5:00 p.m. - Friday, Aug. 15, 2003
The Writers Hood
Today I feel great!!! I got a full eight hours of sleep last night, uninterrupted by pain or anything else. The phone didn't even ring. Hallaleujah! I feel like partyin'. So far my legs aren't botherin' me today. Wow, you cannot imagine how good it feels not to be in pain even if it's only for a short while. Someone must have heard my prayers. Yesss! I bought some new sleepin' pills, Nytol, and whooo! Knocked me out!!! I feel like a new person today! I needed that sleep. I didn't wake up until almost noon. I was nearly dead from lack of uninterrupted sleep before last night. Today I feel like I could take on the world and win! Whoa! One more night of sleep like that and I will not be able to contain myself, hahaha.
I went diary readin' awhile ago and right now there aren't too many updates to read on my favorites list. A couple of my friends signed my Guestbook and that made my day even nicer. I love to open my email and see "Someone has signed your Guestbook". That is like bein' given a prize of some kind. I appreciate all my friends who take the time to share their thoughts with me. I enjoy readin' my favorite diaries and then givin' feedback. I know how much I love it, so I figure everyone else does also. It's fun to be able to comment about what someone else has written and to even give a few words of encouragement. In this world there's not enough encouragement given. There seem to be so many who are sad or lonely. I love signin' guestbooks. It can become habit-forming. Of course I don't always give feedback because the topic of the entry may be beyond my understandin' and thus my ability to add anything constructive, meanin' I don't want to come off soundin' like a babblin' imbecile, lol. So when that occurs I figure silence is my best option if I want to continue to live with myself. I hate to embarrass myself.
I very seldom go to random diaries unless I have found it on the list of one of my friends. I figure that if my friend enjoys a particular diary then I might also. I have found some very good diaries that way. I am surprised at the number of very strange things one can find by clicking banners, lol. Sometimes I will do that just out of curiousity when I'm bored out of my mind, but mostly I find the best diaries by checking out the diaries my favorites have enjoyed enough to put on their own list.
I don't always add the favorites of my friends to my list, but I do find some good ones now and then. I found out the hard way that at least one of my favorites has someone on his list that I need to be very cautious about. I don't want to mention any names so I will use fake names. If I've signed your Guestbook anytime in the last few months it's not you. In fact, I don't think the writer of this diary has ever visited mine back. This one is a diary that I only read now and then. I haven't decided if I really like what the guy writes or if curiousity just gets the better of me. I will use the name "Tom", not his real name.
Tom is very popular on DiaryLand. He has an unbelievable number of readers from what I can tell. And his entries are pretty funny sometimes. But he can be harsh and even unkind too and that makes me tempted quite often to remove him from my favorites. But so far I've left him on. Now and then I will read his entries, but it is not very often unless his email notifier gets my curiousity up. I have quit signing his Guestbook altogether. Even if I think I might want to, I don't let myself do it. The main reason is due to an experience I had with one of his favorites.
Once, soon after I began readin' Tom's entries, I was checkin' out his favorites list the way I do. And I found this particular diary on his list written by another man. When I signed this other guy's Guestbook, just as a courtesy to say I'd been there, right away I began gettin' emails from him and the emails were so weird (I mean scary weird) that I was terrified for awhile. He would send me emails that made no sense and I'd only signed his Guestbook one time. The guy signed my Guestbook once, I think, but he would send me emails, several emails, over the space of the next few weeks after that, which spooked me and I was actually afraid to respond back to him. I didn't think I'd written anything in his Guestbook that should have set him off. I'm usually pretty reserved on the first or second time I comment in someone's Guestbook. I re-read the entry I made and it seemed kind of innocent to me. But I was debating contacting DiaryLand management about him before the man finally stopped sending me emails. I suppose he got tired of gettin' no replies back. But I still don't sign Tom's Guestbook ever again because I've seen this guy's name on his Guesbook quite often.
I've never had an experience like this again, but that's mainly because I never check out any more of Tom's favorites. I'm not saying that Tom has only weird people on his list. This guy may be ok most of the time and maybe it was just me that set somethin' off in him. I have no way to know. And maybe I misunderstood what was happenin'. I don't know which it might have been, but I'm relieved not to hear from this guy any more. I don't remember what exactly was in the emails he sent to me because I deleted them when he stopped writing. It started out with: "Write to me"--nothing more. Then the emails began gettin' a bit weirder each time, like the next one said: "Why don't you write to me?", and the emails progressively became more and more odd. This man was a total stranger to me. We know absolutely nothing about each other and he's saying "Write to me"? Anyhow it's over. And I am very cautious about signin' the diaries of strangers now. Except for that one, my readers are very kind and caring people whom I enjoy hearin' from and whose diaries I love to read. And I enjoy signin' their Guestbooks.
It's a beautiful day outside. The sun isn't too bright. In fact, there are even some low hangin' clouds. From the inside of my cooled home it looks almost like a fall day outside to me. I love fall. My favorite season of the year.
I imagine by now that D is all moved in to his new home away from home close to his school. His best friend is going to college this year for the first time and he's sharing the house with D. D's father owns the house. D will have DSL instead of dial up now. We are all excited about that, especially D. He is anxious to get back to his online writing.
Speakin' of online writing, my friend S, also on D's message board, gave me the link to a great e-book site for short stories and poems. The Writer's Hood has sections for various genres of writing, including a secion for children who write and want to share their stories or, I suppose, for people who write stories for children. It's a great site. I have read some of the stories. Some are good. Some are not so good. But, this is free so I can't knock it too much. They're needin' an editor in the mystery section or they'll have to shut it down according to a notice on their mystery site and so I've sent them an email offerin' my services. I've never been an editor, but I figure I'd be better than nothin', right? Hahaha. I haven't heard back from them yet. They may have had another offer as well. So whatever happens, happens. I thought it would be interestin' to have the experience of editing.
I do a bit of writing myself from time to time. I have called the office of copyrights in Washington, D. C., and it costs $30 to get a copyright for a book, short story, or poem. I have asked them to send me some forms for applying for a copyright. I have a couple of things, stories and poems, I'd love to make sure I can hold onto if I put them onto the internet. The Writer's Hood has a contract they have their writers sign which gives them the ok to have their work copyrighted but the phrasing of the clause makes me hesitant. It says that while the writer shall maintain the right to authorship of the piece, The Writer's Hood can publish the work wherever they choose to, even on other sites. And the writer cannot publish the work anywhere else without their permission. Or so I have understood it to say. For this reason I am holding off in submitting any of my work to them.
Once, over a year ago, I read the statement of another author who was bewailing a claim that her work was stolen from her through something like this. She claimed that a site had offered to have her work copyrighted to publish on their site but then they had the copyright put into the name of one of their editors instead of hers. I don't know if this is true, but it's caused me to be very hesitant about the matter of putting my work on other sites without having my own copyright first. For the sake of clarity I will say that "The Writer's Hood" was not the place she was claiming this against. The Writer's Hood may not be like this and may be an honest and reputable site who do not steal materal. And I really don't even know if what the other lady was claiming was actually true or not, but she sounded terribly upset, upset enough to name names. I didn't follow up on this lady to know if any law suits were invoked or not over the matter. But I feel like I have been warned to be careful.
