Diary of a Mad Editor

You may have noticed the old Wordpress theme has been replaced (hopefully temporarily) by the default Wordpress theme. What happened was this: Went to update my blog and discovered a problem. When I logged and clicked on a permalink, it loaded and empty white page instead of the blog post I had written. When I was logged in, I could view the page fine. I looked at several things and as far as I could tell everything looked fine. I hadn’t made any significant changes to the blog in the previous 48 hours and the thing was working fine just the day before. Permissions were set where they were supposed to be, etc. My web host had been experiencing some problems with the servers, so I checked my other blogs to see if they were suffering the same problem. No, not my other blogs. Just Diary of a Mad Editor. I consulted authorities who know far more about PHP and Apache than I do and got some suggestions — most of which were not that helpful. One person suggested a problem related to upgrading to Wordpress 2.8. The only problem with that is I’d upgraded to 2.8 a at least a few weeks ago and hadn’t had a single problem until yesterday. Another suggested an Apache bug but, again, wouldn’t I have experienced this bug previously? Another person suggested that I change themes and see what happened. I figured I had nothing to lose so I switched to the default template and tested it and, sure enough, the permalinks were working the way they should. So, until I fix the problem with the old theme or decide on a new theme, we’re all stuck with the bland, default theme, so don’t be to alarmed by the sight of it.

June has been a bit of a bad month for me. Not a lot of money coming in. Persistant health troubles. Father in and out of the hospital. Red tape and ugly, uncomfortable weather among other little things. As such, I have fallen behind on all my correspondence. When you add the fact that I am hardly a social butterfly and kind of absent-minded too, it’s easy to understand how this situation could have snowballed to the extent that Facebook is sending my queries as to why I haven’t logged-in in a while and friends are sending letters and emails wondering if I’m even still breathing. And don’t think I haven’t noticed a drop-off in the readership of this blog in the last few weeks! I realize I haven’t been posting all that regularly of late. No, I am not the type who one is likely to receive party invitations from. I tend not to attend parties either and when I do, I usually find an excuse to duck-out early. Like this past weekend, I attended a wedding of an old friend. If it were anyone else, I wouldn’t have gone at all, as I don’t do well in large groups where I’m expected to be sociable and on my best behavior. I went to the wedding and made an appearance at the reception, but felt out of place there. Aside from the bride and groom, I didn’t know a soul and am not usually eager to meet new people. Too much small talk and inane ramblings about nothing of significance.

Of course, the ability to express those little social niceties — to schmooze and rub elbows in public is part of the job of a writer and publisher. You have to promote yourself to others. So, it’s ironic, I suppose, that I should be a writer and small press publisher. It understandable why I’m not more successful. And yet, I discovered the written word largely due to my inability to engage in those social niceties, to find a way to express on paper what I could not in the flesh. As I say . . . ironic.

Anyway . . .

Interesting post on Pinoy Copywriter the other day about the distinction between a professional writer and an amateur.

My feeling on this is that, while the term “amateur” is often used in a derogatory way (often rightfully so) it’s not always the case that a professional writer is the better writer. Now, don’t misunderstand me, I do think that 99 times out of a hundred the amateur writer is an amateur because he’s not good enough to make it as a professional. However, the only real distinction between an amateur and a professional is that a professional gets paid and an amateur does not. It’s not a fair determinate as to whether one has talent or not. First off, some genres pay little or nothing. Take poetry, for example. A gifted poet can write and publish poetry for years without earning a dime. An SEO writer can make possibly make a living writing content for websites. Secondly, some kinds of writing are easier than others.

Is the SEO writer necessarily the better writer because of what they are paid? Hmm? I’ve written pretty much everything, including SEO and SEO requires scarcely any ability at all. Anyone with a basic understanding of composition and an Internet connection can write an SEO article. Many poets I know can write SEO without blinking if they wanted to. Can the SEO writer compose a publishable poem? And I know other writers who are technically professional in that they get paid for many of the things they write who are not — at least in my estimation very good writers. Any fool can call themselves a writer these days and often they do. There may even be more “writers” sucking air on planet Earth right now than lawyers, and that’s saying something. And any writer who has ever been paid for any writing they’ve done can call themselves a professional but not every writer writes well enough to call themselves a good writer or even a competent one regardless of their status. That takes effort and talent and it’s much easier to give yourself the title of “writer” than to do the hard work. ’nuff said.