My virtual commonplace book & cabinet of curiosities.
Or, if you prefer, a microblog.
You can follow via RSS or Bluesky.
I’m currently in deep ideation and research mode for a fantasy novel. The working title is Mawd for one of the characters (named after Lucy Maud Montgomery – author of Anne of Green Gables.)
Here’s a timelapse of the mood board I’m creating.
You can browse the virtual mood board and see image sources on are.na.
Find snippets of my research here and here.
I’ll be sharing more about my writing process over at The Writing Desk.
This month I’ve undertaken a HUGE task of bringing all of my chickens home to roost on my own website. It’s going to take time to move all of the archives, but now everything (blog, newsletter, shop, portfolio, microblog) all live under sarahshotts.com
I’m also taking this opportunity to make my website more me. It was previously very minimalist in the fine art style. I’ve retained that for my gallery / portfolio, but bringing in more texture and personality to the rest of my site.
For example. My broken link page:
I’m also working really hard on alt text for accessibility and moving posts one at a time because trying to import them was (and always is) a big mess.
I’ve spent SO MUCH time on it this month, but moving forward I’ll try to archive March posts in March and then I’ll be done by this time next year.
I wrote a bit about the process (and 90’s nostalgia) here.
Back in the 90’s when we built websites we would often put “under construction” banners and GIFS on pages we were still building. This Lemmings one was one of my favorites. (Tai’shar to whomever archived these from Geocities.)
Lemmings was also one of my favorite computer games growing up. Little characters (more like Fraggles than real life lemmings) would pour out of a trap door and you’d try to usher as many as possible safely to the exit. Each Lemming could have a job like digging or building or blocking unsafe areas.
So this little banner of Lemmings building a Coming Soon sign is super nostalgic.
Over the last week my website has been “under construction” as I move from Squarespace to WordPress. By the time you’re seeing this the dust may have settled, but right now my domain name is in limbo. My site is kind of working, but my email is not. My shop is down. And I haven’t worked out all the design details the way I want.
Last year I orbited closer and closer to old school blogging. I started a digital garden with Obsidian and tried the micro.blog platform. They were an easy entry, but I realized more and more I wanted my own blog and I wanted more control than any of those platforms gave me.
So here I am.
Bringing my various dragons home to roost.
My intention is to carve out a space here to share the types of things that I used to post on social media.
To own my archive.
And do my best to future proof what I’m creating.
If you’re doing the same I’d love to hear from you.
Shoutout to GifCities of Internet Archive for the 90s style gifs.
Foraging walks are our new favorite. 🍂
Foraging walk.
Decorated the studio for Christmas today. 🎄
Caught up on my novel writing.
Writing my way out.
Painting autumnal leaves for fine motor and art lessons this week. 🍁
Vanzant Fruit Farm