Engineering, flood studies, freelance writing, poetry, reading, Writing

Progress as Promised: a shameless commercial plug

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I had intended tonight to post the first part of a two-part review of Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Yes, I finished it last night, well ahead of the schedule I thought I could achieve. The book is long, and deserves a thorough review. On my noon hour, after walking 1.33 miles, I did an outline of my review. Of course, I left the outline on my desk when I left the office.

So tonight I’ll post something else. I’m making progress on a number of fronts.

  • Health: After a few weeks of barely watching what I ate (while continuing a good level of exercise), this is shaping up to be a good week. For the last two days I’ve barely snacked, and have upped my exercise level slightly. Despite 90+ temperatures at noon, I walked 12 laps each day (a mile and a third).
  • Flood study: At the end of the workday, I had pretty much completed the last analysis of the flood study that has been a sword dangling over my head for two years. I still have to get the tech going on the mapping (promised for tomorrow), and must write a technical report (already started) and fill out the FEMA forms (one day’s work). The end is in sight.
  • Reading: As stated, I got more reading done than anticipated over the last month. Perhaps I’m reading more efficiently, because I had great comprehension as I read; I didn’t skim any of it.
  • Freelancing: Last night I spent time preparing a query for another article in Internet Genealogy. No word on it yet.
  • Suite 101.com: Here’s the shameless plug: I have three articles up on Suite 101: two on flood plain issues, and one an overview of Robert Frost’s “Into My Own”, one of his early poems. These three articles don’t have many page views yet and no revenue earned, but that will come in time. What business, you ask, does a civil engineer have reviewing a Frost poem? You’ll have to go to my profile page at Suite 101 and click on the article.

Tomorrow hopefully I’ll begin the book review. Right now, I’m exiting the Dungeon for the upper levels, from the coolness of the basement to the heat of the street level, and will spend a little time reading. The next two books on my reading pile are A Harmony of the Gospels (I forget the author) and East of Eden by John Steinbeck. I’ve never read that, but it’s rather long and I’m not sure I want to read a long book right now. So, for the few minutes of reading tonight, I’ll get back into my son’s philosophy paper “The New Problem of Akratic Action”. This forms a chapter in his dissertation, and is not really a difficult read. At least I think I understood the first five pages.

Doctor Luke's Assistant, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, freelance writing, poetry, Writing

The Kicking and Screaming Part

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Yesterday I completed my first article for Suite101.com and posted it for editor’s review. Your first article after signing on must be approved by an editor before it is viewable on the site. After that you post directly and an editor reviews it after it “goes live”. This morning an e-mail was waiting for me, from the editor for this area of the site, saying some changes were recommended.

I checked in at the site and looked at the editor’s suggestions. Turns out it’s just to add some more white space by breaking things into smaller paragraphs, and maybe making a bulleted list of a couple of items. No change asked for in the text itself. After completing this post I’ll make those formatting changes, resubmit, and the article should go live today. I’ll come back either today or tomorrow and post a link.

Then I will have to go to PayPal and see if my long-dormant account is still there. That’s the only way Suite 101 pays. Not that I expect a windfall any time soon. I have about thirty days to give them payment provisions.

But as I said in my previous post, I’m doing this freelance thing kicking and screaming, holding on to my novels, Bible studies, poetry, and even non-fiction books dream. I’m afraid every writing hour for a while will be devoted to freelancing, both Suite101 and other markets. So I’ll have to carve out time for other writing. Doing it while driving doesn’t work. I’ve tried it and I can’t seem to concentrate, and I don’t really want the distraction. Better to spend driving multi-tasking time with the radio and either music or talk.

My walking time on the noon hour provides opportunites for poetry. I’m usually working on a haiku, or a cinquain, or something else short, something I can remember and write down when I get back in the office. Most of these are not good and I do nothing else with them. although I’ve got two from the last month that are on Post-it notes on my desk, waiting for me to decide whether they are good enough work on some more.

TV time obviously isn’t a good time. Although, I find I can write with the TV on whereas I can’t read. But this time is better for editing something rather than writing new stuff.

But the time that has seemed effective at pursuing my “dream” is when I go to bed and turn out the light. I generally fall asleep almost right away. But lately I’ve been fighting sleep to think through scenes in my novels. I have at most ten minutes before whatever substance my body makes in excess sends me into la la land. Lately I’ve visualized the last few scenes in Doctor Luke’s Assistant. I’ve played and re-played the scene of In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People where Ronny Thompson learns his girlfriend is a fraud and he hurls his cell phone off the Brooklyn Bridge into the East River. And I’ve ridden again on the Star Ferry across Hong Kong harbor, where the vanilla American family moves unbeknownst into an espionage adventure in China Tour.

Eventually I’ll move on to other scenes. And I won’t let this overcome me to the point where I can’t fall asleep easily. Perhaps these last thoughts will lead to dreams that will enhance these books, and perhaps I’ll begin remembering my dreams.

freelance writing, Writing

What do they call that big change thing?

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Back in the mid-90s it seems everyone was talking about paradigm shifts. I can’t tell you how many business meetings I sat in and hear someone say, “We have to make a paradigm shift here,” or “We’re undergoing a paradigm shift.” I wasn’t quite sure what that meant other than a change in outlook, or maybe a change in philosophy. I made a mental to-do entry to look up “paradigm”, but never got to that part of the “list.”

Then, in the mid-00s, it seems everyone was talking about a “sea change”. I’m not actually sure how to spell sea, since I’ve never seen this term written. I heard this more from television, from pundits on the 24 hour news outlets. “We are about to experience a sea change in this county,” or some such drivel as that. I have never bothered to look up that phrase in one of the instantly available Internet resources, but I’m sure I could enter it in a toolbar blank and get all sorts of definitions. I suppose it is another euphemism for a big change.

Whatever a paradigm shift is exactly, and whatever sea change really is (or how it is spelled), I’m pretty sure I’m going through one right now in my writing life. The shift from writing novels and Bible studies has resulted in a big change in what I do in those few hours I have in a day to devote to writing. Yesterday noon and last night were devoted mainly to freelance activities. Oh, I managed to type some on the next two Bible studies I’m going to teach, all of 20 minutes or so. But otherwise I was freelancing both evenings.

Wednesday evening after church I worked on query letters for new magazine articles. I completed two, but decided to let them sit overnight before looking at them again then sending them off. Last night, however, I forgot about them and worked on getting my Suite101.com account set up. That was actually quite simple, so I went to the new member’s tutorials and managed to get through two of them (interrupted by a phone call) before I left the Dungeon and went upstairs.

This would normally be my reading time, from 10 to 11 PM, but I had noticed, or rather remembered, when typing in one of those Bible studies that I had already done a bunch of work on it that wasn’t with the papers I was typing. So instead of reading I began going through piles of papers–in my closet, beside my nightstand, next to my reading chair, in my portfolio–to find that earlier work. I found it, fifteen minutes later, carefully filed and indexed in a notebook I had failed to mark on the outside. That left me some time to read, and Team of Rivals is a little bit closer to being completed.

I want you all to know that I am not embracing this freelance thing. I’m pursuing it, dragging my feet, clinging to novels and Bible studies till my knuckles are white, all the time saying, “I’m doing this to build a platform so I can publish novels; I’m doing this to accumulate clips so I can publish novels.” I don’t yet know how this sea change, or paradigm shift, or whatever they now call a big change, will set with me. Two roads diverged in a wood. And I’m on the one I never intended to be on. I’m just afraid that knowing how way leads on to way, I shall never get back. Off to do another tutorial before starting my day job.

Engineering, freelance writing

A New Freelance Submittal

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This will be a short post at the end of a busy day. My flood plain study still refuses to cooperate. I’ve got all of the garbage out of my input file (I think), and have worked the six main analyses to perfection. I’ve even started the technical report. However, one additional analysis remains, of encroachments into the flood plain. This is a must. I’ve worked on it off and on since last Friday, but the computer calculated results are not within acceptable ranges. I’m doing something wrong, but can’t figure out what. Will continue to work it tomorrow.

I just made a freelance submission, to be a regular writer at Suite 101. This site doesn’t pay for articles up front, but rather shares ad revenue with freelancers. Others report that their articles generate about a dollar per month, but I don’t know if that is typical, high, or low. The contract will require posting ten 400-600 word articles every three months, which shouldn’t be too difficult. We’ll see what happens.

Edit on June 17, 2009: My application was accepted. Waiting on a web site glitch to be fixed to access and sign the contract. Interesting that I’m accepted to a somewhat regular freelance writing gig on the 35th anniversary of my starting my first job as an engineer.

That leaves me with freelance submittal as follows so far this year:

9 submittals
1 acceptance Make that 2
1 rejection
7 not heard Make that 6
0 withdrawals

Of course, six of those were my short story “Mom’s Letter” to six different literary magazines. And on the first query I submitted for a freelance article, the on-line query letter may not have gone through. I keep meaning to re-post it, just in case it didn’t go through. So, I’m not doing all that bad so far in 2009.

And, I managed to go the entire evening without playing a computer game. I’ll count this as a make-up day for the 40 I didn’t do during Lent. Only 39 to go.

family, travel

U-505

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As I mentioned a few days ago, on Friday during our trip to Chicago we went to the Museum of Science and Industry in the Hyde Park neighborhood. The museum was having a day of no admission (except for special exhibits), so the place was jammed. While I was glad to get in without any cost in money, the cost was in having to deal with the crowd. Lynda and Charles wanted to see the Harry Potter special exhibit; I didn’t. I’ve seen the five movies with Lynda, but haven’t read any of the books whereas she’s read all seven. I also had a problem with things so new being in a museum. Museums are for old stuff, not for things from a mere five to seven years ago, or less. So I avoided the Harry Potter exhibit.

So I used the time to see the U-505 exhibit. This is the World War 2 German U-boat that was captured intact by the US navy, towed to Bermuda and then on to the US east coast, where it was inspected, injected, dissected, folded, spindled, and mutilated.

The story of the capture is amazing, and well told in the exhibit. You begin with a television screen with Bill Curtis (of A&E channel fame) narrating a couple of minutes of the story, beginning with the havoc the U-boat wolf packs were having on our merchant marine fleet and crews. On the walls are various explanations of and expansions on what Curtis said. Then, just a few steps down the corridor was another TV monitor with the next few minutes of the story. At times the corridor opened into a room, giving more exhibits to go with the sequential narration. Once the narrations was done by “actors”. I think these were really projected on a screen, but it had a 3-D appearance behind a sheer curtain.

Eventually you arrive at the main hall, where the sub resides. All around the walls and on the floor around the sub were exhibits, mainly of the workings of the sub and its weaponry, but also of its capture. This is the first submarine I’ve seen out of the water, and getting a look at the diving planes and the trim tank was great. This gave “flesh” to what I’ve read in several books.

I was also amazed at the torpedoes. Two rested on platforms next to the sub, one in cut-away view and one mostly intact. The innards of the torpedo were quite complicated: motor; batteries; gyros for navigation system; warhead (or gas canister for floating a test torpedo); structural frame; skin. An exhibit also showed how these critters were loaded and launched, also putting before my eyes what I’ve read in books.

On the way out, the exhibits covered the relocation of the sub to Chicago after the navy was through with it, and then the construction of the building wing to house it and actually moving the sub to the open building then closing the building over the sub. As I wrote before, this was quite an engineering feat and worthy of showing. Except, that happened in 2003, so I’ll have to go back on my previous statement about museums showing only old stuff.

One part of the exhibit saddened me. The incredible complexity of the torpedoes demonstrated the huge effort that goes into making war. These fish are manufactured to tight tolerances. Each has a thousand parts. It’s a huge effort to make each one. This sub carried about twenty of them, and with a couple of hundred U-boats in the fleet, that means about 4,000 torpedoes were being moved at any given time. Add in equal amounts of American, British, Russian, Japanese, and you have a massive industrial work all for the purpose of killing others. Then add to that the sub itself, and the cost to humanity is geometric. How sad.

Still, if you are ever in Chicago and have the time, go see this exhibit. It’s well worth your time.

Bible study, History, reading, Writing

Trying to Concentrate

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This weekend has not been good as far as writing is concerned. Yesterday morning I did my usual Saturday work outside the house routine. I cut down a 30 foot dead tree on the adjacent lot, where we are trying to create a small, park-like area (we don’t own this lot; it’s vacant and forested; I suppose we can use it until the owners retire and build a house on it). I only had a few other things do to outside, so came back into the house.

Before I could write, I decided I’d better read a chapter in Team of Rivals. I’m making good progress in that and am ahead of even my most optimistic schedule. Still, as of this afternoon, have 160 pages to go, but the reading is easy and I should finish by next weekend, if not before.

Then I came downstairs to the Dungeon, intent on writing something, either work on a chapter in my novel in progress, or a Bible study in progress, or begin to flesh out some freelance ideas I had, but as I sat at the computer I found my mind had no powers of concentration. I couldn’t even read e-mails. I played some mindless computer games, tried to read e-mails again and got through them, played some more games, then left the computer to file various household papers. That worked fairly well, because I got through some papers that did not have a place prepared. That meant I had to concentrate enough to determine what the place should be and prepare it and file the paper. That included a number of items related to my completed, in-the-drawer novel.

That done, I came back to the computer, but still couldn’t write. A writing related task I had on my mental to-do list was to set up a spreadsheet for freelance writing accounting. This isn’t on a critical path, since I have no income as yet (at least none paid; I have some accrued), but still just having the system set up will make it much easier to keep track of things. Still, that wasn’t writing.

I never could get much done. I did some hand-writing on an idea for a magazine article, and I read some writing blogs, but nothing that could be described as progress. Lynda returned home from OKC about 8:30 PM. I had supper prepared (though she ate on the road). I just turned to reading for the evening. Having read a chapter in ToR, I decided to pull out Tolkien’s letters and read them. I’m at the point where he was finishing the proofs and then seeing published The Lord of the Ring. That was interesting and satisfying, until one long letter to a bookstore owner/operator who had questioned some theological items on the book. Tolkien painstakingly explained how he had no theological agenda, that the book wasn’t allegorical, and how this and that item had been misunderstood, etc. I got through that letter, but was left with no mind for anything else. So I went to bed, earlier than normal for a Saturday night.

So here I am in the Dungeon, at the computer, about to begin writing. It seemed a blog post would be a good place to start. Even with that, I have interrupted my writing several times to play a game. Cursed games! I have four or five writing projects I could work on, and will turn to them now. Perhaps I can get in two or three good hours from this point on, and face the new week really feeling like a writer.

Christianity, family

Ordination

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I’m sitting in my office this noon hour with a storm raging about me. Not a figurative storm, but a literal storm. The tornado sirens sounded about 10 minutes ago, ran for five minutes then quit. The Weather Service has issued a tornado warning. A funnel cloud–no, perhaps two funnel clouds were spotted within striking distance of us. One NE of Gentry and one SE of Gravette. That’s probably the same storm. A rumor has it that one is also near Cave Springs, about 6 miles south of us. The wind is fierce, sky dark, rain heavy, lightning and thunder in close communication, and all who are in the office worried. Traffic has supposedly stopped on the state highway a mile and a half south of us.

I just went on walkabout throughout the building, and although radar says we are now in the worst of it, the sky has lightened. We’ll see.

Last week we attended the ordination service of the Southwest Oklahoma District of our denomination. This is, I think, the fourth ordination service I attended but the first one where I went for a purpose other than as a delegate. Our son-in-law, Richard L. Schneberger, was ordained. The way we do it is a minister is licensed once he or she has passed a course of study and been examined by a District Credentials board. This makes him/her legal with the State, and able to perform marriages. For ordination, we require a minimum of 2 years of active pastoral ministry or 4 years as a minister on staff–plus another examination by the credentials board.

Richard made it. He has been pastor of the church for the last year [there goes the tornado siren again], was a fill-in pastor for several months a couple of years ago, and was in staff ministries a couple of years. It all added up to enough; the Credentials dudes thought he was qualified; and he was ordained.

The ceremony was not solemn by any means, but it was reverent and exciting at the same time. We, like most Protestant churches, do not consider ordination a sacrament, but perhaps we should. What is more sacred, or a more outward sign of an inner grace, than for the bishop (a.k.a. General Superintendent) to lay his hands on the new minister and read the minister’s charge from the writings of Paul, then for a mentor to pray the prayer of ordination/dedication. To tell the ordinands to preach the word, minister to the sick and needy, administer the sacraments, and change the world. Truly this was an inspirational moment.

So go out there Rev. Richard and change the world. I am here in an inner room amid a fearsome storm, but you will be outside in an unstoppable storm that is leading to our Lord’s coming again. Things are not going to get better, only worse. The difficulties under which you will work are enough to crush someone who is not truly called of God for that purpose. Find your own inner place to pray and be strengthened. Heed the advice of the scripture and those who are senior to you in the ministry. As an ordained Elder in the Church of the Nazarene, help us laymen to dedicate our lives to spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The tornado warning in our area expires in one minute. The worst has passed us by. For you the storm continues. May God bring you, Sara, and Ephraim safely through the storm of ministry.

freelance writing, Genealogy

The Proofs

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We left on our road trip last Wednesday morning, leaving no time for a morning check of e-mail. It was not until we arrived in Chicago on Friday that I checked e-mail and found the proofs of my article for Internet Genealogy.

For those who don’t write, I’ll explain. With freelance writing you generally don’t write the article until you have an assignment. First, after researching a magazine to see if the idea you want to write about seems to work for that mag, you write a query letter and submit it to the mag. If the idea and any specifics you give them seem to fit their themes and publishing schedule, they give you the assignment. For bigger mags this will result in a contract with certain performance requirements from the author. For smaller mags there may not be a contract, only a virtual “handshake”. Then you write and submit the article. At this point you have no guarantee that the article will be accepted and used. The mag may have given out more assignments than they can actually publish, knowing some freelancers might miss a deadline. Or they may wind up not liking your writing. So, although you have an assignment, that is not a guarantee of publication.

I submitted the article on May 26, I think it was, almost a week ahead of schedule. And I began a patient wait for the e-mail that said, “Yes, we think your writing is acceptable; and yes, we have the space, so your article is accepted and will be in our xxxx issue.” As a first time freelancer, this was a difficult thing. I fear that my article won’t measure up. So from May 26 to early June 5 I heard nothing.

Finally the morning of June 5 I opened my e-mail, and there was one received June 3rd from the the copy editor of Internet Genealogy, not saying my article was accepted, but rather conveying the proofs of the article–that is, the article as it will be laid out in the magazine. In other words, it was accepted, and will indeed be in the next issue of the magazine. Sweet!

I don’t know when payment will be coming, but I almost don’t care. The article was accepted.

Last night I began putting ideas for more articles on paper, planning to query the same magazine and other genealogy magazines with additional ideas. That will be my noon hour tasks today, to continue that process. Maybe I can get one in by tomorrow.

This freelance thing is fun.

travel

Home Again, Home Again

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We returned last night from our road trip to Chicago via Oklahoma City, driving through two severe thunderstorms in Missouri, with tonado watches and warnings all around us. We arrived in Bella Vista to find it dry, hot, and muggy; it looked like no rain fell yesterday.

About 10:30 PM that changed, as the lightning and thunder came, quickly followed by wind and rain. When I went to bed about midnight the storm was still raging. When I woke at 5:45 AM all was quite. I saw little storm damage on the commute, so perhaps it sounded worse than it did.

I have many impressions from our trip to write about, and would like to get at it. Unfortunately, my employer calls me to put in a full day. And I have some blogs to review. And e-mails to read. And two writing related tasks I must complete today. So stay tuned. I will be posting daily this week, perhaps even twice daily at times.

miscellaneous

The Bustle of the City

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We are in Chicago, having been here since Thursday night, staying with our son and his roommate. This was after having been in Oklahoma City for a day, attending the ordination of our son-in-law Richard.

The timing of this trip was to attend the Chicago Tribune Publishers Row Lit Fair, set up downtown on a couple of streets. We went to that on Saturday. It was a great mass of humanity, going between about 100 booths. It looked to me like people were buying. I passed up one used book on the way in, due to budgetary constraints, thought better of it and decided to buy it on the way out. It was gone. Someone else paid the $8.50 for it, I guess. The crowds thinned a little during several episodes of light rain, but still it was crowded.

On Friday we went to the Museum of Science and Industry in the Hyde Park neighborhood. It was a free day, so it was crammed with people. I got in free; Lynda and Charles paid extra to see the Harry Potter exhibit. I wasn’t interested in that, so I spent that time in the U-505 exhibit, which they saw on a previous visit. That was really something, a German U-boat captured intact June 4, 1944, towed to Bermuda thence to the East Coast and eventually to Chicago. It was moved indoors, quite an engineering feat, in 2003.

Today we went to the Hyde Park Art Fair. Six-hundred-eighty exhibitors from coast to coast were here, having attracted a sea of humanity. The artwork was lovely, but the prices so high we didn’t do any serious looking. Lunch cost $23, quite high by my standards, but they have a captive audience. As we walked back to Charles’ car, we went by the Rockefeller Chapel (misnamed, since it holds 1,500 people and thus is not a chapel by my definitions), popped in, and observed a handful of people in it attending a lecture/presentation about Albert Schweitzer, a weekend event commemorating the 60th anniversary of his visit to the University of Chicago. Next door, at the president’s house, was a shindig for some key alumni. Charles thought it might be an alumni weekend.

From where does all this energy come? And all this money? To look at Chicago you would never know we are in a depression, or even a recession. I suppose some of the book and art vendors could compare this year’s sales to last year’s and determine how they did and advise if we are in a recession or not.

The people, the sales, the activity. I have lived in the ex-urbs for so long I’ve forgotten how busy the big city can be.

Author | Engineer