Boss Bean is Sick

Got word through our author's only Facebook group that Jo was in intensive care at the hospital. That comes as a big shock to all of us. We have come to rely so much on her and appreciate all the hardwork she puts in on our behalf. Whenever I've had a problem, Jo has always gone above and beyond to have to problem rectified.

To illustrate, this past year my son Wesley was offered a sneak peak at one of Andy Boerger's children's books in exchange for a kid perspective review. The initial review was done reading an ebook copy but he was supposed to get the hard copy in the mail later. That's where things got weird. Our address is just a wee bit hard to send packages to. It took some real hands on leadership from Boss Bean to get that done. I am grateful for her efforts and Wesley loves the book. Not only that Wesley has shown a stronger interest in reading ever since.  Who wouldn't want to do business with a publisher like that?

Without her at the helm though, a lot of us worry. She does so much to keep us in the loop that her absence is huge. Makes us all feel a bit adrift. Not a good feeling. Our prayers are with her. Hopefully she'll be back soon but not before she's ready to do so.

Bubblews is Dead, but MyLot Has Been Resurrected

A couple of days ago Bubblews abruptly disappeared from the Internet replaced by a brief announcement of closure complete with an excuse. I don't think anyone was really surprised. I describe it as one of the ugliest, most protracted writing site deaths in history. I retrieved most of my writing that I considered as having some value but not all. I got lazy. It isn't like I didn't know it was coming. I do feel for those who lost work there.

I migrated to Bubblews with a group of writing friends from a site called MyLot. At that time, they had a change of ownership and told us they would be making wonderful upgrades to the site. When the changes came, we liked them all except the part that we would no longer be paid anything for our content. We were hurt and upset, but at least it was done with some class. We were given ample warning, we weren't given the runaround, there was never a time when we couldn't retrieve our work and we were paid every last penny we were owed to that point.

I made infrequent visits back to the site out of curiosity. On my last visit, I got a surprise. The original owners have regained control of MyLot and have reintroduced the payment incentive since some time in August. It isn't nearly as lucrative as Bubblews was in its heyday, but we know that wasn't sustainable either. It does have it's advantages over the old Bubblews.

• 1) Payout is reached at a very reasonable ten dollars. I expect with my limited participation to hit payout every month.
• 2) The administrators are far more capable than the one's on Bubblews. MyLot's previous stint as a paying site lasted something like seven years and I don't think the old formula was the problem.
• 3) If you had lots of Internet friends on Bubblews, most of them are already writing on MyLot. I've known some of these writers for a decade or more and we do kind of look out for each other.

Quite a few of my real life friends and family joined the bandwagon on Bubblews. Some of them actually profited financially. I hope we all had fun until the wheels fell off. I'm writing this as a sort of public service announcement. No referral program exists on MyLot at this point although they did say it may be coming. At this point, I will gain nothing financially from friends and family who decide to give MyLot a whirl. I just want to make sure that any of you who might be interested won't get left out.

Website address is simply www.mylot.com

Grammar Nazis: My Thoughts

A reviewer on one of the sites I submit writing to recently wrote something that kind of boggles my mind. This person noticed a punctuation error in the first sentence in a piece I had just posted and stated that they would normally stop reading at that point, dismissing the entire thing. They praised the rest of the article. I'm not saying grammar and punctuation are not important but to reject something on the first perceived technical error that has no bearing on the content for me is a little over the top. I thanked the reviewer and corrected the error, but I still can't quite get this out of my mind.

If you are a grammar nazi, I like to think of you as a useful friend. I'm a storyteller first and a writer second. I deal in ideas, motives, plots and sometimes grammar and punctuation take a backseat. I need you guys to help me deal with my obvious weaknesses as a writer. If I'm dismissed on the first minor error, we haven't done each other any good at all.

I'm going to take this a bit further. I've been a member of writing.com for quite a number of years now. I have friends there that can write grammatically flawless rough drafts punctuated to perfection. When it comes to writing fiction, though, many of them struggle to create living breathing characters. The writing is often dead and boring. My daughter who is also a member of that site has noticed the same thing. Between us, we have written over 1400 reviews on that site alone.

The point is that we need each other. We creative types need help from those know the nuts and bolts of the language. Please don't look on me as some kind of lesser species because I struggle to correctly use commas. Keep reading and maybe you can learn something.

Doing Work in the Background

My spare time is spent right now doing background work to make my freelance writing efforts succeed in the long term.

I am studying to become a better copywriter. Some of my efforts show definite improvement. In a little over two weeks I wrote two articles on Hubpages. Both of those articles have been written with improving visibility of my writing in mind. The first one surpassed my all time Hubpages article view count in just over two weeks without social media promotion or even back links from my blogs. I'm impressed with the results. I'm hoping the second one follows the same pattern although I have begun promoting it. Links for both these articles are at the bottom of this post. If the subject matter is of interest to my readers, by all means click through and have a look.

I am also building files to help me work faster and more efficiently. I am uploading links for title swipe files, article templates and more. One of my biggest short comings as a freelancer is that I take way too long to write an article. If I am going to earn decent income from this, I need to produce material at a faster rate. I can do it. I think I can earn a side income that will stabilize our family finances from my writing. This should give me enough financial wiggle room to get my woodturning rolling as well.

For my readers. You should begin hearing more from me over the next month and beyond.

                                                        

How to Become an Effective Paid Forum Content Writer

This article outlines my methodology for creating and making a side income as a forum content writer.

How to Get the Most Out of Self-study Courses

Basic overview of how to succeed with self-study programs. Written as a test of what I've learned so far and to see how much difference it makes in regards to view count.

Writing Reboot

A lot has changed over the last several months, especially in regards to my writing. New to me equipment and new priorities.

Biggest and most painful change was shelving Pico's Cycling for the foreseeable future. I have every intention of bringing it back when circumstances change and allow it. In the meantime I will continue learning things that will make it better and more successful when the time comes.

My focus right now is on three things. The first is learning to be a better writer with an eye to turning whatever skill and talent I might have into a useful income. I'm not aiming at wealth but to try to stabilize our financial ship. We're scraping by but there are storm clouds on the horizon that worry me. I'd like to have a little bit more control over it. I am studying online material to help me out there. I've signed up for several freelancing sites and have done quite a bit of testing to qualify for better potential assignments.

Second area of focus is improving and writing on my own blog sites, including my Hubpages account and WDC. I can apply lessons I've learned and see what happens when I promote them. I don't have to worry about the monthly magazine format or deadlines. I may write some cycling articles that would likely be saved for a future issue of Pico's Cycling but I can temporarily run them on a different platform. Overall the intention is to produce more work rather than less.

Last but no least is my novel writing endeavors. I have to complete novel rough drafts to work with. Part of my time will be spent revising and editing them. I'm hoping to have at least one ready for my publisher to consider before the end of the year. Not sure how fast I can get the work done but as far as I'm concerned it can't happen fast enough.

I have some new hardware at my fingertips. My kids have passed down a more powerful laptop into my care. Francine also gifted me a keyboard for my tablet. This entry is written entirely on that sitting at Mc Donald's while I'm stuck waiting for the twins to finish work. When I finish I will email it to myself so I can put it on my blog when I get home. Putting it directly on the blog is still beyond my skill set. I like to check it over and add at least one picture and for now that only works on my laptop