Writing
Could I Be The Next Big Mommy Blogger? (Hint: Maybe.)
Apr 10th
So waaaay back when, when I was a stay-at-home dad (which lasted about a month) I started a blog about – wait for it – being a stay-at-home dad.
Today, having had a conversation with some of the editorial staff at a certain family-oriented magazine that shall remain nameless until things are finalized, I received interest in reviving said blog so that it could be featured among their list of mommy bloggers. And obviously I’m not a mommy, but hey! I’m all about breaking the glass ceiling.
When I went back and started reading it, I found many things to laugh at, and I realized it was something I should have kept up all along.
So I’ll be reviving it, and doing my best to keep it at least somewhat current. With five kids (yes, five) this shouldn’t take much effort. If anything, it will encourage me to spend more time with them so I can mine them for good material. Which is strangely utilitarian but also awesome, because they’re great kids and I should be doing that anyway.
I’ll keep you posted on the writing opportunity if and when it materializes. Even if it doesn’t, I’m glad to get back at this. It’s a great way to commemorate the childhood of my munchkins before it slips away into the angsty twilight of adolescence.
Blogging Tip: Controversy Spurs Discussion, but Limits Your Audience
Mar 20th
This used to be me. Every night.
I used to write controversial stuff. All the time. It was my bread and butter, and the only two topics I was unwilling to be away from were those that you’re never supposed to touch: religion and politics. And because the Internet is forever (unless you want it to be, then the websites go down and you can’t find things on the Wayback Machine) that stuff just sits out there, fermenting, waiting for you to get a job or run for office so they can dig it up and use it against you.
If you want to write that way, you’d better learn to deal with it. Even if your views change, the archives stay the same.
One of the reasons I wrote that way was because I had an inherently negative outlook, so I’d complain about something that I knew would draw the attention of other complainers and the discontented. They always feel like they’re an under-served audience, and appreciate a shout out. I also liked to pick fights. Sophistry can be an entertaining hobby when you have unresolved anger issues.
One of the biggest reasons, though, that I’d write about things that were controversial: it drove traffic and discussion. I liked nothing better than getting a heated comment box debate going. Every comment posted might as well have been a dollar in the bank for all the excitement I got from it. Somehow it was validation that what I was doing was interesting. And it would earn me comments like:
“I normally find Steve Skojec’s blogging too polemical, but….”
Badge of honor? Not really. Then, after years of this, I burned out. I stopped wanting to talk about religion and politics. I stopped feeling like arguing on the internet was such a fantastic idea. I wanted to be more constructive. And so I let a fairly significant readership drift away, while I spent the better part of two years not blogging. At all. And it was fantastic. It was peaceful. My writing was going to hell from not practicing, but I didn’t care. If I found content worth sharing, I’d post it to Facebook, or tweet it.
And then I had an idea.
I decided to change my entire model. I decided to build a whole new audience from the ground up. Instead of writing about controversial things, I would write about interesting things. Things on different topics, but mostly related to communications, tech, and social media – the sort of things that directly impact my line of work. I was reading those kinds of blogs every day, and I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t count myself among them. I hardly ever jumped into the comment boxes on anything controversial after a while – it was always a blood bath anyway, and logic had no quarter there – but I’m happy to get into a discussion about best practices or communications strategy or trends or where I think the future is taking us. That stuff is fascinating to me in a whole different way. And then there was the personal stuff, because I believe that social media is about the humanization of business, and I’m a human being, despite what some people have called me over the years. So I write about things like the weird stuff we eat, or where we live, or what I did with the kids.
And I was pretty sure there was a good chance that none of you would be interested in any of it. Since it wasn’t driven by passion anger anymore, it felt a lot less focused. Since it wasn’t honed in on a couple of very specific topics with strong niche audiences ready to go to battle, it felt less likely to succeed. And speaking of success, since I wasn’t the VP of Communications for some big firm, I didn’t know how relevant I would be. I think I have pretty good ideas about this stuff, but then again, I’m biased.
I’m happy to say, though, that since I started blogging regularly, traffic has picked up. In January of this year, I had 199 views the entire month. This week, I’ve been averaging about 130 views per day. These aren’t earth-shattering numbers, but they look good on a graph. They also tell me that what I’m doing is resonating, at least with a handful of people, and that’s a good thing. Because I don’t want to earn eyeballs simply by using cheap parlor tricks. I’m certainly not above stirring the pot now and then to get things going (no comments yet, but by far my most-read post) but that’s all part of the game.
If you’re blogging and have adopted my old strategy of using rants, public shaming of significant figures, polarizing issues and polemics to get readers, that’s your choice. But if you really want to grow your audience, I suggest you try something more original. Don’t limit your potential. It’s always easier to tear down what someone else is doing than to create something of your own. That road leads to the dark side.
Since I didn’t expect the uptick in traffic back when I was getting about 10 or 15 views a day, I set a goal for 2012 to get my daily views up to 100. Now that it’s only March and I’ve hit the mark, it sounds like it’s time to revise the goals. I think a good milestone will be 500 views per day. I hope you’ll stick around and help me get there.
And if you feel the urge, leave a comment. It’s too quiet around here!
Write in Your Own Voice
Feb 29th
I’ve become increasingly convinced that writing in my own voice is important. But I’ve been writing almost as long as I’ve been talking, and frankly, I write a lot better than I speak. Chalk it up to ADD, lack of confidence, or daydreaming, but my speech meanders even more than my posts.
Even so, I think there’s a need to achieve synthesis. (And yes, I would actually say a sentence like that out loud.)
One of the things I’ve noticed recently is how much more serious my writing is than my speaking. People who know me personally know that I’m passionate – opinionated, sometimes angry, and often funny. I make a lot of jokes. I also swear a lot. More than I should.
It could be related to the fact that I’ve written for Catholic or politically conservative audiences for so long, but I tend to clean up my speech a good bit when I type it out. Gone are the damned swear words, the wit, the excessively controversial or risqué statements. I very rarely type out the words, “That’s what SHE said!” And I never make jokes about enemas.
Perhaps this is aspirational. I want to be a smarter, more mature guy than I am in real life. Maybe it’s stylistic – we all learn to write with a good bit more formality than we speak, and if we read a lot, this style is picked up through imitation. Either way, I think that my real self and my written persona need to talk about a merger. I think the real me could do with an image upgrade, and the written me could stand to loosen up a bit. I need to stop writing for what I think my audiences expect, and write what I want to talk about with all the enthusiasm I’m capable of. Then, I think it’s safe to assume, whatever I’m saying will come out better.
And brevity ain’t so bad either.
The Problem With Writing on the Internet
Feb 9th
I’ve been writing my whole life. When I was little, before I could do much with words, I made stories by drawing out each scene, frame by frame, on a notepad. I’d sit in the back of my parents’ station wagon and I’d sketch out the adventure du jour. The ballpoint pen-and-ink helicopter chasing the motorcycle, bullets striking the asphalt, explosions happening everywhere. I’d make myself car sick back there thinking it through, but I wouldn’t stop. What I had in my head needed to be put down on paper.
I wrote stories in school. Somewhere, in a box, I still have one of my earliest, written and drawn out in crayon, the front and back dust jacket made from hideous wallpaper glued to the makeshift book. In the fifth grade, I placed second in my first writing contest. It was for a bumpersticker campaign about seatbelt use. I received a $50 savings bond. By the end of fifth grade, I won first place in an all-school story contest. I more or less blatantly ripped off The Indian in the Cupboard in my breakout hit, The Drawing that Came to Life, and I earned myself a trip to Bantam publishing, so I could have a sense of what the process was for real writers. My dad took me, and while I was excited, I lost interest quickly. The only tangible thing I brought home with me that day was a copy of Ursula K. LeGuinn’s A Wizard of Earthsea, which started a decade-long dalliance with the fantasy genre, that ultimately culminated in a life-long enjoyment of the more mature and interesting obsession I have with Science Fiction.
I let my writing slip somewhat as I cruised through high school, still earning high praise for my test essays and English and history papers but not doing much with it. I went to college for communication arts, but I focused on Radio and Television Production, not journalism or other disciplines of the scribe. But it was in college, ultimately, that I re-discovered my love for the written word. In a series of journals I sent home via an arcane email system while spending a semester abroad, I developed (unbeknownst to me) a fan base of individuals who had received my dispatches as forwards from my mother, and I returned to the U.S. with lots of suggestions that I continue the craft. My senior year of college, I landed a column in the student newspaper, and it wound up being fairly popular (if at times a bit too controversial for administrative tastes.) Several years after college, I got my first paid writing gig, when I landed a column with Inside Catholic, formerly (and, now, again) known as Crisis Magazine. Since then, my writing has appeared in multiple publications, corporate blogs, personal and business websites, and even under the signature of some rather more successful and well-to-do people than I am who simply didn’t write as well, or have the time to take up the keyboard for themselves.
All of this is to say (in a long-winded and self-promoting memoir-like fashion) that I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, and I’ve produced a lot of material over the years that I’d like to be able to showcase for anyone interested in taking me on for a gig. For the writer, there is perhaps no more valued possession than his portfolio of work. And while I still have a box with clippings of my newspaper columns, childhood stories, and the like, for everything I’ve written since 2001, the portfolio is entirely online.
I should say, it was entirely online.
Over the years, websites I’ve written for have disappeared, changed their URL structure, archived or deleted old content, or in some other way invalidated my links. Just this week, Crisis relaunched with a new website look, and it appears my archived content on the site More three-quarters of the links on my portfolio page now either go nowhere, or to whatever PDF I could patch together from digging through The Wayback Machine.
This is, frankly, a pain. I don’t want to only offer links to locally hosted PDF files, which are bulky and slow to download. I don’t want to have to convert HTML to PDF either, since sometimes this comes out rather less nice looking than the original page.
The simplest solution, I suppose, would be for me to get more things published instead of relying on links to older content. This answer of course presumes that I possess plenty of time and spare creative energy to produce new content, which lately I haven’t, but which I certainly should have if I want to sell anyone on the fact that I can still write and do so worth a damn.
But there’s still the nagging question of legacy content, and how to best display it. I really like a good deal of the work I’ve put up for public consumption, and I’d prefer to be able to keep it available for as long as possible. Any ideas on how to best handle this challenge?
2012 Goals – Writing
Jan 18th
I haven’t made the time this year for goal setting. Not personal goal setting anyway – work requires it, so I’ve already turned those in. But there are certain goals floating around in my head, just waiting for the right precipitate so they can coalesce.
One of the things I’ve neglected in the long creative drought that ensued following Arizonageddon at the end of 2010 is my writing. I didn’t have a single thing published in 2011. I barely touched the blog. I failed at NaNoWriMo (though I was moving into a new house, so perhaps that’s a valid excuse.) It was a good year in some respects, but a bad year for getting personal agendas accomplished.
2012 is going to be better, because it simply has to be. If I’m a writer (which the preponderance of evidence suggests that I may very well be) then I have to, in fact, write.
I came across some interesting quotes from Hemingway today. On writing, he says,
First, there must be talent, much talent. Talent such as Kipling had. Then there must be discipline. The discipline of Flaubert. Then there must be the conception of what it can be and an absolute conscience as unchanging as the standard meter in Paris, to prevent faking. Then the writer must be intelligent and disinterested and above all he must survive. Try to get all these things in one person and have him come through all the influences that press on a writer. The hardest thing, because time is so short, is for him to survive and get his work done.
And that’s not enough. Hemingway identifies the silver bullet:
The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it.
Now, working backwards, I can state with confidence that I have a built-in, shockproof shit detector. Surviving, per se, is less of strong suit for me, but it’s within the realm of possibility. Intelligence isn’t really a problem (for all that it’s worth) but disinterest likely is. Who creates art because they’re disinterested? We’re all compensating for some insufficiency, perceived or actual. We want the validation of not only our loved ones, but total strangers. If possible, we want the validation of a paying audience. Surely, if someone is willing to put down hard-earned cash for the work of our pen, it must be worth something.
As for conscience? I have one, but it’s never served me particularly well as a writer. It tends, more often than not, to vomit up moralistic tripe as I’m attempting to work and therefore just gets in the way.
Discipline? I know the meaning of that word about as well as I could name the works of Flaubert himself (Which is to say not at all. Wasn’t he some sort of impressionist? I’m so poorly-cultured.)
Talent? Yes, I think I can say so without engaging in embellishment, though for what it’s worth, it’s a rather unrefined talent. And it’s all the worse for wear due to the lack of any sort of exercise in the last couple of years. The writing muscle is no different than a bicep or a quadricep. It get gets flabby and unsightly if it’s never used. Let’s face it – Twitter killed the blogio-star. Micro-blogging has been the death of a lot of longer-form writing from undiscovered or otherwise unappreciated talent. It’s easier, it’s lazier, and it gets the endorphins pumping just the same. (For heaven’s sake, I have a higher Klout score than the CEO of Klout, whatever that means.)
The point of all of this is that I need to hone in and get back to basics. To that end, a 2012 goal for me, as a writer, is to write something every day. I can’t overstate how simple this sounds and how difficult it is. I have five kids and a fairly demanding day job. I am burned out. But I also am suffering from the deep dissatisfaction that comes with not creating, not doing the things that are at your core. Writers write not necessarily because they want to, but because they have to. And I’ve managed to tune that out.
So watch this space. I won’t only be writing here – I have some stories and personal items to work on – but writing every day this year is only going to happen if I have an outlet. And even if it’s only a few sentences, a paragraph or two, something is better than nothing. Of course, I’ve been known to make pie crust promises on this topic before. I highly recommend that you don’t trust me on this.
I’m sure there’s an applicable Japanese sword proverb or something about constantly perfecting or slicing cleanly through bone or some such, but I don’t have time to Google one. My kids are calling, and I need to read them a bedtime story.
Hide and Seek
Nov 15th
It was our turn.
They counted on the porch, eyes closed, squinting, their voices louder than they needed to be.
I grabbed Alex, hefted him under one arm, and sprinted as quietly as I could across the nearly grassless expanse of lawn toward the tree line. The sky was pale gray above us, the air cool but not cold, promising rain. His belly was squishy against my hand.
We hurdled the fallen tree that I had partly cut up during an experimental round with my new chain saw. I hoped that the volume of their counting would mask the scruffle of our feet through the peanut-butter colored drifts and dunes of dried leaves, cascading down the hill. There was a big tree, easily three feet in diameter, its rough bark showing rivers of contrast along a smooth trunk unbroken by the jut of branches. We dove behind it, finding cover, nestled down into the underbrush, our backs pressed against its solemn bulk. We laughed quietly and shushed each other, his tiny finger making a line across his wide, smiling mouth. I reminded him again and again to be still and not to move. Oscar, the dog, seemed likely to give us away, but he panted off when he heard the others come running. I was thankful that they didn’t yet know that to look where he was standing was a big clue on where to find their pray.
Seconds passed quickly, and then, out of nowhere, Ivan rounded on us, announcing his victory and waving his arms above his head. Next, Sophie came, and we all sat and laughed in the leaves and breathed in their dry-straw smell, and looked through the thinning branches at the glimmer of the river beyond. This was our hill now, our tree, our game to play as often as we wanted.
And for the first time in a very long time I felt as though I were a child again, filled with wonder, my eyes alight with the magical possibilities of a November forest.
NaNoWriMo Begins!
Nov 1st
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m taking a crack this month for the first time ever at the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) competition.
I’ve written fiction for a very, very long time. I’ve never finished anything longer than a short story of about 5,000 words. A couple of times, I’ve attempted longer form fiction, only to be stumped, time and again. I have never, to the best of my knowledge, crossed the 10,000 word barrier. I’ve come close, but that’s it. My high water mark is one fifth of a full-length novel.
And that’s what NaNoWriMo is about. It’s about getting it done. In 30 days, participants grind through 50,000 words and finish a whole novel, even if it sucks. Just break those barriers and make it happen! The “official” ten-step process is:
1) Sign up for the event by clicking the “Start Here” button at NaNoWriMo.org.
2) Follow the instructions on the following screen to create an account.
2.5) Check your email for the account validation email and click on the link included.
3) Log into your account, where you’ll be prompted to finish the sign-up process.
4) Start filling out information about yourself and your novel in My NaNoWriMo.
5) Begin procrastinating by reading through all the great advice and funny stories in the forums. Post some stories and questions of your own. Get excited. Get nervous. Try to rope someone else into doing this with you. Eat lots of chocolate and stockpile noveling rewards.
6) On November 1, begin writing your novel. Your goal is to write a 50,000-word novel by midnight, local time, on November 30th. You write on your own computer, using whatever software you prefer.
7) This is not as scary as it sounds.
8 ) Starting November 1, you can update your word count in that box at the top of the site, and post excerpts of your work for others to read. Watch your word-count accumulate and story take shape. Feel a little giddy.
9) Write with other NaNoWriMo participants in your area. Write by yourself. Write. Write. Write.
9.25) If you write 50,000 words of fiction by midnight, local time, November 30th, you can upload your novel for official verification, and be added to our hallowed Winner’s Page and receive a handsome winner’s certificate and web badge. We’ll post step-by-step instructions on how to scramble and upload your novel starting in mid-November.
9.3333) Reward yourself copiously for embarking on this outrageously creative adventure.
10) Win or lose, you rock for even trying.
So there you have it. Why am I writing about this here? Because I’m hoping that by announcing my attentions I’ll feel just the slightest bit accountable for not completing them.
Oh, wait, what? Why am I writing this instead of my novel? Because I’m procrastinating, natch. My plot is still pretty sketchy. And I have this thing that I’ve been trying to take care of. And I have to work today. And I don’t have a desk set up in my new house yet. And…
OK, fine. I’m going.
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