Category Archives: Writing

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.

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.