Struck down by a nasty cold this week, so not as productive as of late. I managed to crawl out of bed frequently enough to keep up with my freelance editing work, but my WIP has really suffered. I had planned to finish a detailed synopsis by the end of this month, then put it aside for the whole of March to distance myself from it before returning for some severe tweaking in April. Now that goal is in serious peril.

The difference, of course, is that my freelance work comes with deadlines set by others, and the promise of (relatively) immediate reward that pays the bills. With my writing, it’s so much easier to cut myself some slack when I’m feeling ill, or tired, or something “more important” occurs. And I’m finding that, even as I recover from my unidentified lurgy, my enthusiasm for my WIP is lagging behind. The problem is, however much I love the process of creation, it will always be easier not to do it.

This is nothing more or less than procrastination, of course, driven by fear of failure. I know it well because I’ve spent years there. The point of this year’s big push towards publication was to banish procrastination forever and get stuff done like the highly directed individual I always believed lurked within my rambling exterior.

OK, I haven’t been quite that incisive – but I’ve been feeling good about what I’ve achieved so far in 2012 and I don’t want to lose that.

The happier news is, I have a plan! When I procrastinate, not only does my writing suffer, but also all sorts of minor tasks that aren’t difficult to do but are easy to neglect. Like getting dressed before noon, and doing the washing up, and taking the time to make proper coffee instead of instant. To stop this drift – which is essentially a time management problem – I have set myself a very strict schedule for the next couple of days, with times marked in my calendar for everything from showering to phoning relatives to getting our juicer out of its retirement and boosting my vegetable intake. And, of course, writing.

I’m not going to keep this up forever (no need to get obsessive about it, is there?). But I will keep tabs on my use/wastage of time until I’m back in my writing groove.

Image by שומבלע

Right after publishing last week’s post, I put up the first content on my WIP’s website. You can’t see it yet, and nor would you want to – other than that single meagre paragraph, the site is host to nothing more than a few Amazon links, some rather nicely designed social media buttons (not mine) and a load of dummy text (“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet” etc.). But at least it’s there, with its own domain name, and the faux Latin is now interrupted by a few lines of (hopefully more comprehensible) English.

As that precious paragraph is a book review, I went mad and also posted it on both Amazon and Goodreads (two more firsts). Follow either link for a sneak preview of the wonders that await you when WIP – The Website goes live!

Another milestone reached this week was my 1000th day as a Suite101.com contributer. After passing the site’s entrance test (supposedly the most rigorous of all the so-called “content farms” at the time), I had my first article accepted on 15 May 2009. In an initial rush of enthusiasm, I submitted pieces on everything from beauty treatments to quantum physics during the first couple of weeks, but soon settled on health care, which I already knew well from my in-house and freelance editing life. A good move, for in August the Feature Writer for General Medicine announced that he was stepping down; with a ruthlessness quite unlike me, I rushed off an application almost before he had bid us farewell, and just as quickly was accepted for the job. I will always be grateful to Barbara Bell for allowing me the opportunity, especially as I hadn’t written many articles in the topic at that time.

Almost four years, one Panda, nine purged articles and countless organizational changes later, I’m still there, now a Topic Editor and waiting with interest to see which way the site goes next. I’ve recorded my page views and revenue for every one of those 1000 days, and will continue to do so; the figures make for some telling Excel graphs that I might get around to reproducing here some time.

Back in 2009, people used to boast how Suite’s revenue share model would fund their retirement; I think everyone is more realistic these days. Despite the ups and downs, however, I’m glad I’m still there, and hope to stick around as long as they’ll have me!

Image by Beao

What a lot of tennis fans we have here! When I mused about grades of fame and the royal box at Wimbledon back in 2010, Scribblings had its highest page view count ever. And now, 18 months later, when I focus on that fine sport again, page views go through the roof. (We do have a very low roof here, however. Infant mice have to crouch to get in.) Thanks to everyone who popped by last week – I hope you’ll visit again.

With the start of a new month, I’ve been doing my own revisiting lately – of my New Year’s resolutions. I like making these as much as the next person, but I’ve come to the conclusion that heady, holiday-fazed (and possibly hungover) Janurary 1st isn’t the best time to promise yourself anything. Better to make such committments in the cold, sober, snow-dusted light of February, when you’ve had a few weeks to work out what you really want to do with the year.

I did create a list of 10 resolutions, the first day I sat back at my desk after the Xmas break; some I have put into action already, others I haven’t – yet. I’m not beating myself up about these, because I see that list as a plan of action, a work in progress as much as my other WIP. The time for self-reproach will be the end of the year, though I’m determined that, this year at least, that won’t happen.

On Monday I published my first Suite101 piece since the Great Article Purge of 2012. Many contributors appealed their deleted articles, and have had them restored, but I plan to (1) take a fresh look at each one I lost (more revisiting), (2) decide whether it really did deserve its removal from the site and, if so, (3) make it better.

I did Symptoms and Causes of Low Vitamin D, E and K first because it was the easiest one to tackle. The title of the disappeared version was “Symptoms and Causes of Low Vitamin D, Vitamin E and Vitamin K”. Even those with zero knowledge of search engine optimization (SEO) will appreciate the unabashed “keyword stuffing” here. The subheadings, too, were guilty. All products of the old days of SEO, when the content writer’s aim was to game the system by cramming as many keywords as possible into every piece. Of course, this led to stilted, unnatural prose – but hey, we were making money! Not any more. With the new, more sophisticated Google algorithm, we have to work a lot smarter for our ad revenue.

Image by PPDigital

I love it when a tennis match turns into an all-day event. I got up and had my breakfast early so I could watch (and later listen to) the Australian Open Men’s Final from Melbourne this morning – and was still engrossed in the battle (the longest Grand Slam tournament final by almost an hour) well after lunch. But what did I learn from this epic encounter that might help my WIP?

1) Max the drama
There were a dozen other things I could have done instead today – writing this blog, for example! What kept me glued to the screen/radio was the unfolding drama, the ups and downs, the clichéd but very apt “rollercoaster ride”. First one player ascendant, then his opponent, then a fight back; by the beginning of the fifth set, who could guess who would win and who would lose all? Both were close to exhaustion but still slugging it out, digging deep into their last reserves of strength to decide the conflict. I’d be happy if my plots were as gripping as this!

2) Get the crowd on your protagonist’s side
During that mammoth six hours on court, I’m sure both players were buoyed by their fans’ support. We naturally tend to root for the underdog, but we like to see our heroes triumph, too. Whether sports stars or fictional characters, we get behind people we can empathize with, which for writers means showing our character’s struggles while helping our readers understand their wildest dreams and greatest fears.

3) Never give up
Not much to add to this. If Djokovic had given up after the first set, or Nadal in the middle of the fourth, I wouldn’t be writing this now. And of course, the mantra applies not just to characters, but to would-be authors as well!

4) Pick up the pace between points
As a commentator pointed out, dilly-dallying by both players contributed to the record-breaking length of this match. I can’t say it detracted from my enjoyment of the tennis, but in fiction it’s a different matter! How many “epic” novels could be cut by half and be just as entertaining? Certainly, variations in pace are necessary – even the most heroic characters need a breather sometimes. But it’s always good practice to minimize the literary equivalent of ball-bouncing, towelling down and shirt-twitching.

Those are my take-home messages from today’s match. Have you learned any writing lessons from watching – or playing – sport? Let us know in the comments below.

Image by Jean Marc Cote

The effects of the Great Suite101 Content Purge continued to dominate the writers’ forums this week, as the appeal process swung into action. TPTB seem as happy to reinstate unjustly deleted articles as they were to remove them in the first place – and are are doing it almost as quickly, which is unusual for them! However, I wonder if the clear-out has put off some contributors, as the number of submissions to General Medicine has been well down this week; I saw considerably more new articles over Xmas and the New Year.

At least with the lack of new contributions I’ve had more time to plod on with the jazzing up of my topic pages. I realized this week that whoever set them up was a big fan of chiropractic. As I’ve mentioned before, the entire subject of cancer is crammed into a single subtopic, while chiropractic is split over half a dozen, some containing only one or two articles. I would point it out to TPTB, but with all the recent – and possibly forthcoming – changes to the site, they might have more important things on their collective mind.

My attempt to simultaneously learn HTML and create a Facebook landing page for my WIP also continues, though I wouldn’t describe it as a plod. In fact, it’s quite exiciting, tweaking the code then switching to the preview to see whether my clumsy fumblings have had the desired effect (though only, perhaps, if you are easily excited). The styles and fonts and colours etc. are now all in place – I just need to think of some words to put in there.

Image by Jez Arnold

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth among Suite101 contributors this week, after admin deleted almost 50,000 articles that no longer complied with the site’s publishing rules (which have become rather more stringent post-Panda). Some compared the purge to “Stalinist Russia”, though Suite writers have been calling for months for TPTB to cut the “dead wood” that might be dragging them down in Google’s rankings, so I don’t see how people can complain too much.

I lost 9% of my articles, which – going by posts on the writers’ forum – seems about average. I guess I might have been annoyed if the cut had taken me back below the 100 article line! There is an appeals process, but I won’t bother with that. I’d rather revisit, rework and resubmit.

I set up a Facebook page for my WIP this week. I’ve had a group for it for ages (with the grand total of one member – me!), but I’ve deleted that and the shiny new page now takes its place. I want to really jazz it up with a proper landing page, though to do that I will have to expand my very basic current knowledge of HTML. Another challenge, though one I think I’ll enjoy!

Image by Henrykus

In an attempt to pack more into each day, I’ve been getting up between six-thirty and seven this week. This may not sound much to many, but it’s a big deal for me – I normally detest being up before the Sun. I still do, but these extra few hours have allowed me to start work on my Suite101 topic information pages, which I should have finished months ago. Basically, all I have to do is find eight articles in each subtopic (and there are a lot of subtopics) to display in their respective Featured Articles boxes.

This is kind of enjoyable if, like me, you enjoy making lists and classifying things, but it’s not as easy as it might sound. Apart from finding sufficient articles of “quality”, every one of those articles needs to have a “compelling” image bigger than 466 × 347 pixels, and since these are health care topics, I think they should have good references, too. And they shouldn’t be too old, either, though some of my General Medicine topics seem to have been neglected for years. Has there really been nothing to say on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis since 2007? (A better question might be, why does amyotrophic lateral sclerosis have a section all to itself, when the whole of cancer also gets only one section?) I could write some articles myself, I suppose, but that would be self-promotion, which is another no-no.

Elsewhere, I’m continuing with the research for this year’s fiction project, which I plan to finish by the end of January (the research that is, not the project [laughs hysterically at the thought]). Although despite all those extra hours, I haven’t progressed as far as I would’ve liked due to a sudden rush of editing work. Good for the bank balance, but not so good for the WIP.

Image by Kevin Rosseel

What a difference a year makes. A little over twelve months ago, I was racing to reach the milestone of 100 published articles on Suite101.com – and the associated ad-share revenue bonus – before the end of 2009. Then February rolled around and Pandemonium broke loose. Anyone who knows anything about web content writing will have heard of Google’s “Panda” algorithm change, the one designed to reward quality over quantity, authorities over generalist magazine sites.

And why not? Unlike many Suite101 contributors, I have no issues with Google, and I don’t believe that the men behind the world’s biggest search engine have a personal vendetta against the site. The harsh truth is, why should any internet search engine – or any reader – favour my little health and wellness articles over the work of experts at, say, the Mayo Clinic?

I can’t speak for others, but that realization certainly had an impact on my content-writing practice. Since February, I have produced exactly one article per month for Suite101 (compared with the required four per month previously), and have shifted my output from overviews of various conditions and disorders to more newsy pieces based on recent research. At the same time, I became one of the many Feature Writers who volunteered for the role of “Topic Editor”, tasked with cleaning up the site in our respective fields. With further changes promised in 2012, however, it’s hard to guess what form Suite101.com will take a year from now.

At least Suite survived the Panda attack. Poor old Bright Hub is no longer accepting submissions at all (except in a few “core areas” such as technology and business). Which is a shame, because it was pretty cool being a Space Writer. My old articles are still viewable on the site, though for how long I don’t know.

The time I would have spent on Bright Hub this year I hope to instead devote to Decoded Science. This newish site covering all the “ologies” (and some areas I wouldn’t consider science – but hey, that’s just me) is on the rise and I was very pleased to be accepted as a contributor to the biological sciences section. I can’t help feeling that I could have put in more effort, though, and getting more involved in the site is a definite New Year’s resolution.

As for my fiction writing, exciting new things are afoot (aren’t they always?); 2011 was the year I – like a lot of people – finally smelled the self-publishing coffee, and realized that the “traditional route” isn’t the be-all or end-all of getting one’s creations out into the world. More on this to come, but I’m already feeling hopeful about 2012. This could be a great year for Scribblings!

Image by Antonio Litterio

I feel that I should print out this blog post by Joanna Penn and glue it to my laptop or forehead or something. Ten thousand ebook sales in six months, and without much of a fiction author platform to begin with. I am inspired! So why don’t I power on with my own work-in-progress?

I need to remind myself of all my fellow would-be writers who would love to find time to write, when I can factor writing time into my working week. All those who would love to have a place to write, when I have an office in my home (albeit a small, yellow room that smells of cat wee). And those who would love to have the blessings of an uncooperative family, when I have a hubby who supports me in all I do (and don’t do).

I need to remember how fortunate I am, and make the most of it!

Image by Grafixar

I recently got back the marks for my latest Open University assignment. I’m doing a general science module this year (compulsory for the Natural Sciences degree I might obtain some time this century) and last month’s topic was biology. Disturbingly, despite my background in zoology, I scored lower on this assignment than on any other so far. But hey, biology must have changed a lot over the last twenty years…

Anyway, answering all those questions on natural selection inspired me to write an article on evolution for Decoded Science, a new website featuring more ’ologies than you can throw a stick at. (You might want to check it out if you’re an “interested observer” – I have only three articles up at present, so it should be easy enough to avoid anything written by me.) Much time and effort later, I had hammered out a deathless piece of prose entitled Evolution in Action: Three Experiments Demonstrating Natural Selection. And would you believe it, within ten minutes of me uploading the article, it had been linked to from an anti-evolution site. It got me loads of page views, but maybe not the kind I want to encourage.

And people think I’m crazy. Readers of this blog, for example. Like the recent commenter who took the trouble to explain what the Bus Maths poster means. Perhaps I should display a disclaimer – I don’t really believe that the Oxford Bus Company is conspiring with aliens, or that Apollo 17 astronauts found C-3PO’s head on the Moon. I just enjoy amusing myself in a mental world that’s a little weirder, a little more outré than the one I inhabit. But I can tell the difference!

And now I’m off to draft an article on Ancient Mesopotamian astronomy – with nary a mention of Nibiru and the end of the world next December!

Image by Poxy