Morgajel.net

earlier this week I crossed the 50k line on Ziggy’s second book. As I ramp down on this and switch back to editing the first book, I’ve been thinking about the different categories of editing. There are several different groupings- Technical, Stylistic, etc… I’m sure there’s an official english language checklist somewhere, but until I find it, I’m gonna try and write them up.

Why? Because when it comes time for other people to edit my books, it would be nice if they kept these changes in mind and maybe color coded them so I’d be able to tell what is what.

Technical

• Spelling/Punctuation
• Sentence Structure
• Paragraph Structure
• Chapter Structure
• Book Structure

Fact Checking

• Consistent character naming
• Consistent timelines
• Consistent Distances
• Consistent motivations
• Consistent aging

Naming

• Map up to date
• Location names consistent with races/area
• Locations named
• Characters named
• ALL names pronounceable

Personalities

• Consistent character naming
• Consistent motivations
• Consistent aging

Perspective

• Maintain 1st person
• Clue reader in on Ziggy’s perspective, other party perspective, and reality
• Validate stretches of logic
• Explain moral choices

Let me know if I’m missing a group or need to flesh something out.

So a coworker just shared a fun story with me- His bank, we’ll call it Pursue Bank, had a nice little glitch in their payment system. when he tried to change how he paid his mortgage. Said bank then charged him not one, not two, but three mortgage payments against his checking account. Then charged him overdraft fees.

It’s nice to see someone else suffer from the bad code issues that I see on a weekly basis. The only downside is my mortgage is also through said company. Jackie and I have been thinking about refinancing since our interest rate could be a bit lower, so this was a good kick in the rear to get away from these guys.

Migration

Ok, so as the past two posts have hinted, Jackie and I have migrated most of our sites to a new host, Midphase. I compared 50+ packages to find a baseline for what we needed and rough cost. The initial round checked out

Disk Space, Monthly Traffic, Uptime SLA, Setup Fee, Price / month, SSH access, OS, MySQL databases, Dedicated IP addresses.

From there we narrowed it down to a dozen or so packages by eliminating overly expensive packages, bizarre limitations, required domain transfers, etc.

From there we checked Live Chat support, Statistic aggregators, Cron access, and Ad Credits.

The end result was Midphase- they had the features we needed, little chance of overrunning bandwidth or storage limits, and the best bang for buck value. Half our sites are already migrated, with OSC and Ian’s site next on the list.

NaNoWriMo

Also started NaNoWriMo this week- just hit 20k words around midnight. Last year I was closer to 30k words at this point, but I suppose it’s to be expected that I’m not as amped up about the second book in the series when I haven’t completed the first. It’s all good though- I’ll still power through it and get it done by christmas- that’s the goal, not sure how realistic it is.

Marble Maddness

One of the reasons I’ve been behind is Ian’s relatively new obsession with a marble maze- we bought him a $20 kit and he loved it. The only real problem was some of the parts that clipped togetherdidn’t give the included marbles enough clearance- either by poor design or manufacturing defect. anyways, I got it in my head to build him one. I started small- 12″x8″ zigzag and he went nuts. Within a few days he was asking me to build him a bigger one, which is what I’ve been working on. the new one is 30″x28″ and an absolute monster. Fortunately you don’t get Mesothelioma (lung cancer) from aluminum shavings, just Alzheimers (I’ve been cutting and shaving aluminum rails for the marbles to use).

I’ll have pictures when I’m done.

So the new move went well; LE is next up I suppose.

moving from unicron to our new host; using this site as a test. will be up sporadically.

Update: this is on the new host; testing updates

Search Engine Optimization is the process of making your website easier for people to find via search engines. There are two ways to go about this- designing your site in a way that maximizes the right traffic to your site, and trying to trick google into sending ANY traffic to your site. There are some scum sucking bottom feeders out there who do this- Not only does it destroy the usefulness of search engines (like spam does to email), but it will often get you blacklisted and banned from sites like google for bad behavior. The bottom feeders don’t care about long-term problems- they just want your rating to go up short term so they can take your money and run.

Now, there are some actual Search Engine Optimizers out there who can help you simply design your site in a way that makes it show up better- it’s akin to putting fresh paint up in a house you’d like to sell- it will attract more offers because it shows better. Sometimes it’s as simple as adding alt text to images that contain text (since a spider can’t read the text on an image), other times it’s about reducing/removing javascript or flash site navigation. In either case, there are many things you can do to help your site show up better. Google itself helpfully provides a FAQ on SEO, webmaster guidelines to make your site rank correctly, and Tools to help you optimize your site. It’s not so much about ranking “better” as it is ranking “properly.”

The following is an example of what NOT to do. It was sent by one of the bottomfeeders I mentioned earlier.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Jason M*****
Date: Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 5:27 PM
Subject: I visited your website and had a question
To: myjaxon@******* ^[1]

Hello, my name is Jason M***** and I am an internet marketing specialist. I was looking at websites under the keyword house repairs and came across your website http://morgajel.net. I see that you’re not ranked on the first page of Google for a house repairs search.^[2]

I’m not sure if you’re aware of why you’re ranked this low but more importantly how easily correctable this is.

There’s no reason you can’t have a top three ranking for the keyword house repairs based on your site structure and content^[3]. You have a very nice site.^[4]

You need significantly more one way anchor text backlinks^[5]. If you’re interested I can help you with this…

I’m talking about getting you ranked for ALL your keywords. Adding new backlinks on a steady and consistent basis from high PR quality websites is what produces the rankings you are looking for http://morgajel.net.^[6]

The right kind of links are very critical in getting top ranking….and I can hand deliver these quality links to you.^[7]

My partners and I own 1000’s websites^[8] and offer private linking to hundreds of website owners just like yourself.

I didn’t send this email out to very many people^[9] but I am currently reaching out to a list of your ‘keyword competitors^[10]‘ as well. But I do favor your website because I can see your website monetizing the targeted website traffic the keyword house repairs can deliver.^[11]

I have your contact information and phone number. Is it ok if I give you a call?^[12]

I have a very simple way to prove that what I do works and it’s risk free for you to try^[13]. Nothing beats seeing the results with your own eyes

Is it ok if I give you a call?^[14] I would love to pursue this further over the phone with you or should I go somewhere else?

Sincerely,

Jason M*****
(480) 445-92**
www.*******.com

P.S – If the tables were turned and somebody I didn’t know came to me with a proposition, even one that was appealing, I would be hesitant because I would be wondering – what’s the catch? What does this guy know that I don’t?^[15]

But then I would think he does know something that I don’t know. He does have thousands of high PR websites, he does have hundreds of thousands of pages indexed and ranking in Google Yahoo and MSN. Sites that can deliver the quality anchor text backlinks. I would also think that I need to get my website in the top rankings^[16]. And he is offering to turn key top rankings for me…on all my keywords including house repairs^[17]. Even keywords I’m not currently competing for^[18]. Keywords that produce traffic that’s potentially worth tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars.^[19]

I emailed you because It’s a win -win for both of us. Think of it this way – Who wouldn’t be interested in buying money at a discount? Because that’s what I’ll be able to do offer you…Money at a discount.^[20]

Is it Ok to give you a call? Or you can can call me anytime at the number above?^[21]

Man… where to begin…

1. Sent to Jackie- I have no idea why. She’s not listed as a contact for this site *anywhere*.
2. that’s because this is not a site about house repairs. In fact, I rarely mention it short of a list of repairs I have to do on my house.
3. Yes there is- it’s not appropriate. My site shouldn’t show up in the top 3 for house repairs for google.
4. Had you seen my site, you’d realize this email was pointless.
5. No, I don’t.
6. Not really. It provides false metrics which google is not fond of- in fact they’ve been to court and won for removing people who’ve done this. They’re called shadow domains and they’re frowned upon.
7. You may be able to deliver links, but I severely doubt the quality of manufactured links.
8. Jackpot- shadow domains. Google frowns on shadow domains.
9. Who did you send it to? I didn’t even show up in the top 10 pages? where did I place in the 36,700,000 results google found?
10. What competitors? Who competes with me on “house repairs?” Every non-house-repairs site, I guess.
11. “Favor,” “Targeted,” “Monetizing,” “Keyword”….smells like snakeoil. Anyone looking for house repairs and gets my site will be annoyed.
12. No, do not give me a call.
13. Risk free, unless google finds me using shadow domains to promote my site and bans it.
14. No, do not give me a fricken’ call. How’d you get my number?
15. Well, you don’t know that I’m a geek who deals with high traffic sites on a daily basis, so I suspect you know much less than you think you know.
16. No, I do not need high rankings for an unimportant blog. You’re a tool.
17. “House Repairs” is not a keyword for my site, jackass. Had you not scraped it mechanically off a search engine you’d know that.
18. Why would I want keywords I’m not competing for? Why would I want people looking for Antique Romainian Teacups to find my site?
19. Traffic that is potentially worth millions of dollars? Why on earth would my site be that valuable?
20. Money at a discount!? Why didn’t you say so in the first place!? Moron.
21. No goddamnit!

Why am I writing this? Because I’m procrastinating. I’m stuck. I’m not even writing the book yet, I’m just coming up with the plot line.

Perhaps sleeping on it will help. I can’t even write this without stopping every 5 words. Hopefully November will go smoother.

Just for the record, I WAS finished with the first draft. Honest.
I wrote the rough draft for NaNoWriMo last year, chopped off two sections, rewrote the entire thing and was going to call it good. I just had a small list of things I needed to rework- polish how I discuss ziggy’s adopted mother, mention the king’s son, make Ziggy’s cousin and aunt more antagonistic, etc. There are 21 changes that I wanted to make for this book before I distributed the draft.

It was supposed to be just a simple todo list, however between the time I started the first draft and ended it, I read a great book called Manuscript Makeover. It’s an excellent book that covers a quite a few noob writer mistakes. I said “Oh, crap that’s a good point” quite a bit. As I read the book, I began implementing it’s suggestions in my own writing.

I didn’t realize how much of a difference it had made until I began rereading the first section of my book- it was painful. Everything was past tense, and while that’s expected from an “autobiography,” there are plenty of places where I could show conversations rather than mention them happening in passing. If everything is past tense, it reads like a history book rather than a novel (if everything has already happened, so why bother investing in the story?).

On on e hand, there’s supposed to be ramp-up within the book towards the climax, the beginning would have been too slow to keep anyone’s attention. I read somewhere that you shouldn’t show your book to anyone until the third draft, and I can see why. Even now as I rewrite section 1, I see places I’ll have to go back an polish. The first three sections all need this same treatment to be honest.

The frustrating thing is NaNoWriMo is almost here and I’m wasting October on the first book rather than planning for the second. I figure I have until the 15th until I really have to buckle down and start preparing for the second book. So to anyone who wanted to review, you’ll probably have to wait a little longer…

I’m currently on Ch 6 of 7 in the first draft of The AutoBiography of Ziggy Swift: The Rise. Anyone feel like volunteering? Check out the Poll on the side and let me know. You can email morgajel at my gmail address for details if you’re interested.

My goal is to have this wrapped up for November so I can start the second book. When December rolls around, I’ll go back to implementing the suggestions people gave me on the first book.

Time for a different battle- Ian’s online. Rather than be one of those moron parents who think it’s everyone elses job to protect my kid online, I’m gonna whitelist the sites he can visit, hence I gotta start working on a list of what sites are acceptable. Here’s what I got so far…

http://pbskids.org/

http://www.infostuff.com/kids/a.htm

http://www.fisher-price.com/fp.aspx?st=2601&e=gamesByAge&mcat=game_toddler&site=us

http://schools-wikipedia.org/

http://www.funbrain.com/

Any other suggestions?