Category Archives: Documenting America

Documenting America

"Ex parte Milligan"

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Last night I went to work polishing the Documenting America files I will need to do the marketing. I took another look at the query letter–probably the 50th time–and couldn’t find a word to change. Then I pulled out the critique group comments for #0006, and went through them. I had already gone through the critique group comments for the query letter and #0001.

Some of the comments required that I double check the original document quoted in the column, to check for errors, and to make a better reference in two places. So I pulled the volume off the shelf at home and re-read it. The subject matter of this particular column was a Supreme Court decision in 1866. Designated “Ex parte Milligan”, it was a decision that determined that trial by military court was inappropriate where civilian courts were functioning and where war was not present nor anticipated.

I hesitated, a couple of years ago, to choose this as a topic. Who am I to examine, extract, and comment on legal issues before our highest court? But I found the issue fascinating, studied it, and determined I could give a “layman’s” view of it, and did. Today I decided to do just a little more research, and so Googled “ex parte Milligan”. To my surprise this resulted in 28,800 hits. Yikes! This may be an obscure court decision for the layman, but obviously not for the legal professional. This once again caused fear of error to rear up. Layman or not, I’d better be sure I know what I’m talking about for the limited commentary in the column.

As I did this work last night, I skimmed through the table of contents of the volume and found other documents that appear good items for future columns. I read one of them, marking with pencil the parts I will likely quote. Two or three others I marked for columns based on the topic and a very quick scanning of the text.

All of this, between yesterday and today, took about two hours. Two very enjoyable hours. Two hours where I felt I was in my element. Two hours where I was able to stick to business, not including some time dreaming of success in this endeavor.

Ever closer, ever closer.

Documenting America, Writing

Getting Closer

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Closer to a decision, that is, on whether to market Documenting America as a self-syndicated newspaper column. Today I went through the critiques of the Spavinaw Writers on my query letter and on two prototype columns (no. 1 and no. 6). I have to admit that, after I made a good number of the suggested changes, all three documents are better.

I also gave some more thought to the calling of the writer. At a Yahoo writers group to which I belong, the question came up “how do you know if God is calling you to be a writer?” I posted on that before on this blog, stating that God never seems to talk with me directly, so I have to base my assessment of my calling on grace, gifts, and usefulness evidenced in my life. I thought back to feedback I’ve received on DA, and realized it has somewhat stacked up on the side of doing it. The work tonight on the three pieces let me to believe that maybe this is the direction I should go, even if it means foregoing other creative writing for a while.

I’m going to give it another day or two and, if I pull the trigger, do it on Friday.

Documenting America

Who Am I?

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Yes, who am I to think I can be a writer of an op-ed column? I have no credentials. I never took a political science course in college; never worked on a political campaign after some high school volunteering; never ran for office or even contemplated doing so; never covered government or political-economic-cultural issues for a media outlet. Well, I did function as a contract city engineer for eight years, but it was for a small city, with limited staff although with booming development. And, during that time, I did work on writing city ordinances (i.e. laws and regulations) and then worked to enforce them in my limited capacity. I did get to observe the roles of mayors, councilmen, planning commissioners, and city staff up close.

But, that is a far cry from national issues. So why should I think I can write the column “Documenting America” and self-syndicate it to newspapers? I’ve been thinking of this for almost five years, more recently as a platform-building activity for launching a writing career. But is this possible? Could I sell the column, and myself as the best person to write this?

The status is this:
1. I have developed the concept for the column: taking some document from America’s past; excerpting it; explaining it; showing its importance in America’s growth and development; and tying it to a current issue, if possible.

2. I have completed eighteen columns, and have a good handle on where the sources of documents are; what the copyright issues are; and how long it will take me to research, write, and polish a column. I’m sure I can produce it weekly.

3. I have to some extent researched the market, and have developed a marketing plan for selling it to newspapers, most likely smaller, weekly or daily papers, but never the big national ones. The actual marketing of the column awaits, so I don’t actually know if it will sell or not.

4. I have taken a number of the columns to two different writers critique groups, and received good feedback and suggestions for improvement. I’ve also workshopped one of the prototype columns at an on-line workshop, again with good feedback. To the same two real-life crit groups I have submitted a query letter to newspapers, and received help on how to make it better.

5. I have shown a few of the columns to people I would describe as my target audience, and received positive feedback: without exception they would like their newspaper to carry it and would read it.

It’s ready to go, and has been for close to a year. All that remains is to pick some newspapers, send them a query and some samples, and see if they will buy it.

So why haven’t I done it? Why haven’t I pulled the trigger? Fear, as I blogged about before, but also the thought that I have no standing on which to sell this column. Why would any newspaper buy it from me, hire me to fill ten to twelve column-inches every week?

This post is long enough right now. Possibly I’ll expand on this over the next couple of days. I’m off to find a couple more beta readers for the column.

Documenting America, Writing

September Writing Goals

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Given my personal workload, my writing goals in September will be modest, as they were in August.

1. Attend critique group once (it meets every two weeks), and present the next chapter in my work-in-progress novel.

2. Blog 10 to 12 times. I’d like to do more, but will settle for that.

3. Update my submissions log. I filed a few papers last night, and discovered I haven’t entered in my log the last several submissions I made. That may be important come tax time.

4. (If I finally decide to market it) Submit Documenting America to about twenty newspapers as a possible self-syndicated column.

5. Work on, and complete if possible, the proposal (with four sample chapters) for the Bible study requested by the editor.

6. Wait (patiently) for a response on the two projects I currently have out with an editor and agent.

7. Continue to work on my reading list, the writing help book and the next one, whatever it is.

Documenting America, Writing

The August Report

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As per my developing habit, I set some writing goals at the beginning of August, and will report on them now. Here’s how I did.

1. Complete the book proposal, requested by an editor, on the Elijah and Elisha Bible study, and mail it. I failed miserably on this. To turn in a proposal I had to convert my weekly handouts into book sample chapters, at least four. Plus, since I decided to add one chapter that preceded the study as taught, I started on this. But I became bogged down in writing this chapter, and didn’t finish it. I made fair progress for a couple of days, then decided to let it sit. Consequently, I didn’t work on any of the other sample chapters nor the proposal itself.

2. Complete the planning phase of my next two Bible studies. I don’t know if I can claim completing these, but I did work on them. The one on Israel becoming a nation is very close to being fully planned out. The one on Peter’s life is less so, but is fairly far along.

3. Complete the research I need before undertaking an on-line poetry workshop in September (may start in late August). It is a workshop I will lead at the Absolute Write poetry forum, with a limited scope. I began the research, but have very little completed. Since this is a volunteer thing, it will probably be low priority for this month. Still, having committed to leading it, I’d like to get it done.

4. Attend one critique group meeting; present the prototype for the Documenting America newspaper column. I did this. The group was very positive about the column, and gave some good suggestions for the query letter and the two sample columns I shared with them.

5. Read in some writing how-to books. I started this–one book, not “books”. It is one I picked up at a used book store, and appears to have been a high school text, though I’m not certain of that. I will likely finish this book in September and report on it.

6. Wait for the editor and agent to respond to the two proposals I have out right now. Ah, this was the easiest goal of all, waiting on an editor and an agent to get to my submitted material. As I blogged about this previously, I am waiting patiently, resisting the urge to contact the two, and trying to concentrate on new works-in-progress.

That’s it. I had relatively few goals for the month, as I knew I would miss time for our road trip and then helping people move. I accomplished those non-writing things, but still would have wished for a little more productivity in writing.

critique group, Documenting America, technology woes

An evening partly usurped

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Last evening I went to writers critique group, the Spavinaw Writers, who meet at the Gravette Public Library every other week. I shared my query letter and two samples articles for Documenting America. They all seemed to love the concept, and I received much good feedback on how to make it better. One other woman shared a chapter from her novel, but no one else had anything. We were the only two that had anything. We had two new writers attend, college age ladies, so we had a full table even with a couple of people missing.

Then, at home, I had to deal with viruses and other malware on my wife’s computer. These “popped up” yesterday, causing her Internet Explorer and stock trading programs to either lock up or lose performance. She had run scans and isolated most of the critters, but then the instructions from our free security program of what to do next were not clear. Okay, so they are in the virus vault. Do we delete them, repair them? What happens if we do one thing–or the other? Do we need to repair the repairable, delete then restore the unrepairable, or just dump it? I went to my computer, began my own virus scan, then did some Internet searching for the particular malware she had on her machine. I determined they were pretty bad, but I didn’t get all the answers I needed. I searched for and found a primer on computer malware, and began reading.

All this time I kept checking on the status of my scan. It had reached 54 minutes and isolated about 30 to 40 adware cookies or similar relatively innocuous yet unwanted files. I went to click on minimize, guess I had poor mouse control, and so clicked on close and accidentally ended the scan, not having acted on any of the results in progress. I was so upset I closed out of all open programs, went upstairs, read for twenty minutes, couldn’t concentrate and so went to bed.

This computer malware is an awful thing. I guess we’ll have to bite the bullet and go with a paid security program. It’s a shame we must outlay our money to protect ourselves from evil.

Carlyle, Documenting America, Writing

Capturing the Idea

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Over at the Absolute Write Water Cooler, my current Internet writing hangout, a recent threadbrought up the subject of documenting ideas. As I wrote previously, Carlyle didn’t worry about capturing the many ideas that went march-marching through his head. Maybe his writing list was enough to last a lifetime without trying to capture those stray thoughts.

I have to capture them, however. How do I know but that a stray idea will be the one that gives me a magazine article writing credit? Or that possibly one might be a better novel or non-fiction book than the one I’m currently working on? That happened to me recently. I’d been working mostly on getting ready to market Documenting America, and writing for this blog, when an idea for a non-fiction book hit me. This idea was strong enough that no documentation was required. After a week, I discussed it with my wife and she encouraged me to write it. So all other writing projects are dropped, save for the sporadic posting to this blog, so as to get four chapters, a table of content, and a proposal done before the May conference. I’ve completed the four chapters in first draft, and will tonight begin the editing process. I’ve begun working on the proposal, but only barely. The TOC will come in due course during the proposal.

Monday night another non-fiction book idea came to me, I think it was as I was driving home. The idea was in response to something someone said on a news or talk program. An idea for a book loosely related to that came to my mind. By the time I was home, the idea was gone, lost behind a nuked baked potato and veggies. Yesterday it came back, so I decided I’d better do something with it. I took a sheet of re-use paper and wrote a single line: a proposed book title. Tonight I’ll take a few minutes to hand-write a short paragraph, discussing what the book will be about, and will stick it in my newly created Writing Ideas notebook. When will I get to this idea for actually developing an outline, and maybe writing it? I don’t know. It will take some research to write, for it’s something I have strong opinions on but am not familiar with historical details that I’ll need. So this might not be any time soon. But who knows? Maybe my current non-fiction book will sell in May. If so, a follow-up book might be needed at some point. This one doesn’t follow that one in subject matter; the following is only that they are both non-fiction. But, since non-fiction outsells fiction something like 8 to 1, perhaps that is the way to go.

Then again, it might be years before I get to this idea—or never. I might get into the research and realize it was a stupid idea (the word “stupid” is in the title), and not worthy of a book. Maybe it’s just magazine article length, not book length. Or maybe the idea is valid, but I have many better ideas to pursue. Or maybe my fiction takes off, and I abandon non-fiction for a long time.

Whatever, for once I have correctly documented the idea, in a three stage process (or, if you want to say “remembering” the idea was a step, then it’s a four stage process). Either way, I feel I’ve come a long way.

Christianity, Documenting America, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, miscellaneous

Getting Things Done, Part 2: The Impact of Lent

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Lent began yesterday, and, while I haven’t been in a church that practiced Lenten rituals in over thirty-five years (I do miss the hot-cross buns), last year I decided to use Lent as a springboard to give up a negative habit: computer games. I did so sucessfully, not even playing games on Sundays (which are not part of Lent), although I did backslide one day near the end of Lent and play a few. In the ten and a half months since, however, the bad habit has returned, and now I find mself eliminating mines and moving cards instead of tending toward business, that is, my avocations of writing, genealogy, and Christain studies. Thank God that all games are deleted from our computers at work, and it’s only at home that I have the problem.

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the beginning of a new Lent season, I decided to do it again. So Tuesday night was the last time I’ll see Solitare and Free Cell for forty days plus Sundays. Maybe, this year, the habit will stick and I will find myself still game free when Lent begins in 2009.

So what did I do with the time? Did I write a column in the Documenting America series? Did I work on a chapter in In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming Poeple? Did I market anything? Did I pursue a new ancestor, and try to drag him/her out of the depths of some Internet web page? Did I start a new poem?

No, but I did something perhaps more important for the needs of the moment: I started on my income taxes. I had the goal for the evening, only one or two hours work, of making a start on the taxes for our (my wife’s and mine) home business partnership taxes. I hoped at best to copy the spreadsheet from last year, wherein I calculate profit and loss, and make a handful of entries to check the formulas; in addition, I hoped to gather all the papers needed to complete the calculations another day. Instead, I was able to enter ALL of the transactions for our main business, leaving only the irregular items to do tonight. Since these are a much smaller set, I should be able to finish that tonight and know what profit we made. Yes, we appear to have made a profit this year, the first in four years of operating.

Which gives me a wonderful feeling of getting things done. Oh what I might accomplish in life if I could wrap my brain and body around getting things done that need to be done. If Lent can help me with that, I will celebrate it every year.

Documenting America

Marketing DOCUMENTING AMERICA

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Well, two posts ago I said my next post would be about marketing efforts for Documenting America. Events of the weekend caused me to alter that, and I’m tempted to alter it again. Last night we were in a string of strong thunder storms that spawned a number of tornados, strong straight-line winds, and much rain. That caused us to move to the basement twice, and keep our eyes glued to television to watch the progress of the storms. But, thunder storms are common here (not in January), so it almost isn’t newsworthy.

My thoughts for marketing Documenting America are to simultaneously send forty query letters, ten to newspapers in each of the four states closest to me: Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri. While not really an idealogical column, I’m sure DA will reflect my conservative politics without my even trying. These four states are all conservative, and should be good targets. I plan to query smaller papers in smaller towns and cities, both weeklies and dailies. I will query based on not marketing to competing newspapers.

Why not just target one of my local papers? Or the larger papers in these states? I will include two of the newspapers in the area that are non-competing, including the one that published the four trial ones. Obviously, I’m a no-name, and the larger papers may be unwilling to take on a columnist with almost no publishing track record. Smaller papers, I hope, will be more willing to do so. And, if I go with the larger papers, with their larger distribution, staying with only non-competing papers will reduce the number of potential papers. The fewer I can market to, the fewer I’m likely to be accepted in. So, if I market the column to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, since it has state-wide distribution, I could not market it to anyone else till I heard back from them. I don’t want my options tied up like that.

What is the likelihood of success? I’d tell you my dreams for this, but you’d laugh at me. Let me simply say I believe the column idea is unique, the writing is good, the length is right, the frequency is right, and the country is ripe for this kind of column. A few beta readers, from diverse backgrounds, and all found it worthwhile and something they would read. For all these reasons, I believe I’ll be accepted at more than one newspaper.

Documenting America

Finding Inspiration in Old Documents

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The next document I wrote on was a speech by Carl Schurz before the Massachusetts legislature in the pre-civil war years. The subject of the speech was True Americanism. Although Schurz was from Wisconsin at the time, he travelled to Massachusetts to address the legislature on an issue then before them. He contrasted America to the Roman Empire. I found the speech uplifting and inspiring. I immediately thought of how this could be worked into a Documenting America column, and wrote the piece. Once again it was deemed worthy by the local paper, and was published.

After this came two letters, one from James Madison to George Washington, then Washington’s reply, during the Articles of Confederation era (1783-1789). Madison was concerned that the colonies were going astray from the ideals upon which the Revolution was based, and were not living up to the Treaty of Paris. Washington concurred. I found these letters to have inspiring and informative information, so wrote a pair of articles and they were published.

The program for guest editorials allowed only one per quarter, appearing in the Sunday Op-ed section. About this time the editor who was a friend from church moved away, to Washington state, and continuance of the guest editorial program was in question. I decided to back off this for a while and concentrate on other areas of writing interest. I now wonder if I made a mistake, and should instead have continued to write the columns, and do the research for self-syndication. More on that in my next post.