Memos

Our first task as students of Internet Literature was to read Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium. The posts within this blog will be my attempts at breaking these Memos down and extracting their meaning.

Tips for Denizens of E-Lit:

• Make an outline For me, it helped to make all of the posts and publish them as private. This can be done on the right hand side of the post screen. Although it can be overwhelming, you don’t have to worry about naming and creating a post later. 
• Jot down your notes After you’ve created your post, enter in initial thoughts of what you’re going to write. It doesn’t have to be perfect – it’s private! When I took notes on Calvino’s memos I did it in a Google Doc. That way, when I set out to write the “Calvino’s Memo” post for each of the qualities, I was almost finished.
• Do Calvino’s Memo first It helps to define Calvino’s quality first before you start working on any of the other posts within that category. I didn’t really have a specific order that I went in after that post was finished. I typically just jumped around to whatever inspired me the most.
• WP Tips & Tricks
  • Save for Web If you’re using Photoshop to re-size your images, instead of “saving” your images, Save for Web. It compresses the image better and usually saves the image as a .png instead of a .jpg which make give you pixel noise.
  • Choose quality images There’s always the Creative Commons for Flickr! You’ll enjoy looking at your blog more if it’s aesthetically pleasing
  • Use tags But don’t go tag crazy. Use only a few key words from each post. If you choose a Tag Cloud as one of your sidebar widgets, it can help you to see which words you use the most. This might be helpful when choosing your personal aesthetic
  • Dont make images clickable Just don’t. It’s annoying. When you upload an image file you can decide what you want the image to link to. Select “None.” Unless you’re linking your image to another page (which you SHOULD do) it’s just bad WP etiquette.
  • Use Pingbacks & Link it up Make sure to utilize the “link” feature when you’re creating a post. It helps make your blog seem more connected. And if you’re referencing something from an outside source or introducing something that you don’t think many people will have knowledge of, be sure to include a link!
• Original but don’t waste time At the beginning I spent a lot of time trying to make all my images “original;” my own personal photos, collages made by me. Don’t waste your time! Do it only for things that you can’t find a good example on the interwebz.
• Have fun My biggest problem when I started writing the blog posts was that I acted like I was writing a term paper. Throw in some jokes and your own personal style. It makes it more enjoyable for you and your readers.