Writing Gig

I'm trying something new. A got a tip from an e-friend about this website called the Examiner that hires writers for columns and pays them based on how many hits an article gets. (A penny a hit, so I'm not expecting to quit my day job!) They have several general rules to keep a consistent theme and look, to keep them from being a blogging site. And since the only serious writing I've ever done has been this blog I wasn't sure if I'd be a good fit. But I thought I'd give it try just to see. I filled out a long application and writing test, etc. After describing the subject matter they gave me the label of Seattle Faith and Agnosticism Examiner. So now I'm feeling my way through the process of expanding my writing style… sort of. I'm supposed to be less autobiographical, avoid using the word 'I', and strive to make points of fact rather than giving opinions. This is highly problematic for me since the point of my writing is to explore maybes, rather than declaring facts. The editors do recognize that the area I'm writing on is less about facts and more about exploration so they are giving me some leeway, and I'll continue to be honest about the fact that all the stuff I write is just stuff I think. But the articles need to be much shorter than my typical stream-of-consciousness philosophical meanderings. Because when I start a typical blog, I haven't sat down and thought about a theme, a conclusion, supporting claims, structure, etc. What happens is I think of one or two lines of an idea. I write it down, and that sparks other related ideas, and then it just snowballs as I think 'out loud' while typing. So trying to actually make articles with a point should be a good stretch for me.

I'm trying to figure out how to approach this thing… as far as what to write. I've decided I don't want to stop blogging here, because this is my journal and it has a lot of value to me, and I'm not supposed to journal on Examiner. I'm thinking I'll be reworking a lot of material from this blog and making it fit the Examiner criteria better. My goal is to simply start conversations about spiritual matters in a non-dogmatic context. We'll see how well it works out.

I'm also supposed to promote my articles on the various promoting websites like Digg and Reddit, etc. Which I don't know how I feel about. I've never really wanted to promote my stuff because I feel like it's a sort of declaration of how right I am and how important I am, etc. But then, the main reason I'm doing this Examiner thing is to get more people to talk to me about these issues, so…

Click here often to make me rich!!! http://www.examiner.com/x-19272-Seattle-Faith--Agnosticism-Examiner

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Epic Weekend

Image
Wow… I am worn out.  My team’s big project at work is live now, and we just released a big patch to fix some terrible difficulty spikes.  The last time we released Super Adventure Box: World 1 it got pretty universal praise.  (Which I put up here back in April)  Since then our founder/president has used it (Along with the Mad King Clock Tower I designed and built back in October 2012) as examples of content we release that raises retention rate, and therefore revenue.  So expectations were high for this World 2 release which came out on Tuesday.  The day after Labor Day and the Penny Arcade Expo.     Saturday (3 days before SAB World 2 launched) my company held a party at a hotel near PAX for fans, and my project, Super Adventure Box was the main feature.  We were running speed run competitions all night where players tried to be the first to get to the end of the new zones.  I ended up MCing the whole night.  I guess there...
Read more

Covid: 4 Years Later

Image
Before I begin let me quickly sketch the readers I'm writing this for, so you can decide if it's worth your 10 minutes. Firstly, this is for those of you who are at least somewhat sympathetic to people who are still worried about Covid and are sincerely curious why we are this way. I'm trying to present our case as coherently as I can, with references. (As well as I, a not-quite-professional writer can.) I'd like to convince you our stance is not based on fear, hypochondria, conspiracy theory, etc. But based on peer reviewed science. I'm also writing for myself and other folks who are taking Covid very seriously. I'm an ambassador by nature, so I like to facilitate understanding between groups where there is none. Many in my cohort simply cannot fathom how most of the world is not seeing the problem. Here's the agenda. First I'll quickly cover history of this pandemic, then some of what the science says about infectious disease and protecting ourselves....
Read more

A Covid Mask Prediction

Image
In speaking with several other covid conscious people I got a very nicely detailed prediction I wanted to record for posterity. They do not want to be credited with this out of concern for messenger-shooting. So I asked them if I could post it here anonymously and they agreed. Anon:"We are going to have mask requirements. I've done the math on all the possible interventions, and masks are the only one which can get the Rt down below 1 and actually stop the pandemic. Without masks, you can't do it; the other tools put together just aren't good enough (the best one, air filtration, maxes out at 80% effective, and so does Far-UVC, and this simply isn't enough with the infectiousness of Covid -- short-range transmission, which neither intervention stops, will keep it going at pandemic levels). Therefore we're going to get masks. I don't know how many maskless people will die before we get masks. But the math is inescapable. We start using respirator masks. Or m...
Read more