Daniel Greene

Tag: writing

  • How to write blog posts in less time

    How to write blog posts in less time

    I’ll say it up front: I’m tackling this because I struggle with it myself. I spent an hour last night writing a short blog post about interpreting and another two hours this morning returning to it again and again to make revisions. (And that’s after already publishing it last night, which is a no-no.) Rather than telling you what works for me, I’ve collected some articles from bloggers I hope I can learn from — and you can too.

    Related articles

    Whew! Even that took me a half-hour. Any ideas on blogging faster?

  • Why I split my eclectic blog into five specialized blogs

    For 16 years, I tried to combine my personal and professional lives into one blog (“website” for the first 10 years). I combined my various professions into that one blog, too. It got so broad and wide-ranging I called it Daniel Greene’s Blog-o-rama. Why did I do this? I figured I was a Renaissance man and I should embrace it. Why splinter myself? I wanted integrity. Also, when I created my website in 1996, it was all I could do to write the HTML and CSS for the pages on that site. Then, even when I transformed my site into a blog in 2006, it wasn’t  easy to maintain more than one blog. Over the years, however, blogging platforms like WordPress have made it easy to create any number of blogs and manage them all in one place.

    A number of factors led me to split my blog into several blogs. One motivation was that I found a blog called StreetLeverage focused solely on interpreting. There is nothing personal about the blog; it is written by several bloggers, and is purely professional. It began publishing in August 2011, and it seemed to be having great success by the time I found out about it in February 2012. I felt a twinge of healthy competition, because I wanted danielgreene.com to be seen as a professional blog about interpreting and translation, and I realized I needed to change things to make that happen. I wanted people to be able to follow my blog, never having to be put off by irrelevant posts. In order to draw people to my blog as a professional resource, I realized there had to be a greater draw than just me and my name. As a friend and colleague of mine told me:

    I read your blog because I am interested in you — because I know you. I don’t mind if you write about interpreting and photography and singing and technology and personal things, because those are all activities that make up you. But I read blogs like streetleverage because I know that every time I read it, it will be about interpreting. I know I can count on it to be about one thing. If I didn’t know you, and I saw your blog posts on things other than interpreting, I would probably stop following.

    Knowing that I wanted my professional blog to be focused and credible, I registered the domain terptrans.com and renamed my blog TerpTrans. DanielGreene.com is the same blog; the URL just resolves to TerpTrans. Now my blog is specialized and professional, and all of my non-interpreting content is on other specialized blogs. I put all my photography onto photography.danielgreene.com, all my singing and signing videos onto singingandsigning.danielgreene.com, all my communications & media articles onto messagesandmeans.danielgreene.com, and all my personal reflections onto beingreene.danielgreene.com. It’s not a matter of hiding things away; rather, it’s about giving the visitors to each blog an experience that is reliably consistent.

    If I could give two words of advice to someone starting out blogging, I would say specialize; then diversify. If you want to write about a wide variety of things, start with one. Pick a good blogging platform such as WordPress that you can grow with. Focus your blog on one specialty and blog about that so you can create credibility and gather followers. Then, if you find yourself wanting to write about more than one thing, create another blog! It’s easy and free (and domain names are reasonable too). Take it from someone who lumped everything into one blog for 16 years — it makes more sense to specialize. Each of my blogs is now earning a following of people interested in the subjects I write about, and I am finding communities of others who write about the same things. It is better to diversify than amalgamate.

  • Why I retitled this blog Daniel Greene’s Interpretation

    Daniel Greene’s Blog-o-rama sounded too general. The “-o-rama” suffix implied a wide view and a surplus–which this blog is–but it sounded like it was about nothing in particular. I never put interpreter or interpreting in the title because I write about much more than interpreting. In the 16 years that I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve covered acting, singing, dancing, modeling, poetry, voiceover, web authoring (HTML & CSS), telecommunications, technology, typography, e-books, EPUB, products and services, photography, photo sharing on Facebook, Flickr, communication via social media, and more.

    It was time to focus. I renamed this blog An Interpreter’s Interpretation for a few days, and wrote the blog description “of interpreting ASL-English language, Deaf-Hearing culture.” I had thought taking my name out of the title would show humility and focus. But people know me by name, and for more than just interpreting. Besides, danielgreene.com has been my domain name since 1998.

    Yet I needed to add something about interpreting to the title. I thought about “take” because it is a short word for interpretation, perspective, opinion, etc. But I kept imagining it being pronounced tah-keh in some other language and meaning something terrible. Besides, the word interpretation would focus the blog while allowing for other, well, “interpretations,” such as perspective and opinion. So I changed the title to Daniel Greene’s Interpretation.

    I then considered one of two descriptions: of interpreting, communications, media, and life or of interpreting, communications, media, and the world. “Daniel Greene’s interpretation of life” sounds like I’m a philosopher or guru, and “Daniel Greene’s interpretation of the world” sounds like I’m a news analyst or travel guide. I thought about using a general extender like and other stuff, and other things, and more, etc., or et al., but et cetera means “and that which follows,” and some things I write about don’t logically follow the others. My favorite general extender was et alia, because it means “and others / and other things” but it sounds esoteric. I finally settled on topics that were inclusive enough for me.

    What do you think of the new title and description? Have you ever struggled with a similar dilemma?

  • Update on my thesis on VL in ASL

    I am working on my master’s thesis on vague language (VL) in American Sign Language (ASL). As far as I know, not much has been published about vagueness in ASL and nothing has been published about “VL” in ASL aside from my article in the RID Views. For my thesis, I’m doing a literature review of what has been written about VL in world languages and vagueness in ASL— even if the topic of the publication wasn’t “vagueness” per se. After a review of the literature, I will contribute a description of at least one aspect VL in ASL. My goal is to help ASL-English interpreters recognize VL and interpret it faithfully to serve the communication goals of deaf and hearing consumers.

    If you know of any literature about VL in ASL—or any type of vagueness in ASL—please leave a comment. Thanks!

  • My sexting blog post published in the book Sexting by Cengage Learning!

    My sexting blog post published in the book Sexting by Cengage Learning!

    The UPS truck delivered something today that brought tears to my eyes: my own hardcover copy of the book Sexting including a chapter by lil’ ol’ me. Gale Cengage Learning approached me a year ago about including a blog post of mine, Sexting highlights society’s issues with privacy and shame, in one of their textbooks. I agreed to publication with a writer’s fee and copy of the book. They complied with a check and a copy of the book as promised. My article appears as chapter two titled “The threat of sexting has been exaggerated” on page 15 of the hardcover edition. The book is part of the At Issue: Social Issues series.

    Here is the Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

    Sexting / Stefan Kiesbye, book editor.
    p. cm. — (At issue)
    Includes bibliographical references and index.
    ISBN 978-0-7377-5161-1 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-0-7377-5162-8 (pbk.)
    1. Internet and teenagers. 2. Internet–Safety measures. 3. Teenagers–Sexual relations. 4. Electronic mail systems. I. Kiesbye, Stephan. II. Title. III. Series.
    HQ799.2.I5.S49 2011
    004.67’80835—dc22

    Purchase At Issue: Sexting on Amazon.com.

    I am excited to be a part of this compilation and I look forward to reading the other chapters!