Capturing Chaos

When I was ranting about the unwanted responsibilities and expectations that sometimes come with a talent, J. D. Salinger was in the back of my mind. After spectacular success with Catcher in the Rye and a few other books, Salinger disappeared from public view, and as far as anyone knows, stopped writing. As if in answer to my unspoken questions, 3 Quarks Daily posted an excerpt from a New York Times article about Salinger: Still Paging Mr. Salinger .

What the article boils down to is an analysis of Salinger’s various views of one of his characters, and what those views might reveal about the author. Considering that Salinger is now 90 years old, hasn’t published anything since 1965 and hasn’t granted an interview since the 1970s, it’s all guesswork. Continue Reading »

Writing is a perfect example of something you’re encouraged to do because you do it well. As too many prodigies have found, to their profound regret, the pressures to forge careers out of talents can lead to lives of frustration rather than fulfillment. The simple truth is that the possession of an ability doesn’t always bring with it the enjoyment of using it, much less the desire to devote a lifetime to it.

No talent stands in isolation. The talented violinist must perform publicly, must tour, must make him or herself a somewhat public person. Every career comes with requirements which have nothing to do with the original talent, and which may be difficult or even objectionable.

Even for someone with a small talent and small ambitions, there can be unpleasant factors to deal with and costs that may seem too much to pay. Somewhere along the line, you may even realize that you were looking at the talent in the wrong way. The violinist may decide that he wants to write music for the violin rather than play it. Continue Reading »

Today is a week since I joined Entrecard—a period of figuring out how it works, how to best use it, and of just general tooling around from one blog to another, and discovering some worthwhile ones along the way. I tend to be the person who pushes a button just to see what will happen, so much of my learning has been hands-on rather than reading the FAQs and help files. I save the reading for when I’m really stuck, trying to understand something.

My page views have increased dramatically, but I have no idea yet how many will translate into new readers. The cost of advertising here (EC credits) has gone up surprisingly fast. I don’t know whether that’s normal, but it’s encouraging.

The main thing that I’ve found, to my relief, is that you really don’t have to spend hours every day or drop a huge number of cards. My biggest day so far has been 17 drops, and most days I drop more like 10 or 12. I’m sure my page views would go up faster if I did more dropping, but I’m happy with slow, steady growth that comes from interested readers and not just from droppers who have no interest in my content.

It’s possible to be selective about reciprocating drops, and what blogs you accept as advertisers. In fact, it’s to your advantage to be selective about advertisers since your acceptance rate is one of the statistics available to prospective advertisers, who may also be picky about who they share space with.

I can honestly say that I’m happy with Entrecard, which has never been the case with any social network that I’ve joined in the past. Entrecard’s goals are clearly defined, and you’re free to use it in the way that suits you best.

I’ve never been a celebrations type of person, and as I get older I prefer to spend most of my time to myself, and observe the various kinds of human madness from the sidelines. So, I spent xmas eve, and the day, doing exactly what I normally do—surfing the web (pretty boring on holidays, I can tell you), reading, writing, and watching movies.

Up to a point, observation is a great source for ideas, but writing about my observations doesn’t always work out. Too much of what I see is depressing, and the appropriate comments on human nature just sound like complaining. I try not to complain about what can’t be changed, especially when it comes to how other people live their lives. They do what they’ve been conditioned to do, what their temperaments bias them toward, and what society offers them. They’re insiders and I’m an outsider, and our views of the world are very different.

Which leads to the Lemonade Award, which was kindly given to me by Ambrosiavenus at Chronicles of Caelan , and which I have declined. I understand the purpose of the award, which is to highlight bloggers whose writing is worth your attention. That’s an admirable motive, but it’s something I already do by adding people to my blogroll, and by quoting them now and then, and pointing to their blogs. Continue Reading »

Wrideo is a fairly new social bookmarking site for writers, one that I believe has great potential for becoming a central source for information on every aspect of the writing business. “Wrideo.com was created to aggregate useful and interesting articles about writing.” The categories under which you can post blog or article links are: writing, freelance, ghostwriting, home business, publishing, marketing, monetization.

The site is nicely designed, and very easy to use. You post links with tags and short descriptions. The space you’re given for the description is adequate for a well-written “hook.” Articles can be voted up or down, and readers can leave comments.

Once you’ve posted at least one link on Wrideo, you can set up a simple profile that includes your website, any information about yourself that you want to include, and the list of articles that you’ve bookmarked on the site.

For the first time, we have a chance to promote writers that we admire, without the competition that exists on general bookmarking sites like Digg and Reddit. You can promote your own work on Wrideo, of course, using the same courtesy that you would use on any other bookmarking site. Participation and sharing are the key to getting noticed and read.

If independence in your choices is a high priority for you, how far you can take that will depend on how much money you need to earn. If freelancing is to be your full-time career, you probably will always have to balance your own preferences with the demands of others. “Others” includes sites that pay for content, so even if you don’t have a roster of clients who pay you for assignments written to their specifications, there are always some constraints on a writer’s freedom.

Working for others may be easier if you can view it as temporary—just a step toward eventual independence. Whether that independence is even possible will depend on your skills, both those you have now and those you will need to acquire. Without expertise on one or more topics, or the ability to gain that expertise fairly quickly, earning a living as an independent freelancer will be difficult at best, and maybe impossible.

There are a multitude of options for developing a writing career that allows you flexibility and independence, but all require a commitment of time and effort. An important step is researching the various methods and their pros and cons. The path you take may not be a typical one, and may even be one that few professionals would recommend. But one of the advantages of freelancing is that it’s not set in concrete. Trying different paths is not only possible, it’s the best way to learn what works for you.

Part one: Freelance Writing: Find Your Own Path

In the process of trying to bring some order (and money) into my writing life, I suddenly found that blogging is slipping away quickly as a major part of that life. I’ve been doing the equivalent of house cleaning, taking a close look at what I’m writing, where I’m writing it, and what format I’m writing in. Most of what’s been bagged up and thrown out with the trash has been blogs. And the process is still going on.

I’ve always had too many blogs; for a long time they were my primary presence on the web. Each one focused on a different subject, one of them had a very substantial niche readership, and others had the potential to draw readers and, eventually, income. What happened? Continue Reading »

I’ve been reading a lot of articles about freelance writing, and all the ins and outs of developing a freelancing career. I’m not trying to build a career, just add to my base income for a bit more financial security. That means I have a lot more choices than someone whose very existence may depend on their ability to produce lots of content, day after day, week after week, year after year. But whether you’re looking for part-time freelance work or stepping off into a career, most of the advice is based on common assumptions.

For example—a substantial amount of the information revolves around clients—how to get them, what to charge them, your relationships with them, etc. The impression I got, until I started thinking about it, is that without clients, a freelance career isn’t even possible. Which led me to an overlooked area in career-building—how you, personally, function as a writer. Continue Reading »

Trying to develop income from writing isn’t a straight and easy path, as the last few days have proved. Some of the things you try work out, and some just don’t.

I found a nice site that pays members to post on forums. Good pay, for that type of writing, the staff seem to know what they’re doing, and their standards are high. So I joined their forum, wrote the requisite number of pre-qualifying posts, and lo! Applications are temporarily closed. The forum is friendly and has enough interesting topics to make it worth posting there, strictly as a leisure-time activity, so I’ll maintain my presence and wait for applications to open up again.

Less cheery is my short experience with DailyArticle, a site that functions as an intermediary between writers and sellers. I joined, mostly because of recommendations on the Associated Content forum, posted one article, and waited. And waited. And waited. The article was marked “available,” but after six days still hadn’t appeared on the site. It was Christmas-related, and it’s now too late for anyone to buy it, so I pulled it and deleted my personal info. I don’t have the patience these days, to deal with screwups.

I’ve also learned from experience, one more time, that a topic you’re interested in isn’t necessarily one you want to be tied to for a long time. So I just posted a brief note on my other today.com blog saying goodbye. I know I’m bad about sticking to limited topic projects, which puts me in the ranks of bloggers who start numerous blogs over the years, and abandon most of them eventually. But you never know which ones will stick until you give it a try.

Where’s that good advice I give everybody else and myself? Where’s that notebook that’s supposed to be by my bedside for late night inspiration? Just before hitting the sack last night, I had an excellent idea for today’s post. The thought briefly flashed through my mind that I’d probably forget it if I didn’t write it down. Nonsense! It’s such a great idea that I couldn’t possibly forget it. Isn’t that what they call famous last words? Well, at least I can post about the stupidity of (for the thousandth time) relying on my very defective memory.

I keep trying, but all I can come up with so far is that it was going to be the development of an analogy between writing and some else. If I ever come up with the “something else,” I’ll have it made. Instead, I’ll just bore everybody (all three of you) with a recital of my latest semi-accomplishments. Continue Reading »

I recently submitted a blog post to my very first writing carnival. So the link to “Leaving Your Comfort Zone” is up on Incurable Disease of Writing, along with a links to a bunch of other writers’ posts well worth reading. Some very nice stuff is published there every week.

Just Write Carnival

Every time I look at my Associated Content content page, I’m reminded of why I left the site in the first place. The article that they finally published today was seven days in the review queue before they made an offer, and then two days processing. But I’m learning patience, and also the importance of timing.

I submitted an article on the ideal Christmas gift for a gardener, an idea I picked up from a quick glance through Helium. (By the way, Helium is an excellent source for ideas if you’re running dry.) At the speed that seems to be AC’s current mode, by the time it’s published, most of the timeliness will have passed because I submitted it so late in the month. Let’s hope I remember that lesson when the next holiday season rolls around. At least it’s an evergreen article that will be relevant every Christmas, so even if it hibernates for the next nine or ten months, it should collect some pages views for the 2009 season and thereafter. Continue Reading »

A recent post on Freelance Writing From Home reminded me how narrow people tend to be in their thinking. The author was addressing the idea that too many people seem to have—that freelancing means you spend every day, all day, writing. Aside from the deadliness of such a routine, freelancing doesn’t even necessarily refer to writing. “Freelance simply means being self-employed. It doesn’t mean writing. You could be a freelance photographer or a freelance consultant.”

As a freelancer, you’re running your own business, which is supposed to be a path to freedom, not a different kind of slavery. Certainly, you’re going to have to work hard if you intend to make a living at it. But along the way, you should be learning how to work smarter so that you don’t have to work as hard. Continue Reading »

I don’t know if I’m unique in habitually throwing away my old journals. It seems that most people keep theirs as a source of ideas, or just to see how their writing has changed over time—how they have changed. One reason I throw mine away is that it’s too tedious to read over so many pages of my handwriting. I had the mad idea of eventually typing all those pages into computer files, but that turned out to be one of those what-was-I-thinking brainstorms.

I’ve tried journaling on the computer in the hope that It would be easier to keep at it, and that I would be less tempted to toss. But it turns out that it isn’t just my handwriting that’s the problem; it’s the repetition. And when I started thinking about that, I realized that my journals have two kinds of material. One is my life; all the moaning about problems and vowing to break out of old habits that keep me from accomplishing my goals. Over and over again. Who wants to look back over the years and face the ugly fact that you’ve been saying the same things pretty much forever, that you haven’t changed and aren’t likely to change? Continue Reading »

The economic downturn is beginning to hit writing sites, and people are running scared. Forums are filled with moans and groans about changes that clearly indicate there is less money to go around. Back in September, Shared Reviews stopped paying for reviews, and announced that members could now compete for prizes. Now Ciao has done the same thing, after first reducing payments from $1.00 a review to .25. Understandably, not too many people are happy about having to settle for what is being promoted as fun and games as a substitute for being paid for their content. Continue Reading »

In the old tale, the tortoise wins the race because the hare takes too many naps, counting on his speed to keep him ahead, while the tortoise just keeps plodding on towards the goal. Does that make me feel better about being a writing tortoise? Not at all, because I know it’s a lie intended to let us tortoises think we’re superior to the hares. In the real world, the hares win every time.

A race isn’t really the best analogy, because writing isn’t an area where there’s just one winner and a lot of losers. It’s more like a huge, self-renewing pie that allows each person to take what they can from it. That doesn’t prevent some tortoises from believing that hares don’t really exist, that they’re just tortoises with some unfair advantage, or who cheat their way into harehood and get more than their fair share of the pie. Continue Reading »

It would be wonderful if every writer could have an automatic recording device plugged into their brain. No more of those great ideas that pop up just as you’re falling asleep, that you try to burn into your brain so you can write them down in the morning. I should have learned my lesson by now, but for some reason, I always think I’m going to hang onto that stroke of genius until morning. Even if the stroke of genius amounts to nothing more than an idea for the next blog post, it’s frustrating to wake up and remember that there was something important to remember. And that I forgot what it was.

How about an automatic filing device? Whatever happened to that little notebook and the pen that I used to keep by the bed, just in case inspiration hit in the middle of a yawn? There weren’t that many bolts from the blue, so the notebook got moved to where note-taking was more likely to happen. And every now and then, I find a little stack of pages ripped out for immediate action and then buried under growing piles of odds and ends that just don’t seem to fit in any sensible category for safe-keeping. Thank goodness, I don’t write on the backs of envelopes.

I used to think that the computer would be the solution. I could enter every note in a handy program that would store my ideas safely, and allow me to find them by keywords. Nobody touting the wonders of computers ever considered that messy and forgetful minds create messy and forgetful computers. So there are bits of paper all over my apartment, and virtual bits of paper all over my computer. Whatever I’m looking for is likely to be in any one of dozens of places. But that’s okay. Out of confusion comes a new game. It’s called Treasure Hunt.

I just had an article published at Associated Content for the first time in a year. I started writing for the site, but was unhappy with the various delays and glitches, especially the amount of time that it took for an article to be reviewed, and then published once I’d accepted their payment offer. That aspect of the site has probably deteriorated, if anything, but I’ve also become more serious about being paid for my writing, which means learning patience. The lure of instant publishing at penny ante sites has worn off.

I’m still going to have trouble writing the kind of SEO-oriented articles that lead to the better offers, but I’ll do it every now and then, with teeth clenched, and hope that page views will make up for low payments on the articles that come out of my own interests and ideas.

This is one of the decisions you have to make when the thrill of being published wears off and you begin to understand the potential for real income. Will you do the work that is highest in demand and that pays the highest wages, no matter how much you hate that type of writing? Or are you willing to settle for less money and retain ownership of your skills and your soul?

Take a look at How to Buy Great Clothes at Thrift Stores . It comes out my own experience, but isn’t the kind of thing that I’m really happy writing. And it shows.

I’ve been struggling through Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing, and I’m not sure I’m going to make it all the way through. I bought it on the recommendation of several NaNo forum posters, thinking that it would be a good addition to my small collection of books about writing. It sat next to Stephen King’s On Writing for quite a while, and for some reason I was reluctant to dip into it. A few weeks ago, I read On Writing again, for the third time, and thought it might be a good idea to follow up with Bradbury. If nothing else, the contrast would be interesting. Continue Reading »

I had doubts about using Twitter for networking and getting readers for my blogs, but I succumbed to some enthusiastic users, and signed on. Today, I’m signing off. Using social networks of any kind has been painful for me, and a waste of time. I gathered that Twitter might be different, but in its essence, it’s no different.

Two principles lie behind social networks. They allow you to link up with old friends and find new friends. And there’s the catch. If you don’t have any friends, and I don’t necessarily consider internet or real-life acquaintances my friends, then your only option is to find new ones. And that means very much the same thing it means in real life: hanging around the fringes where people gather, and asking to be friends with them. Continue Reading »

Here’s the final version of the original “off the top of my head free writing” chunk. I really should have kept this consecutive with the longer one, but so it goes.

“Why do so many unqualified people want to be writers? Words are all around us; they’re what we use every day, so it’s easy to think that there’s nothing special about them. If you can speak, you can write; for too many wannabes, daily conversation seems no different from what a writer produces and what ultimately shows up on the pages of books and magazines.

“It’s a very different thing, though, a different world, one you enter either prepared or unprepared. If you start out unprepared, and refuse to change that, you’ll eventually be cast out, whether rudely or politely doesn’t matter, except in how it affects your understanding. Too polite a rejection teaches nothing. It allows the incompetent to believe that if they just keep trying, the doors will open and they’ll be admitted to the inner sanctum and to what they mistakenly believe is an endless flow of money and adulation.

“If one of these aspiring writers looked at what I produced in a 15 minute writing exercise, they might be impressed, even awed. How can someone produce so many words in such a short time? And where do the ideas come from? They have no conception of what goes into becoming a writer, even one who’s just adequate. Even so, they’re convinced they can do it.

“At the opposite pole are those who think that they need to take courses, be instructed how to write. The great writers of the past would laugh at the idea, and so would most contemporary writers; their teachers were the writers of previous generations and those of their own generation worthy of their admiration. They might emulate those writers in the early part of the learning process, but mainly, they spend many years reading and absorbing the language and its uses.

“Reading is the foundation, the core. Without that foundation, it’s impossible to become a writer. The would-be writer who doesn’t read, who hasn’t been reading most of his life, is an empty shell, and all he will produce is the trite shorthand that makes up most of our everyday communication.”

I planned to post the edited version of the free writing excerpt today, but another topic started nagging at me, so get ready for a bit of a rant.

I’ve been coming across a lot of blogs set up to offer information to writers and would-be writers. Some concentrate on creativity and the mechanics of writing; other tend to stick with recommendations about where to write if you want to make money. What’s beginning to get my goat is recommendations that are rushed and uninformative, and even suspicious. Too often, the posts don’t indicate whether the writer actually has any experience with the site, or just ran across it in browsing the web. Continue Reading »

I was in the middle of editing another chunk of the free writing that I wrote about yesterday when I thought it might be interesting to post the original today and the edited version tomorrow. So here, warts and all, is another selection from the top of my head.

“Why do so many people want to be writers when they lack every qualification? They have illusions of adequacy because words are all around us, they’re what we use every day, so it’s assumed that there’s nothing special about them. There’s nothing we need to know about words or language because it’s part of our everyday experience. We think that the grunts of those around us and the grunts we offer then in return are equivalent to what a writer produces and ultimately shows up on the pages of books and magazines.

“It’s a very different thing, though, almost a different world. It is a different world, one you enter either prepared or unprepared. If you’re start out unprepared, and refuse to change your status, you will eventually be cast out, whether rudely or politely, it doesn’t really matter, except in how it affects your understanding. Too polite a rejection teaches nothing. It allows the incompetent to believe that if they just keep trying, the doors will open and they’ll be admitted to the inner sanctum and to what they mistakenly believe is an endless flow of money and adulation.

“If one of these aspiring writers were to take a look at what I’ve produced in the last 15 minutes or so, they would be impressed, possibly awed. How can someone just sit down and produce so many words in such a short time? And where do the ideas come from? They have no conception of what goes into becoming a writer, even one as mediocre in many ways as myself. Years of reading and absorbing the language and its uses. They think that taking courses, being told how to write, how to go about it, are what they need, but it never occurs to them that most writers have never taken a course. The great writers of the past would laugh at such a notion, knowing that their teachers were the writers of previous generations and those of their own generation worthy of their admiration. They might emulate those writers as part of the learning process, but they never took courses or had a teacher in the sense in which we understand teachers.

“So reading is the base, the core of everything that a writer is. Without that base, it’s impossible to become a writer. There is nothing to draw on, nothing learned. The writer who doesn’t read, who hasn’t been reading since early childhood is nothing but an empty shell, and all he can produce is wind the meaningless natter that passes for communication.”

Shortly before National Novel Writing Month began, I decided to find out what writing 3000 words in one day would be like. I planned to write that much each day for the first three days, and wanted to see if it was really possible.

It turned out to be easier than I thought it would be. I didn’t bother with plot or characters. I just sat down to do free writing about the act of writing. It didn’t matter whether the result was garbage or genius. The doing was the important thing. So I did it, and put it away without even looking at it. The idea was to give it long enough to be completely unfamiliar and then see if there are any gems to be dug out. Continue Reading »

Some days, it’s incredibly hard to focus. Even with a Plan, temptations constantly drag me away, or problems come up that have to be solved before I can take the next step. Part of the distraction is the Stumble! button on my Stumbleupon toolbar. But it’s also such a rich source of information that I have to take the risk of distraction almost every day.

I’m planning to start building Squidoo lenses once I have my two new websites fully tweaked and running smoothly, so It was a moment of serendipity to stumble across Captain Squid , a blog by a guy whose lifework seems to be building Squidoo lenses (he has about 500 of them so far — boggles the mind, doesn’t it?) and making a very substantial amount of money doing it. I’ve bookmarked the blog for future reference, but I’m also trying to tear myself away from reading more than a couple of posts. Continue Reading »

When you start writing on the internet with no clear goals in mind, it’s easy to slip into a comfort zone that eventually becomes a trap. We tend to stay with what’s familiar and easy, avoiding even the thought of change. Even if we do sense that we could be doing better, we’re not sure what the alternatives might be or what challenges we might have to face.

I’ve spent years writing online, making a little money here, a little money there, and sometimes no money at all. My writing improved; I learned the difference between traditional writing and content writing intended for internet readers, learned how to create a snappy title and an enticing opening paragraph. People let me know that they admired my writing, and maybe that’s why it took so long to venture out of my comfort zone into a world where the standards of judgment are very different. Continue Reading »

The second trigger for my departure from Triond was an article posted by a member. It had a cheery “this site is wonderful, we’re all wonderful, and together we’re going to make this the most popular writing site on the web” tone that reminded me of the crowd-pumping speeches that are a traditional part of sales conventions, and that are so often and so easily parodied. What really clicked, though, wasn’t the article itself, though it rubbed me the wrong way and set off BS alarms, but the comments. There were dozens, and every single one was in agreement, cheering the writer, thanking her for her encouragement, etc. I added my comment, which disagreed about the potential popularity of the site, and discovered, a day or so later, that it had been removed.

To digress a bit — smart, hard-working people can make money on these sites, but if they have a real talent for writing, they could make better money elsewhere, and probably with less work. So why do they stick with these low-paying sites? There are undoubtedly many reasons, but here are a few that I think probably rank high.

1. They’re emotionally needy and get off on the applause and admiration of their followers.
2. They’re excellent marketers (and manipulators) who know how to appeal to the masses. On sites where income is tied to ratings and page views, this is a valuable talent.
3. Their writing is good, but not good enough for survival in the competitive world of professional content production. Continue Reading »

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I removed my last few remaining articles from Triond yesterday. It was the end of my second try at using Triond for a little extra writing income. I thought that I hadn’t given the site a fair trial the first time, so I would try harder. And I did try harder. I posted roughly twice as many articles as I had the first time. I stumbled a couple of the best ones. I read and commented on other members’ work, and I made “friends.”

To its credit, Triond has made a lot of upgrades to the site since my first residence there. Friending people means that their latest work will appear on your community page, making it easier to keep up with them. Most recently, Triond instituted a long-overdue feature — making your user name a live link to your profile and content when you leave a comment. Continue Reading »

Today has been a struggling-along-the-learning-curve kind of day instead of a writing day. I am discovering — again — that I develop a severe case of writer’s block when faced with large tasks without some kind of a framework. I have an entire website to overhaul from stem to stern on a new site. Creating the content first seemed like a good idea, but not much was getting done. Solution — create the box to put the content in and I’m more likely to get it written before my self-imposed deadline.

So I’ve been playing with the software on three different free web.2 site-creation hosts, trying to find one that I can use to build a new site without tearing my hair out in the process. And the winner is…. Synthasite. It’s all drag and drop, perfect for a CSS illiterate and HTML first grader. It’s even kind of fun, but I’m a writer, not a coder, so I don’t need the thrill of doing it all from scratch. I’ll save that for my cooking. Not tonight, though. I’ve spent so much time tweaking and dragging that suppertime has arrived with nothing done in the kitchen. Frozen pizza for me, with some extra Parmesan and maybe a chopped up slice of smoked pork roll.

I did accomplish one other small thing. I pulled all my articles off Triond. Maybe more about that tomorrow.

If you’re going to earn money by writing online, sooner or later you have to make decisions about where that money is going to come from. That may seem like a “Duh!” statement, but it isn’t. Consider how many blogs and websites depend on Google Adsense for income. How many decisions about where to blog are made primarily on whether you can or can’t have Adsense? If you’re hosting your own site, the question doesn’t come up, but if you’re using a free site, it’s very important. Debate over wordpress.com and Blogspot usually boils down to a choice between features and income.

For a variety of reasons, I decided that I don’t want to have an Adsense account or depend directly on Google for my income. I have no objections to Adsense or to earning money from it, as long as I don’t have to maintain an account of my own. The income from my Today blogs is based partly on Adsense, but the account belongs to today.com. The decision to write for either Hub Pages or Squidoo came down to choosing the one that doesn’t require me to have an Adsense account, and that’s Squidoo. Continue Reading »

I’ve been writing online for quite a few years, but without any sense of direction. I went where the atmosphere seemed friendly and where I could make a bit of money, but that’s as far as my thinking went. Over the last year, though, I’ve begun to think seriously about setting priorities, focusing my efforts, and trying to make more than just a few cents here and there. I always wanted to make more money, and I was pretty sure that I could if I put my mind to it, but I didn’t make the effort to work out what that would involve.

The bottom line is that I’m not cut out for a world in which SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the ruling force. Finally coming to that understanding means that I can stop thrashing around, trying this approach, and then that one. I have a sense of direction that I never had before, and real, long-term goals.

Changing your Stumbleupon topic preferences and then hitting the Stumble button fifty or sixty times a day can turn up all sorts of interesting information. It’s not always just about the subjects that people are writing about, but the various approaches, the number of people writing in a given area, and how much of what comes up is old but still good — the evergreens. Odd but interesting perspectives that developers of Stumbleupon didn’t necessarily have in mind when they started the site.

Two topics that I like to Stumble are writing and blogging. The most obvious thing that jumps out when you’ve been hitting the button for days and days is that most people have nothing original to say. The majority of blogs about blogging are there to make money by telling you how to make money. There must be thousands of them, most of them fairly obscure and probably struggling to fulfill their own promises — “How to get thousands of readers for your new blog,”  “How to use AdSense to build an overnight fortune.”

The majority of writing blogs follow much the same pattern; “How to get started in freelancing,” “How to promote your writing career,” “How to write a killer article, use ‘it’s’ properly, write an attention-getting title,” and on and on. Thousands upon thousands of blogs and websites, all trying to win a little slice of the attention pie. And they just keep coming.

So here I am, writing about writing, and handing out advice. What’s my advice? If you’re going to write about blogging or writing, do something different, for heaven’s sake!

I planned to write about the pains and pleasures of National Novel Writing Month, but reality took hold of me, and I dropped out just short of 9,000 words. For the first time out of three tries, I had a plot — a real plot with a beginning, a middle and an end. So what happened?

But there’s an idea and a cast of characters that keeps nagging at me and wants to see the light of day, so maybe it will happen when the time is right. I’d like to think that I have one novel in me and that it could be a really good one. Time will tell.

Sometimes I think that the hardest part of writing online for money is deciding where to publish. With so many sites offering different opportunities, different pay rates, and different requirements, it’s easy for the beginning writer to bog down in a state of total confusion. There’s plenty of advice to be had. In fact, it seems that just about everyone who’s ever published online has an opinion. But are those opinions worth anything?

We’ve all seen “This site ripped me off and I’m warning every body to stay away because they’re a bunch of crooks.” And “You can make a fortune writing for this site. Just sign up under me and get started.” Who to believe, who to ignore? No matter what anybody else’s experience may be with a site, yours might turn out to be completely different. It doesn’t matter what site you name, every one has its haters and its lovers.

What I learned is that there’s no easy way to decide which sites are best for you. It really comes down to the equivalent of pounding the pavement and going door to door. First you read every scrap of information a site has to offer: how much it pays, when it pays, how it pays. About ownership of your material, about their format and their standards. What’s expected of you, and what you can expect from them.

If it all looks good, you sign up and start writing. This is the honeymoon, when you really get to know who you’re living with. Was the nice appearance a mask or the real thing? Give it a couple of months, but if the romance wears off too quickly, you may have to decide to move on and try again.

The real work is in the setting up and eventual transfer of some posts from my writing blog on Blogspot. Other than that, some of what will appear here is my usual sporadic, slightly warped views on writing. The focus, for the next month, will be on the insanity that is NaNoWriMo. No excerpts forthcoming. After that, there’s unlikely to be any focus except the always fresh, exciting, and frustrating subject of writing. 

I know there are thousands of blogs about writing, some of them good, some great, and some pretty lousy. We’ll just have to wait and see how this one turns out. Of course, that’s really a matter of taste and it’s impossible to please all of the people all of the time. I’ll settle for pleasing some people some of the time, and I hope those will be the ones who like to explore new pathways, new ideas, and new sources of inspiration.