Saturday 19 March 2011

A new space for The River, and get your badge for July


Our next write-a-small-stone-a-day challenge will be taking place in July. In January, over 350 bloggers across the world took part. This time, we'd like to encourage even more people to discover the joys of paying attention to one thing every day and writing it down.

Like last time, we'll be very happy if you want to write your small stones in your notebook and nobody ever sees them, or if you want to share them on your blog, on Twitter, on Facebook, with your neighbours etc. One of the things a lot of people enjoyed in January was reading other people's small stones, supporting each other and making new friends.

We have two different blogrolls.

One is a brand new space called The River which is for blogs that only contain small stones (no need to use the 'aros' tag this time.) If you post your small stones on your usual blog and you want to join The River, you could always create another blog and upload your small stones to it once a week or so. (If you have a Wordpress feed which will filter your small stones from your usual blog, feel free to send us this too.)

The other will appear here, and is for anyone who's planning on taking part in the July challenge, regardless of what else you might post in your blog.

Both blogrolls are open for business as soon as you're writing small stones. If you'd like to join them:

Email fiona@fionarobyn.com and tell me your blog address and whether you're posting just small stones (in which case you'll be added to The River and the blogroll here) or other things too (in which case you'll just be added to the blogroll here). 

I'm trying to keep things very clear because we're determined to spend less time doing admin than we did in January. And we'll hopefully have more blogs to add! If you need more detail, let me know and I'll make these instructions even clearer. Thank you!

If you want to keep up with the news, you can join the mailing list here - we won't be collecting any other details about participants than their web address this time. There's also a group for July small-stoners on the Writing Our Way Home forum.

And, as you can see from the previous post, our new badges are ready. Get them while they're hot and let's start spreading the word...

PS In January, we created a book (the beautiful pay attention: a river of stones) from our favorite stones. In July, the whole project will be online. 

Roll on July!

19 comments:

  1. Bloggers using WordPress ccould put all their small stones into a dedicated category on their blog. Couldn't you just use the category feed in that case? (The feed address is simply the category URL with "/feed/" added to the end of it.)

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  2. This is so exciting! :) The new place at The River looks great!

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  3. Dave - thanks, I don't know Wordpress and didn't know this was possible. The answer is yes - I've added it to the general instructions.
    AL - thank you!

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  4. Dave you can do the same thing with tags as well if you didn't want to dedicate a whole category...

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  5. Sorry, I don't understand. Do I *need* to have a separate blog to participate, or can I participate by entering comments on the Writing Our Way Home forum that is related. That's sort of what I thought was happening. Thanks in advance.

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  6. R - if you're writing small stones, you're participating. If you'd like to join the blogroll on the right, email me your blog address. If you'd like to join The River, you need to post small stones only, and email me your blog address. Being in the blogrolls will give you a different audience to the members at WOWH, that's all... some people will just write in their notebooks, and some will post them on Twitter - the blogs are just two additional places people can appear all together if they want.
    Hope that makes sense.

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  7. @Elliott Yes, and that's true with author feeds at WordPress. too.

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  8. Hi dear Fiona and Kaspa

    I have just finished pay attention: a river of stones, I want to say how much I enjoyed the experience of immersing myself in the flow of the stones, and they did flow, every now and then I would come across a little bend in the river or a branch diverting my flow and this really allowed me to come up from my flow, and look out at what was beyond me. I feel i met some kindred souls on the way who I hope to meet again. Thanks for for making my writing more central to my daily life and being part of something that keeps flowing on Ann XX

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  9. Thanks Annie - chuffed that you enjoyed it! x

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  10. If you want to twit your small stones, is there a tag that can be used there to share them?

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  11. Hello sociopath ;) yes - use the #aros tag - some are still using it but LOTS will be during July.

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  12. Sorry to be dense but I'm a bit confused about using my blog. I thought I might tweet each day using the #aros tag (you see, I have been reading the instructions!) and then put them on my blog once a week. In this case how to I enroll?

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  13. I don't have a blog so how do I join rivers of stones? SINCERELY, LISA HILLS

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  14. Rosalind, just let us have your blog address if you'd like us to add you to the blog roll, and do tweet using the #aros tag, lots of others will be.

    Lisa, the main point is noticing and writing one small stone a day, if you have a blog you can share them with others, but you could also keep a paper notebook for the month - it's a great process to take part in!

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  15. I am completely confused, but so enjoyed the stones in Jan, I want to write them again.

    https://annellannell.wordpress.com

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  16. I also am confused but here it goes.

    my stone

    Melanie

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  17. I sent an email and asked to be added. I did set up a separate blog for the stones.
    http://poem-painting.blogspot.com/

    Is there a place to post an url when you write a stone for that day?

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  18. Hi Linda - you're on both blogrolls now, so your new stones will appear on the river as you post them. Warmest, Fiona

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