Juniper Ink.

I don’t know how to spell colour. Or color. And I’m not sure what to do about neighbourhood. Do I go to the theatre or the theater? These are some of the questions at the center, or centre, of my recent blogging dilemma.

I am Canadian, so one might think I would just carry on the spelling I was taught in school. But, since graduating from university, I’ve been working in technical documentation, where the standard has been, almost exclusively, to use American spelling. Most of the software products I’ve written about have been targeted at American users, so it makes sense to drop the needless “u” in so many words. Even when the target audience is Canadian, it is still standard to use US spelling.

At my first writing job as a summer student at the Ontario Lottery Corporation, we followed Canadian Press style, which dictates that the American spelling of words is used. So, even at a crown corporation in Ontario, Canada, with publications geared strictly towards Canadians, I had to get used to spelling words the way our neighbours/neighbors to the south do.

So, when writing professionally, I’m pretty much American. But, I have made it a point when writing non-professionally (for example, personal e-mails, creative writing, dealings with public administrators and local businesses, Christmas cards, grocery lists, and so on), to use Canadian spelling. This usually involves going back after a piece is written to change the words, since I’m so used to the American way. I do this to keep up my knowledge of how we spell things here and because the people I typically deal with personally would call me on it if I didn’t do so. I really like to be right. And being right means spelling things properly depending on when, where, why, and for whom they are written.

But now I’m blogging, and it’s a bit of a gray/grey area. Blogging seems to be a mix of professional and non-professional writing. A blog can be read by anyone, anywhere. In that regard, it makes most sense to use American spelling. Not doing so can even affect page ranking in searches. You might be an expert on fibre optics in Canada, but people won’t find you if they’re searching for fiber optics. This blog is to talk about writing and show people (prospective clients) how I write. With that in mind, American is the way to go here (since I’m targeting a professional audience in both Canada and the US). I have another blog that talks about my neighborhood and presumably has only local readers. I could probably get away with using Canadian spelling there. But, the readers are used to reading American online and in print news, so I might just stick with American there as well. I may just give up on “u” entirely.

Who says Canadians have identity issues?

I find myself asking that question often lately. Work is keeping me very busy so it is hard to find the time or energy to write in the evenings–to write stories, to update this blog, or work on freelance assignments.

But, my job is as a Technical Writer, so at least I get to write all day long, right? Wrong. The past week, for example was extra busy and stressful, and long (I logged well over 40 hours, and there were two vacation days and a stat holiday in there), and I doubt I even wrote one sentence.

Some days, I think that the “technical” in my job title refers not to the subject matter and not to the tools we use daily, but to “all the little technical things we need to do that aren’t writing but are necessary to get the documentation ready.” Typically, this includes formatting, compiling, testing, fixing broken links, creating PDFs, indexing, and building Tables of Contents. Where I work now, there is also the task of prepping the content to be translated into multiple languages. This involves, scripts, tweaks, tools for packaging up the docs, tools for sending the docs, and answering the translators’ questions (that may come from a dozen different translation centres in different countries). As a colleague of mine has said, “it’s time consuming, not mind consuming.” It’s mind numbing, in fact, and it can eat up much of the time scheduled for actually documenting new features. But, it is necessary and part of working for a large, international company. Fortunately, I’ve pretty much wrapped up that part, for now. I have a busy week ahead of trying to catch up on the writing I didn’t get to do last week. In the next couple of weeks, the new features will all be documented and I’ll start getting it all prepped for the next translation round.

Outside of work, I’m trying to get another blog up and running and again I’m finding myself bogged down a bit with the technical details (Wordpress themes, plugins, widgets, RSS feed details, analytics, and so on) and wondering when I’ll get to just write.

Some days I wish for the old electric typewriter I used when I learned how to type in grade 9. Then, I could just write. No links, no 404 errors, no spam. But, also no copy & paste and no undo…technology is not all bad.

Although I’ve dabbled in short-story writing on and off since elementary school, I’d never read much short fiction for some reason. Until now. I’ve been reading a bunch of it online (mainly contest winners and stories posted on writers’ Web sites and blogs). And, I received three books of short fiction for Mother’s Day (along with a great scarf).

I’ve really been enjoying the short stories, for a few reasons.

They’re short.

Many of them are very short, so I can start and finish an entire story online while I scarf down my lunch.  Others are a bit longer, but I keep them by the bath and squeeze in one story in a night or two. They’re low commitment and I don’t have to re-read several paragraphs, or pages, to figure out where I left off, as I often am forced to do with novels.

I’m getting a lot of good ideas for my own stories.

People turn the most basic things into stories and it’s made me realize that I have more plausible stories in my head than I thought. The very short stories (flash fiction, sudden fiction) seem to me to be more like personal essays in many cases. In stories under 1000 words, or even under 750 or 500 words, there isn’t much room for character development or setting development, so I imagine that many of these stories are really based on one small, real-life event. I have plenty of small, real-life events to draw upon.

Some of the stories are really, really good.

Three that I’ve read recently were so powerful that they are still gnawing at me and when I was done reading them, I was left with that same void you often feel after finishing a really good novel. These stories were longer, so there were strong characters. And at the end of the stories, I was sobbing, empathizing with the characters, and wishing I could write stories like that. These three stories are in an anthology of short stories by top Canadian writers (selected and introduced by Jane Urquhart), so high quality was expected, but I was surprised by how I felt after reading the stories.

Check out The Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories for some great reads.

I recently received word that I won an honorable mention for my entry in the Spring 24-Hour Short Story Contest run by Writers Weekly. I was excited because I was generally pretty happy with the story after writing it.

Honorable mention stories are not published on the contest site, but you can still see my name in lights. Scroll down to the Honorable Mentions section and about half-way down you’ll see “This Garden by Jennifer Smith Gray, Toronto, ON, Canada.” Oh, and while you’re there, you should read the winning entries.

Cash and book prizes were given to the top three winners. The 28 honorable mention winners received a one-year subscription to The Write Markets Report (a monthly list of paying markets for writers) and a single e-book of from the prize page. There were a number of e-books of interest. Many of them are about freelance writing, in general. I chose Make Money Writing for Niche Markets. I thought it might inspire me to try out some specialized writing (and to find niches that I might not realize that I actually know about!). I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, so we’ll see.

I think I might enter the summer 24-Hour Short Story Contest. I wasn’t going to do so because it’ll really mean losing half a weekend in the summer, and those are so precious. But, I’m feeling a bit inspired by the honorable mention, so perhaps I’ll try to put aside some time for it. It’s a fun process and you’re forced to finish the project right away, which is always a good feeling.

When I was researching Search Engine Optimization (SEO) writing, I wrote a sample article to try out some of the concepts. I could have just posted the article here, on this blog, but instead I decided to try out another area of online writing that I was curious about. So I posted the article on an online content site. There are many of these sites live now, some of the more common ones being About, Examiner, Demand Studios, Helium, and eHow. These are all sites where individuals post content and earn some kind of revenue from the content. The sites all have different rules, different payment models, and different levels of quality standards.

The site I chose was Bukisa.com. I had never heard of it until I looked around for somewhere to post my article. I chose Bukisa mainly because they pay Canadian writers (many sites pay for work from US residents only) and because I didn’t know much about it (I’ve heard lots about most of the others).

Bukisa pays per views of the articles (whereas some other sites pay per ad clicks on your article pages). This seems like a better way to go, to me. Every time someone views the article, it counts, not just if they happen to click on one of the adds. Bukisa does not review the content at all–I uploaded it myself and was off to the races. Some sites do monitor for quality.

Bukisa is also a bit different from other sites in that you can set up networks and earn revenue off the articles of others in your network. They suggest you send out a mass email to your contacts to get others to sign up as part of your network. As with all of these sites, the key is to promote the articles to have people view them.

My findings

I posted my somewhat crummy test article on Bukisa.com. That’s all I did. I did not (and will not) send out an email to everyone I know asking them to join my network, and I won’t be promoting the article because the effort likely won’t pay off to any great extent and because it’s not really a great article, so why do I want people reading it? But, posting the article did enable me to see some of the SEO techniques I had learned in action.

Without any promotion (I haven’t even told one person), my article has had 36 views to date, and I have $.08 build up in my account. So, years from now, maybe I’ll make $10 off the article.

I know people who provide a lot of content for these types of sites. Some make money on it. It doesn’t seem to me, in most cases, that they make enough money for the effort required to write and promote the articles. Some just crank out article after article to improve their revenue. Many of these people are not writers, but have found an easy way to make money (albeit, at a low rate) by writing. As a result, these sites are overloaded with not-so-quality writing by writers and non-writers alike. And it’s often these not-so-quality articles that come up first in Internet search results.

Suffice it to say, I’m not a big fan. I think these sites are over saturating the Web with poorly written, and often unresearched or unverified content. It enables everyone to be “a writer” but it doesn’t do much for the quality of the writing out there. Of course, this is a generalization. There are some good articles out there, written by writers. But I think, as a rule, the more reputable, well-researched, and quality articles would be found on established news sites, established niche sites, on the writers’ own sites, and in print.

For interest’s sake, to see what I’ve been talking about, you can check out my quickly-churned-out article about Taylor Creek Park in Toronto.

Over the past week or so, I’ve been learning about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) writing. There is an abundance of information about it online, obviously. The articles that I read are by the better SEO writers, I guess, since they’re the ones that showed up at the top of my Google search results.

I also took an SEO writing course at work. We need to consider search results and the retrievability of information in our documentation, which is presented in online information centers, so SEO is something I need to start thinking about while writing at work.

What I learned
The goal of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to improve the ranking of Web content in search results. Web users tend to click on the first several results of a search, so sites that manage to turn up there will have more viewers. Web search engines such as Google use algorithms to determine rankings for Web sites and pages, and the rankings in turn determine where the sites show up in the results. Through the use of various writing, tagging, and linking strategies, you can attempt to ensure your pages turn up in the first pages of a user’s Google search.

Here are some of the SEO techniques writers can use:

• Include keywords and keyword phrases that searchers are likely to use when looking for information.
• Use appropriate tags that include keywords (but don’t overdue it—Google will penalize you for that).
• Use keywords in titles, headings, and site abstracts-these are what users see in Google before deciding whether or not to click on the link.
• Use keywords in the first sentence and near the end of the visible text.
• Place keywords throughout the rest of the content (again, don’t overdue it).
• Include keywords in anchor text of links used on the page.
• Use synonyms of keywords-there are tools that list appropriate synonyms to use for specific keywords.
• Spell out acronyms, as users are more likely to search on the full term.

This is just a start-there are many more things to think about when writing or revising content for optimization. There are also more advanced linking strategies to consider (for example, the ranking of a site depends on the number of other sites that link back to that site).

What I think, so far
In theory, SEO writing is straightforward and it relies on some of the same qualities that are required for good technical writing, especially clarity and good structure. But, I wrote a sample piece and I found it to be an awkward process with a result that also seems awkward, simple, and lacking natural flow. It was just one quick-and-dirty sample, but I guess it means that I need to work on it if this is something I want to do.

But, I don’t know that it is something I want to do. At least, I don’t think I want to do it just to do it (as seems to be the case with many of the freelance SEO writer roles I’ve been reading about where quantity more than quality is the goal). I don’t like the idea of writing just to be read, online. I understand the value of SEO writing as a marketing tool, and I will certainly apply the concepts I’ve learned to any online writing that I do (for example, in this blog post, I normally would have just used “SEO” in the title, but now that I know that Google likes it when you spell out acronyms in titles, that’s what I did-not a big deal). I will try to use more subheadings and keywords (likely implemented after I’ve written a piece, not as a primary concern while writing it).

But, I would hope that what I write has a larger purpose than just to turn up at the top of search results. I hope that it at least instructs, informs, or amuses. Landing the top results should be just one by-product of good online writing. If being read was my number one goal as a writer, I certainly would not have been a technical writer for so long. But, I know that SEO is very important now—if people aren’t viewing a site, then they’re not learning what the site is teaching, or reading the story the site is telling, or, most importantly, buying what the site (or its advertisers) is selling. So, although good, purposeful writing, will still be my goal, I will continue to learn more about, and put in to practice, Search Engine Optimization writing techniques.

Stay tuned—in my next post I’ll talk about my sample SEO piece and what I did with it. Hint: In seven years, it might net me $4.65 in earnings.

I finished my story for the Writers Weekly 24-hour short story contest with about 20 minutes to spare. Fortunately, I realized that 2pm Central time is actually 1pm local time, not noon as I originally thought. I did come up with an idea early–actually, immediately after reading the topic for the story. Within about an hour, I had a “first draft” done, short an ending. But I struggled to find the ending, or to get it out. I spent a lot of time on Saturday night and Sunday morning trying variations. The contest rules specifically stated “have a good ending,” so I wanted to get it right. I agree with their thoughts that short stories often start out with a bang, and then fade out at the end.

I had my husband read it over a few times and he pointed out some continuity and clarity issues. Actually, he didn’t get what the story was about at all the first time he read it, which indicated some obvious gaps. But I think I was able to fill them effectively, while remaining within the 900-word limit. I think my style tends to leave too much to the reader to assume. I really try to live by the “show, don’t tell” mantra, but once in a while, it is actually better to just tell, because the reader might not see what you show the same way you see it.

Immediately after clicking Send, I thought of a few simple changes that would have helped, but, it was too late, and they were probably sufficiently minor to not be an issue. If I resubmit the story elsewhere, I’ll make those changes. I’m generally happy with the story. It’s a bit darker than what I would normally write– I believe “creepy” was the term my husband used, and I was thrilled with that descriptor. I think my stories, although generally well-constructed, tend to be a bit boring and predictable.

But I’m working on that, and the contest this weekend was a good exercise. It did take up more time than I had expected it to, but it got me writing. I think a 48-hour contest might be better for me than a 24-hour short story so I don’t have to give up a whole Saturday and Sunday morning. But, then I might just end up doing even more tweaking and lose two whole days!

Months ago I entered a 24-hour short story contest. It starts today at noon Central time (2pm local time). At that time, I’ll find out, in an email or by checking online, the topic and maximum word count for the story. It has to be written and submitted by noon Central time the next day.

I don’t know how much time this contest will take up this weekend. It really depends on the word count and whether I come up with a decent idea right away. In the past, I’ve done some good writing with little time to think about ideas (for example, my timed writing assignments in university, and some other group writing assignments I’ve done since then). I hope this is the same, that I see the story’s theme and immediately know what to write. When this happens, I ususally can write it up quickly and do a few revisions, but ultimately don’t spend too much time on it.

The hardest part for me, and what often holds me back from writing more, is coming up with ideas. So, I like it when someone gives me a theme or idea, and I have to write to that. We’ll see what happens this afternoon. The 24-hour short story contest is through Writers Weekly, a freelance writing ezine.

I finally have a live writing Web site and blog. It took me about 6 hours over the course of two nights. There wasn’t too much to it, although the site is pretty basic right now. I’ll explore more features (widgets, plugins, etc.) later.

This is what I did:

1. I read a few articles online about how to get started with a WordPress blog. Mainly, I found everything at The New Ultimate Guide to Migrating from Blogger to WordPress (since my original plan was simply to move over and continue my personal blog) and A WordPress QuickStart Guide: WordPress Hosting and Installation.
2. As per the instructions, I obtained my domain name (I already had it picked out and was happy to see it was available.) This was quick and easy.
3. I briefly attempted to just use the free, limited hosting capabilities that came with the domain registration, but I realized that wasn’t going to get me very far. I figured that if I’m going to make a serious attempt to learn all this stuff, I needed to get real hosting. So I did. This was also quick and easy. I knew that I’d be using WordPress, and I’d read that Bluehost’s administration tools include an easy WordPress installation, so that made sense to me. I was kicking myself for not just using their domain registration from the start to save money, since it is included with the hosting, but I have since learned that that was actually a good thing. Apparently you never want to have your domain registered by the same company that hosts your site because if you decide to switch hosts later, it might lead to problems with your domain.
4. I installed WordPress.
5. I quickly browsed through several WordPress themes and decided on and uploaded Atahualpa 3.2 by BFA WebDesign. I wanted something relatively clean looking, with the flexibility to have three columns.
6. Finally, I played around with the theme. I rearranged a few things, added a few widgets, created some pages, and put up links. It’s a quick-and-dirty place to start, and now I can get on with the writing, while I continue to enhance the site.

What I should have done differently:

I would have saved some time if I’d read more instructions, especially for using Wordpress (and uploading files using FTP). But, figuring these kinds of things out is what I’ve been doing for a living (as a Technical Writer) for the last 13 years, and it’s a tough habit to break. I know that some writer was paid to write instructions for users like me (and many more people have blogged and written even more instructions just for fun), but trial and error and fiddling around is more fun, and a pretty good way to learn.