THIS SITE HAS MOVED. Inkygirl posts are now part of DebbieOhi.com.
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Debbie Ridpath Ohi reads, writes and illustrates for young people. Every once in a while she shares new art, writing and reading resources; subscribe below. Browse the archives here.
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*NEW!* Also see my Broken Crayon resource
Writer comics by Debbie Ridpath Ohi are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
More details: Comic Use Policy
Welcome to Inkygirl: Reading, Writing and Illustrating Children's Books (archive list here) which includes my Creating Picture Books series, Advice For Young Writers and Illustrators, Writer's and Illustrator's Guide To Twitter, Interviews With Authors And Illustrators, #BookADay archives, writing/publishing industry surveys, and 250, 500, 1000 Words/Day Writing Challenge. Also see my Inkygirl archives, and comics for writers. Also check out my Print-Ready Archives for Teachers, Librarians, Booksellers and Young Readers.
I tweet about the craft and business of writing and illustrating at @inkyelbows. If you're interested in my art or other projects, please do visit DebbieOhi.com. Thanks for visiting! -- Debbie Ridpath Ohi
Believe it or not, I think I've finally moved over most of the old site. Most recently revamped: The Writer's Guide To Twitter. I'll be gradually adding to this FAQ, so if you think of any questions you'd like me to answer or research, please let me know!
The bulk of my Squarespace move is finished, though I still have quite a few tweaks to go. Still, it's SO GOOD to finally get back to my own writing! Also a relief to Google my name & Inkygirl pages and NOT get pharmaceutical hacked info. But back to my own writing...
More and more people have been inquiring about where they can buy a print collection of my comics, so I've (finally) written a nonfiction book proposal featuring compilation of my best Inkygirl and Will Write For Chocolate comics. I plan to send it out soon, but obviously I want to include samples of my work.
Do you recall a favourite comic of mine you think I should include in the proposal? If so, please describe it below.
For those who missed my earlier post, by the way, I've started a separate blog feed for just my Inkygirl comics and am gradually uploading the archives, one comic at a time. The goal of this separate blog is to make it easier for people to find comics on a particular topic for posting in their blogs, using in their presentations, etc. I'm tagging and categorizing as I go.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
Apologies if some of you encountered odd security warnings when trying to access Inkygirl lately. I'm still learning more about Squarespace settings. :-)
Thanks to Lydia LeRoy-Williams for giving me The Versatile Blogger Award!
Here are seven of the most random things about myself I could come up with:
1. I have a love-hate relationship with the squirrels in my garden.
2. I painted a tree on my office wall.
3. My first writing mentor: Lee Wardlaw Jaffurs (Lee Wardlaw back then). I will always be grateful to Lee for her encouragement and advice.
4. I don't mind spiders but despise centipedes.
5. I dislike clothes shopping.
6. I attend virtual writing sessions on Second Life (I'm "Inkygirl Omizu" on SL).
7. I have Ray Bradbury's autograph.
Next, here is my list of the fifteen outstanding blogs YOU should visit:
5. Megan Crewe
7. Jo Swartz
10. Marina Cohen
11. Patricia Storms
12. Author2Author
13. Okay I cheated because #12 actually has
14. five authors contributing to it
15. which is one over my limit. :-)
Hurray, Inkygirl has been successfully moved to Squarespace! If you're reading this post in your old feed, then all is well - I'd appreciate it if you'd post below to let me know. You can find a list of my updated feeds in the top right corner of this page.
I'm actually going to be displaying two blogs on the Inkygirl page: my regular Inkygirl info plus a separate comics blog. I decided to keep my comics separate to make it easier for people to find the comic they want since I'm tagging/categorizing as I upload my archives.
In addition to Inkygirl, I've moved over Blatherings, Will Write For Chocolate, My Life In A Nutshell, Filking.net and my Filk FAQ, iPadGirl and DebbieOhi.com. I have about half a dozen other blogs to go, but when I have the basic infrastructures in place, I'll go back and do finetuning and link-fixing.
If you notice anything amiss or would like me to fix certain pages sooner than later, please do let me know! And thanks for sticking with me through this transition period. I'm hoping not to have to move again for a very long time.
Inkygirl.com is now pointing to my Squarespace account, although it may take a few days for the change to propagate through all the name servers.
I still have a fair amount of tweaking and content moving before I'm ready to start up regular posting again, but would very much appreciate it if some of you could try posting comments.
If you are unable to post, could you please e-mail me?
Thanks so much!
Just letting you all know that I've decided to move Inkygirl to Squarespace. I appreciate all your suggestions, info and feedback. While I'm moving some of my sites to Squarespace, some will be moved to other services some of you have mentioned (still researching the latter).
No need to change your bookmarks; I'll just redirect Inkygirl.com to the new site when it's ready.
The main reason I'm moving Inkygirl is because I want to cut down on the amount of tweaking, admin and security issues I have to deal with, so I can focus on the content. Wordpress is a great blogging platform, as some of you have pointed out, but I lack the time to keep up with the version updates for all the blogs that I currently have, plus other admin.
I want to be able to post more often, including more writing-related comics. I have half a dozen interviews with amazingly talented and knowledgeable authors lined up, but haven't had time to work on editing/posting them because of the Wordpress admin / repairs I've had to do lately.
No blogging platform is 100% secure, but on Squarespace I know I'll be able to have someone ELSE deal with fixing the code/admin. I've sent their customer support half a dozen questions so far and each time, I've gotten back a response within a few minutes; I've been really impressed!
Many thanks to literary agent Elana Roth for all the info/help. And again, thank you all SO MUCH for sticking with Inkygirl through all this. :-)
So it looks as if Inkygirl's been hacked again (if you missed reading about the first one, see this post). This time the hack is more subtle (no malware) and only noticeable in search engines. If you try entering "inkygirl" in Google right now, here's what you get as the top hit:
Chris Pearson encountered the same hack and posted a solution, but it didn't work for me. I admit to being frustrated, especially after Jeff spent so long cleaning up after the first hack, and all the time I've been spending on repairs as well.
And this has got me thinking more about time management issues. In the early days of the World Wide Web, I was as excited about the tweaking/design of my websites as I was about the content.
I've always tried to have good content but I also admit to spending a ton of time tweaking templates, looking for useful plug-ins, playing around with different Wordpress features.
As more and more people started using the Web, however, inevitable security and hacking issues have increased. This last incident (or incidents) has prompted me to seek another blogging platform. I would much MUCH rather spend more time writing and creating than tweaking and admin.
Yes, I realize that any platform I choose will have its security issues. But whereas I used to want total control over my site's design and features, now I'd rather find a service that will do most of the behind-the-scenes work (including putting out security issue fires) so I can just focus on the content.
Some of you have suggested Tumblr and Blogger. I've tried both sites and they're easy to use, but I have to confess I'm hesitant to commit to any free hosted service that doesn't have a clear business model, just in case they decide to start charging (like Ning just did) or worse, shut down without warning. Not as much of a problem if you only have one blog, but I maintain quite a few, not just for myself but for others as well.
I plan to consolidate some of my blogs/sites and cut down on the number of domains I use. I'm thinking of reorganizing most of my own blogs under one personal site and one work site rather than have the scattered all over the place.
I'm looking for a service that won't roll out new versions unless they're rock solid and thoroughly tested, will let me modify CSS if I want but also have templates so I don't have to do much appearance set-up, has as little downtime and glitches as possible, and good customer service.
Right now I'm checking out Squarespace and Typepad. If any of you have had experience using either of these services, I'd love to hear about it.
(Resource list updated: June 3, 2010, 11:06 AM)
As some of you may already know, some of my sites were hacked on the weekend. If you notice some missing images and features from this site, that's why -- I still haven't finished the finetuning after major damage control had been done.
Many thanks to those who e-mailed, tweeted and sent me Facebook messages about the problem, and to Cid of Cidwrites.com and others for their advice. Biggest thanks to my technonerdboy hubby, Jeff Ridpath, who spent pretty much the whole weekend helping me get things back to normal.
For anyone else out there who uses Wordpress as their blogging platform, be aware that what happened to me could very easily happen to you. You might think you don't have to worry because you just have a small site or figure that you don't have any valuable info on your site anyway but trust me...it's worth taking a few precautions to avoid going through the hassle of having to scrub your site clean and have to reinstall everything.
And if you get flagged by Google as a malware site, then you have the added embarrassment of the warning that comes up whenever someone tries to access your site. Even after you scrub your site, then you have to fill out an application to get Google to review your site.
Here are some things I learned from the experience that you may find useful:
- Make sure your passwords are strong. Read Protect Your Blog With A Solid Password. Don't use any words that can be found in the dictionary. Other BAD passwords: names spelled backwards, phone numbers, birthdays, qwerty, asdf, yourname1, default, letmein, password1, your car license, middle names. Don't use the same password for multiple sites.
- Keep your versions of Wordpress updated. As Alex King says, "Upgrade immediately. Always. No exceptions."
- Keep your versions of plugins updated. Remove any plugins you aren't using. Some older versions of plugins have security holes that hackers can use.
- Don't use the default admin account (called "admin") that comes with every Wordpress installation. Create another admin account with a different name and then delete the "admin" account.
- Take regular backups of your file directories as well as your database. One security tips post I found recommended WordPress Database Backup.
- Be wary of letting an application have write access to your files. Keep your file permissions as restrictive as possible.
- Limit your use of plugins. I try to do this anyway, because I was finding that having too many plugins really slowed down page loading on my site.
- Turn off any features you don't use.
And yes, I'm on the lookout for another blogging platform. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to post below!
Anyway, here are some useful resources I found while researching Wordpress and security issues:
Top 5 WordPress Security Tips You Most Likely Don't Follow
Wordpress Security Tips and Hacks
20+ Powerful Security Plugins and Some Tips & Tricks
Wordpress Security, Upgrades and Backups
Wordpress Security Issues Lead To Mass Hacking. Is Your Blog Next?
Hardening Wordpress
Wordpress Security Whitepaper
How To Diagnose and Remove the WordPress Pharma Hack
Protect your Admin folder in Wordpress by limiting access in .htaccess
Any other tips or suggestions? Feel free to share them below.
For those who encountered the malware warning over the weekend, Inkygirl has now been scrubbed cleaned (HUGE thanks to my hubby). Will post about what happened later today but basically, Inkygirl got hacked late Friday night. Didn't get much writing done over the weekend. :-(
Last year, I posted that C.S. Lewis had been rejected 800 times after finding the info on several websites. Several readers have since questioned this data, including Mary Mueller, who said:
Who the heck is Inkygirl and where the heck did she get her data?? This is entirely undocumented (the 800 rejections) and shouldn’t be “published,” even on an amateur website, without meticulous documentation.Mary is entirely correct that I don't provide meticulous documentation for the rejection stories I've been posting, so it's entirely possible that some of the stats may be inaccurate. Unfortunately I lack the time to search for the original documents to support each stat but do try to include my sources of info whenever possible, in case readers need to verify info themselves. I make very little income from this site, and provide the info mainly to help inspire and motivate writers. I'm hoping that the spirit behind my Writers & Rejection series is still helpful to some writers, despite the lack of detailed documentation. Thanks to Mary for her feedback, and I do apologize if any of you were misled by my C.S. Lewis info. [Later edit: I just want to clarify...I -do- think Mary had a point, as blunt as her comment may have been. As she pointed out to me in a follow-up e-mail, just because you read something on three websites (or more!) doesn't make it true. It's a good lesson for me, and I do intend on doing a better job at verifying my source info from now on. Again, however, sometimes I won't have time to provide as detailed documentation as I could, so please do feel free to challenge anything I post if you don't agree. :-)] Gary McGath comments:
Claims made on the Web do tend to be picked up by other people and repeated, which gets some people really frustrated. I’m a lot more concerned when major news outlets, which _should_ have the resources to obtain “meticulous documentation,” don’t bother. I try to avoid the trap of repeating someone else’s unsubstantiated claim, but I’ve been caught in it too many times myself. All I can do then is acknowledge it.
I recently discovered that my site has been listed in Writer's Digest annual "101 Best Websites For Writers" list, in the May/June 2010 issue. Thanks to all those who nominated me! :-)
And thanks to Heather Wright for letting me know.
Thanks so much to Anita Nolan for giving me the Lovely Blog Award! If you write for young people and aren't familiar with Anita's blog, you should definitely visit her website.
Here’s my list of blogs that I check regularly because of their excellent info and inspiration. I've tried to avoid blogs that have already been given the award, but I strongly suspect there may be overlap. I also check WAY too many blogs regularly to list here, so please don't be offended if your blog isn't listed.
Congrats to all! If you write about the award on your blog, I encourage you to award 15 more, and let them know with an email or a comment on their blog.
1. Cheryl Rainfield: Cheryl updates her book blog with great info for writers in addition to her book reviews.
2. The Actress and The Writer: Adrienne posts a weekly roundup of links and info for writers, plus I also enjoy her frank insights about the craft and business of writing.
3. Mystery Writing Is Murder: Elizabeth Craig is also one of my favourite people to follow on Twitter at @elizabethscraig. Consistently high quality information for writers on both her blog and her Twitterfeed.
4. Routines For Writers: One of my daily reads, always inspiring! I've always been fascinated by work habits of other writers, so this blog is right up my alley.
5. Writer Unboxed: Always high quality content, with excellent interviews and information of interest to genre writers. You can find a list of the author interviews they've done so far as well as useful writer links in the right-hand navigation bar.
6. The Happy Accident: Writer Greg Pincus offers tips on how to use (and not use) social media, with a focus on writers.
7. Book View Cafe Blog: Online publishing venture by a group of writers. Posts include tips and thoughts re: craft & business of writing.
8. Gail Carson Levine: Wonderful posts by Newbery-winning children's book author, packed with practical tips for those who write for young people.
9. Bookends, LLC - A Literary Agency: Great tips for writers looking for an agent. BookEnds is a literary agency focusing on fiction and nonfiction books for adult audiences.
10. Editorial Ass: A self-described "recovering editorial assistant," Moonrat posts from the editorial perspective. Love the ascerbic wit throughout these posts. Lots of good info here.
11. Georgia McBride: If you're interested in writing for young adults, you HAVE to add this blog to your RSS reader. Georgia also has an active YA author community going on Ning and Twitter.
12. Rachelle Gardner, Literary Agent: One of my favourite sources of retweet material on Twitter, Rachelle posts consistently high quality tips and info for writers.
13. The Swivet: Colleen Lindsay's blog. Colleen is publishing consultant and a literary agent at FinePrint Literary Management. I read Colleen's blog not just for the useful information but also for her acerbic wit.
14. Lisa Yee: LOVE Lisa's sense of humour, and her blog posts are a fascinating and often entertaining glimpse into the life of a children's book author.
15. Blue Rose Girls: Seven children's book professionals (authors, illustrators, an editor, and one former librarian) discuss everything kidlit related; from industry news and the ever-changing world of publishing to the creative process with all its frustrations and inspirations.
Thanks to Profwriting.com for making Inkygirl their Blog Of The Week. :-)
You can follow Profwriting on Twitter.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010 at 10:34 AM