Welcome to Ink Inc.
All about Stephen Morrill's writing activities.
Here are some links:
TampaBayOnTheCheap.com - cheap things to do and see in my home area
WritersCollege.com - 60 course online writing school
StephenMorrill.com - my nonfiction writing
Sorcet.com - my fantasy novel series
BLOG.STEPHENMORRILL.COM
120306 TBOC is dead, other rants
Tuesday, 6 March, 2012 I killed off my TampaBayOnTheCheap.com travel web site. Hated to do it but it seemed time.I WAS a little annoyed by the CitiesOnTheCheap franchise operation, similar sites in
dozens of cities all across the US and elsewhere too. I paid for the franchise, received not a whit of useful help and then they sent me a short email saying they were shutting the whole thing down.
I asked why. I received no answer other than to be ordered to remove their logos from my site by the end of February. Since, in the several years I've run it, I could never make it pay for itself and
it was very labor intensive, I just spiked the whole thing. I may revisit Florida travel sometime in the future but I need the time right now to do other things.
On the plus side, eliminating the associated email box cut my daily spam by ninety percent.
Perhaps this is my week for being petulant. I also did away with the hits counter/web analytics I had used for 12 years on various web sites. WebStat.com charged me a small fee monthly for each
web site they tracked. When I tried to cancel the tracking for the TampaBayOnTheCheap.com site I realized that (a) There were absolutely no obvious and simple instructions on how to cancel an
account. And, (b), to send them a web-site-form email (I hate those too) I needed to supply my account number. I did so and was told that there was no such account. I was looking at my stats counter
web page with that account number. One of us was crazy. Finally, (c), WebStat had no phone number to use to call them.
When an online company intentionally makes it very difficult o cancel my account, and clearly does not wish to receive email or phone calls from me, I need to look elsewhere. I did eventually
manage to email them. They did call me (on an unregistered phone line so I could not get the number and the person to whom I spoke didn't want to tell me what it was). And I managed to cancel three
accounts. I hope.
Now testing Google analytics and also StatsCounter. I don't think they are any better than WebStat but they are both free and GoogleAnalytics is available by telephone if need be.
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111101 Starting NaNoWriMo
Today (November 1) is the start of NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a novel in 30 days. It need not be a novel
in the strictest sense; contestants have to write 50,000 words in 30 days to qualify for the prize at the end. the prize is...nothing.
I did this year before last and got to 50,083 on the final day. It was one of the most despicable manuscripts I have ever cranked out, and that's saying something. But it ...
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110920 If we're post-labor day, can autumn be far behind?
110920 You who live in the 'nawth' are already looking at new sweaters to wear and all that cool stuff. Here in Florida Labor Day happens pretty much in the middle of summer. Today is the 20th and it
is still hotter than a three-dollar pistol outside. I had one good evening last week when I could open the front door for a few hours. Two of our 'palmetto bugs' (giant cockroaches, really but we
call them something else to make the tourists happy) promptly scampered into the house. Spots, my four-footed assistant, got one and I got ...
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Not-So-Charming advertising?
How many blogs discuss toilet paper? Well, count on us to get the vital information and get it out to you as soon as possible.
Buying the all-essential TP is a problem for me. I live in a 90-year-old house with one bathroom and the TP dispenser is built into a tile wall. Apparently toilet paper rolls
have...swelled...since 1927, so much so that it's hard to find any that will fit. I have to pick through the assortment, of which there is no end. So to speak. ...
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WritersCollege.com upgrade completed
Tuesday, 24 May, 2011:
Finally! After months of off-and-on work on it, completed the major portion of an upgrade of my writing school web site. http://www.WritersCollege.com is about 200 pages in total, most not visible to the general public. That now conforms to the new HTML5 standard.
Next up is the http://www.Sorcet.com web site, for my fantasy novels. But that's a small site and should not take too long. After
that I get to upgrade my own writing web site, http://www.StephenMorrill.com which, like ...
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Redid my schedule
A favorite cult movie "Tremors" has Kevin Bacon saying, "We plan ahead. That way, we don't do anything right now." I admit to doing more planning some days than actual doing doing.
And the SteveMorrill.com web site is rather a case of The Shoemaker's Children - it gets no respect and is last to be updated. I'll get to it, but right now I', completing the huge overhaul of
WritersCollege.com WritersCollege.com
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Converting several more blogs into GoDaddy too
I have umpteen web sites and all but one are now hosted by GoDaddy. lately I have decided I need to do more social networking. You know-blogs. Like this one.
I pay for this blog, about $4 or $5 a month. I have an identical blog with Wordpress and that one is free. I have two more business blogs on Wordpress and another for a fellow writer whom I
support with technical things. So I waffled back and forth. Until yesterday. Yesterday the other writer posted a new blog entry. I saw it and ...
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Emailed vs. Snail Mailed Queries
A friend just sent me this quote from a literary agent:
<< MORE >>Before the arrival of e-mail submissions, I used to receive perhaps one hundred queries a week. That was a lot of queries but it wasn't frankly unmanageable. The agency now receives more than twice that on a daily basis and it's becoming ...
testing
testing ...
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Second entry
Set up this second blog to replace an earlier one I had neglected and then destroyed. Let's hope this fares better.
