Monday, March 2, 2009
Web Site for Portland Writers
Portland Writers discover fiction, essays, poetry, resources, podcasts, blogs and more at WritersDojo.org.
Monday, July 28, 2008
New sites abound
We have some exciting online developments with enormous enhancements coming soon to WritersDojo.org. Stay tuned for our relaunch as an art-house style online magazine for Pacific Northwest writers. More on this topic throughout August, when this blog will migrate over to the Website.
In the meantime, please check out this fabulous blog for all things literary in Oregon, from our friends at Literary Arts: http://paperfort.blogspot.com. There's a great wealth of resources and information brewing with interviews and more. Please take a gander and help us support and applaud their efforts.
In the meantime, please check out this fabulous blog for all things literary in Oregon, from our friends at Literary Arts: http://paperfort.blogspot.com. There's a great wealth of resources and information brewing with interviews and more. Please take a gander and help us support and applaud their efforts.
Friday, May 16, 2008
CMS Websites for Writers
For about 5 months we've been chatting with Web programmers and designers to offer inexpensive CMS websites, custom designed, to come in under or around $1000. If you're familiar with Content Management Systems and high-end Web design, you probably understand our challenge to find a highly qualified team willing to help us in this price range.
We wanted creative time with amazing designers, a creative brief session, and then 7 or 8 pages to start, with the ability to easily add pages at will, and the sites needed to include such options as: easy-to-use point and click CMS, all the basics like home, about, and contact forms, secondary navigation features, gallery for photos or streaming media, blog, events calendar, mailing list sign up... All the stuff writers might need.
We talked to programmers involved with Drupal, Joomla, Windows .NET, XML, PHP... The price tag always ran North, up, up and away to 2K, 3K, 5K. It's the CMS connected to custom design that makes it so expensive. Occasionally we found a programmer willing to help, but only for one site. (We want to help many writers.) But then the reality of no money set in... we have a project manager, designer, and programmer for each site... Then we discovered roadblocks and shortcuts taken. Not good.
Just when all hope was lost... We have discovered a solution! Our friends from an amazing and powerful and successful Web shop, the sort that works exclusively with large corporate clients and budgets to match, have agreed to help support our writing community. They are extraordinarily generous and though we have just started this endeavor together through a beta launch phase, we are grateful for their positive energy, experience, advice and support.
If you need a site and you understand the value of what we're talking about here, please drop a line. Let's chat. Our goal here is to just provide an awesome resource. Once we get fully up and running, we'll also have lots of free content and ideas for writers and Web development.
We wanted creative time with amazing designers, a creative brief session, and then 7 or 8 pages to start, with the ability to easily add pages at will, and the sites needed to include such options as: easy-to-use point and click CMS, all the basics like home, about, and contact forms, secondary navigation features, gallery for photos or streaming media, blog, events calendar, mailing list sign up... All the stuff writers might need.
We talked to programmers involved with Drupal, Joomla, Windows .NET, XML, PHP... The price tag always ran North, up, up and away to 2K, 3K, 5K. It's the CMS connected to custom design that makes it so expensive. Occasionally we found a programmer willing to help, but only for one site. (We want to help many writers.) But then the reality of no money set in... we have a project manager, designer, and programmer for each site... Then we discovered roadblocks and shortcuts taken. Not good.
Just when all hope was lost... We have discovered a solution! Our friends from an amazing and powerful and successful Web shop, the sort that works exclusively with large corporate clients and budgets to match, have agreed to help support our writing community. They are extraordinarily generous and though we have just started this endeavor together through a beta launch phase, we are grateful for their positive energy, experience, advice and support.
If you need a site and you understand the value of what we're talking about here, please drop a line. Let's chat. Our goal here is to just provide an awesome resource. Once we get fully up and running, we'll also have lots of free content and ideas for writers and Web development.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Covered inPORTLAND
We're donning the cover of inPORTLAND in today's Oregonian. The press is great. Naturally, we're now card-carrying members of the Anna Griffin and Fred Joe fan clubs. Surely, their members are legion.
The kind, congratulatory notes and inquiries have flowed in steadily throughout the day. Thank you, Anna, for helping support our burgeoning community.
Ah, but we can't help but chuckle at one or two small editorial wonders. For instance, I didn't realize I was so well published.
Here's the online version.
It's edited differently than the print version. It claims I have: "managed to escape a career in advertising copywriting to write full time, publishing a couple of novels along with numerous short stories and nonfiction." Well, that's sort of jumping ahead. For the record, if we replace the word "publishing" with "penning" we'd be spot-on accurate.
By the way, the article doesn't offer any contact info save for this blog. So if you made it here after reading the story...
WritersDojo.org
503-706-0509
info@writersdojo.org
The kind, congratulatory notes and inquiries have flowed in steadily throughout the day. Thank you, Anna, for helping support our burgeoning community.
Ah, but we can't help but chuckle at one or two small editorial wonders. For instance, I didn't realize I was so well published.
Here's the online version.
It's edited differently than the print version. It claims I have: "managed to escape a career in advertising copywriting to write full time, publishing a couple of novels along with numerous short stories and nonfiction." Well, that's sort of jumping ahead. For the record, if we replace the word "publishing" with "penning" we'd be spot-on accurate.
By the way, the article doesn't offer any contact info save for this blog. So if you made it here after reading the story...
WritersDojo.org
503-706-0509
info@writersdojo.org
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
The Mother of Events Calendar
We've been threatening to develop a master events calendar that culls together all other literary calendars for events, reading, workshops, etc., and puts them into one easy-to-use and read database with simple search functions and daily updates. Whoa, that would be awesome. A one-stop shop. Maybe sometime this year we'll get it together.
In the meantime, there are all the email lists and organizations and book stores and newspapers to check. We always feel like we're late--oh, just missed another favorite writer who was in town for one day. Luckily, we caught this one in time. If your a fan like we are of Then We Came to The End... Joshua Ferris will be at Powell's on Tuesday night. That's on Burnside, March 25th, 7:30pm.
In the meantime, there are all the email lists and organizations and book stores and newspapers to check. We always feel like we're late--oh, just missed another favorite writer who was in town for one day. Luckily, we caught this one in time. If your a fan like we are of Then We Came to The End... Joshua Ferris will be at Powell's on Tuesday night. That's on Burnside, March 25th, 7:30pm.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
So many blogs, so little
Thank you for the recent emails re: what happened to our blog? Nothing like a six-week hiatus. So, here's a little disclaimer for inquiring minds: We've been working on the Web site, to offer literary resources beyond another list of links. Of course, we want to incorporate this blog more closely into the site.
We're still waiting.
In the meantime, we return to sharing thoughts here. Today, we're headed over to the Writers Resource Fair at the Central Library. Hope to see you there.
We're still waiting.
In the meantime, we return to sharing thoughts here. Today, we're headed over to the Writers Resource Fair at the Central Library. Hope to see you there.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Ode to a Super Agent
Poets&Writers will run a series of interviews with literary super agents. Their first in the series with Lynn Nesbit is completely awesome, if not slightly melancholy for the current state of publishing. Still, this is a must-browse situation. Oh, the salad days of the industry, when eccentric, intellectuals and insiders could roam the New York City streets fueled by Scotch, party invitations, and crazy notions of literary purpose. Wow, Nesbit agented how many of our favorite authors? She's been at the center of the New York lit scene for decades. Oh, how I'd love to pour the java and get her chatting over here at the Writers' Dojo. Lynn, if you happen to be reading this blog, please drop a line anytime: 503-706-0509.
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