Author: Carolyn Steele

Carolyn writes websites, copy and nonsense about emigrating. She also occasionally ambles off to do something daft in case it’s interesting enough to write about. Her latest book grew from the blog Trucking in English, and you can learn more at her blog and her Amazon author page.

An Unlikely Roadie

Photo by Michael Messner

I’m going to depart from my usual topics this month…no musings about why non-fiction gets a bad rap or cosy tutorials to demystify geekiness. I’m going to tell you about my week instead. Partly because it has been utterly extraordinary and partly because I relearned something about storytelling.

It all started with my pal Valerie. Occasionally she’ll get an idea in her head and nobody will be able to budge it. She’ll know it’s nuts but she has to do it anyway. She also knows exactly how to work my strings to get me giving it a go too. Sometimes it’s a relatively trivial idea, like ‘let’s go ziplining,’ or ‘camping in the snow will be fun!’ On this occasion however the mad idea spread wider than one terrified and/or frozen Carolyn. Continue reading “An Unlikely Roadie”

An Indies Itchy Feet Vox Pop

I interviewed the famous and fabulous Martin Crosbie on my blog recently, and realised that he was the second Scot-transplanted-to-Canada to feature in a podcast. Then there’s me, a Londoner in Ontario. I asked him if he thought the whole emigration thing had contributed to his writing, and we mused about outsiderness for a while. Intrigued, I had a look at the Indies Bio Page and found that about half of us have moved from somewhere to somewhere else.

Not a scientific survey I’ll grant you but I wondered about the connection. I asked some of the minions, “Did you become a writer because you travelled, or did you travel because you’re a writer?”

and “Writers often consider themselves to be outsiders, observing life. Did learning to adapt to new cultures foster this aspect of your personality?”

Here are some of their answers. Let’s start with Martin… Continue reading “An Indies Itchy Feet Vox Pop”

But I Don’t Want a Blog: Turning WordPress into a Website

I was speaking with a pal recently who bemoaned the fact that websites are so hard to edit. “I wish I could have the sort of editing I can do in WordPress for a normal website,” he wailed. “I know how to use WP but I don’t know any html.” Yours truly waved her geeky little magic wand and opined, “Oh but you can use WordPress for a normal website if you want.”

“But I don’t want a blog on this site, it’s just for my books and stuff.”

“You shall go to the ball, young fella-me-lad, you can have your heart’s desire. We’ll make you a static website in WordPress.”

I mentioned this to a few people who agreed, “I’d love the usability of WordPress but I don’t want a blog,” and I realised that there’s a thing to know here. You can use WordPress for any sort of website. It’s not difficult and you instantly have access to the usefulness of widgets and plugins, plus the ability to edit whenever you please. The SEO is a breeze, you can add all manner of social media buttons and woofers and tweeters without ever having to pay a geek to do stuff you don’t understand.

Here’s how… Continue reading “But I Don’t Want a Blog: Turning WordPress into a Website”

Getting it Right: Trauma

It was in the news again recently here, in the Great White North. The Canadian military redeployed soldiers with PTSD back to the places that made them sick. At least, that’s how the headlines ran, the truth was slightly different but hey, who doesn’t want to sensationalise how stupid it is to give a gun to someone who’s unwell?

This set me to thinking how cross I get whenever an episode of Criminal Minds or some such leads us to believe that PTSD turns people into killers, running amuck reliving their trauma from Afghanistan on the streets of Niceville. Trauma, PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is another one of those misunderstood dramatic devices that really, no really, upsets those who know when writers get it wrong. Continue reading “Getting it Right: Trauma”