Some Knowledge

In the last two days I have had three comments on this blog.  I stopped by here first thing this morning to approve comments and leave a post.  I am just adding yet another paragraph to this very long project.  If I could stay focused on a piece of fiction like I have this blog, I would have a couple of novels by now.  Anyway, that’s it for right now.  I just wanted to check in and see how things are going here.

I took a bit of time this morning and wrote three pages of fiction.  I don’t know what I’m doing writing fiction.  I just tried to make up a story.  The story was not very interesting.  Perhaps I need more conflict in this story.  Perhaps I need better names for things.  It’s hard to just make things up as you go along, but then, it’s probably harder for me to stick to a plan.

I think if I put in a certain amount of work on this project every day I may end up with something I can try to sell.  I don’t read a lot of fiction.  I am just not that interested in people who are trying to save the world.  I find villians far more interesting.  I think I am going to have the main character of my story become a villian.  Of course, how many people would be interested in a story like that.  Still, I could make it something people could identify with on some level.  It just takes a lot of work and time to write fiction.

Anyway, I just stopped by here to see how things are going.  I think I am going to go back and open up my word processor again and see where I can go with this story.  There is only so much typing I can do in a day, but over time it adds up.  The hard part is getting a story I am interested in enough to follow through on to the end.  Long projects have never appealed to me much.  I tend to give up in the middle and let things lie around and gather dust.  Perhaps I can work with what I started this morning and make it interesting.  Rome was not built in a day, as they say, so who knows?  Perhaps I can go somewhere with this fiction project.  At the very least it will be good practice and exercise for my imagination.

Seriously, it’s impossible.  Regardless of what other people tell you, it is impossible to make money from a blog.  You will just have to break down and get a job.  There is no money in blogging.

Sure, you might put some Adsense ads on your blog and make a few cents.  People are not reading your blog so they can find the latest diet products.  They are reading your blog to get information or an opinion that is already like their own.  Unless you blog about cool products available for sale, you are not going to sell anything.

Of course, you could set your blog up to make money.  You could write reviews of various cars or products that people buy online.  Then you could run ads for those products on your blog.  This is a very tricky approach.  Of course, nobody is going to find your blog unless you advertise.  Advertising costs money.  You might do like the TV stations do and advertise your blog on your own blog.  A lot of good that is going to do.  Bottom line, you will not make any money on your blog.  Unless you become very popular, you are wasting your time trying to make money from a blog.

Does this mean blogging is pointless?  No.  Keep your blog because you like to write.  Keep writing about things that interest you and people will find your posts.  Get your opinions out there and people will notice.  Words are powerful, if they are used right.  Don’t believe the hype that you can quit your day job and make a living off your blog.  This is just not possible.  Post something to your blog every day, and people will read what you write.  Don’t expect to make millions from your blog about fast food.  Write about what you like and sit back and watch the people come.  Stop trying to get rich from a free blog, and enjoy your life.

There is a light rain this morning.  The sky is grey and it is chilly.  I am waiting for the sun to come out later this afternoon, but it may not happen.  At least there are no floods here.  There is a lot of flooding in the country this Spring.  I think today would be a good day to start a writing project.

I have been thinking about writing a lot in the last year.  I checked out a book on writing from the library yesterday.  I like to read what other people have to say about writing.  Over the years I have taken many classes in creative writing.  What I learned in those classes was to use lots of imagery and to use memories from your life to trigger pieces.  Right now, I am just doing a free write on whatever is on my mind.

I got a comment today on this blog.  Kate recommended I read a book about primitive people.  I might look into this later.  I have some books about ancient history.  I used to enjoy reading translations of the Greek and Roman writers.  It took a lot of effort to write a book in the old days.  It was all done by hand.  The only way they had to make copies was to write out another scroll by hand.  You had to have something important to say to go to the effort of putting together a book.

These days, all the effort you need is to type up what you want to say.  You can format your work as an ebook or a blog and then publish it yourself on the net.  There are a lot of these electronic books out there on the net.  There are a lot of people trying to cash in on publishing their own work.  You do not need a printing press, employees, and reams of paper to put out a copy of your work electronically.  This is why newspapers are going out of business.  They are not really going under, they are just switching formats to electronic editions.  This just means there will be less waste in the world.  Old newspaper is only good for starting a fire in the fireplace.

So, it’s raining this morning and I am in my office trying to think up an idea to write about.  All this blogging has been good practice, at least as far as typing goes.  I have not been having the pains in my fingers I was getting from typing a few months ago.  Of course, I don’t type as much now either.  I am going to read some stuff about writing for a while, then I think I am going to start in on a good project.  I have been thinking about this for a while.  It’s time to stop thinking and start doing.  This blog would be nothing if I had not put in the effort to make it a reality.  There is a time to think, and a time to act.  Now, if I only knew what I was going to do.

I took some books and movies back to the library this afternoon and checked out some more.  I think I like the library.  They have a lot of books, and all kinds of DVDs, and I haven’t even looked through the CDs yet.  I think they even have video games these days.  It beats the hell out of buying a book and having it sit around taking up space.  I must remember to thank whoever came up with the idea for a library.  It’s an idea from the ancient world.  Those ancient people had a few good ideas.

I just stopped by here this evening to check on how things are going on this blog.  People still seem to be finding the stuff I post here.  There are not a lot of people reading the new material though.  I have gotten into the habit of writing these little posts about things that are happening and things I have been doing.  It’s better than nothing.  I don’t really feel the need to be useful these days.  I am still trying to think of other projects to do.  I checked out a book today about how to find inspiration as a writer.  At least, I think that’s what this book is about.  The first 30 pages seemed to be nothing but trivial life stories about how this author doesn’t want to write any more.  Apparently it took her a month to get the first 24 pages written.  I suppose if I worked at it, it would take me a couple days, maybe even just one day, to write that much drivel.  Still, it’s interesting to get another person’s opinion on things like art.

I am off now to do some more research online.  I am reading about meditation and psychic phenomena.  I am interested in the paranormal.  Maybe I will write my own book about the strange properties of the human mind.  Anyway, I am going to poke around the net, then watch TV for a while.

I read a book yesterday about lucid dreaming.  It was an interesting book and it got me thinking.  I think I should write a book about my dreams.  It would not be a hard thing to do.  I have dreams every night that I remember.  I just wonder if anyone would publish such a book.  I wonder if anyone would buy such a book.  Still, the idea interests me.  I like reading about other people’s dreams.  Maybe I will start a project today on my computer.

I have been doing some thinking about my blog project here.  It seems that the articles I write that get traffic are all information pieces about various things that were popular in some way.  For some reason, Google gave this page some rank.  I get visitors searching for articles I wrote on how to carve jade and for thinking up things to write about.  Today, people are reading my review of E3 sparkplugs.  Most of the pieces I have written lately about the weather or about winter or about what I happen to be thinking about get no page views.  People don’t read stuff on the net for entertainment, they are trying to find something out about things they are curious about.  So, it’s all about if you can give people some value with your work.

I am off now to start my new project.  Today, I am just getting warmed up on my blogs.  I think I will look around Amazon or Barnes and Noble and see if there are any dream journals that have become popular.  It’s something that interests me, and that I think would make a good book.  Anyway, I will check back tomorrow to see how things are going here.

It would be a long book.  Already, this is the 566th post here.  While some of my posts go 2000 words, most are in the 300-500 word range.  I estimate that in the last year, I have written something like 200,000 words on this blog.  That’s a couple of long novels.  All this is from writing for less than an hour a day.

Of course, I don’t do a lot of revising on this blog.  I tend to write something, read it over for mistakes, then hit the publish button and forget about it.  There’s really no point in doing multiple drafts for a blog post.  I am not writing any academic tome.  It’s just a blog that has some stuff people occasionally read.  Right now, I am getting like one page view for every three articles a day.  That’s not a lot, considering how many posts are on this blog, but it amounts to a few people every day being exposed to my writing.  I think that’s cool.

All this blogging is good practice for writing other things.  I have noticed my writing level has gone down a lot since I started blogging.  This means I am more understandable.  The easier it is to understand what a person writes, the more people who will be drawn to your writing.  I like to develop a simple style of writing.  I like to say what I am trying to say and then move on.  I do not like to make puzzles out of words like some scholarly people do.  I did not go to graduate school to learn how to confuse people.

So, one of these days I think I am going to start a new writing project.  It will be something with my word processor.  It is easier to write on a word processor than it is on a blog input form.  A word processor will auto-capitalize the first words of a sentence.  A blog input tells you if a word is spelled wrong, but offers no suggestions on what the right spelling is.  The only thing that will be different on my new project will be that I will have to shop my work around and find a publisher.  I want to kill trees and make money.  I see no way to make an electronic novel pay off.  People don’t read a lot of novels on their computers.

If this blog was a book, it would be a long book.  One of these days I have to look through what I have written here and see how I have developed in the last year.  While I have made no money off this blog, I have learned some things about writing.  Overall, this project has been successful and has taught me to take my writing seriously and to work on it every day.  I will continue to post things here, and maybe add some interesting pictures from time to time.  Right now, I am off to do some research on the web.  Perhaps someday I will be so famous that this blog becomes popular.  Until then, it is here to record my thoughts and anything else that strikes me as being worthy of a post.

If you want to learn how to write, you should write something every day.  It doesn’t really matter what you write, as long as you put the time in and do the work.  Writing is like any other skill.  You learn a skill by practicing it.  There really is no other way to learn how to write.  On top of the improvement you will see in your writing skills, you will also be accumulating a portfolio of work.

I like blogging.  A blog is an excellent place to practice writing.  You not only get to do the work that will improve your skills, but you get to show other people what you do and perhaps get some feedback on what you write.  On top of everything else, you are storing your work online, so if you have a computer failure, you can still get at your writing.  A blog is the perfect place to practice writing and get your name out there in the world.

It is sometimes hard to think of what to write about each day.  You might write your opinion on the latest news.  You might write about something you learned today.  You might write up some experience from your life.  You might write about people you meet.  There are infinite possibilities to write about.  Pick something you are interested in and get to work.  Even if you only write something short each day, over time it will add up to a considerable piece of work.

I try to write several blog posts each day.  This post is my second today.  I have five blogs that I post to, some more than others.  Even if you do not want to share what you write with the world, you can always save work on your own computer and work with a good word processor, or you can go medieval and get a pen and paper and keep notebooks with your work.  Writing is a never-ending learning process, and if you work on it every day, you will eventually get good at this skill.

I just watched a video somebody sent me on how to make money.  What you need to do is find businesses in your local area that don’t have a web presence.  You go to these places and propose to them that you set up a website for them.  Then you set up a website and get paid.

Of course, the video I watched was almost seven minutes long, but I just gave you the general idea in three sentences.  Why does it take some people ages to say something simple like this?  Anyway, if you know how to make web pages, this might be an opportunity for you.  I might look into doing this myself.

I haven’t posted anything on this blog in days.  I guess I am just running out of ideas to write about.  It has been good practice writing things for this blog, though.  I think there are something like 563 posts here now.  That’s a lot of words to write in a year.  People even seem to find what I write from search engines.  So far, there have been something like 70,500 page views on this blog.  That’s a fair amount of traffic for my random thoughts.

I think I am going to start working on another project soon.  I want to see if I can write a book and get it to sell.  I have read that of the books published in a given year, between one and five percent actually make a profit.  Those are just terrible odds.  Making money from writing a book is like winning a lottery.  There are of course, things you can do to stack the odds in your favor, like by writing something interesting.

This is not going to be a long post.  I just stopped by here to leave a comment on my lack of posts in the last few days.  I am off now to do some reading.  Who knows, I might even start another writing project today.  I don’t know how many words are on this blog, but I know they would have made a long novel if they had all been fiction.  Anyway, that’s all for now.  Maybe I will find a writing project that pays off some day.