Category Archives: writing

The hired blogger’s nightmare: spam blogs

While I doubt my personal site will ever get to the level that it is noticed by copyblogger or problogger, I actually do make some significant money blogging for clients (not enough to live on, by itself, but more than pocket change).

It was all so simple at the start
The first time I started blogging for hire, it was easy. I just searched for terms related to my client’s company and found blog entry’s that were written and read by people who were likely to be interested in the same things I was interested in. I directed traffic there way and basically generated chit chat. Between Technorati and the Google search engine, I had all the tools I needed. The only thing left to do was to learn about SEO.

Stepping into Stepford

Eventually, however, I found a client whose expertise was in an area of interest to litigators, and that was when I discovered the spam blog. Before, it was as if I had a magic guide that would lead me through the crowd to a group that was talking about something that indicated I could meet their needs. I didn’t hard sell or anything. I just had to converse and wear my name tag.

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Today’s scribblings

Thanks to meeting my goal regarding wake-up time, I now feel cranky and uncreative. Getting started on my Ephesians commentary today seems impossible.

I walked so so slow for thirty minutes that I am embarrassed to even mention I did it at all. But I’m going to stick with my assumption that if I nail down the practice as something I do every day I can improve on it later.

It occurs to me I could take some of my stuff on Ephesians and try to get it publshed through a reputable (make that paying) publication of some sort. But I think I would have to edit and rearrange and reread so much that I wouldn’t really save any time. I wouldn’t really be “re-using” the same material. I would be better off to come up with something new.

Earlier this year I bought the Writer’s Market and I have not yet used it. It is much more profitable to find people who will contract you to write rather than produce a work to submit in the hopes of making a few cents a word. All my best work has been done when someone asked for something specific. I have new writing ideas all the time, but I’m too risk-adverse to invest in them on the basis of a mere hope they will be published (and paid for).

My Dad was able to write a hefty novel in his spare time simply because he liked the characters. I have some idea how he did it–I can relate to the joy of creation–but at this stage in my life that kind of accomplishment is simply out of my reach.

Obviously, I’m too tired right now to do a proper blog entry. I started one, but it will have to be finished some other time.

My last Table Talk article for Ligonier

Title: HIStory

Column: A Pastor’s Perspective

Date: Don’t have that written down on my copy.  Sometime between around 1999 to 2000.

Magazine: Ligonier Ministries’ TableTalk

Quick! What’s the basic message of the Bible? Summarize it in as few words as possible and say what first comes to mind.

Here’s how I would answer the question:

Boy meets girl.

No, I am not joking. We see it in the happy ending of Revelation, which shows us a wedding between Christ and the church and tells us that they live happily ever after. We see it in Adam and Eve all the way back in Genesis 2, which–as Paul tells us in Ephesians 5–refers fundamentally to Christ and the church. When we read in Luke 2 of how the Spirit will overshadow Mary, we realize that the description of the Spirit hovering over the waters in Genesis 1 involved the same theme. From beginning to end , this theme of boy meets girl pervades all of the Bible.

Twice in Genesis, once in Exodus, and oncein an incident reported in both Joshua and Judges we see a man coming together with his wife in association with a well or spring of water. Agraham’s servant meets Rebekah, the future wife of his master Isaac, at a well. She gives him a drink and waters his camels, demonstrating that God has chosen her to be the bride. Jacob meets the shepherdess Rachel at a well. He rolls away the stone that is blocking the spring and then waters all her flock. Moses meets his future wife Zipporah at a well. He defends her and her sisters (who all “just happen” to be Shepherdesses, just like Rachel was) from bullying shepherds, then waters their flock. Caleb offers his daughter Achsah to the man who defeats the Canaanites in Kirjath Sepher. Othniel captures the city and wins the bride. In receiving her, he also gains some land grants from her father. Due to her petitioning her father, the grant is expanded to include springs of water.

So when Jesus meets a woman at a well, in Samaria, what are they going to talk about? Even if you have never read John 4, the asnswer should be inescapable. When Jesus meets this woman at a well, they are going to discuss her marital status. Indeed, Jesus rescues her from a much more dangerous threat than bullying shepherds.

There is much else to support this basic biblical theme. Space would fail if I were to mentions the Song of Solomon, the role of Wisdom in the book of Proverbs, and the way Proverbs culminates with the portrayal of the ideal wife. Neither could I list here all the times Jerusalem or Israel is called God’s wife, setting us up for the identity of the church as the bride of Christ.

There are two things we have to keep in mind if we are going to understand the Bible as God’s literary master piece. First of all, we must keep in mind the doctrine of providence: God is in complete control of everything that happens in history. As we read about the events recorded in the Bible, we must apply this doctrine by bearing in mind that not only what God is said to have done in these events, but also the events themselves, are part of His message. God could have brought about Jesus’ meetin with the woman at the well in some other place, but he predestined it to take place there. It is not simply what Jesus said that reveals god, but the entire situation in which Jesus acts.

Second of all, we must keep in mind the doctrine of inspiration. Every word, every jot and tittle of Scripture, is the very Word of God. It is not merely the overarching truths that are inspired but the words used to express them. With the woman at the well, John could have summarized what Jesus said about the Spirit without quoting the metaphor of water or mentioning the well where He spoke. He could have overlooked what Jesus said about her marital history. But by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, John set down those statements.

If we remember these twin truths, we should be able to navigate between two common errors. Many conservative evangelicals, who (rightly) affirm the inerrancy of the scriptureal record of events, treat the events themselves as virtuously meaningless. The fact that the same things keep happening is simply ignored. Liberals, on the other hand, sometimes do much better at seeing the meaning in events, but they treat the Scriptures as a fictionalized account that cannot be trusted for historical veracity. For conservatives, the woman at the well really happend, but her encounter with Jesus is important only in that it gave Jesus a chance to say some things He could have said almost anywhere else. For liberals, the woman at the well fits nicely into the themes and theology of the Bible, but her encounter with Jesus probably never really happend. Rather, it is the work of a novelist.

But if we acknowledge that God is the great novelist, then we need never choose between meaning and truth. God is more creative than any human being and can make His novel work better than any merely human book. But God is also all-powerful and sovereign over history. Thus, God can make history by His novel. Therefore, He can make a truthful Bible work better than fiction, even while remaining completely truthful.

As characters in God’s novel, we usually don’t see how our problematic lives can possibly be leading to the kind of tidy plot resolutions that we find so satisfying in a narrative. But the Bible can function as a corrective to our lack of faith. As we see what a well-woven tale the Bible is, how it is all true, and what its story is about, we can believe that our own stories will make sense because they are tied to that story. We have to trust the novelist to finish his work and vindicate his graciously chosen protagonists. Ultimately, He is going to win the girl.

Stephen King on writing

This was a phenomenal read. At some point, Steve mentions that writers read all the time and, at that point I sort of took a break from the book and started reading more fiction. Then when I came to the book I realized he himself had taken a long break in writing the thing. So I enjoyed imagining some sort of significance to that (hey, what’s the point of enjoying fiction if you’re not willing to engage in a little bit of it in your head?). Of course, my break from the book to read stories was a lot more pleasant than his break–which was caused by getting hit by a van and nearly dying.

King’s book has several sections. The first, C.V., is basically a biographical sketch which heavily emphasizes his experience in getting started as a writer. He then gives some advise for writing, both living as a writer and the actual practice of writing. The book ends with some more autobiography detailing his trials in restarting his writing habits after a forced break–or rather forced multiple fractures and breaks.

Probably the least amount of attention is given to technique. King believes there is a lot of good material out there and he doesn’t think he has much he needs to add to it. He recommend’s Stunk’s The Elements of Style. Of the tidbits he does leave the reader, probably the most space is devoted to portraying adverbs as monsters as gruesome and repulsive as any he has ever portrayed in his novels.

Rather than a technical manual on how to write a novel, King’s book is more about how a person can be a writer. What disciplines and habits do you need to learn? What tools do you need? King recommends a bottom line habit to produce a thousand words a day for six days a week.

It’s a great book (though a content warning for some language is necessary).  But what surprised me the most was how much I ended up liking Stephen King as a person.  He just seemed like a great guy.

SciFi economics & webscabbing 1

Since, I’m a lowly occasional reader, and not a member, perhaps I shouldn’t comment on this, but who am I kidding? There is no real choice here. So here is the quotation:

I‘m also opposed to the increasing presence in our organization of webscabs, who post their creations on the net for free. A scab is someone who works for less than union wages or on non-union terms; more broadly, a scab is someone who feathers his own nest and advances his own career by undercutting the efforts of his fellow workers to gain better pay and working conditions for all. Webscabs claim they’re just posting their books for free in an attempt to market and publicize them, but to my mind they’re undercutting those of us who aren’t giving it away for free and are trying to get publishers to pay a better wage for our hard work.

Since more and more of SFWA is built around such electronically mediated networking and connection based venues, and more and more of our membership at least tacitly blesses the webscabs (despite the fact that they are rotting our organization from within) — given my happily retrograde opinions, I felt I was not the president who would provide SFWAns the “net time” they seemed to want at this point in the organization’s development, or who would bless the contraction of our industry toward monopoly, or who would give imprimatur to the downward spiral that is converting the noble calling of Writer into the life of Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch.

Now my difficulty is avoiding a tirade on scabs and unions–in which I propose a complete inversion of the usual moralistic portrayal. I’ll try to leave that one alone. Since no one is on strike the real issue is whether one is, or if it is as bad to be, a mataphorical scab. And unless that question is addressed directly there is simply no traction to the entire rant.

Here is some pretty direct counter evidence to the idea that free promotionals on the web are undercutting writing wages.

But I want to look at the issue differently. Consider Crimson Dark. As far as I can tell the writer had no agent and no real connection to comic book publishing. So instead of investing months in quiet solitude developing a project with no audience, he published his work on the web at his own expense. I seriously doubt that this has proven to be the path to financial prosperity. I don’t think that’s the point.

The only one who is doing work for low wages is the writer himself! How on earth does this harm anyone else. I haven’t been reading comic books for years for financial reasons. If I had never discovered Crimson Dark that would still be true. There is no mainstream comic book publisher out there who has been hurt by Crimson Dark.

I’m just better off because of someone else’s free gift. It is really hard not to imagine that Mencken’s version of Puritanism lies behind this erroneous economic analysis–the haunting fear that someone somewhere is having a good time.