Back on Yahoo! Answers

July 14, 2008 at 7:43 am · Filed under Blogging, Internet, Yahoo! Answers

In the days when I was publishing a punk rock blog called State of Punk I used to use Yahoo! Answers as a way of directing traffic to my blog. I would simply answer a lot of questions under the music category and then link back to relevant articles on my blog where I could. It was moderately successful, but eventually I gave it up because it was a very time consuming pursuit.

Just recently however, I found myself browsing YA again. This time I was looking at the Books & Authors category. I noticed that there were an awful lot of folks in their community who were sporting a “Top Contributor” badge. Had I been using the YA community consistently, I’d likely have one of those by now too. Call me odd but I thrive for those little distinctions. They give me a short range target of sorts.

So, it was with that in mind that I began answering questions in YA under the Books & Authors category. I’ll likely be spending a good deal of time there in the near future. A writer can never turn down an opportunity to write and have his efforts rewarding by actually having their work read. The immediate feedback that you get, along with the voting and points system, all work together to make YA a fun place for me to hang out. Maybe I’ll see some of you there?

JMK

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Writing Fiction Again

June 12, 2008 at 6:00 am · Filed under Blogging, Books, Writing

Yesterday morning, after reading an email from my Stepfather asking about how my fiction book was coming along, I cracked open the three-chapter seedling of a novel and set about reading and writing. When a piece is still that short, I’ll read the entire thing before I write another word in order to attempt to locate the same groove that I was in when I wrote what is already there. Otherwise the transition can be a bit rough for the reader.

Anyhow, I already knew that I didn’t like the 3rd chapter. I had accidentally written myself into a scene that wound up being very complex when it was meant to be a short segue. The chapter is set in once scene, a single room actually. But because it is a meeting of several people from several agencies, I suddenly have to pay close attention to who is saying what in terms of what roles each agency will play later in the plot. I’m not talking about what clues are given out, because I’m not even to that point yet. I’m still developing the background story that will lead into the action of my plot. I’m talking about the dynamics of how each agency would interact. Suddenly I’m writing a police procedural, and I never meant to do that!

Anyway, after reading it over I decided that there was a lot of important information in this scene, so I’m leaving it as is for now. I know for sure that it will get polished four or five more times before I call the manuscript complete, so onward I go. I got about a third of the way into a new chapter, and stopped only because my children woke up and began organizing a strike in exchange for breakfast. They do that, they organize like labor unions. It’s scary. Don’t ever turn your back on your kids, they’ll eat your houseplants!

The best part about writing this new chapter is that it’s set out at sea. I find it completely relaxing to picture my characters toiling away out in the middle of the Pacific. I always loved being at sea myself. It never really seemed to matter how hard you worked during the day, as long as you could get ten minutes just to take in the vast and open void that surrounded you. There was a something reassuring about being so inaccessible to society.

I suppose that after I insert my keywords, pick my categories, and publish this blog post, I’ll go crack that manuscript open again and head back out to sea. Writing fiction is rewarding in varied ways from writing nonfiction but both — to me — are exhillerating.

Thanks for stopping by!

JMK

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Topical Focus

June 10, 2008 at 7:51 am · Filed under Blogging, Books, Military, Politics, Radio, Writing

Not to be confused with “topical fungus,” I’ve admittedly gotten a bit scatter brained lately with my posts. I never did want to put myself in a position where I would be pigeon-holed into writing about one single thing, and I still won’t allow that to happen. But I’ve gotten complaints from friends that my blog is too open ended.

Now of course, part of this is due to the fact that they don’t understand how I’ve been approaching the blog. I write about things that occur to me to write about, true. But I also write about things that I think or know will pull in some search traffic. Writing about holidays, for instance, is a good way to get a short term spike in traffic around that holiday. Similarly, I’ve noticed that when I blog about events that make the local news, I get a short spike in local traffic, the group of whom have proven far more likely to leave comments on my writing than random, international readers.

I’ve been spending some time on blog directories and widget maker websites in an effort to rev up my blog’s marketing campaign because I want to use it as a tool for promoting and discussing my book, when and if it comes out. One thing that I’ve consistently noticed while on these sites is the fact that I can almost never find a category that sums up my blog in a single word. Not that I want people generalizing about my writing with a single word, but it seems to be the modus operandi of blog related service providers that you categorize your blog with one, or a few words that never quite do the job alone.

The trick is to find a category that will hold most of your content in a relevant light. It’s a little bit like moving a grown tree with a wheelbarrow. It’ll get the job done, but you might be dropping pears all over the place when you move the tree. (Don’t ask. I’ve been coming up with some really odd imagery lately and I have no plans to feign an explanation.) So anyway, I’ve either got to convince the blog directories to include a broader list of categories, or I need to sharpen my pencil and hone in on the blog’s actual topic: Sailor turned Writer.

As such, for the next week or so I am going to make a concerted effort to stay in the realm of the book — Reading, Writing, and Publishing. There may be a story or two related to the military, because of that first word in the subtitle, “Sailor.” Anyhow, that’s my pledge for the coming week(s). I think it will benefit the blog and my readers alike. If you have comments on this decision, or requests for topics, please feel free to let me know.

JMK

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BT Radio’s Fate Uncertain

June 9, 2008 at 6:58 am · Filed under Blogging, Internet, Radio

Blog Talk Radio is not in trouble, don’t misread my title. As you can tell I didn’t record a radio show this week. This was partly due to having a lot going on and partly due to a minor round of depression this last weekend. I had made up my mind to completely remove the BTR badge from my site and CANEX (Cancel Exercise: military speak for the cancellation of plans or programs) the whole radio idea. This happens occasionally. I’ve very nearly CANEXed this blog before, we artists are fickle if nothing else.

I originally began the BTR radio show, Which sports the same title as this blog, mostly in order to leverage the archiving systems and the playback badge. I knew that it would be beneficial to my blog to have a multimedia option available for those readers who have short attention spans when they surf the web (don’t feel bad, I’m one of them too). Having that audio available, I figured, might just reduce my bounce rate a bit and encourage listeners to become readers.

It still may serve this purpose, but it’s clear to me now that the current format needs some tweaking. I’ve considered some changes but I haven’t made up my mind yet. I have thought about simply reading each post from the blog that week out loud and then soliciting responses from callers but that would almost certainly be dull. Anyway, my point with this post was to point out that I did not record a BTR show this week and offer a meager explanation for why.

JMK

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The Greatest Generation

June 8, 2008 at 9:23 am · Filed under Blogging, Government, Military, Politics

Well folks, it seems that I missed this one by a couple of days. Big surprise. Hell, I’m just now figuring out that there is a thriving military blogging community out there. (Of course I figured that there were service members who blogged, I just hadn’t stumbled upon a cluster of excellent examples — until now.) Anyway, as I have begun to stretch my tentacles further and further into the Internet and wrap them around the Blogoshpere — all in the process of researching the potential market for my book and blog — I have been learning many things.

Just this morning I was reading one of my new favorite military blogs, Eagle1’s EagleSpeak, when I found a short but sweet post about the 64th anniversary of the American invasion of Europe called D-Day: The Things They Fought For. I have always been fascinated by WWII, and if there were any other generation that I felt I should have been born to, it would have been theirs. Eagle1’s post was pretty short, but it spoke very much to way I feel about that war as compared to more recent wars, roughly beginning with Vietnam.

Now, it’s said that when it all boils down to the basic elements of life and death on the battlefield, soldiers most often recount that they fight for the lives of the men next to them. Even if they feel a strong sense of commitment to the political ideals behind their war, those sorts of issues tend to take a back seat to ensuring the immediate survival (and victory, preferably) of the associates that they have made and the friendships that they forged through concurrent service in battle. I believe this to be true, but this motivation is not related at all to the cause of a war. Even if the men fighting together in WWII hadn’t liked each other enough to fight and die in symmetry, they had plenty of high flung ideals to pick from as a secondary motivation: Freedom, Liberty, Democracy, Economy, Morality, and etcetera.

But just imagine how confused our service members must be today, serving around the World in support of a concept so slippery that even our nation’s leaders can’t quite seem to put their finger on it — or aren’t willing to. How many Americans ran out and enlisted in the military following 9/11? I don’t have hard numbers, but it was a ton of people. They joined up to fight terrorism and to affect vengeance on those who were responsible for the bloody deaths of so many Americans. Then, they found themselves in Iraq, securing and defending oil production in a nation completely detached from the War on Terrorism.

And then there are the men and women in Afghanistan. They were given what must have felt like a golden opportunity to be on the front lines of America’s new war, the War on Terror. It must have felt like they were on the precipice of a real accomplishment, something that would be taught in schools around the world. Only, once they got into the thick of it, they had to watch and endure as our Generals sent thousands and thousands of troops, who could have been there assisting them, off to Iraq in order to dethrone a dictator and safeguard his oil. Now, record petroleum prices seem to beg the question — what good has that done?

To them our policies must seem split, almost schizophrenic. It must feel terrible to be bound from doing anything qualitative towards accomplishing your given mission by scatterbrained policies and an inability for our uniformed leaders to commit to an actual plan of action on any front at all. America’s military might, coupled with the skill and valor of our warriors, knows no bounds. If we really wanted to get things done, we would have already! The war would have been made into movies by now. We’d be reading books about how we stomped out terrorism and installed stable democracies throughout the Middle East. Meanwhile, thanks to our fighting men and women having ensured safe and sustainable levels of oils production in that region, we would be enjoying ultra-low prices at the pump. But of course, we are not.

Anyways. I’ve gone on long enough. With the current political division facing our nation, most prominently embodied by the ongoing presidential election, it will be hard enough for our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines to find unit cohesion, why must we also continually knock down the larger motivations for their service as well? They know that they can’t simplify things and just say that they are serving the greater good, otherwise some of them would be fighting in places like Darfur, Tibet, Somalia, and so on. They can’t say it’s the War on Terror, because we’ve made next to no progress on that front and most of our combat resources have in fact been diverted away from that front in favor of Iraq. They can’t even say it’s for oil because, regardless of whatever progress they might have made, our fuel prices are skyrocketing. Either the Saudis are incapable of aiding us in this respect, or unwilling. Iraq though has certainly not eased that market in any way.

In remembering the service members who fought and died on D-Day — and on every other day of that war as well — I feel a tinge of desire for the availability of such motivations to our men and women fighting in uniform around the World today. It’s an extremely difficult task they have been burdened with. Regardless of the outcome, they deserve our gratitude, and even our awe. Let us never forget them. They do the right thing by serving, it is their leaders and our politicians who squander their pride and motivation. We the People love them, and will continue to honor them.

JMK

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