The Impossible Reply

Over the years, some of the hardest writing that I had to do has turned out to be personal, rather than monetary and creative oriented work. Heck, there are times personal writing is even harder than academic writing. I was reminded of this fact today when I recieved a holiday card from my sister.

When I saw the return address on the envelope, I sighed. Yesterday, I recieved a Christmas card from one of my brothers. My prompt response was that he had obviously not recieved the memo that I was...well, not worthy of inclusion in the family. So it was a big surprise to recieve a card from my sister, who should have sent out the memo.

The regular readers of my blog will understand why sending a response to her is going to be hard. This sister is the one that I finally figured out why she was a toxic writing friend early this fall. And one of the things that she told me is that she never wants me to talk about college, my writing, and Golden Dawn ever again.

Hmmm...I have no idea what I am supposed to write to her about. I guess she will have to settle for a thank you, and possibly a question about how everyone is. Because I have nothing else that I can say. *sigh*

Happy Solistice!

I took the day off from writing today. I spent it sending people season's greetings and trying to catch up with everybody's facebook page. That is one of the advantages of self-employment: you can take the day off to be human.

To all my blog readers:

Happy Solistice! May the coming year bring you Health, Wealth and Love!

My clout level at AC went up

Today, I checked my stats at Associated Content, and saw that my clout level went up from six to seven since yesterday. I did not realize that I was so close to the edge. Sometimes surprises are pleasant.

And seven is the magical level where my PPM payment starts to earn a bonus. It is not a big bonus, but I will take that shiny nickel anyways.

I have noticed that my daily pageviews on average have gone up. Plus I got a little spike in views the couple of days that David Griffin was complaining about my review of his book, The Ritual Magic Manual.

(For those who are unaware, he thinks that I gave him a bad book review because of political reasons [I belong to an evil occult conspiracy, he says {more or less}]; I just do not believe that his book should be selling for a thousand dollars on the used book market...though I have yet to see evidence that it is actually being sold at that price [we all know that there is a difference between the asking price and the price something actually goes for]. Though it is pretty much a non-issue now, I have recently saw a complete pdf of his book; I doubt that the value of his book will remain so high now.)

*Gee, that is an awkward looking group of sentences, isn't it?*

But I think that the spike in pageviews were minor (it really wasn't that large...hmmm, I guess people really do not care what he thinks). More important I think for getting me up an additional clout level is that I have been putting up more articles on Associated Content, and not just occult articles.

My latest was an article I wrote for Campus Connections back in August about Amendment 50 and what effect it might have on community college funding.

So here to me making progress as a writer. That nickel PPM may not sound like much, but it beats the moths that are currently inhabiting my bank account.

Kicking around the astrology column

Well, I just posted the last astrology column of the semester up on Associated Content. Normally, I would wait until the next issue comes out before even considering doing this; but given the fact that it was about New Year's resolutions, and I seriously doubt that a lot of students are still on campus to read the issue, I decided to post it up early.

This is actually the first column from the new improved format that I put online. The big difference that one can see online is that I have quit doing the introduction, and am now just focusing on describing the signs and their behavior. The other two changes were to the way it was printed in the physical version of the newspaper: the name of the column changed from "Crystal Ball" to "Sun Wisdom", and the bad mugshot printed behind the column was replaced by a simple astro-wheel without any words printed over it (both of these problems were a non-issue on the web).

(I still have four more columns to post online, but I want to space out their posting a little for web traffic purposes.)

Now, it is time for me to kick around what my next column is going to be about. And the deadline is rapidly approaching (just over a week away).

When I volunteered to do the astrology column, I did not realize that it was going to take two weeks to come up with an idea for the column, and only a few hours to actually write it. I thought it would be the other way around; ideas coming quickly, and the actual writing being the bog that would slow me down.

Turns out that it is actually harder work to come up with the ideas (due to the audience and issue frequency) than it is to write the column itself. I will admit that I am still a little slow at writing the column itself; my knowledge of astrology was not as deep as I thought it was. But the column is helping improve my knowledge of astrology.

Now if I could only come up with ideas for the column faster. I would be in so much trouble if they decided to publish more often than once every three weeks.

Inspiration from Anne Rice

Today is one of those low self-esteem days. I dread them because they tend to be counter-productive. For instance, I messaged someone back today that I could not imagine them publishing any article of mine---this is after they said that they would like me to consider writing something for them. *sigh* And I already treated a couple of compliments as if the speakers were merely humoring me.

So I really needed this bit of inspiration. It is from Anne Rice; she has a fanpage on Facebook.

All aspiring writers out there: know that we need you, we need your voice, your vision, your stories. Be brave. Go where the pain is; go where the pleasure is. Seek to create in words the world in which you long to live.

Beginning the spring campaign

It is that time of year again, that moment when we are all deciding what we are going to accomplish in the upcoming year. For me, it is the start of my spring writing campaign.

I started doing an annual writing campaign almost two decades ago. The restaurant I was working at, not being close to a mall, would suffer a drop in sales around the holidays. There was also the advent of the secular new year to remind oneself that one was wasting one's time flipping burgers.

So I started to jot down ideas, volunteer to take off early, and doing more writing in a month than I did the entire year...it became an annual event for me. Especially after I started to make a little money writing. Every year was "This is the year, I am going to make the big break and get the hades out of here."

After I realized that it was unlikely to happen, switched jobs, and decided that I still liked writing better than my day job (ended up being a restaurant manager), I still indulged in the new year writing campaign.

There have been some changes in the way I conduct it over the years. As I have made more money over the years, it has surfaced in my mind earlier.

For awhile, it started as soon as I hit my net plus thirty cutoff point: that point in the business year where you know that nothing that you are working on now will earn you a dime until after the New Year. One of the hazards of being self-employed is that the earliest you might recieve money for the work you do today is thirty days after the end of the current calendar month.

In recent years, my campaign has rotated around my college and university schedules. I cannot start the campaign until I have died on the sofa for a couple of days after I take my last final exam and turned in the last paper for the semester. If I am unable to type a single sentence without making a spelling mistake, it is probably too soon to start the campaign.

My work at Campus Connection (the student newspaper for the Community College of Denver) have also affected my campaign. Some of the work that I am going to be doing this month is meant for them...all writers change their agendas based on who they can get to pay them. I also will spend time this month uploading articles that I have done in the past semester to one of the pageview sites.

(I will admit that I thought that I had all my astrology articles up from last year, leaving just three articles from last year left---articles that I am not sure I want anyone to see ever again; but I was wrong. I found a lonely sun sign astrology article about evil twins and our negative astrological traits lurking on the hard drive of my computer, and I had to upload it to AC today. Tomorrow, I will probably start uploading this past semester's articles; it will be interesting to see the stats for the new format compared to the old format of the previous year's.)

But I think that the most important changes to my new year campaign is that I have several mini-campaigns, and I am no longer focused on the big breakout.

The mini-campaigns are the results of doing both online content and the college newspaper work, as well as suffering the university schedule. I find it easier to look ahead and plan articles that will be interesting in the months, and sometimes years ahead.

Another reason for the mini-campaigns is that I am no longer trying to create a big break for myself. My most reliable income sources are small monthly jobs. A little income from this source and a little from that source adds up. I am a far ways from making a comfortable income, but I know I can get there, given enough time and content.

Earlier this year, my sister (who is one of my toxic writing friends) told me that I will never be a "great writer"; it did not bug me all that much to be told that---I have ceased to aim for that several years ago, and I am working hard to be a regularly employed hack instead. (What disturbed me was that she considered my entire life a waste, not just my writing.)

So I am not planning on writing a great short story over the next month; instead I am focusing on articles that will generate income---short, sweet articles. Here is to my spring campaign (it is when I will start recieving payment for this month's work), and here is to yours. Tally-Ho!

It is the ideas that count, not my English!

It amuses me the number of individuals I get to interact with that believe that they should be judged solely on their ideas and creativity, and that it does not matter how badly they string a sentence together. And I really want to locate this fantasy world that they inhabit where editors and readers are willing to struggle with a piece of writing to get at the meat of the ideas. It sounds like a marvelous place to visit, though I doubt that my Virgo sun would be happy there for long.

I first became painfully aware of this belief when dealing with one of my toxic writing friends (you know the type---they are your friend, but you do not dare talk about writing around them if you want to get anything written in the next month, aka wet blankets).

My friend had done a draft of a novel, and he wanted my opinion of it. After ten minutes of reading, I had finally moved onto the second page of the manuscript. Yes, I said ten minutes to hack my way though the first page.

Now if this manuscript had been on the slush pile, it would have gotten the form rejection slip on the first page, first paragraph, perhaps even first sentence. Before I could even address the ideas in the script, I had to give him feedback about how to write a proper sentence.

And what he told me was that it was unfair that he would be judged on solely on the basis of his ability to write a clear sentence; all he needed was an editor who was willing to work with him; his ideas were worth the effort.

Nice fantasy world, I told him. He ignored me; he does not believe that my writing and editing experience qualifies me to have an opinion. I seriously doubt that he would listen Stephen King, J. K. Rowling, or anyone else for that matter, if they told him the same thing.

The reason I have been thinking about this is that recently I gave someone feedback about their blog, and got told that they were more concerned with ideas than learning how to present their information in a reader-friendly format. Blog T (not its actual name, sorry to whoever is actually writing Blog T) has many attributes that are going to make me talk about it often; it will serve us well as an example of what not to do.

The writer may think that it should be only their ideas that should matter; but given the habits of readers, they are dead wrong. I wish them luck in actually finding the fantasy world they think exists, where readers and editors are willing to work at reading something and do not run off to better sites at the drop of a comma splice.