Category Archives: Writing

Suite 101, Writing

Good News to Counter the Bad

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Well, my arthritis in my fingers is still bad this morning. Saw the doctor yesterday. They x-rayed my right hand and found no trauma. His conclusion is a severe rheumatoid arthritis attack. He prescribed me a steroid and a strong pain killer. Went to the pharmacy later that evening and they had the painkiller but not the steroid. Seems something was unclear about what the doc wanted, and they wouldn’t fill it until he returned their call. Since the doc’s office is closed today (a special day off, it appears) I may not get that medicine till Monday. The painkiller is helping a little, I guess.

And I got my pickup back yesterday. New engine, rebuilt clutch, new warranty. I’m considerably poorer, though I’m glad to have this friend back who has carried me for over thirteen years now. Looks like I’ll have to take it back in tomorrow morning, for they failed to properly fasten the boot in the cab at the bottom of the gear stick. It’s kind of flopping around and I can hear all kinds of strange noises coming from below somewhere.

But the real good news is last night I had an e-mail from the Suite101 editor-in-chief. My article on homemade turkey soup was chosen as one of the winners in the Best of the Holidays contest. The announcement hasn’t been made publicly yet, but I imagine it will be today. The prise is $101, which comes at an opportune time, both in terms needing the money and needing the confidence boost.

Writing

Number 1 on Google

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Dr. Hook and his Medicine Machine may have fixated on getting their picture on the cover of The Rolling Stone magazine. Athletes hope for Sports Illustrated covers. I suppose politicians hope for the conservative or liberal magazine of choice. But for a writer who writes on the web and tries to attract readers through search engines, the goal is to be number 1 on Google for the critical search term(s).

My article, Book Review: Lost Letters of Pergamum, from June 2008, has for a long time been the most popular article I’ve posted to this blog. It’s companion, More Thoughts on Lost Letters of Pergamum, doesn’t get near as many hits. Some of my other book reviews get some traffic. Otherwise it’s a known reader in Rhode Island, a known reader in north Georgia, a mystery reader in Little Rock, and me who look at any of these pages.

I can always tell when some class somewhere has begun a study of The Lost Letters of Pergamum, for I get a few hits from that locale on the article. They show up in my sitemeter stats for a day or two, then things go quiet till next semester.

But Wednesday and Thursday I got a lot of hits on that article, many more than just one class studying the book. In fact, I think the hits came from five different institutions of higher ed. I wondered what was going on. At least one of the hits indicated they accessed the site after searching on Google for “review of lost letters of Pergamum”. So I did the Google search for that term.

And there I was, number 1 on Google. Even ahead of the Christian Book Shops page reviewing the book. Ahead of the Amazon.com page. Ahead of Barnes and Noble. Ahead of 12,799 other sites.

Those who have been at this Internet writing game for a while, and who know more about “search engine optimization” (SEO) than I do, say that somehow, through magical al-gore-ithms, Google can tell what is good writing and what isn’t. Or maybe it’s what is popular writing and what isn’t. Either way, my review seems to have passed Google-muster and risen to the top. It must have always been fairly high in a Google search, because I wouldn’t have been getting the occasional hits if it hadn’t. Research shows people rarely look past the first page of hits, and even more rarely go past page three.

But to rise to the number 1 position for the most important search phrase is validation. I must be doing something right. Since I wrote that article long before I had even heard about SEO, either I’m a natural at that new practice or the writing must be fairly good. Either way, I’ll take it. Time to get back to my SEO-based writing, trying to figure out how to write informative articles that incorporate search terms and that are written with excellence, not with mindless repetition of those terms.

It’s a good feeling.

Suite 101, Writing

Home Alone

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Well, it’s 5:30 PM Central time, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and I’m home alone. The holiday company have left, my wife taking our daughter and son-in-law back to Oklahoma City this afternoon. So I’ll be batching it for a few days.

Time to work on my writing, catching up on what I let go from Tuesday until now. I don’t know that I’ll do a whole lot today. I’ll probably write a second blog post a little later, and possibly I’ll work on and maybe complete an article for Suite101.com. My article on homemade turkey soup has done quite well there lately, helping to sustain my page views at respectable levels through the holidays. My revenue is also up, at the highest level for any month with three days to go in the month. I’m within striking distance of having enough to get a payout this month.

Tonight, though, I may take most of the evening to just relax. I’ll fix a thick turkey sandwich, complete with gravy and dressing, and watch Gladiator, which is supposed to be on one of the cable channels tonight with limited commercial interruptions. While watching that I might get my submittal log up to date, and take notes on a couple of Suite articles. I can multi-task, since I’ve seen Gladiator before.

I also have a new writing gig that I should take the evening studying, but I think I will put that off till tomorrow, and will report about it on this blog sometime later in the week. For now, this will suffice to get me back in the groove.

Engineering, freelance writing, Suite 101, Writing

Back On-Site, and a Writing Lesson Learned

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This morning the street superintendent of Centerton called. He needed me at a construction site. He was modifying something I “designed” a year ago and he wanted me to look at it. I put designed in quotes because this wasn’t a rigorous engineering design. A culvert wasn’t draining properly; erosion downstream had exposed a water line; wingwalls obstructed proper flow of water; he was tired of waiting for the highway department to fix it. So he and I met on site and I drew a sketch of what needed to be done. He hired a contractor and had it constructed. It has worked fine.

Well, sort of fine. The erosion control measures worked like a charm, save in one location they didn’t complete. The culvert drains as it should now. But a problem he has noticed since is that the flow entering the culvert, from the east and west and which turn and flows south, don’t work well together. The flow from the west is so much more than from the east that it overwhelms the smaller flow and creates backflow in that direction, over-topping the highway three hundred feet east. He wanted to put in a diversion wall and let the two flows get into the culvert with less co-mingling. I helped them lay it out, and hopefully it will accomplish what he wants.

I say hopefully, because once again this is not rigorous engineering. I get to do that this afternoon as I re-evaluate a flood study and respond to FEMA comments. But this approximate engineering is something I’m not as comfortable with. There’s no way to know if this will work until the next rain storm allows us to watch it in operation–and it needs to be enough rain to have the ditch flow at lest two feet deep. One of these half-inch rainfalls won’t do that. Much better to engineer something that works according to the laws of science and mathematics. Something I can reasonably predict how it is going to perform. Oh well, billable hours are billable hours. I shouldn’t complain.

It’s sort of like the difference of writing for a residual income website and a pay up-front website. On the latter I know exactly what I’m getting for what I have to write. For Suite101 and its residual income payment model, what I get paid is totally dependent on how many ads are clicked, which is somewhat dependent on what subjects I write about. It’s also dependent on how well I optimize the article for search engines. Maybe, over several years, it will amount to more than I would make writing for up-front pay; maybe not.

I’m working on my SEO abilities, but frequently find that butting up against what I consider to be good writing. So far, with one exception insisted on by an editor, I have always come down on the side of good writing. I hope I always will.

freelance writing, Suite 101, Writing

Submittals Made

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Well, just over half way through November and I’m met my submittal goal for the month. Yesterday morning I completed an article that qualifies for a current Suite101 contest for their writers. Yesterday noon I researched magazines where I could submit some poems. I found close to eighty mags suitable for what I wanted to send. I narrowed it down to two start-up mags. Last night, after writers guild, I completed this research, and decided to submit to Four Branches Press. I selected five poems (the upper limit) and fired off the e-mail before I could change my mind. They don’t pay except in contributor’s copies and a subscription, so this is mainly to get a publishing credit.

At writers guild last night, only four of us attended, and only three had material to share. I brought the first four pages of Father Daughter Day. I had been sharing with them my baseball novel, but no one in the guild except me seems to know the first thing about baseball, so I decided to shift to FDD. Of course, only two of us who attend regularly know anything about poetry, so this might not be best either. Still, although over the years I’ve shared with them two or three poems from the book, I’ve never shared the book from beginning to end. Their comments will be interesting. Last night comments were limited to “very nice.”

Also yesterday I began researching other on-line markets to write for. Right now at Suite101 I’m averaging only $7 per month (though Nov. appears to be higher than that), and I’ve got to make some more money. I went through this before, looking at Examiner.com, and decided I couldn’t commit to that. But maybe there’s another site I can write for. Stay tuned.

Writing

Submitting

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Okay, yesterday and today I worked on my writing goals. Yesterday I pulled out out my submissions notebook and updated it. So far this year I have this record:

20 submissions
4 acceptances
8 rejections
8 not yet heard
0 withdrawn

One of my goals this month was to make 4 (I think) submissions of any type. I’m sitting at two thus far, and want to get as many done this week as I can, hopefully exceeding my goal. This noon hour I researched poetry and short story markets, and identified two or three to submit to. The pay stinks (if something non-existent can be said to stink), but being able to add publishing credits would be good. I’ll likely submit something to then tomorrow.

Yesterday I pulled out my Bible study ideas notebook, intent on organizing it and trying to decide what to work on next. What I found was I never gathered all my idea sheets into that notebook! So I spent a half-hour documenting, by title and status only, nine ideas I’ve had for Bible studies. Now I have to see if I have an idea sheet written up on each and if so get them in the notebook. I’m not sure where I’ll find them. Some I might have typed into the computer and never printed. Some may exist only in my mind, and are waiting escape. I suppose this will be some of my work this week.

Well, my employer beckons, so I’ll get back to what pays the bills.

commuting, Engineering, Suite 101, Writing

The Joyous Sound of…Plotters

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I arrived at the office this morning, not knowing what to expect as to IT issues. When I left last night: e-mail was down; Internet access was down; our intranet was down; and all copiers and plotters were inaccessible. All the way home, through especially horrendous traffic, I kept thinking this would be a good time to launch my dream magazine, Technophobia.

This morning, I got to work about 7:30 AM after a stop at the bank and the gas station. Rounding the corner and entering the long, narrow corridor to my office, I saw a beautiful sight: an engineering drawing sitting on the out-put tray of a plotter. They must be working! I thought. Then, after getting coffee and completing my short devotional, the joyous sound came: the whine of the back-and-forth of a plotter head, producing a drawing. I about cheered these two sensory experiences.

So I took a chance. Calling up MS Word, I opened my daily diary sheet, chose the printer that’s supposed to be closest to me, and clicked . For five seconds nothing happened, then came the joyous sound: the printer/copier spitting out my document after it’s morning warm-up. Everything’s working; all’s right with the world.

So it’s back to the routines of the last nine years. Only difference is the route to work, and that only for the last mile and a half. I don’t have a key to the office yet (because the electronic entry is not yet installed), so I’ll come in a little later and fight heavier traffic on the commute. Before work I’ll have devotions then check writing web sites. On noon hours I’ll walk and write and eat simple fare at my desk. After work I’ll spend a half-hour or so waiting on traffic to clear by doing something else for writing. Hopefully, in between these, I’ll return to my past love of civil engineering and find meaning in flood plains and drainage ditches and sewer lines and streets, etc. At least I can write about some of those things at Suite101.

Suite 101, Writing

A Form of Flattery

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That’s what they say about imitation–it’s the sincerest form of flattery. That doesn’t, however, extend to plagiarism and copyright theft. At Suite101.com, several people posted to the writers forum there today to say their articles had been stolen verbatim and posted at http://general-finance.com/. It has happened with at least two articles, possibly a dozen. One of the authors effected found that general-finance didn’t get them directly from Suite, but from another, content-washing site which posted them all with a date one day before they were posted on Suite, making it appear that a dozen different Suite authors stole work from this other site. Yeah, right.

This didn’t affect me, but it did make my get off my lazy cyber-butt and set up a few Google Alerts. This is a tool that helps you spot copyright theft automatically using their powerful search spiders. I set up three alerts: one for my name, and two for phrases in two of my articles. I set them up to report as an event was found. We’ll see what happens. Nothing so far.

I set up one alert for my name. Then I decided to Google my name and see what I get. I do this from time to time, also for my Internet pseudonym, Norman D Gutter. Today I found at least five other David A. Todds: a doctor in California who writes about secretions from nipples; a welder in Texas who makes political contributions to the Republican party; an engineer in Texas; a civil engineer in Oklahoma City–with his own firm; and another I can’t remember right now. Oh, now I remember: someone with a home for sale in Florissant, MO.

Several of the search hits were to my writings, including one that appeared in American Profile magazine, the Sunday newspaper insert that competes with Parade Magazine, in 2004. What I wrote and sent to them was:

America, settled by those who thought freedom more important than comfort, was forged to nationhood through the concept that men can govern themselves, if only they adopt excellent laws, then embrace them.

The best citizen puts ethics before law, law before gain, nation before self.

What they put in the magazine was:

The best citizen puts ethics before law, law before gain, nation before self.

That was close enough I didn’t gripe about it. Now, as I Googled my name, I found this latter statement at a number of places, normally with attribution to me. Here are some of the links:

The News-Sun forums.

WikiAnswers

Yahoo Answers

MaybeNow Answers

Then I decided to do a Google search for a key phrase in my published quote, and found this site in addition. [If you go to the site, you have to scroll down to near the end to see my words, slightly modified.] So, I suppose I should be flattered to think that this young man saw my words, thought enough of them to post them as his own. I guess I’ll let him get away with it for now. After all, I can easily prove they are my words if I ever have to.

career, Writing

My Kind of Day

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The rain started yesterday, Sunday. Never heavy, and not steady. Just enough to make you not want to leave the house on a walk. Gloomy clouds; fresh north wind; temperatures falling. Just the kind of thing to perk me up from a gloomy mood.

Last night, after dark but while we were in the Dungeon at our computers with the night shut out, the heavier rain came. By this morning the heaviest rain was over, and we had steady drizzle through the day. No sun. Dark clouds. The north wind persisting and freshening.

I had a huge day of accomplishment at work, getting stuff done a day ahead of schedule, and surprising people in the office.

Then came the evening. As the rain ended my mood worsened and disappointments came. I guess I should just learn to be an engineer and not worry about being a writer.

Engineering, Writing

More Books to the Dumpster

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Since I last posted on Monday, my work at the office has been a mixture of library organization and miscellaneous assistance to people who request help. Tuesday I began work on a small project, checking and recalculating something in the drainage system of a large subdivision designed under my supervision back in 2003. But the computer program has changed since then, and I have to re-key everything into the new program. Except the new program was bought out by AutoCAD, is no longer stand-alone, and I don’t do AutoCAD. So today I need to find someone to help me with it.

The library is organized. Except for two shelves of old project documents I discovered yesterday, everything else is in its place. I haven’t arranged the reference materials in a way that makes sense, but at least they are all together. Nor have I alphabetized the many project documents (specs, drainage reports, flood studies, master plans), but they are all together.

Yesterday I began the process of getting rid of duplicates. I started with the local regulations for the three nearby cities we do many projects in. This required checking manuals that were seemingly the same to make sure they really were the same, or if not to determine if one superseded the other and get rid of the old one. I found one manual of ordinances that had three packets of updates just stuck in the front rather than collated. So I did that. I think I freed-up close to two shelves.

Then I began doing the same thing to manufacturers’ catalogs and data. I only did a little of this, yet freed-up at least two shelves there. Today will be the main work of catalog culling.

CEI is selling some surplus furniture: bookcases, folding tables, file cabinets, etc. I bought some and loaded them in the pick-up last night, took them home via Wednesday night church, and unloaded them into the garage. Consequently I was exhausted physically, which affected my mental state as well. I did no writing, spent a little time on Facebook, played some mindless computer games, and read in the book off the top of the reading pile.

Tonight promises more of the same, as the library work today will not doubt tire me again. I may, however, finally go to the link friend GB sent me months ago and watch Diary of a High School Bride, at least the critical scene an hour in, and re-live a college prank from freshman year. That’s a good way to spend an evening while batching it.