Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Tag Archives: pinterest


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Home Improvements and Future Plans

homeA brief report on the status of things, as I’ve been working on the blog (instead of sleeping).

My busman’s holiday is almost over, and in september, I plan to do some major work on Karavansara, tightening the schedule and improving the blog.
When I started Karavansara I did not have a clear plan – I just wanted to jump into the action and try my hand at blogging in English, after seven years as a blogger in my native language, Italian*.
Now the shakedown run is almost over.
The home improvements I started in these days will go on in september, october and november, and by its first birthday this blog will be fully funcional and cruising at full tilt.

As of now…

. Karavansara now has its own mail account – I can’t promise a prompt reply (news travel slowly through the desert), but if really there’s something you can’t tellm or ask me publicly in a comment, now you can mail here…

karavansara.wp

. Karavansara now features a dedicated Twitter account – you can follow this blog @KaravansaraBlog

. a Zemanta account and plugin should grant better contents, more options, links and stuff on future posts

. we are getting listed in Technorati

. I’m are now on Wattpad, which might be a fun way to distribute some of my stuff

. I’ve been toying with Plinky, a fun web-service that provides daily prompts for posts… but Karavansara refuses to share contents with Plinky (or viceversa) so I’ll have to do without**

In the meantime, the Karavansara Facebook Page is getting a lot of visits (but not many likes, alas!***), and the Karavansara Pinterest Board is featuring hundreds of wonderful photographs and links.

Not bad.
More’s to come.

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* I still blog in Italian, on strategie evolutive and on Il Futuro è Tornato
** But writing prompts are something I’d like to feature somehow in Karavansara. I’ll have to work on a few ideas.
*** Yes, you might drop by and gives us a Thumbs Up. It would be nice of you. Thanks in advance.

 


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Team writing with Pinterest

Another post on writing with Pinterest.
Or, using Pinterest as a support for writers.
You can find my previous musings on this social network here.
But something new and fun emerged.

Pinterest is a great tool for writing with others.

I know I will have to use a character like her.

I know I will have to use a character like her.

Currently I’m sketching a project with two partners – we are throwing ideas around, taking notes, having lots of fun.
We do not know what shape our project will take – if a multi-author work, if a shared universe, or whatever.
We are separated by space, and we work online – we use chatrooms, mail, we exchange text files.

But a picture is worth a thousand words, and it’s a lot easier to just upload a photo on a pinterest board, and say “I was thinking about something that looks like this,” and take it from there.
Opinions can be exchanged and supported by visual references.
“I think this would look better…”
Scenes can be set by posting different pictures of the same place, the same building.
Atmosphere can be set by sharing pictures, or movie clips, or music.

The collection of visual references and other stuff can be kept private – setting up a secret board- and can be later re-used as a reference for cover art, or whatever.

And when everything’s ready, a part of the material can be made public, as a way to promote the finished work.

Also, the Pinterest community has collected such a huge mass of references, that a simple in-network search can lead to dozens of useful pictures and informations.
Including historical and anthropological details, fashion details, ethnic recipes…

So you can actually build a scene using pins – my character is here, she’s wearing this, and she’ll drink one of these…
It can turn teamwork into a sort of game – each one contributing some elements and filing them on Pinterest.

The downside – Pinning can become the main activity of the team. There’s a moment when you must stop collecting visual references, and start writing.

But right now, this is turning out to be a colossal tool.


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Writing with Pinterest

piniconAs I mentioned a few days back, I’m exploring Pinterest as a tool for writers.
And as we know, the Pinterest nation is 70% women – this already makes Pinterest attractive, but let’s not talk about looking for a girlfriend…

For the uninitiated: Pinterest is a social media and tool based on the pinboard metaphore.
You collect items of interest around the web, and organize them in graphical, themed pinboards – providing images, videos and sounds, text (Pinterest allows for 500 characters comments), links.
You can share your pins, collaborate on pins with other pinners, and “steal” pins from other boards.

An early attempt at putting together a writing-oriented pinboard was the Mock Elizabethan board I manage together with my friend Chiara.
We both share a passion for the Elizabethan Era, and it seemed a fun project collecting weird and unusual modern Elizabethan references in one place – as a game, but also, who knows, as a source of inspiration for future writing project, maybe even the joint project we’ve been talking about for years now, and still haven’t found the time to get going.

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Boys tumble and girls pin

Photo-PinupGirls1Short harmless post today.
I’m taking an in-deptyh look at Pinterest, a tool I’ve been using in the past as a simple “place to collect stuff”, but which I’d like to turn into a more hands-on resource for my writing, and not just as a promotional tool.
I’ll keep you posted as soon as something develops, but in the meantime… while I was crawling through the web reading articles, I stumbled on some interesting demographics.
Looks like Pinterest is a girl’s best friend, in terms of social networking and media sharing.
70% of the useres, they tell me, are female.
I wonder why.
Male users seem to stick to Tumblr or Flickr.
Curious.
I mean, this will not change the way I look at the Pinterest utility, but…
Now the fun bit of being both a scientist and a writer, is the fact that my first reaction is… why?
I’m still looking for a viable explanation.