Category Archives: Examiner

Examiner, freelance writing, Suite 101, Writing

Sleeplessness

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After sleeping [cliche alert!] the sleep of the dead Wednesday night, which followed a day of mostly sleeping while my body fought the stomach bug, last night, Thursday night, started sleepless. To find the cause(s) that set my mind going so strong I guess I need to retrace the day.

  • At work my weight was down to an 11 month low. I’d have been disappointed if it wasn’t, after what I went through Tuesday night/Wednesday.
  • Also at work, I took a stand against a bad practice I feel another engineer was doing, refusing to approve something for submittal to a State agency, and that felt good.
  • By the end of the work day I (think I) figured out what is wrong with my flood model, which caused FEMA to reject it. Today I get to put that theory to the test. Unfortunately it’s going to be tedious work, model revision cross-section by cross-section, tweak upon tweak, plus adding about three cross-sections, which is tedious in itself.
  • At home I had a good evening playing with Ephraim, giving him his bath, reading stories, and rocking/singing him to sleep. He’s responding well to what I have him do.
  • After that, I completed an article for Suite101.com and posted it, the first article I posted since Dec 17. It felt good, and it’s the first of a cluster of four or five articles on the same topic that should go fairly easy.
  • Then I left the Dungeon, came upstairs and read 16 pages in my current reading book, The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain. I’m not yet half-way through its 680 pages, though getting close to that milestone.

So, which of these things caused my sleeplessness, such that laying down at 11:45PM saw me still awake at 1AM? I suppose all of them. I had visions of Ephraim, knocking down the block towers I built, and asking me to do the “pokey pokey”. I had visions of a floodplain model, corrected and doing exactly what FEMA wants while at the same time providing protection and appropriate access to flood insurance for residents of the city. I saw a company that puts ethics above mere adherence to an arbitrary schedule, and engineers who knew the right way of doing things and did things that way. Strangely (?), I had no vision of any short story by Mr. Twain.

But most of all I saw writing projects, many of them. I saw a whole host of articles at Suite101, including rising page views and revenues. I saw my short story published. I had a vision of teaching a poetry writing class [this one is on-going, nightly], asked to do so based on my Suite101 articles on poetry. I saw Father Daughter Day published and a huge success. I saw the e-zine/magazine I’d like to publish, Technophobia, published, and a wild success. I saw my newspaper column, “Documenting America”, syndicated and a wild success, with spin off books as a result. And I saw myself writing for Examiner.com as the Northwest Arkansas Christianity Examiner, again with wild success.

All of this because I managed to get eight hundred words and change coherently put together and published, after a sickness-caused dry spell of a month. No telling what visions of failure will do.

So at 1:15 AM I got up, had a bowl of cereal with real sugar and cinnamon, watched a little of a news program replay, found a Writers Digest I hadn’t read yet and read an article about religious publishing wars (which turned out to be a bit misleading based on its title), and went back to bed around 2AM. Sleep came at some point, not sure when. The alarm at 6AM seemed a lot louder than normal.

Examiner, Writing

Debate Almost Over: Probably No to Examiner.com

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I didn’t get much time during the weeked to consider my inner debate from last week about whether to apply to Examiner.com to be the Christianity Examiner for Northwest Arkansas. The time wasn’t there. I don’t much remember what I did Friday evening, but I wasn’t on the computer much. I think I was close to brain dead after an intensive week at work, and just read for the evening. On Saturday I did the usual yard work in the morning, got tuckered out doing it, and did things in the house at diminished capacity. With Lynda laid up with a cold (or possibly flue), I was chief cook and bottle-washer for a few days. I worked on my latest Suite101.com article, but didn’t post it. I also prepared to teach life group on Sunday.

Sunday morning, of course, was tied up with church and life group. Sunday afternoon I rested some, then tweaked and posted my article at Suite. I spent some time trying to figure out Facebook, but gave that up as a young person’s game. I read, searching for my next article to post at Suite, but did not find it. I think my brain needed its Sabbath rest yesterday, and so I did little to enhance my writing career.

The evening included watching Shooter on A&E. This must have been in theatres some years ago, but I never heard of it before. I multi-tasked as I watched, having a new idea for a freelance article for a print genealogy magazine. Okay, it wasn’t actually a new idea, but this is the first time I put it on paper. I didn’t finish it (multi-tasking doesn’t work well for me when the television is one of the tasks), but at least I got started.

All of which lead me to conclude by 12:30 AM Sunday (actually Monday) when I went to bed that there’s no way I could adequately do what I’d want to with Examiner. Everything I’ve investigated tells me it would be an excellent platform-building pursuit, but I’ve neither sufficient hours in the day or brain power to do that at present.

I’ll futz around with this debate a couple of days longer, but almost certainly I won’t be adding Examiner to my too-full schedule. I’ll revisit that decision every couple of months as I see where my writing career is heading, but probably it will be no for a while.

Examiner

More Internal Debate: What I Could Accomplish as a Christianity Examiner

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Back to my debate with myself about whether to pursue a second on-line writing gig, this one with Examiner.com. I made two posts about this yesterday. I don’t know what to do here. I had a second article at Suite101.com selected as an editor’s choice, which will mean more page views and maybe some more revenue. But I’m day-dreaming more and more about what I could accomplish at Examiner.

As I said yesterday, if I do this I would apply for a position as Christianity Examiner for Northwest Arkansas, which, because Examiner doesn’t have a NWA site, is a position not even created yet. That’s a minor hindrance, however, and I believe they would very likely create the position in anticipation of a local site.

As a Christianity Examiner, I would try to post articles that would cover the complete Christian community in these parts, not just on the evangelical community. Some types of articles I dream I would include are:

  • News of churches: who’s having VBS? When is everyone’s Christmas program? What is the pastor’s–any and every pastor–sermon series? What new adult Sunday school series are about to start? What are the teens doing next? This could be many, many articles.
  • Devotionals, maybe most days of the week. I’ve never written devotionals, so this would be something different for me. Probably a good writing skill to have.
  • Interviews with pastors and other clergy, including associate ministers.
  • News of Christian schools, including interviews with administration and staff.
  • News from Christian bookstores and other businesses.
  • Bible study stuff, either a few things I think of or analysis of some Bible study out there ready to purchase.
  • Excerpts and analysis from Christian classics.
  • Evaluation of Sunday School curriculum, non-denominational type, that is.
  • Church history articles. This would be a never-ending series. Most of the source information is now on the Internet, usually scanned.
  • Book reviews of Christian books, both fiction and non-fiction.
  • Maybe even an occasional–or weekly–guest article from the clergy. I don’t know if this would be allowed per the Examiner rules.
  • Any special programming on Christian radio and television available in the area.

As I’ve daydreamed about this, I’ve had more ideas pass through without capture. I imagine I could expand this list by 50 percent, easy. Actually, here’s some more that just came to mind.

  • News articles (not necessarily local) of interest to Christians. This could be anything from the SCOTUS decisions on church-state issues to cultural stuff.
  • If I could get them, interviews with ministers who have a national audience.
  • Interviews with Christian writers. I’ve met a fair number of these, and they are always looking for ways to promote their books.
  • A survey of the contents of the current issue of Christian magazines.

I guess what I’m trying to say is I would not have a shortage of material to post. Variety should be easy. The posts would be a mixture of current events, which will bring one type of page views, and “evergreen” content, which will bring another type of page views.

It seems to me that this would work, given the right amount of work on my part. I would have to figure out the data gathering part, and see if the time is available to do even a fraction of all I can dream. But meanwhile the dream is good. Every writer wants their writing to have an impact on an audience, be it big or small. This could work toward that purpose.

Stay tuned, for the debate is not over yet.

Examiner, freelance writing, Suite 101

The Debate Continues: To be an Examiner?

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When I drove to a noon hour meeting of an engineering organization, I had time to thing about pros and cons of applying to Examiner.com. I’m no where near making a decision yet, but more arguments concerning it are buzzing around in my head, and I’d better get them out in this hour I have before I’m due at church.

For: The visibility will be great. Since Examiner.com is like a newspaper, it will have people subscribing to the topic and checking it out daily. Traffic is not based on search engines alone.

Against: Since it’s like a newspaper, the writing work will be more journalism than essay and general articles. It will involve interviews, perhaps sometimes attendance at events, variety. At Suite101.com variety is of less importance than conforming with the house style.

For: The position I would apply for is Christianity Examiner for Northwest Arkansas. This would be a great position. I believe, with the right combination of articles, I could really impact people. I don’t know that it would lead to conversions, but it would likely strengthen Christians, even if in just a small way. I would have no shortage of articles. It could include: church news, interviews with clergy, news of events, devotionals, Bible analysis, Christian issues, perhaps some editorials. It would not really have to be exclusively about northwest Arkansas. I could write about almost anything Christian that would be of interest to northwest Arkansans. I could even invite local pastors to provide guest devotionals and sermons. I would think with the right mix of articles, and with a good posting frequency, I could establish a popular site.

Against: The work would almost be more that of a reporter. I’d have to learn new skills. I’d have to do interviews. I’m not sure that’s what I want.

Against: I would be quite exposed. I’d have to make sure, really sure, I was right in what I post.

Against: Examiner doesn’t have a site for northwest Arkansas.

For: They would probably let me piggy-back on the Little Rock site for a while, perhaps a long while, until we had enough examiners to justify a local site.

For: The pay would likely be better than Suite 101, and probably more consistent. Since the traffic will be more predictable, I suspect I would make more total money, faster than at Suite 101. Examiner pays about 1 cent per click, or $10 per 1000 page views. Right now at Suite 101 I’m in the neighborhood of $1.45 per 1000 page views. The Suite 101 income will likely continue to rise with time, regardless of whether I have more posts or not.

Against: With the pay being better, you have to wonder if Examiner has a long-term business model that can sustain that rate of pay. With Suite 101, since my income is based on Suite’s income, which is all on advertising dollars, the long-term prospects for continued pay seems viable, so long as the entire Internet advertising scene doesn’t collapse. But Examiner’s paying per click, the payment is based on traffic not revenue. Can it be sustained?

Against: What happens when I want to quit Examiner sometime in the future–if I want to quit? Since the site would be based a lot on current events and less on “evergreen” content, the clicks might stop and with them the revenue stream. At Suite 101, if I quit today my articles, which I’ve tried to make “evergreen”, would continue to earn revenue at their slow pace, even increasing at least for a couple of years.

For: Not everything on Examiner has to be current events. I can mix in some “evergreen” topics and keep some level of page clicks coming.

That’s about it for now. More debate coming later.