At Least It's Paid Off

We only have one car. It is something we decided to do in order to save money. Our job situation is such that we are able to car pool to and from work. Not long after we bought our house, we paid off our car, using the first time home buyer's credit to do so. This way we figured we would have fewer bills and we would just drive the car into the ground and the need arose to buy another car. It was a great thought, and it's worked well for us so far.

Hopefully we will be able to get our car fixed. Tonight my wife was out driving and someone rear-ended her. It was dark and rainy, and the intelligent driver decided these were the optimal conditions for holding a conversation on her cell phone while attempting to drive down a busy street. I have said it before that trying to hold a conversation on a cell phone has been proven to be equivalent to driving drunk, whether you're using a hands-free device or not.

The most important thing is that my wife is not injured. I suppose we are lucky that the person didn't take off, and at least they were insured, but I can't help but wonder what might happen if getting a license required a little more proof of driving ability than they do now.

I also am taking the night off from NaNoWriMo. Not only have I been having to figure out what to do next with the car, I'm also getting a cold.

Church Marketing

If you work for a retailer, like me, marketing is something that you just have to do. To sell products you have to be visible to your customers, which means advertising and marketing. I also think about marketing because of my hobbies. If I want to be a writer or a musician, especially at a professional level, then I need to be able to market myself as such. If you are in a church that wants to reach out to people do you need to be able to do marketing, especially considering the growing numbers of internet-savvy generations? I would venture to say for churches that you have to be able to do marketing, whether you like it or not.

Marketing gives people a sense of who you are as a church. It triggers emotion in people. Advertising gets people to the events you plan. If you advertise and people find it off-putting, they will not come to your event and are less likely to ever come to your church. If you do not advertise then the only way they will find out about you will be through word of mouth (a form of marketing) and the sign in front of your church (again, whether you like it or not, a form of advertising).

These days a lot of marketing gets done through websites, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace (ick), and the like. To have someone who can regularly update these things with events like clothing drives, concerts, and movie nights can be invaluable. The thing about online social media is that much of the marketing is done by having that initial connection with people, both members and visitors, creating an entry point at all levels.

The challenge lies with managing time around these things, for they can become a hindrance to your work schedule and an excuse to not interact in person. I know they are for me. They keep me from doing things that I should be doing, and really that I would rather be doing. What are your thoughts on church marketing?

More Free Food

Earlier this year I alerted you to some free food offers, which didn't even include the free burger and ice cream you can get on your birthday. This year KFC tried to give away free chicken, but thanks to the marketing power of Oprah, they had too many customers, ran out of chicken, and had to cancel the promotion. Today they are trying it again. For today only, you can get one free piece of grilled chicken. You may have to wait in line, or they may have annoyed enough customers that the promotion has worked against them. Who knows? But hey, free food.

Working in marketing can be challenging, especially when a promotion goes sour. You risk the danger of actually turning away customers who may never come back again. Bad commercials can offend people, which is one reason I can't eat at Carl's Jr. even though I think their food tastes good. A bad promotion can do the same thing. When customers think you are so inept that you can't create a valid coupon or have enough product to back it up, they are more likely to think you are inept in other ways.

I think I feel a post on church marketing coming...

NaNoWriMo Every Day

I have been doing a lot of writing over the past year or so. Most of that has not been on this blog. Some of it has not even been on my writing blog. I have been working on a novel for several months now, slowly chipping away on the word count while forming characters and plot. In the past I have mentioned participating in National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo. While I have participated in this venture a couple of years, I never really quite made it to the final word count. I think it must have been the mental block most people run into when they try climbing the 50,000 word mountain for the first or second time.

The thought of spending 30 days of agony trying to write at least 1,667 words every day makes me sort of cringe, especially knowing how much free time I actually have, how much of that I want to spend with my wife, and how many stupid distractions there are to keep me from the goal. I am now fairly certain that the 50,000 word goal has nothing to do with writing a good novel, but has everything to do with the discipline of writing through the distractions, the boredom, the pain, sort of like one does at a job. That's the ultimate goal for many who participate in this thing isn't it? They want to be writers. If someone really wants to be a full-time writer, they need to be able to write every day, regardless of how they are feeling about it. I think it is for this reason that I will be dusting off my NaNoWriMo chops and giving it another go, not that I think I will be a full-time writer any time soon, but if the option were there I would like to know that I could do it.

Wasting Tim

I've been a little lax on writing on my blog. Most of my recent writing has gone into my writing blog or into working on one of my novel ideas. This isn't to say that my ideas are novel, just that I have this strange desire to write them.

A couple of months ago, after wrestling with crashing issues on my not-so-awesome PowerMac, we finally decided to buy a new computer. For this, we purchased one as cheap as possible, which happened to be a $500 17" Toshiba laptop. Our only problem now is figuring out how to share it. We considered buying a second one, but since we are fairly frugal folks, we figured that we could do without.

Apparently, when computing becomes easier, you waste more time doing it, and it is for this reason I have been saying for a while that I "secretly" want Facebook to go away. To all of my friends playing with your mafias and farms, don't be surprised if sometime in the near future I suddenly fall off the Facebook map. It is a time sink, and for someone who has the desire to be a creator and not a consumer, I have to choose what I put my time into. Five years from now, what will I have to show for myself with all my efforts?

On Writing Daily

Writing daily has been an eye-opening endeavor. I began this experiment to test myself to see if I had the chops to write every single day for an extended period of time. It started off well, following the rules I had set for several months. I then decided on pushing myself into the process of writing a novel. This did not last as long, until more recently, when I lowered the daily word count to something I felt was more attainable. During this time, I have come upon several things which I think could be helpful for others interested in writing.

Some of these thoughts are as follows:

1. Your daily writing does not have to be good. Editing is much easier when you have something to edit. It is much more difficult when there is nothing there. Get it written even if you think you'll remove it later. What you think is horrible now may actually turn out to be worth keeping in the final draft.
   


2. Your word count does not have to be high. One hundred words a day is attainable, as I have already written more than that in this post. If that is too much, try fifty. If it is too little, make it five hundred. Every little bit adds up over time, and it may even lead you to write more each day than you have set as a goal.
   


3. The more you write, the more ideas you will be able to build on. Several ideas for short stories and novels have grown from simple writing prompts or randomly generated ideas from various sources. If you keep the ideas in your head, you are not very likely to ever write them.
   


4. Find a time that works best for you to write. At first I wrote right before I went to sleep, but I found myself staying up later than I should have in order to make my word count for that day. I recently used a drop in my work hours to my advantage, finding an extra hour after work where it made no sense for me to go home before I had to pick up my wife from work. This extra hour has been invaluable in that I have found it to be productive in writing anywhere from one to five hundred words each day on various projects.
   


5. Life has distractions, and they can be an excuse not to write. I found a nice place to write in the local mall. I found some tables near the front door with heavy foot traffic. The tables are across from a Starbucks where everyone orders their drinks. It can be noisy sometimes. Try writing during lunch breaks, with your morning coffee, or even sitting on the couch while someone else watches T.V.
   


6. Having other people read your writing as you go can lead you to be a better writer. Putting my stuff out for everyone to read and comment on has made me more receptive to criticism. I think it has helped my writing improve, and like anything, the more you do something, the better you will get at it.
   


7. Even if you get out of the habit, you can forgive yourself and get back on it. There have been a few times that life circumstances have made it impossible to write. There have been times that I have just been lazy and found excuses (not specified in my list of excuses) to put off writing. The temptation is to give up completely, but by putting the past behind you, the ability to keep going is always there.

I hope some of these things I have learned are helpful and encouraging to others. Hopefully there will be much more to read from me.

Some Thoughts About Writing

Imagination is not, like thought, concerned with abstractions from particular things, experiences, and relationships. Both [C.S.] Lewis and Tolken as writers, therefore, valued looking at reality in a symbolic and mythopoeic way.

Fiction, for Lewis and Tolkien, was therefore the creation of meaning rather than the literal restating of truths. It reflected for them the greater creativity of God, when he originated and put together his universe and ourselves.

~ Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship by Colin Duriez

Back From Gold Beach

My wonderful wife and I just got back from a trip to Gold Beach for a memorial service for her grandmother. It was a good reminder to me that this life is tainted by sin and the corruption of death, but that those who have faith in the Lord Jesus are covered by grace and will have a new body on the new earth when the Christ returns. God has plans for His creation, to resurrect it from the death we all face. Thanks to Jesus for confronting death, for taking away the sting, for giving us the Spirit which is the love of the Father and the Son with us. We are known by our God, and He makes himself known to us, and on the day Jesus returns, we will see God in His full glory. Keep my wife and her family in your prayers.

With all the traveling we've done and stuff that is happening right now, my writing has suffered, but the good thing is that I've done lots of reading. Sitting in a plane or a car for hours can do that. I'm thinking that Facebook and Twitter are getting in the way of blogging, but it may not be a bad thing for everyone. Many people started a blog because they wanted to give people a way to keep people updated with things happening in each other's lives. Facebook and Twitter is an easier way to do that more frequently and quickly. Blogging is a more formal way to fill this same function, but also a more suitable place for lengthier thoughts. The writer in me likes blogging more than Facebook, for it gives me a better outlet for forming thoughts. I think a lengther post on the subject of social media and writing is called for, but I will save it for another time. I thought I would just let everyone know I am still here. Life is good.

No Excuse for Cheating

Manny Ramirez was recently suspended for 50 games for getting caught using steroids, adding him to the list of players suspected of using or getting caught using these drugs. I have thought about this topic for a while, and have heard various viewpoints on it. Many think that steroids will not help you become a better baseball player. Many people think they help you hit home runs. Here is my take on it.

Steroids will not make you a better baseball player. I should qualify that statement. Steroids will not make you a better hitter. If you are already really good at hitting the ball, however, they will help you get more hits, and a higher percentage of those will be home runs. Let us look at this logically. A player that routinely hits line drives and fly balls will hit many of those for home runs. Take away the performance enhancing drugs and twenty feet off the flight of the ball, and instead of going over the outfield fence the ball goes into the outfielder's glove, or at best between or in front of the outfielder for a base hit.

Now consider even with the steroids that the player is simply good at hitting the ball in the gap. A faster, stronger runner will more likely be able to run out a base hit and turn it into extra bases or stolen bases. Consider the four players who have hit 40 home runs and had 40 stolen bases in the same season. The first was in 1988 and following: Jose Canseco, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, and Alfonso Soriano. Soriano is the only one on the list not suspected of using steroids.

So while baseball is still just entertainment (some people would argue otherwise), there is no logic in thinking that steroids do not help baseball players, or for that matter baseball teams, achieve higher performance in the sport. When one player does better, the whole team does better. This is one reason why you do not see much effort on the part of the owners to do anything about this epidemic.

Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi, Alex Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa — don't cry for any of these guys. In fact you should be glad something is being done for the sake of the kids that look up to these players or aspire to be one of them. As for Manny, I only wish he were still playing for the Red Sox so that I could enjoy his suspension even more.

Don't Believe Everything You Read On The Internet

April Fools!

Sorry to anyone who believed what I posted about not blogging anymore. While my blogging has been a little sparse recently, I am not giving it up entirely. I have been busy doing other things, and blogging is not at the top of my list of things to do. I do secretly wish that Facebook would crawl back into the depths from which it came with its stepbrother MySpace, but until that time people can continue to stalk old high school friends or send pillow fight requests to their hearts' content. Just know that I will not be accepting any of them.