Postcards from the Funny Farm

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Thanks to Joanna at Confident Writing for offering this group writing project to her readers. I’ve been in love with writing from an early age and it is exciting to share about that on my blog. From making money publishing things to writing a random blog article describing how light and shadows fall, I have too many writing memories to share in one post. Having said that, here are two childhood accounts I’ve selected that started my love affair with writing.

I was an early reader of Dr. Seuss books such as: Hop on Pop, One Fish Two Fish … etc. At age 3 or 4 I was reciting each page to my mother and father as they read with me. In retrospect, I was probably just memorizing what they said and saying it back. But I got a lot of attention from that and that is why I think I continued to read so much as a young kid. Parents would do well to make a note of that. My first memory of getting recognized for writing was in fourth grade. Mrs. Van Diemen (pronounced Van demen) pulled me aside one day and asked me about a paper I had written. This was one of those papers where you use a vocabulary list to insert words that are new to you. I would look them up and then build a story with the new and mysterious words I had just learned. I don’t remember much about it but I do recall it was about a trip to my grandparents’ house for Thanksgiving. I remember one sentence used two vocabulary words: “tranquil” and “serene.” Anyway, she was very impressed with it and she was the school’s “GATE” coordinator (Gifted and Talented Education). She recommended me then and there for GATE and I remained a GATE student throughout my K-12 education. I didn’t always live up to the branding, but I was labeled just the same.

My next memory of writing was for when I wrote a short story that was published for the Orange County Fair competition. I was a few years older and the writing this time was a short story based loosely on the Wind in the Willows. They apparently saw no connection and crowned me for a weekend. I had a picture and story on me in the paper and I got free tickets to ride the rides.

Between then and now writing has been my constant companion and friend. I contribute to my blog daily and online publications monthly and I have had one teaching story published in a book (that was a real thrill). These are not lofty accomplishments by most professional writers’ standards I know, but to me they represent a love affair that is still alive.

I know there are many people nowadays that want to become rich and famous through blogs or other writing endeavors. They meet in back dining rooms of Denny’s and share their writing with groups that critique and supposedly “help” one another other get published. To those I would clarify that even though payment is nice:

if compensation were the main reason I chose to write, I wouldn’t be doing it at all. To me the best payment is the therapy it provides along with positive feedback. Writing and being read makes me feel “seen” and “heard.” Writing in my blog every day is like sitting with a good friend on a country front porch talking about the way the light and shadow falls on things. And even just that is interesting enough to both of us.

The expression: “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water” seems especially appropriate for Google here at the beginning of 2008. I am no seo or blogging mmol genius but I do know a few things about logic and ethics and setting PayPerPost writers’ pagerank to zero is a choice lacking in both.

Under the guise of weeding out vacuous content from searches, they claim all blogs that have PayPerPost articles on them are less helpful than those who don’t and thus set their PageRank to zero. This is an example of a company thinking they will reinvent natural law to suit them because they can, not because they should. It’s going to bite them, the internet did not evolve to this point to be defined by one company.

I recall when I first got into using Google, it seemed like such a cool enterprise. The page was white with no ads and it had applications that were all utility, no fluff (ie; analytics, gmail …). Now, they have decided they know based on one criteria if a blog is helpful to the internet, this is ignorance at its height and I hope Google stops this practice. My how Google’s “feel” has changed for me.

As for me? I will continue to be a postie because it’s something I am good at and it’s something I profit from. That’s why Walt Disney, Rod Serling, Ray Kroc, Richard Carlso... did what they did. Last week I lost my PageRank of 4/10 when it was set to zero. I had a feeling this might happen when I read the news about what Google was doing to posties. But has my readership changed? It has gone up. Has my content changed? It has gotten better. The way I see it is this: Google figured the blogosphere would appreciate it if they targeted posties, and for the most part, they are probably right (check out Duncan Riley’s tone on Tech Crunch). But that doesn’t mean that weeding out all blogs with PayPerPosts on them will increase the value of a search. In fact, in many cases, it will keep good information out of a search. Is the only information we want on the internet that which is written without compensation? You might as well stop watching TV as far back as I Love Lucy.

To quote Michael Stipe: “It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.” Emphasize: I feel fine.

I predict Izea (PayPerPost’s rebranding) and SocialSpark will revolutionize rankings in 3-6 months. You can come and tell me I was wrong if they don’t, but as for now I am making sure I focus 100% on my idea of what a good ranking is:

1. Monthly Traffic Goals
2. Inbound links
3. Comment counts, and
4. Quality content (paid or unpaid)

If I can succeed in these areas (which I can and do already) then I’ll take my PR0 with pride and look to other ranking systems like Izea’s RealRank to determine how I’m doing. To my fans/readers: fear not, I am neither down nor out. I will get better through moving away from Google’s PageRank system, not worse. Whether you like PayPerPost or not, I hope you see how throwing every blog out that uses it is harmful to the blogosphere.

Now, to close, I have a question and I promise not to pigeonhole you or throw YOU out if I don’t like your answer:

What do you think about Google setting blogs to zero for participating in PayPerPost?