The Scrawl

As I researched Twitter outreach for Scrawlers, I learned there is a significant population of folks writing haiku on Twitter. It makes sense; haiku is about the only legitimate art form that fits properly into a tweet. Six word stories are a fun diversion, but I grow tired of them rather quickly.

Haiku is not only about content, but also meter. As with any form of poetry, haiku begs to be read out loud and appreciated beyond a prosaic level. Haiku at its best is a short verse of music.

The usefulness of Twitter may be argued at length. It seems to me the ability to [quickly publish and share haiku](http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23haiku) with anyone who wants to see it is pretty utilitarian. The presentational aspect of haiku on Twitter leaves a lot to be desired. This is where [Hai to the Ku](http://haitotheku.com/) enters the picture.

[Hai to the Ku](http://haitotheku.com/) grabs a large pile of the latest tweets tagged with “#haiku” and presents them to you in a slowly descending stream. Take a break from the daily grind to read melodic writings of the Twitter poets in residence.

Add your own voice to the stream. [Haiku rules](http://k12east.mrdonn.org/Haiku.html) are a 3-line verse with 5-7-5 syllables. Haiku typically expresses feeling or mood and does not rhyme. Simply tweet “5 / 7 / 5 #haiku” and look for your poem in the stream.

Looking forward to seeing your writing at Hai to the Ku.

Scrawlers.com is pleased to be giving away the wonderful book “The War of Art” to one lucky writer. To enter the contest, simply write an inspiration-themed story and tag it with “resistance.” Enter as many times as you dare! [Read more](http://scrawlers.com/contests) about the contest over at Scrawlers proper.

Random drawing will determine the winner of this contest. We plan to run a new contest approximately every month. The better the response, the better the prizes. [Enter now](http://scrawlers.com/contests)!

Perhaps the smallest change made over the past few weeks is the new 100-character bio. If you thought 100-words was limiting, try 100-characters. This is especially constraining when talking about oneself!

It’s easy to setup your 100-character bio. Just visit your bookshelf, where Scrawlers lays in wait, luring you to personalize your biography. Click the link. You know you want to.

Infuse some humor into your bio.

Or make it a little descriptive.

Just don’t write more than 100 characters!

If you wish to change your 100-character bio later, visit your bookshelf, click on “Manage Account” and then click on “Update profile.”

As consumers of the Internet, we at Scrawlers have been inundated with social networks and their inherent personalization options. Not surprisingly we’ve grown tired of the constant maintenance of our own accounts across the ‘Net. This explains why you find Scrawlers taking baby steps to [Web 2.0](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2). Rather than giving you every personalization option under the sun, we’re choosing to stick with our own brand of customization, which will hopefully lead Scrawlers to smell pleasantly different than those other communities.

“The Week of New Features” has come and gone. We enjoyed highlighting a few of the recent goings-on at Scrawlers. Rest assured there is more to come. [Subscribe to The Scrawl](http://www.blog.scrawlers.com/feed/) to catch every new [announcement](http://www.blog.scrawlers.com/category/announcements/) as well as [Nate's excellent thoughts on writing](http://www.blog.scrawlers.com/author/nathan/).

**Note**: Maintaining a profile at Scrawlers requires that you [sign up](http://www.scrawlers.com/sessions/signup) or [login](http://www.scrawlers.com/sessions/login).

If you have any comments on this new feature, please [email us](mailto:feedback@scrawlers.com).

How frustrating is that damn [100-word limit](http://www.scrawlers.com/the_scrawl/faq#34)? Air out your grievances in the comments, on your blog, or into your pillow. We’ll give you time.

. . .

Do you feel better now? Good.

The least we could do is help you keep tabs on that word count. Well, we’ve implemented a live word count feature that is sure to make your writing a little less frustrating. Check it:

**Note**: Writing stories at Scrawlers requires that you [sign up](http://www.scrawlers.com/sessions/signup) or [login](http://www.scrawlers.com/sessions/login).

If you have any comments on this new feature, please [email us](mailto:feedback@scrawlers.com).

“The Week of New Features” continues with the introduction of favorite authors. If you’ve taken the chance to read several of a particular author’s stories, it may be time to make her a favorite author. It’s simple to do, just [visit her bookshelf](http://www.scrawlers.com/users/109-Barbara) page and click “Favorite this author” in the sidebar:

Just like [story favorites](http://www.blog.scrawlers.com/2008/03/04/twonf-favorite-stories), you can always click the “x” next to “Favorite author” if you ever change your mind:

Naturally, [an author has fans](http://www.scrawlers.com/users/11-Derrick). Visiting the bookshelves of other fans is another great way to uncover interesting stories at Scrawlers.

Revisiting your favorite authors is as easy as visiting your own bookshelf:

**Note**: Author favoriting requires that you [sign up](http://www.scrawlers.com/sessions/signup) or [login](http://www.scrawlers.com/sessions/login) to Scrawlers.

If you have any comments on this new feature, please [email us](mailto:feedback@scrawlers.com).

Does a story at Scrawlers tickle your funny bone, scare you, make you wonder, or even make you cry? Maybe a particular story brought with it an excellent workshopping experience? Mark it as a favorite and never lose track of the words.

Every story, save for the ones you have written, will include a link in the tool section at the end of the story. Just click “Favorite this story”:

If later you decide the story is no longer your cup of tea, simply click the little “x” to remove it from your favorite list:

Now if you look at the [dedicated story page](http://www.scrawlers.com/stories/170), you can see all scrawlers who are fans of the story:

If another scrawler is a fan of a story you like, maybe visiting [his bookshelf](http://www.scrawlers.com/users/1-Barry) will lead you to other interesting stories. To visit the bookshelf of any scrawler, simply click on her name, whether you see at on a byline, in a notes section or in the sidebar.

Look at the sidebar on a scrawler’s bookshelf to see what stories he enjoyed:

You may notice that I have a list of favorite authors on my bookshelf. I’ll tell you more about that new feature tomorrow.

**Note**: Story favoriting requires that you [sign up](http://www.scrawlers.com/sessions/signup) or [login](http://www.scrawlers.com/sessions/login) to Scrawlers.

If you have any comments on this new feature, please [email us](mailto:feedback@scrawlers.com).

For one week only, Scrawlers presents “The Week of New Features.” The past few weeks have seen a some fun and useful features hit the Scrawlers universe, and I’d like to quickly highlight each of these.

#### Twitter – caffeinated communication

At no cost to you, we have begun notifying the [Twitter](http://twitter.com) universe of any and all new stories written at Scrawlers. For the uninitiated, Twitter is politely referred to as a micro-blogging service. When one posts to Twitter one is typically answering the question “What are you doing?” When someone submits a new story to Scrawlers, Scrawlers is telling Twitter about it. That’s what Scrawlers is doing, thank you very much.

And did I mention Twitter only allows 140 characters in which to make this update? Sounds familiar, no?

Any Twitter user following Scrawlers will receive notification of a new story. This means web browsers, instant message clients, and cell phones across the world will buzz with a link to your latest creation. Not bad!

Visit [twitter.com/scrawlers](http://twitter.com/scrawlers) to see it in action:

We’re also announcing new blog entries through Twitter. When a new post hits [The Scrawl](http://www.scrawlers.com), Twitter followers will know about it shortly. Of course, you can always [subscribe to the blog via the news feed](http://www.blog.scrawlers.com/feed/) as well.

[tags]Twitter[/tags]

A new feature released today at [Scrawlers](http://www.scrawlers.com) is the ability to share 100-word stories with friends. You must be logged in to share a story. Simply click into the story’s page. Beneath the list of story tags, you’ll see an entry field with a “Send To Friend” button. Simply enter one or more email addresses, separated by spaces or commas, and an email will be sent to your pals.

The resulting email, sent separately to each of your friends, looks something like this:

> Scrawlers writer Barry (barry.hess@scrawlers.com) would like to share this 100-word story with you.
>
> “Palm Reader” by Mornara
>
> To read the story, please click below:
>
> http://www.scrawlers.com/scrawlings/read_story/116
>
> To read what Barry has been writing, visit:
>
> http://www.scrawlers.com/profile/bookshelf/Barry
>
> Thank you!
>
> The Scrawlers Team
> http://www.scrawlers.com
> info@scrawlers.com

Notice this is one place where your email address will be shared, but only with your friends.

[tags]writing workshop, creative writing[/tags]

Scrawlers has taken a little while to click with the Interweb. July has seen the site start catching on a little bit, however. The timing is decent as Scrawlers is now in a state where the functionality in place works pretty well. There are certainly features that we are dying to provide, and hopefully you will see those sooner than later.

I thought I’d take the time to do a little comparison of statistics between June and July.

In June:

* 111 visitors
* 248 visits
* 1,079 pageviews
* 4.35 pageviews/visit
* 5:05 average time on site
* 37.5% new visits
* 12 countries and territories visited
* Top 5 countries: United States, Canada, South Korea, Germany, United Kingdom
* 38% used Internet Explorer
* 35% used Firefox
* 65% used Windows
* 33% used Mac (mostly me, I suspect)
* Google was the biggest referrer
* “Nathan Melcher” was the most frequent search term

In July:

* 1,358 visitors
* 1,736 visits
* 5,109 pageviews
* 2.94 pageviews/visit
* 3:38 average time on site
* 77.48% new visits
* 59 countries and territories visited
* Top 5 countries: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India, Australia/Netherlands
* 82% used Firefox (I attribute this to the StumbleUpon extension for Firefox)
* 8% used Internet Explorer
* 75% used Windows
* 21% used Mac
* [StumbleUpon!](http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/scrawlers.com) was the biggest referrer, accounting for 64% of visits and 95% of new visits
* “scrawlers” was the most frequent search term

In all, we’re pleased to see a near thirteen-fold increase in visitors. Not a lot of the StumbleUpon! visitors are sticking around, but at least they are helping to get the word out by giving us a “thumbs up.” This non-creative-writing traffic has lead to a dip on the pageviews/visit and average time on the site, but I still think those numbers are pretty decent compared to those of the general Internet.

Our biggest problem is that we are very hard to find through search engines. No one looking for a creative writing outlet or an online writing workshop is going to find us through a search engine. This blog is one thing that seeks to change the math, of course.

In all, it has been an exiting month here at Scrawlers. We’ve seen [some](http://scrawlers.com/profile/bookshelf/Mike) [excellent](http://scrawlers.com/profile/bookshelf/AustinNichols) [new](http://scrawlers.com/profile/bookshelf/wink) [writers](http://scrawlers.com/profile/bookshelf/Andrew) [join](http://scrawlers.com/profile/bookshelf/Kimari) [our](http://scrawlers.com/profile/bookshelf/Mornara) ranks. We are very excited to find where the next months lead.

I’d be remiss if I did not think the StumbleUpon user who first submitted Scrawlers to the site. Her name is [onyxstone](http://onyxstone.stumbleupon.com/), and she’s a 15-year-old from São Tomé and Príncipe. Yes, [that São Tomé and Príncipe](http://maps.google.com/maps?q=sao+tome+and+principe&ie=UTF8&oe=utf-8&z=7&om=1).

~Barry

[tags]writing workshop, creative writing[/tags]

If you’ve visited [Scrawlers](http://www.scrawlers.com) recently, you may have noticed some little symbols next to story and author names.

These symbols represent RSS feeds, a convenient way to be notified of Scrawlers updates. You can copy the RSS links into a feed reader such as [Google Reader](http://reader.google.com) or [Bloglines](http://www.bloglines.com). It’s really convenient to follow things like blogs and other dynamic content through feed readers.

Read more…