Yesterday evening the gremlins were partying on Squidoo.

When I was updating a couple of lenses yesterday afternoon (UK time about 4 hours ahead of EST), it seemed that Squidoo was barely crawling and so I gave up. I don’t have the patience to wait several minutes for a page to load.

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I’ve been checking the stats on my Squidoo pages today and I thought I must share what seems like good news.

Back at the end of March I posted here New Squidoo Widgets – Absolutely Brilliant! I’m really pleased to report that it looks like I was right to be optimistic. After looking at stats and sales on Amazon.com, I’ve had sales of three books that appear in my right hand column Amazon Spotlight widget and several lenses are showing referrals from lenses with the Featured Sites widget, obviously I checked that links to the sites receiving traffic appear in the widgets.

I’ve been a bit lazy about using the Amazon Spotlight widget because I haven’t always wanted to spend time looking for products to appear in it. Now I’ve seen this, I’m definitely going to spend time gradually going through all my pages and putting this widget on and finding really relevant products.

I’ll report again, if and when I have more news.

Books for Research

Research of some kind is usually essential for all writers. I know that is a sweeping statement but, in my experience, it’s true.

No matter how well I know a subject, there are almost always facts that I need to check to ensure I’ve remembered them accurately. If a reader notices just one wrong fact then the rest of what you’ve written loses credibility.

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New Squidoo widgets in the right hand column of the lens

Sometimes I’m so happy I’m one of the Giants on Squidoo because we get to test new widgets and other stuff that TPTB think will improve the overall look of lenses or the ease of making them. I’ve fallen in love with the latest ones: widgets that enable the lensmaster to add content to the right hand column. Before the advent of these widgets, we could only use a small portion of that column right at the top.

There are four different kinds of widgets: Amazon Spotlight, Featured Lenses, Squidcasts RSS, and Blogs RSS.

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I was taking the dogs out for a walk this morning and met two neighbours. One of them said, “You do have a nice straight back.” The other woman said, “Yes, I’ve often noticed what good posture you have.”

I’m so sad that these  compliments gave me a real lift even though they came from two elderly women and not two hunky guys. Oh well, when you reach 60, you have to take your compliments where you can find them. The sad truth is that at my age there are very few ’suitable’ men that are attractive. Who wants a man that has to take his teeth out to clean them or needs to clip the hair in his nose and ears more often than the little that remains on his head?

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I think I’m suffering from post Christmas lethargy. In the run-up to the holidays, there always seems to be so much to do. Now it’s all over and, although I still have plenty of things I should do, nothing is so urgent that I can’t leave it. I have no real incentive to get on with much. It seems my get up and go got up and went.

The carpet in the hall needs shampooing, the net curtains could do with a quick rinse through, the inside of the windows at the back need cleaning – they’re not desperate, you can still see out of them! These are not hard jobs that will take ages, just boring.

I’m going away to my best friend’s tomorrow for New Year so I think they will all have to wait till I come home. Then I’ll go into a cleaning frenzy, soap suds and fresh smells everywhere.