Category Archives: Writing

Suite 101, Writing

My Income Taxes…

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…are done! Put a fork in them. Finished the Federal last night; will have to pay a small amount. Not too bad considering Lynda’s stock trading made a decent profit. Of course, we have to move the maximum into our IRAs to get the taxes as low as possible. Finished the Arkansas state taxes about a hour ago; will get back a nice amount–not as good as last year, but several times over what I have to pay to the Feds. Had to figure it two different ways to determine which way was better. I’m a happy man.

Tomorrow I will copy and mail them. That’s actually a challenge, for due to businesses I have lots of attachments.

I’d like to get back to this blog with some kind of regularity, but alas a number of things have dropped while I was working on taxes, also due to having to work on my church’s parking lot rehab. For the rest of tonight I’ll simply say I have to spend some quality time with my checkbook, and make sure all is well there. Then there’s the kids and grandkid coming tomorrow, so there’s some prep work there. So I can’t spend much time here tonight, and probably not again till Friday night or even Saturday.

Oh, I will say that, after a significant drop over the Easter weekend, my page views are climbing nicely at Suite 101. The last three days have all been well above average with revenue as well. Maybe my stock trading tax articles and my Earth Day 40th anniversary articles are pulling their weight and more-so.

Writing

The Best Laid Plans

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I planned on writing today. From the moment I got up and prepared for church–no, actually from last night when I got home from a adult Life teachers’ meeting and our weekly pilgrimage to Wal-Mart–I had writing on my mind. When we got home from church I grabbed Poets and Writers magazine, took it to the sun porch, and read until I fell asleep. This was all according to plan. I woke up from my nap, had a light lunch, and came down to the Dungeon to begin my writing.

What to write? Perhaps an article for Suite101, the second in my series on rain gardens? Maybe a couple of passage notes for the harmony of the gospels. Maybe even 500 or 1000 words on my novel. Or perhaps begin the writing on my next Sunday School series, on the sacraments. The latter, I thought. I had my study book, I had my lesson series outline, and looked at the computer.

There, showing on the bottom bar (the task bar?), was the Excel logo with four files active. What were all those files, I wondered. A simple click showed they were tax spreadsheet. Oh, shoot, I was supposed to finish the Federal taxes today, so I could hopefully do the State tomorrow and then my mother-in-law’s Tuesday/Wednesday.

So, I’m afraid writing is out the window for a few more days. The good news is my Federal taxes are done, except for figuring out the IRA contribution so I don’t have to write a check to the evil IRS, and proof-reading, math checking, printing, etc. So I’ll sign off and look to that. Writing, see you another time.

freelance writing, Suite 101, Writing

Reversal of Fortune

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Well, the article that BiblioBuffet accepted is now rejected. A week after acceptance they e-mailed me requesting changes, saying, “You do have a wonderful topic here. But…it needs to be more you and less a college assignment.” I tried. I looked at it slowly, reading it over and over, finally coming up with a “patch”, an addition to it where I used words for the Carlyle-Emerson correspondence to express my feelings. No good, according to the editor. I received the e-mail this afternoon: “While I do find [your essay] well written it is missing…passion. I still see nothing of you in it. …There’s nothing that tells me…why you…or care about it. I am afraid I am going to have to decline to run this essay. …I urge you to continue with your writing group. Perhaps in a year or you might wish to try us again.“

“A year.” That in itself speaks volumes.

Oh, well. But to what do I ascribe this failure? I’m wondering if the uber-objective viewpoint required by Suite101.com has caused be to think only in that mode and have trouble with the personal point of view and with creative writing. That’s a possibility. Or maybe I really want to write college essays rather than creative pieces. That’s a possibility. Or maybe I just don’t have it. Whether or not I turn out to be the hero of my writing career…blah, blah, blah.

Oh, well. Tonight, being in a bachelor mode with Lynda in OKC, I went to Barnes & Noble after work. I had a gift card burning a hole in my pocket, and last time I was there didn’t find anything I really had to have. Tonight I picked up a remainders copy of Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters. Six hundred and eight-six glorious pages of his letters, plus index; a fair number of footnotes, and I love footnotes. This will be enjoyable reading for me, even given ACD’s spirituality issues. Into the reading pile with it; should get to it in late 2011.

I also looked in three writing magazines and culled some ideas. I’m wondering now how to approach my freelancing, or if I should just go back to novel and Bible study writing and see what I can do there. The good news is I made a whole $0.30 at Suite101 on Tuesday. Two tanks of gas per year for 72,000 words. Either I’m crazy or obsessed.

Writing

The Tax-Man Factor

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Sorry for my absence of late. Been working on my income taxes, beginning with my writing income (or lack thereof) and expenses, followed by the stock trading business income and expense. We actually made money this year.

But I find this all consuming. Monday-Tuesday it took up the whole evening. I skipped church tonight (well, truck trouble had something to do with that) to do the taxes. I had one more thing to do to finish figuring the stock trading income, something that should have taken me all evening. However, I started it and five minutes into it realized the answer I was working towards was right there on the Fidelity brokerage statement. To be sure I contacted Fidelity, and the rep confirmed it. What I thought would take four hours took fifteen minutes.

With my evening thus relieved, I should have knuckled down and gotten to the expense side of the business taxes. However, my wind wafted into reading land. I went upstairs, cooked a simple vegetable supper, read some pages in an academic article about the canon of the scriptures, then went to work on editing my article for Biblio Buffet. A way to possible do what the editors wanted had come to mind today, and the found time seemed a good time to get that done. Fired it off a few minutes ago. We’ll see how it works.

So, tomorrow I get the pick-up back, and will get back on the taxes. I think one, possibly two, evenings to get the expenses done, then one more evening to actually fill out and print the business forms. Then the personal Federal forms will consume the weekend. I’ll take a week or a little more off and then hit the Arkansas taxes. No, wait, I need to get my mother-in-law’s done too, and this year she will likely owe taxes so I can’t turn them in late. Rats. Then there will be calls from someone who always needs my guidance for his taxes.

So, I may not be posting here at the frequency I like.

Harmony of the gospels, Writing

Still Thinking About Writing With the Flow

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Yes, I’m still thinking about that. I wrote my post from yesterday at work, e-mailed it to myself at home, and posted it in the early evening. After that, I got to work on the passage notes and completed one passage. That still gave me time to read a literary agent’s blog, and achieve my reading goals for the night. Oh, and I got caught up on my personal finance budgets and on the checkbook. So I would call it a successful evening, if only there were more left in the checkbook and the budget balanced.

Tonight I decided to continue with the passage notes in the Harmony of the Gospels. I’m at the place where Jesus warned his disciples, and the crowd, to beware of the teachers of the law and the Pharisees (Mark 12:38-40, Matthew 23:1-12, and Luke 20:45-47). I originally worked on this 2 October 2001, and appear to have completed it in one evening. Now, however, as I was writing the passage notes “with the flow,” I saw a number of places where my original harmony missed some key information. So I took time to break the passage down into smaller chunks, something I didn’t do before, and reworked the harmony. I’m more pleased with it now, as it is more complete.

Maybe this writing with the flow is better. My mind is still engaged on these passages and on the passage notes. The way I’m writing them is to go back to my hand-written notebooks–three of them–where I wrote out the passages, discussed the similarities and differences, then wrote the harmony. Sometimes I began with chunks too big, and had to go back to the beginning with smaller bites. I should have done that with the passage in question. What I’m doing now is typing those notes I made as I harmonized the four gospels. However, I’m expanding my personal shorthand, and adding a few extra comments I didn’t before–the laziness of writing by hand when you’re used to typing seventy words a minute.

But I find I’m adding quite a bit more to the passage notes. After I reread my old notes, and the harmony, and the gospels again, and think some more, more words flow, giving a more complete picture of the process I went through and the nature of the finished product.

So maybe this writing with the flow does work. I’m writing these passage notes kind of fast, yet at the same time adding to them and improving the Harmony. I don’t know how long this inspiration will continue, but I’ll go with it for a while. Maybe I’ll actually finish the project in a couple of years. Since it’s probably non-publishable, no hurry.

I still need to work on the discipline part of writing with the flow, which will involve writing where the flow stops so as to finish a project. I’ll figure it out someday. Otherwise I’ll never get a book published.

Meanwhile, the flow to do my taxes has not yet come.

Writing

Writing With the Flow

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Unluckily or luckily this notion of writing on the Working Classes has in the interim died away in me; and I have altogether lost it for the present. I have got upon Thuycidides, Johannes Müller, the Crusades, and a whole course of objects connected with my Lectures; sufficient to occupy me abundantly till that fatal time come. We will commit my Discourse on the Working Classes once more to the chapter of chances.

In early 1838 Thomas Carlyle wrote these words as the introductory paragraph of a letter to John Stuart Mills. It seems that Carlyle had committed to writing an article about the working classes for Mill’s London and Westminster Review magazine. Carlyle, however, with this letter put off Mill, claiming he didn’t have the notion to write on it at that time, being fully engaged in preparing to give a lecture series that would start April 30, 1838.

I can sympathize with Carlyle. As I wrote yesterday on this blog,”inspiration” suddenly hit me yesterday, and I went back to working on the Harmony of the Gospels, going after the passage notes with great interest. When I worked on some of the passage notes previously (meaning over a year ago) I had some difficulty deciding on a format for them. Should I type the parallel passages in a table or columns? Or should I just refer to the passages and let a reader (including me sometime in the future) pull out a Bible and flip between gospels? I elected to go with typing the parallel passages in a Word table? More work, more paper, more trees killed (or pixels consumed), but more usable passage notes.

As I said yesterday, working on this wasn’t on the radar screen for this month, probably not for the year, but my reading drew me to it. This seems to be the way of my writing life. Reading or teaching or some other of life’s activities gives me a burst of interest, and I (research if necessary and) write. It doesn’t matter if it’s a new project or old project, an outlined project or seat-of-the-pants piece. It doesn’t matter if I have been hot and heavy in the middle of something else. I go with the flow. Wherever the creative waters gush, there I go.

So that puts me at odds with Carlyle. It seems that, while he recognized that he should follow his creative juices, he also knew he had to complete a project to make some money. His lecture series would be quite profitable, and Carlyle at that point in his career still did not have financial success. So somehow he found the inspiration he needed to prepare his lectures. The working classes did not inspire him at that moment, and would not really futher his goals, though they would a year or two later.

When I feel the creative juices flowing in a certain direction, I go there, regardless of what I’m working on at the moment. That’s why I have a dozen writing projects opened, and none finished. In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People was where I was supposed to be spending my time yesterday. That and two articles for Suite 101. Despite the busyness of a Sunday, I had enough time carved out to write a thousand words in FTSP or complete at least one if not two articles for Suite. Yet I went with the flow instead of practicing creative discipline.

On Rachelle Gardner’s blog on Friday I made a comment about that (comments 207 and 208 to Rachelle’s post), claiming I had genre identity disorder (G.I.D.). That may have been a misnomer. Perhaps I should call it Writer Discipline Deficiency. Or maybe Uncontrolled Creative Flow.

Somehow I need to learn to do what Carlyle did: go with the creative flow, yet complete projects started before going on to the next. Get the next idea documented in a notebook or journal, locked down, and carry on where I was before the inspiration hit.

Oh well, tonight, as the time allows, I will be mostly working on passage notes again, trying to get the notes written for at least one passage. If time allows and inspiration calls, I’ll see about a Suite article too. However, what I really should do tonight is get my household budget and financial records up to date (1.5 months behind) and get something done on my income taxes. Unfortunately, inspiration for those two items is lacking.

Harmony of the gospels, Writing

Change of Plans — Inspired?

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The only writing I planned to do this weekend was write a follow-up article on Earth Day for Suite101.com. My article on the 40th anniversary of the first Earth Day is doing quite well, page view wise. And it should do better as the day approaches. A figure another follow-up article couldn’t hurt. Beyond that, I planned on finishing the Chuck Colson book.

But my weekend plans went awry. Friday night I got some good reading done, essentially on-pace to finish the book by tonight. Saturday, though, was fully consumed with chores and comings and goings, until the evening left little opportunity to read. Well, I did read. I re-read a chapter in The Shack, the book we are studying in our adult Sunday school class, and prepared to teach it in case the teacher was out today (he was, so I did). And I read a Nazarene missions book that we’ve had for too long (just 94 pages; easy read). Then it was bed time.

This afternoon I had to meet with the trustees at church to talk again about our parking lot rehab project. We had some money unexpectedly come our way, and have the opportunity to redo the lot according to my master plan. Looks like that will happen. But that meeting, and waiting for it to start, took a good chunk of the afternoon. No time for reading.

But the thing that really changed my plans was reading yesterday morning and today in the gospels. As I usually do this time of year, I began reading again the stories of Jesus’ passion, beginning with the triumphal entry. But I decided to read it in my Harmony of the Gospels. The part I read this morning, Jesus’ ministry and encounters early in the week, led me to realize I may have been off in a couple of things. Plus, my mind seemed really engaged in the subject, and I thought this might be a good time to get some passage notes written.

So this afternoon and this evening I took time to work on some passage notes. I did this for the passages that are titled, in my study Bible, Question About Paying Taxes, About the Resurrection, and The Greatest Commandment. My mind was sharp, and focused. The words of the Harmony seemed to jump out of the page as I read. This is usually a sign that I’m reading the right thing for my current state of mind. So I got to work on the passage notes.

Perhaps I should briefly describe these. They are the notes that I wrote in my notebook as I harmonized the four gospels. I would first write out the text for each gospel covering that passage, in very short pieces (usually a sentence, sometimes two). I would then write a few notes about the differences and similarities in the text; what appeared to be conflicts and what appeared to be simple differences in wording. Then I would state some basis for harmonizing the text, say “Use Mark for the basic text, work in the extra information in Matthew and the word difference in Luke”, or something like that. Then I wrote the harmonized text in the notebook.

So I went to the notebook, found the part about paying taxes to Caesar, and began. I should also say that I’ve tried working on several of the passage notes before. I had little success, for whatever reason. But today I had good success. I took my handwritten notes and began typing. I expanded my private shorthand to full words and grammar. I added a few things that came to mind now. Most importantly, I found a few places where I could make my harmony better, and more faithful to the original text. I also found a few places where I did not adequately state the basis for my decision. I added that to the passage note.

This was not even on the radar screen when I set March goals. Consequently, I’m not sure what this will do to my goals. I may need to lay something else aside, or spend more time on writing than I anticipate having. Well, it seems that I need to write where my mind is going, not force it to write something that it is not interested in at that moment. So I’ll see what tomorrow brings, be it a Suite article, a little more on my novel, editing my article for BiblioBuffet, or even another passage note.

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.