September 1, 2010: Yesterday I bought “Problogger” Darren Rowse’s new e-book, The Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers, and I’m about half-way through it now. There’s a lot of copywriting tips plus some questionnaires for (1) the blog, and (2) each post, plus the scorecard near the end of the book. After I bought it yesterday he added an expanded version with about fifty more pages, so I downloaded that late in the day.
All that information inspired me to make new spreadsheets to organize my blogging. My spreadsheet for this blog has a page for the blog questionnaire and my marketing plan plus blog post ideas (everyone needs a place to do some brainstorming.) I put my new mission statement at the top of that page in large letters, to remind me of what my intended focus here is. I’m going to keep my intent secret for a while yet because I need to do a lot of writing before the site will be organized in exactly the way I want it to be. I have learned that it can be humiliating to announce my intentions online too soon. Life is full of surprises! (And that’s a good thing!)
The other two pages in my spreadsheet are for keywords – especially those used by people who actually found this site via search engines over the last six months, and for the questionnaire the e-book suggests for each blog posting. It forces me to focus on being aware of what’s good for this blog, and to stay centered on the main purpose.
Today when I got into my blog control panel to find keywords I discovered that a scammer/spammer had infiltrated the SMF message board I had on the site. I spent the rest of the afternoon deleting that message board (which I wasn’t using, anyway) and even had to email my server’s customer support to delete the offensive directory the person was using for some nefarious activity. Anyhow, that’s done, and I’ll be looking through every other site I have for any similar infiltrations. I like to run a clean ship!
September 3: I’m happy… I finally have my children’s literature site ready for submissions! This is such a huge step forward! I also now have a handy place to post some of my children’s stories and illustrations, and to publicize my novels (once they’re published).
September 10: I finally made a new lens at Squidoo a few days ago – one I like a lot. It is Top Ten Classic Space Music Composers. Space music, also called ambient music or atmospheric music, is gentle, soft, mood music that promotes peace and serenity. Stop by the lens for some good samples and my list of ten very well-known pioneers of space music.
I’m still struggling with the virus – waiting for the tech to get to me… there’s such a long waiting list, but these people are volunteers, so what can you say? In the meantime I got new memory cards for my Dell computer and am using that instead of the eMachine. And hey, despite the smaller screen, I’m really liking being back on my Dell. I bought this in 2005 with my income from the webdesign company I used to own. After I closed it I converted the site into a blog that helps people who are thinking of starting a webdesign business.
Oh my, there are cats howling in my yard… in harmony!
September 20: My other computer still has a virus – but I’m now getting tech help with it. Meanwhile this computer, virus-free *yay* is here for me to get some work done on… and it has always been a good computer that way. I bought it in 2005 with money I earned from my (then) webdesign business.
This weekend I made five lenses – which is rather unusual for me; I often do none! So, inspiration hit and I created three book lenses, one writing lens, and one movie lens.
Let’s start with the movie lens. I rarely watch classic movies, and it has occurred to me that I should watch more of them as reviews of them may become good web content. So I wrote The African Queen – Starring Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. It is a fantastic adventure movie released in 1951 – a year before I was born. Shot on location in Uganda and the Congo – as well as in studios in Los Angeles, London and Florida… quite an adventure. Katherine Hepburn also wrote a book about the adventure of making the film in Africa with Bogart, his partner Lauren Bacall, and others.
Book lenses – I said I wasn’t going to create any more… and then I turned around and did it anyway. I should just keep my mouth shut! You see, most of my book lenses are ne’er-do-wells. Still, there’s that one very successful lens I made, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, that is often my #1 lens. It gets lots of attention whereas others linger near the bottom of my list. Currently it is the #1 lens at SquidLit. Well, I decided to make a few new ones anyhow. They are:
(1) The Alchemist and The Executioness which is an audiobook I recently listened to – available only through Audible. I appreciated the two novellas by Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias S. Buckell – and made the lens to list some of their other longer novels. Great writers!
(2) A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, which I read last winter. I started the lens way back then too, but didn’t finish it until Saturday. What was I waiting for? For the flood of inspiration to overtake me? Well, it finally did, so the lens is now published, in time for people to see it this Christmas.
(3) The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner – which I did in less than an hour last night; I need to go back to the lens and write more about the book today; what I’ve got there is pretty lame… but it is a start. I’ll improve it right away.
Okay, aside from all that, I finally finished my lens on Flash Fiction which has been sitting in my WIP (works in progress) area for over a year. I really want to get all the WIP lenses done this year. I have a ways to go. I felt I didn’t have the inspiration to finish the flash fiction lens, but then yesterday, accidentally published it! Aaarrgh! So I went ahead and wrote the rest of it because I didn’t want to have an unfinished published lens.
So it was a busy Squidoo weekend for me. That is one place where my writing has a chance to become profitable… though it can take many months for a lens to start bringing in the bucks.
September 30: I’ve been so busy these past ten days! I started something at SquidU called the WIP Wipeout Challenge. This is a special thread at the SquidU forum for those of us who have too many WIP (work in progress) lenses. I started with 30 lenses and my goal is to either delete or complete them all before the end of the year. So far I’ve deleted two and completed four, so I’m down to 24 WIP lenses. It is kind of fun working on these lenses with a group.
In all, during the last ten days I’ve made six new lenses – four WIPs and two I started and finished right away.
(1) I first heard of the Alphasmart Neo almost ten years ago during my second year doing NaNoWriMo. I wanted one immediately, but it wasn’t in my budget. That sad situation lasted several years. I finally got one a few years back and wrote this lens to tell people how much I love my Alphasmart Neo! It’s a great little writing instrument that weighs almost nothing and is easy to take anywhere.
(2) I am a frequent Netflix watcher. Recently I ordered a documentary about Dr. Bronner’s Magic Castile Soaps, and was so inspired by the history of the company and in particular, the philosophy of the eccentric Dr. Bronner, I made a lens about him: Dr. Bronner, Soap Maker and “All One God Faith” Philosopher. What an amazing character. I love using his soaps!
(3) The next lens is on a very serious topic: divorced or separated parents who call CPS to complain about one another. This is a very dangerous practice so I made the lens to explain why it is something that shouldn’t be done. Disputes between separated parents should be taken to family court instead. CPS isn’t a convenient shortcut! I run a large family rights website that advises people caught in the Child Protective Services quagmire. I use Squidoo lenses to impart more focused information to the people who use my site. My new lens, Divorce, Separation, Child Custody, and Child Protective Services (CPS) is especially for divorced and / or separated parents who aren’t getting along well enough to decide custody matters amicably.
(4) My next lens was in WIP status for a few weeks as I re-read a book I loved as a teen, Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse. On the day I made the lens my dear Bob and I discovered that the 1972 movie was online at Netflix in the “Watch Instantly” section. We watched together and then I finished the lens. What a beautiful and spiritual novel this is!
(5) This year there’s a whooping cough epidemic here in California. This lens explains what the disease is like, who is dying from it, and why our childhood pertussis vaccinations no longer work. Bob and I were shocked and dismayed at the video showing the suffering of a baby infected with whooping cough.
(6) Today I put together a WIP lens that’s been sitting on my Squidoo dashboard for about a year. Eep! This is a simple lensography of lenses made during Giant Squid Summer School in 2009. Since all the lenses are just over a year old it was fun to think about each of them. . . and why some succeeded and others are sleepers. Lessons learned!
So, that brings me up to date with my content writing. By the way, since it is the last day of the month, I’ll mention that this month my TOP lens was Vintage Beatles Albums – What Are They Worth. This is currently sitting at lensrank 134 on my Squidoo dashboard. I think it is a “fun” lens because it brings up current eBay auctions for all the Beatles albums released in the USA during the 1960s. You can see in real time what kinds of prices each album sells for.
So, that’s it for September. A great month for content writing!
