Category Archives: Writing

Engineering, Writing

My Mind is Still Full

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As often happens after a long conference, the realities of work and life don’t allow for as much translation of mind fullness to practical results. As I wrote last Sunday, I returned from the IECA conference with a full mind. So many things to do at work about erosion control. And, from my continued reading in Chuck Colson’s How Now Shall We Live with many things to do and think about with my spiritual life.

But the after-conference realities of work hit me this week. I began by organizing the stuff I brought back from the conference: business cards, magazines, copies of technical papers, manufacturer’s materials. That lasted 15 minutes before I was summoned to a meeting involving possible warranty work on two subdivisions, one I worked on and one I didn’t. That lasted 90 minutes and required follow-ups with e-mails and several long discussions. It culminated in a 2 1/2 hour meeting today with the City of Rogers. They claim we did some things wrong in the design, but we don’t think so. The meeting went well.

Then on Tuesday there as an hour usurped to attend a webinar about the new MUTCD manual and regulations (traffic signage, striping, and signalization). Then there was the project in Lone Tree, CO that one of our young engineers designed, which was given to me to review because the City’s stormwater regulations were tricky and others who might have been able to review it were unavailable. That took close to eight hours between a detailed review of the drainage report and then understanding some difficult City standard details (items that go on construction drawings). Oh, yes, also the third review of a flood study in Rogers, of a lake dammed up on a creek.

In the two reviews, I found much needing to be changed. I struggled with the reviews, for fear that the large number of comments I had to give would crush the spirit of these two young engineers. But both took it well, and seemed pleased with the time I took to explain to them what the basis of my comments was. For the Lone Tree project, the misinterpretation of the City’s details might have been disastrous if I hadn’t reviewed it.

All this work, including bringing some things home tonight, is cutting into my writing time. Even tonight I brought some papers home, and an erosion magazine, to finish re-reading an important article and begin crafting a rebuttal for it. I may never turn the rebuttal into a publishable article, but I’ll enjoy writing it. I also made some more notes for the paper I’m going to give March 31 at the Muddy Waters Blues conference in Bentonville. I’m supposed to have my PowerPoint presentation turned in on Monday, but no way will I be ready. I might–I say might–have the paper written by then, but I can’t pull a PowerPoint together until I know what I’m going to say.

Plus, at work they have blocked blogspot, so I can’t even access An Arrow Through the Air from there. Nor can I access many of the writing blogs I read. So I’ll have to do almost all my blog work at home now, in crowded evenings and on weekends. That has put a cramp in my writing other things. I intended to work an hour or so on an article for Suite101, preparing to post it tomorrow. But after cooking supper and doing some dishes and adding the checkbook and working on that work stuff, it’s already 10:10 and I’m exhausted. Yet the end is not yet. I wanted to read twenty pages tonight in Colson, and I have a stack of junk mail to go through. So Suite will have to wait till tomorrow, if then.

America, Writing

The Flattery Continues

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Well, that short piece (real short piece, had to be under 50 words) I wrote back in 2004 for American Profile magazine continues to have legs. I wrote about this before. Yesterday, on a whim I decided to check for it again, so I searched for the phrases “ethics before law” and “law before gain”.

On the former I got over 4,500 Google hits. However, these reduced to just three pages upon clicking through them. The latter had 567 hits, which reduced to seven unique ones upon clicking through. A good number of these were to my quote, or rather to my quote unattributed.

One of those is a discussion on a Yahoo message board (second reply, discussed more several posts down, and the bad language is not my fault). Interesting that this was quoted in a discussion on Islam and whether Moslems can be good citizens.

So the flattery continues, sort of. I seem to have crafted a good phrase. I thought it was good at the time of writing; the legs prove it is.

Now, to be a successful, published writer, I just have to duplicate the quality of this a few tens of thousands of times. Piece of cake.

Engineering, freelance writing, Writing

Hobnobbing Over – Now on Information Overload

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I arrived back in Bella Vista about 10:30 PM Friday night. Grandson Ephraim (visiting us with our daughter, the young business woman) was in bed and daughter Sara was out. I unpacked quickly and went to my reading chair beside Lynda’s reading chair. It was as if I never left.

Except my mind was, and still is, full of things to do at work as a result of the conference. I attended a full schedule of technical sessions. Most of them were good, though, as with any conference, a few did not live up to the publicized expectations. I ducked one technical session to attend a meeting of the Professional Development Committee. As I told them, if I were a member of the organization, and if I were active at the committee level, this is the committee I would gravitate towards. It was quite interesting to see them at work. I learned they have a program to review abstracts and papers for the next conference (Feb 2011), and it appears I can join this program, even as a non-member, and get free conference registration next year.

My mind is full of things CEI needs to do better with our designs to prevent erosion and control sediment. We do some things well, but have large areas for improvements. This is especially true in our construction specifications. We have very poor construction specs as far as erosion and sediment control are concerned. We rely on the State construction general permit, which is not a construction spec. It hasn’t bitten us so far, but that is probably because enforcement is so lax.

My mind is full of papers I would like to write and present at the next conference. I began, evenings in the hotel, making some notes. I’m up to four papers I think I could write, although two of those probably need to be combined into one. Three abstracts to submit would be enough, I think. If they were all accepted, that would almost be too much to present at one conference. Still, I should probably pursue that many and see if I could spread them out over a couple of conferences.

My mind is also full of articles I would like to write about some of this stuff. So much of it is of general interest that I think I could translate the knowledge I have and expanded during the conference and crank out ten to fifteen articles in three weeks. Whether they’d be money-making articles I don’t know, but they would at least fulfill dual roles as writing credits and professional credits. Among the exhibitors at the conference were five magazines or publishers. I was able to speak to four of them. None of them pay freelancers, relying instead on the writers’ desires to obtain professional credits to submit work. Bummer; I don’t know if I want to pursue professional credits like that.

Well, on to other things for the evening. Coulson’s book awaits me, as do the Carlyle-Emerson letters and the Wesleyan Theological Journal. If I can’t make any money writing at least I can enjoy reading.

Carlyle, Suite 101, Writing

The Roller-Coaster Ride Continues

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…I feel as of old that the only true enemy I have to struggle with is the unreason within myself. If I have given s[uch] things harbour within me I must with pain cast them out again.

Thus wrote Thomas Carlyle on August 27, 1833 in a letter to his brother John. I read this today, not for the first time, as I was doing some more research into the relationship of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Carlyle. The article I wrote and recently submitted to BiblioBuffet (now word yet, BTW) dealt with Emerson’s first letter to Carlyle after they met. I wanted to research more about their meeting, as background for the next of these articles or to perhaps expand and re-market the article already written. But I prate.

I found Carlyle’s words to be exactly what I needed today, for again I’m on the writing roller-coaster ride. Despite adding several new articles to Suite101.com as of late, page views are not really growing (just a little, perhaps), and revenues have quit growing and are regressing. For Feb 7-9 I earned 10 lousy cents. For all my 64,800 or so words posted there in a little less than ten months, I’ve earned just over $60 dollars, not including the one contest I won. That’s less than 1/10th of a cent per word, and less than $1.00 per article in total. The Suite gurus say $1.00 per article per month is the site average. I’m sure skewing the curve on the low side.

On days like this it doesn’t seem that I should continue to write there, if at all. Why bother? Fiction is too difficult to break in. Bible studies are saturated. Non-fiction requires credentials. Poetry is a non-starter. Political essays are fun but where’s the money in that? And freelancing requires so much work and so much patience and such a long lead time to earn any money or build any platform that it doesn’t seem worth it.

The only thing that recommends writing to me is that I enjoy doing it. Is that enough?

Carlyle seems to have ridden the same roller-coaster I have, or should I say I’m on the same one he rode almost 180 years ago. That wasn’t his first time. But is it “unreason within myself” to question whether this writing thing I so enjoy is something I should pursue for economic gain, or for ministry? I don’t know. I guess I’ll spend a couple of weeks considering this.

Meanwhile I will still write articles for Suite, so long as I have subjects to write on. This afternoon I wrote and published one about construction engineering; this evening I wrote and published one about pollution prevention at construction sites. I have perhaps twenty more articles cued up, some of the research already begun or done from my regular course of vocational duties. I don’t know how long I’ll keep it up, but I will for a while.

Although my novel in progress is open on my computer. I have a new poem rolling around somewhere inside my skull, waiting to land for a while at the correct side of my brain and in the correct lobe. A friend is reviewing one of my incomplete Bible studies, and I just borrowed a book from the pastor for research for another. So Suite better start making economic sense, if it wants me to continue.

Engineering, Suite 101, Writing

It’s Snowing – Again

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Why does a snowstorm seem to be so distracting? We’ve had snow showers forecast for today for several days. Only Saturday night did that change to a winter storm warning, with 4 to 8 inches expected in our parts. For some reason, this storm has not had the media build-up that the last one did. The press has barely mentioned this one. Still, third snowstorm in 40 days makes this the snowiest winter since 2002-03. My mind today is too much on snow and not enough on engineering.

For the month of February, so far, I have been a good boy about my writing career. Just a few moments ago I fired off a freelance submittal that I had been working on for a couple of weeks, and which I ran by the writers guild last Tuesday. I have written and published four new articles at Suite101.com in February, including two over the weekend. I haven’t posted four in one week since–what was it, August? I would love to be able to post four new ones every week, and see if I can get un-stuck as far as revenue and page view growth is concerned. Actually, beginning in January I did see an uptick in revenue, both total revenue and revenue per article per month. It’s still pretty small, but at least it’s heading in the right direction.

Over the weekend I read an old Writers Digest magazine that I picked up somewhere. And I subscribed to Poets and Writers magazine, with an incredible one-year deal. I normally look at this mag at Barnes & Noble, it’s so expensive. But it’s about my favorite writers magazine. Of course, the checkbook is so low right now I probably shouldn’t have. I’ll get a $25 payout from Suite101 tomorrow, so I guess I earned it.

Some other ideas have begun to gel. I have about twenty Suite101 articles beginning to cue up, with six or so having some research already done. A Bible study that’s been on my mind for a few months has found its way to paper lately. I’m about to work on my novel in progress, which will make me feel incredibly good. And almost all my chores around the house are up to date.

The last three paragraphs have nothing to do with the snowstorm. I tried to find a master metaphor between snow and engineering and writing, but alas I’ve failed. So I’ll simply say: Let it snow! I’ll bring home some work tonight, some studying I need to do for in-house classes to teach, and spend a joyous eight hours at the kitchen table tomorrow, planning and writing three or four classes.

goals, Writing

The January Report

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January was not a productive month. I can blame pneumonia, and the stomach flu, and then the cold I had. I could blame the two snowstorms. I could blame a heavy workload at work, after missing almost three weeks and having a must-make deadline on a floodplain project. I could blame having my wife gone much of the month (including my worst sick time), tending to grandson and daughter. And I could blame having the grandson stay with us for over a week and not feeling like writing when I could play with him or rock him to sleep.

For sure the pneumonia kept me from being productive. I never ran a fever, never felt poorly. I just coughed, from deep within, and then had to sit and be quiet to recover. That coughing takes a lot out of you–or me. I had little desire to work at writing after trying to hack my lungs up every five or ten minutes.

So, I think I did poorly on my goals. I’ll paste them in and we’ll see.

1. Blog 12 times. Made this, blogging 14 times.

2. Write and publish 8 articles at Suite101.com. I wrote only two articles at Suite in January. I did some research on two more, but they don’t count.

3. Make at least one freelance submission. I sort of did this, although it’s not really what I intended. I submitted a poem to a poetry contest at Absolute Write. Came in tied for 7th in a vote of forum members, so no prize. No entry fee either.

4. Write 1000 words in In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I did nothing on this novel. Maybe February.

5. Begin work with Demand Studios. I looked at their stuff once, including the list of articles I could claim, but didn’t begin writing for them. Maybe February.

One thing I accomplished that wasn’t on the list was writing an article for the Bibliobuffet web site. I’ll show it to critique group tonight, and hopefully submit it tomorrow. It will be a guest column, and I’ve no guarantee they will accept it. If they do, it’s a (small) paying gig.

Mark Twain, Wesley, Writing

The Storm Is Here

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We’ve been hearing about it since Sunday. We were in a winter weather advisory on Monday, a winter storm watch on Tuesday, and a winter storm warning on Wednesday to begin Thursday 6 AM. About 3:30 PM it started. It’s rain right now. It should switch over to something frozen–sleet, freezing rain, or ice–within another hour or so. It should change over to snow by Friday morning and snow all day. They’re saying 2 to 3 inches of accumulation, but just forty miles north of us it will be 6 to 7 inches. So if that storm tracks just a little bit south….

I’m not going home tonight. I packed a bag and brought it with me today. I’ll stay with my mother-in-law at her apartment in Bentonville tonight and probably Friday night as well. I set the thermostat at 58 degrees this morning, but in reality we are likely to lose power if it doesn’t change to snow real quick.

I’ve got Mark Twain’s short stories. I’ve got a Writers Digest magazine. I’ve got a Wesleyan Theological Journal issue. I’ve got a few pages from Emerson’s letters to use to write an article. I won’t have a computer, but paper and ink still work. Esther’s apartment is only three miles from the office. If I need to I could walk back to the office in the morning. Or I could stay there, keeping each other company, resting up so this cold will finally leave me alone, and write and read much.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

critique group, Engineering, flood studies, Health, Writing

A Day Usurped

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Okay, so this morning I had two things on my mind–well, actually three:
1. Get the reanalysis done for my floodplain project so that on Wednesday all that would be left would be to have the CADD tech change the two maps and assemble a submittal to send off.
2. Attend writers critique group at 7 PM.
3. Help my wife decide on when to go to Oklahoma City: today with Sara and Ephraim; tomorrow the day after them; Thursday; or Friday.

Concerning the floodplain analysis, I had good success on Friday, completing 1/3 of it (as to total computer runs), and less success on Monday, due to interruptions, working sub par due to this cold, and to normal Monday inefficiencies. Still, the morning went well, and by a little after noon I had completed much, and could see my way to finishing it today or early tomorrow morning, making deadline.

I had a couple of conversations with Lynda. She felt she should go on Thursday, but we are under a winter storm watch for Thursday: 4-8 inches of snow, possible ice, possible rain. It all depends on the track of the storm. I suggested she go tomorrow. Sara called at 1:45 PM or so, when I was working on my analyses after lunch, and said they were going today and that Mom needed the cell phone (hers has never been replaced; I’m not going to do it) and would I meet them in Decatur, sixteen miles west. I hopped in the truck and met them to transfer the phone, and headed back to the office to check one thing in Centerton (right on the way) useful for my floodplain analyses.

Heading back to the office, about 2:45 PM I witnessed a four car accident right in front of me. I circled around the block and hung around about half an hour until I could give my contact information to one of the emergency workers, and drove the mile to the office. So far no one has called to take my statement. Others probably had a better view and so they may not need my observations.

So, with time lost but with no wife to go home to tonight, I decided I would stay at the office till 6:30 PM, rush to writers guild, getting Sonic on the way. That would almost make up for the Decatur run and the accident time. But no, the VP in charge of Production dropped by, asking me to assist that afternoon and help with an unexpected floodplain issue in Covington Louisiana. So from about 3:45 till 5:45 I huddled with one of the young engineers, then with the said VP of Production, including a conference call to our Dallas office where the project manager who botched–I mean supervised–the original work could hear our findings.

That done, I went back to my computer and saw an e-mail from another engineer, saying he knew I was busy but he had finally made the changes to the wastewater lift station project I checked last week and it had to go out tomorrow and could I look at it by mid-morning. He had the specifications done that I insisted he do before I signed off on it, he said. I told him to get it to my by 6:20 PM and I’d take it home. I also wished, by this time, I had not committed to going to writers guild, cause I sure could use the entire evening at the office.

The lift station documents in hand, and the writing I was to share tonight in the truck, I rushed to writers guild, picking up my discount Sonic burger along the way. And nobody else showed up. I waited half an hour, knowing there would be a message on the answering machine at home, saying it was cancelled because of people not being able to attend.

Had I known writers guild wasn’t going to meet, I would have stayed at the office until my floodplain analyses were done. But at that point, I was about a mile from the house and fourteen from the office. So I came home and entered the Dungeon, deflated from the day’s usurpations, very tired from the emotions, and possibly from the effects of my lingering cold, so I decided to not bother with the two articles I was going to write tonight. This post will have to do. I’ll pack a bag to take in tomorrow and spend the night in town, either at the office or at my mother-in-law’s so I won’t have to fight the snow on Thursday. I’ll stay in town Thursday night as well.

Right now, I feel both sad and mad: sad at the missed opportunities and the tiredness, and mad at the usurpations. My choices are to fight the emotions with food or with writing. About the only writing I could do tonight is to critique a poem over at Absolute Write, but the way I feel I’d probably dash some budding poet’s spirit with an overly-harsh critique, and I don’t want to do that. So the forage in the fridge it is. I seem to remember seeing some vanilla ice cream in it.

ETA: Oh, and when I got to the writers guild meeting that didn’t happen and opened up my Sonic burger with mayo and added ketchup and took a bite, it turned out it had mustard on it instead of mayo. The perfect unauthorized substitution for an usurped day.

Health, Writing

Marking Time

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My health is improving. The coughing associated with the pneumonia is gone, I think. I’m still on an inhaler that pumps some kind of medicine in me four times a day (when I don’t forget), and that will go on for another 84 pumps. Still sucking on cough drops and occasionally taking some over-the-counter cough syrup. But really, I cough almost not at all. The stomach flu I had lasted only 24 hours. I’m still fighting a garden-variety cold, but I think that is waning now. So, praise God for feeling better.

I think my immune system is below normal, so I’m not yet ready to go back to an exercise regimen. Perhaps next weeks I’ll resume light calisthenics and walking. I’d like to get back to purposeful weight loss efforts, rather than just what might come off as my body fights this or that illness. When the fight is over, the weight comes back on fast.

Writing is where I’m really marking time. The only writing I’ve done since Dec 17 is the one article for Suite101.com. I have three other Suite articles started, and will hopefully get them published within a week. Tonight I plan on going back to writers critique group, and sharing with them the 490 line poem from Father Daughter Day, “The Legend of the Mill”. I shared this last time I was there, but the poets in the group were absent, so I’ll do it again. Can’t say that I feel like doing much writing yet. Motivation must lag immune systems in regrowth.

Of course, having grandson Ephraim around is a pleasant distraction. He may leave today with his mom, or she might leave him for us to watch a few more days then bring to her and her returning husband next weekend. I got to rock him last night, singing hymns and praying with him. He always lays down and stays there when I do the honors, unlike when Lynda does it. He will usually object to being laid down and insist on more rocking. Must be grandpa’s touch.

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.