Tag: Writing

I plan to reduce my blog writing to one post per week to focus on a couple of larger writing projects off line.

This platform will continue to address sustainability issues. I hope regular readers will find future posts thoughtful and engaging.

The clock on this life is ticking, and there is a lot to accomplish during the next five years. Hopefully the results will be worth sharing.

I’ll continue to freelance for newspapers and post links to my on line work on my Facebook page. Like the page here if you want to follow along.

Thanks for reading.

These days I wonder less about my readership than I used to. While my numbers are nowhere near the popular Jackie Collins who succumbed to breast cancer yesterday, I continually run into people who read my online work and provide positive feedback.

It’s not an income source, but it could be the start of something.

My Autobiography in 1,000 Words, has been the most popular post on On Our Own.

Some of my newspaper work gets more page views, and of course there’s the print version, but still, the autobiography post has gotten lasting attention through the almost two years it has been out there.

When a person writes, having an audience is an important part of it.

When he was in Cedar Rapids, Al Gore spoke about raising readerships and its importance in the post-Internet adoption era. He used Finnegan and Jackson Harries, identical twin brothers who developed the YouTube channel JacksGap: A Story Telling Project Inspired By Travel, as an example. The site has over 4 million subscribers.

Finn Harries sat at my table, and while I was supposed to be his mentor, he offered a lot more for me to learn than I him. When Finn Harries posts something, in any medium, people read and respond. They have been able to commercialize what they do, and that’s important to sustainability.

The limited amount of paid writing I’ve done has served my craft more than my wallet. What is a suitable goal for someone like me to generate income from writing?

It seems more important to work on readership. There may someday be enough readers to support formal publication of my writing, or lead to a paying gig. Gaining a readership is more important than an accumulation of posted pieces that get a couple thousand page views, which is where I am today.

That means continuing daily writing, and posting some of it on this blog. Learning my craft is important, but less so than understanding why people read me and mining that vein. Going forward that’s where I plan to spend my writing time.

The habit of daily writing is important, but not for reasons one might think. Writing is part inspiration and part craftsmanship. Daily writing helps with the latter more than then former and comes a time when new inspiration is needed. It’s not a commodity to be picked up at the local gas station like an Arizona Iced Tea, cigarettes, or unleaded gasoline.

To date I’ve filed 82 stories for newspapers since my first on Jan. 31, 2014. That’s 44 for West Branch Communication and another 38 for the Iowa City Press Citizen. 70,842 words total, with all but three articles printed—my writing in public.

It’s not a lot, but it’s something, and I am happy to be a small part of newspaper writing—a long tradition, but something that will remain regardless of its many changes and new economic model. If anything, freelancers will become more important to corporate media as time goes on, especially if we are willing to work for cheap to get our stories published.

I write some in private, but not much. Journal entries are sporadic these days, and there are some regular reports and emails in the mix. I used to write more in private, but conversations with people during my time in public have eclipsed much of it.

The result of such talk is a sanding away of controversy and new ideas. Polite conversations are a way of getting along in society—something we need and want—but if we engage sincerely with others, we feel good, but little inspiration is usually forthcoming.

But by putting pen to paper, fingertips to keyboard, we write. Working to craft short articles, experimenting with ideas and content, we write. I am writing.

If inspiration is lacking today, it may be found tomorrow in the garden, the garage, the kitchen, or in my book-lined workspace. There is hope for that—a writer’s hope.

We go on writing. I sharpen my skills, seeking inspiration I’m confident will be found. Daily writing sustains hope for inspiration. If we are lucky, it prepares us to write great stories once it emerges.

It would be easier if inspiration could be bought at the gas station. Easier, not necessarily better, and that’s the issue.

Daily writing will have to sustain us for now.

As an English major the re-interment of King Richard III last Thursday seems more than a British peccadillo.

The estimated £2.5 million spent on the re-interment could well have fed the poor, sheltered the homeless, or otherwise been spent on something beneficial to people who need help. Apologists say the value of publicity gained by the re-interment far exceeded the actual dollars spent. Maybe so, but these March rituals portend something else.

Unfolding events since Richard’s remains were discovered in 2012, while important, play second fiddle in the orchestra of history. I’m referring to the historical events which frame English literature in the period between the Norman Conquest, more specifically, the Battle of Hastings on Oct. 14, 1066, and the end of the Middle Ages which Richard’s death on Aug. 22, 1485 in the Battle of Bosworth Field bookends.

The New York Times reminds us Richard was slain seven years before Christopher Columbus sailed for the Indies and “discovered” a New World. While Americans today don’t readily acknowledge it, our invasion of a continent with a civilization arguably more advanced than that of Europe, and our systematic genocide of the population, is far bloodier than Richard III’s two year reign could ever have been. In many ways, European descendents have made the Americas a much less civilized place than the pre-Columbian societies it removed through disease, war and dispossession. While society has addressed some of the challenges of the Middle Ages, there is a lingering savagery that persists beneath the veneer of our cosmopolitan apartments, condominiums and McMansions.

We distance ourselves from the larger world, and in so doing, consent to the continued plunder of natural resources and spoiling the commons. Passive aggressive behavior yields a lifestyle, and for many, that is enough. If one listens to what people say in public, all controversy is brushed aside under a guise of getting along. We know not what people say in private.

It is accepted, beyond a reasonable doubt, the bones re-interred at Leicester Cathedral were those of King Richard III. People from multiple disciplines worked together to frame a convincing story of how Richard lived and died. To date, no one has disputed it. It seems unlikely anyone will.

In this process we were reminded that the biased history of Richard, written by scribes with a vested interest in preserving themselves, and apologists for the Tudors that replaced the Plantagenet line of monarchs, clouded much. With Richard’s bones an old saw re-emerged.

As writers, there must be a reality behind the stories we tell. From time to time, we set stories aside and confront it—whether in the bones of a long dead warrior, or something else. We make a commitment to those truths by our vocation.

While stories may be well crafted, if we stray far from what is real, the tale will never become us. Perhaps that’s why recent events surrounding that long ago death still matter in a society the king could not have envisioned.