (somewhere here, I think) how hard it was for me when I first started working as a newspaper copyeditor. My first week or so in the newsroom was overwhelming because of the chaotic activity, noise level, and distractions going on all around me. As deadlines approached, the chaos deepened. It was an incredible experience for a guy accustomed to writing at a desk in a private study or very small public office.

My advice for you, just to enhance your abilities as a writer, is to get out more with your writing if you’re accustomed to working in quiet isolation. It’s a very useful skill, learning how to write in the midst of chaos. It may not be easy and it may sort of spoil things for your for awhile, but it’s a useful work habit for all writers.

Unless you’re fortunate enough (?) to be completing the Great American Novel as you sit quietly beside a small pond with the twitter (not THAT kind of Twitter) of beautiful birds wafting through a perfect breeze and catch perfectly ripened fruit in your hand as it falls slowly and gently off a tree near your desk.

You get the point, I hope: Put yourself in a variety of writing environments and learn to focus in all of them.

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By Gary, July 22, 2009

I mentioned in some recent “recycled” posts here that I’m using a plugin which pulls old posts from the “back” or “bottom” of the blog to the “front” or “top” of the blog. I should explain.

By default, WordPress software puts the most recent post at the top of the blog. The next time I post, a new post replaces that first one, and it “sinks” to the next lowest position. The result of this is that posts written a year or two ago are pretty much off the radar, unless someone is searching by category or title or something to find a specific post.

This plugin I uses lets me pick a category, tell it how often I want it to “recycle” posts, then it starts with the oldest dated blog post in that category and moves it to the top of this site’s front page. At an interval I set — every day, every other day, every week, whatever — the plugin finds the oldest dated post in that category and moves it to the top of the site.

I like the idea, because it takes something I wanted to emphasize and “refreshes” it for those who’ve just found the blog or who haven’t been around long.

Nothing I write, really, is such a gem of wisdom and knowledge that I feel compelled to make sure everyone reads it. But some people have found posts in such categories as “Writing Tips” and “Advice for New Writers” to be helpful. This process simply gives newer readers a look at the stuff for the first time or as a refresher.

I’m telling you all about this, though many of you probably have no interest in it, for a reason. One of my newer readers “tweeted” me on Twitter to point out that the dates on some of the posts don’t make sense comparing them to the dates on the comments. That’s probably because the comment was written when the post originally appeared. The magic plugin I’m using has recycled the post, updating the posting date on it. But it doesn’t update the date stamp on any comments which were made on the original posting date.

Make sense? Anyone really care? At least now you know.