Category Archives: Writing

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.

Health, Writing

What the Doctor Said

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Pneumonia.

Yep. Went to see him yesterday. When he listened to my lungs he said he thought I had it, and ordered the x-ray. The x-ray showed less than he was expecting to see, but he said he still though it was pneumonia. Coughing without sinus drainage. No flu-type body aches. No fever. Just the persistent cough. They gave me a breathing treatment and a shot of antibiotic, plus prescriptions for an antibiotic, a home breathing treatment, and a strong cough syrup.

So, it looks like I’m home for a while, at least for this week. I won’t go back to work or church until the cough ends. I have gobs of sick time accumulated, so no worries there. Guess I’ll just lay around and rest, sleep, eat, watch bowl games, read, and play mindless computer games. Lynda is in OKC with Sara, Richard, and Ephraim. I’ve been reading a ton, mainly in the letters of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Also in the Bible.

Funny thing, I haven’t felt much like writing. Made a few entries into my journal, but haven’t felt like writing to this blog or any articles for Suite101.com or anywhere else. But as I was reading in Numbers this morning, my memory was jogged about a Bible study I had planned to write about Israel becoming a nation, taking material from Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua. Perhaps tonight I’ll feel like at least outlining that. Maybe in a day or two, if the medicine kicks in like it should, I’ll feel like writing again.

Health, Writing

Weathering It

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Good morning, everyone. I’m back at work, my first hours here since last Tuesday noon. Fighting that cough last week I only worked 1/2 day on Tuesday. I had Wednesday scheduled as vacation, and we were off Thursday-Friday.

Weather reports didn’t look good on Wednesday as we prepared to drive 450 miles to Meade Kansas. We considered not going, but we got a local weather report that indicated things were pretty good there. So off we went, taking a southern route through Oklahoma and arriving in Meade about 8 PM. No snow at all on the way; Meade had only a dusting.

For the next three days I proceeded to do as little as I could. I parked my over-stuffed hide in a recliner and sat there. They didn’t want me in the kitchen, coughing all over the food. They didn’t want my on the furniture moving detail, since the exertion would set me to coughing. And they didn’t want me much in conversations and games, for the same reason. And I didn’t want that much either. Thursday I was mostly in a fog. I had no head cold, just the cough, but that was taking a lot of energy, so I rested. Outside the prairie winds blew at 40 to 50 mph for three days solid. The house shook and windows rattled. But with some senior citizens in the house the hostess kept the furnace cranked up pretty good and we were all warm enough.

I find that when I have a cough, if I just rest quietly, I can resist the urge to cough for a long time. After a cough I lay back, regulate my breathing to short breaths, and before long I can feel the air going after the tickle in my throat. Then it’s a matter of slowly letting my breaths lengthen, and restricting my air passage as best I can to minimize the irritation of the tickle. Knowing where the tickle is, and controlling my breathing, when the urge to cough comes I am able to endure the pain across the tickle instead of coughing. Eventually the tickle worsens, and I cough, but maybe it’s every 15 minutes or half hour instead of every three to five minutes.

I suspect that helps with healing, but it requires extreme concentration. I can’t read while doing that, for I will forget about the tickle and cough when I could have suppressed it. Even television is too much of a distraction. Don’t want to talk or hardly move at all. I can pray some while doing that, but even praying is a distraction that lessens the benefits of my cough self-suppression.

Of course, driving won’t work either. So Lynda drove on the trip home, and some of the trip out. We came back through Oklahoma City and picked up Sara and Ephraim to come and stay with us a few days. Richard is in Mexico with a group from their church and an extended group from the college on a mission trip. So they’ll be with us until New Years Day, when Lynda will take them back and I’ll batch it again for a few days.

During this time, writing went by the wayside. I hardly checked in at Suite101, didn’t check in at Absolute Write, and didn’t read, think about plots or story lines or poems. I think I need another day or two before I’ll be ready to think about words again.

Oh, yes. That snow that Kansas was supposed to get–Oklahoma got it, but a day later. On Christmas eve Oklahoma City got 14 inches and Tulsa 8 inches from a wrap-around band of the storm–the first blizzard ever in Tulsa. The roads east of Tulsa were still a mess when we drove them on Sunday. Lynda did a great job and we had no problem at all.

Health, Writing

A Mixed Bag

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It’s amazing what a white powder, pressed into oblong shape and put into a dose pack, can do to rheumatoid arthritis. After all the problems of getting my prescription–both due to doctor error and pharmacy busyness–the pills did an amazing job. By Saturday morning I was in good shape. By Sunday morning my hands were mostly healed. I say mostly because not quite. The stiffness I normally have was back to background pain. The extreme flare-up was under control. I was able to work again.

Except the emotional toll of the pick-up repairs, the prescription fiasco, Lynda’s lingering illness, and general lack of success with writing in general brought me to Sunday not feeling like doing much. So I did little except go to church and rest. I read a few blogs, finished a stock trading article at Suite101.com (an article I had started on earlier), and read. I read in two days Charles Dickens’ novella The Chimes, the second of his Christmas books. Tomorrow I plan on posting a review of it.

Speaking of Charles Dickens, my Suite101 article on him is one of my recent success stories. This article was picked up and linked by a Charles Dickens dedicated web site. Scroll down to the “Dickens in the News” section to see the link. The way the page is set up, this link should be public for quite some time. Given the season, this is having a positive impact on my page views at Suite.

Also positive is that I discovered a certain site, Investors Journal, is linking to Suite101 articles. Several of mine have been there, although they rotate quickly and none are listed at the moment. But my recent stock trading articles were there, Google still has those links, which boosts my article ranking in a Google search. This apparently was unknown to Suite until I discovered it.

A negative is that the rheumatoid is a bit worse today: same hand, same finger. I’ve worked my way down the steroid dose pack to where I’m not taking much now, and I’m hoping this doesn’t mean in a day or two I’ll be back to where I was last Thursday-Friday. But, to compensate that my weight is down some. I’ve lost about six pounds from the Thanksgiving overeating times, and am pleased with it. I’m right now five pounds above where I hoped to be at the end of the year, so a little exercise, reasonable eating, and the New Year should see me at my goal weight. Time to set a more ambitious goal for 2010.

Two positives are things I wrote at Absolute Write recently, one in a poetry critique and one in a comment on a public events topic. Both were thought excellent by others, and are being quoted. That’s a good feeling.

I suppose we should expect a mixed bag out of life. It can’t all be good. The trick is to not become emotionally down when the bad comes. That’s been my problem lately. Setbacks have set me back emotionally, when they shouldn’t. Hopefully, with a correct appreciation for the situation and expectation for outcomes, from this point on they won’t.