The Writer’s DB Blog

Thanks to the fine folks at Netvibes, I’ve been spared some programming effort. One of the items on the to-do list has been to create a Konfabulator widget (a.k.a. Yahoo! Widget) for those of you who aren’t using Dashboard, iGoogle, or Netvibes, but still want your WritersDB data “to go.”

What Netvibes has done, which is pretty spectacular, is to make good on their promise of a “Universal” widget architecture. It used to be that if you wanted to create widgets for Dashboard, iGoogle, Konfabulator/Yahoo, Windows Vista, Windows Live, etc., you would have to manually port the relevant code to each of those platforms, coding to match the idiosyncracies of each.

Widgets written for the Netvibes platform, though, can now be run in several of those other environments. The conversion to all those different formats is handled with no additional effort from the developer.

So, if you were waiting on those proverbial tenterhooks for the Yahoo/Konfabulator widget, you can now get it here:
http://eco.netvibes.com/widgets/202565/writersdb-pending-subs
(Just click the “Yahoo” link on that page.)

One of the better inspirational posts I’ve seen on the writing mindset in a while:

A student asked, How often do you sing? [Pavarotti] answered with a single word: Always. When prompted he elaborated that he sings constantly—not always aloud—but even if only in his mind, he was almost constantly rehearsing.

When do you write?

Full article here: http://www.take2max.com/writing/2007/12/04/finding-the-time/

My Clarion buddy Trent Hergenrader makes an excellent point about the importance of being Earnest, where Earnest is a writer who keeps careful track of his submissions.

Out of 125 submissions, that’s my fifth instance of something getting lost in transit . . . It sucks, but it happens, even with electronic submissions.

Frankly, I don’t understand not carefully tracking submissions. It’s hard to remember what you sent where and when without at least a spreadsheet.

Yes, Trent’s post is a few months old. I’ve been meaning to link to it for a while now, but have delayed because I wanted to think of something to add. Tonight, I’ve belatedly come to the conclusion that nothing needs to be added.