There they were, staring at him, eight by ten glossies of guilt. His one and only sin had become more than just another Kodak moment.

As he got the books and began to look for places he could skim the extortion money from, the priest realized, for the first time, how tight his collar felt.

Thank you for reading this installment of  Flash Fiction Friday.

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As the administrator of an online blogging community I read quite a few posts a day, as well as posts from the dozen or so blogs I subscribe to.  I also cruise the net just to read different blogs. So, I read a lot.

As far as commenting goes, I see everything from no comments allowed to full out flame wars, but the best of what I see is engaging back and forth conversations that are debates.

From a blogger stand point, I always welcome opposing views, as long as they aren’t outright torch sessions that border on name calling. Maybe it’s my argumentive nature, or maybe I just like the entertainment. But what is more likely the truth is, I understand that when I write a post, it is my opinion or viewpoint. That doesn’t make me right in anyone else’s mind but my own.

I will debate my stand until the other side gives up, or I relent and agree they are correct. I am comfortable with admitting I am wrong or that there are two or more sides to every issue.

Sometimes I’ll write a post just to piss some folks off, and I’m disappointed when everyone who comments agrees with me. This means I’ve tuned into the a community that thinks like I do (not all together a bad thing), but it also means that my blog isn’t getting much in the way of new traffic.

I know when I read some other blogger’s post and scan the comments afterwards, if I see a disagreement, I’ll stop and reread the post to see what I missed.

When I comment, if I disagree, I will write my point of view in a civil and maybe fun manner. Never degrade the blogger or any other commenter, this is a sure way to get people to quit commenting or even reading the blog. I would never want to be the cause of damaging another bloggers blog, but that doesn’t mean I have to agree with everything they are writing.

There are deeper issues at the core of all of this. Issues of censorship and prudence. Some believe that to agree even if you don’t is the just and right approach. I see that as a lie. If to no one else, you lie to yourself. You sell yourself out in name of socially acceptable good form. You become a sheep.

Now, I can hear someone in the back say that if you don’t agree, then don’t comment. That to me is another form of censorship. If you can give your opinion in a civil and exacting fashion, then you should be allowed, and I support anyone who wishes to educate or open our eyes to another point of view on the same topic.

My opinion is important to me, but it is not infallible. I know this and am comfortable with this. I also know that if I am brave enough to write my opinion, I had better be damn well brave enough to defend it and not be hurt because not every reader thinks I am all seeing and all knowing. By god I don’t want THAT onus in my life.

So tell me, am I all daft when it comes to blog comments, or do you honestly agree with me?

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The applause was thunderous. The premier of ‘Elwood The Wonder Pig’ had been a smashing success.

Reporters surrounded Jake, asking about the three-legged pig and its amazing feats of acrobatics and strength.

“What happened to Elwood’s fourth leg?”

Farmer Jake replied, “A pig that smart, you think I’m gonna eat him all at once?”

Add Flash Fiction Friday to your “must read” list for quick fun.

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I was afraid that my best writing had already been done and no one was ever going to notice. I had been as far as I could go and there was no use trying anymore.

The funny thing is, I enjoyed writing right up to the last word I wrote then. I was just afraid I’d never capture the moment again.

Now I realize that that was a foolish argument. We never truly will know when we produce our best work and we should never really care, because the act of writing IS our best work.

The fact that we grip a pen or pound a keyboard is enough of an accomplishment in it itself to warrant a arm breaking self pat on the back. If we practice writing every day, we will learn new things about ourselves. Actually, we won’t learn new things, we uncover things we have put away or hidden from ourselves.

It is in the practice where we will find our best writing. The practice of writing demands that we first spew words all over something. Scrawl raw thoughts, whether or not they are perfect in delivery, or first thought s are elegant in execution.

The point is to write like the wind, be it crap or not.  Leave your self editor on the shelf and just grind it out.  Free and unfettered words that express your thoughts. Leave the polishing for later.

When you do edit your writing, don’t see it as ugly, just remember the energy that is in it. Sure, clean up the typos and grammar, but do not discard the energy. Bottle it and show it off.

I wish I had never been afraid to step off on to the next piece. Since I’ve been back at it in the last year, I have discovered the wonderful art that is me. I have learned that each piece is different and should be held in its own light. I have learned that there is a facet of my own self being exposed in each passage.

Whatever you do, never be afraid that you’ll never top what you’ve already written and never be afraid to step off that ledge and see where the fall takes you.

Never quit writing.

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I have seen other reasons for multiple accounts given, such as protecting original content, but I think that all reasons for multiple accounts add up to one sum; bullshit.

What do I believe is the real reason? The marketers felt slimy about what they were promoting. Aching to make money quickly so they could have statistics to quote in their own get rich quick e-books, some marketers would push and promote any product that preyed on the weak and desperate.

Maybe they really didn’t feel slimy about what they were promoting, but the multiple accounts allowed for the marketer to be ingenuine about his efforts and spammy about his tactics. If a campaign failed or was flagged as mildly fraudulent, the marketer could walk away unscathed, because no one really knew who he was.

Personally, I think that tactic is bogus and is being seen as more dishonest than writing about a wide variety of products. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that you (the reader) really has no problem buying a television this week from the same person you bought car insurance from two months ago. Why? because you trust the writer’s opinion and experience. He is not hiding, and with the amount of information at our fingertips, products do a lot of their own selling.

Think about shopping at Wal-Mart for a second. The reason Wal-Mart is successful is because a shopper can make a purchases of  respected brand name products for not only lower prices than most other places, but all at one stop. We trust Wal-Mart to deliver what they are offering and we keep going back.

When Wal-Mart decides it wants to build on a certain site, the company spares no expense to secure that site AND deliver a store that the community will accept as asthetic. You’ll find many different styles of Wal-Mart stores, but they all say Wal-Mart.

Personal branding is tantamount today, because it is easier to see all on the Internet. We can surf from one site to another quicker and scan so much more information that we could even two years ago. This is how we build a reputation, because we are exposed, and this is how it should be. We should be honest about who we are and then attach products to our personal brand.

Although some still practice the art of multiple accounts and attach false personal brands to products, the tide is changing and we can be proud of who we are and allow ourselves to promote any and all products we choose.

Let the buyers trust us or expose us.

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Actually, the tribute is a focus on the most notable song from that set, Do You Feel Like We Do, a song that made the mouth organ guitar filter famous. Frampton’s talking portion of his solo was the cause of many turned up radios in my high school days, and the influence of so many solos since then.

But, as awesome as Do You Feel Like We Do was, Frampton Comes Alive was littered with great songs, Show Me The Way and Baby, I love Your Way not being the least.

Check out CleanerLife’s awesome lens at Peter Frampton-Do You Feel Like We Do.

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The Internet is crowded and we’re all yelling to be heard but the only ones that hear us when we yell are the ones who are close; our friends. Yet, we have something to say and we want thousands to hear it, damnit!

To be heard, we pay the concierge with keywords, back links, and link wheels to get our words to the booths that sit high above the dance floor. We hope those that sit in those lofty booths will give us a nod and a mention, because one word from those dudes and people will give us a look.

We can use every trick in the book to get thousands of visitors to our blogs, but can we deliver? Seriously, the simple truth about success on the Internet, or anywhere in life, is that we must satisfy a need. We must deliver the goods or we will lose all that we spent.

What is it we must deliver? A solution. We are all marketers trying to service a niche were people are clamoring for relief from some problem. Products, ideas, knowledge, or good old fashioned entertainment, we are all selling something. If we’re good, we get repeat customers. If not, we’ll be kicked to the curb quicker than a homeless chick after a date.

That is the measure of success in life. When we advertise and try to deliver, do people come back on their own? Do they bring a friend the next time?

Sound SEO  practice will deliver sheep, but good solid content will always feed them the sweetest of meals. It is a difficult juggling act, but if we take a good look at a lot of the SEO tools as not part of a separate task of blogging, but as agents of freedom, we can find that writing content is getting to be more like writing than advertising.

If you’re not familiar with some of the tools available to you in your blogs, look around, dig into them. But don’t look at them from the pure Internet geek angle, look at them with your writing heart in mind. If you can do this, you’ll get ears delivered to you AND get them to come back time and time again.

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At the grand old age of 24, Lily Allen’s not about to retire – or is she? The singer announced yesterday: “I have not renegotiated my record contract and have no plans to make another record. “The days of me making money from recording music have been and gone.” Oddly, this quote – and all other comments by others on her blog – was later deleted after she complained: “The abuse was getting too much.” It all kicked off earlier this month when Lily started blogging about filesharing music (she’s against it). Our insider said: “Many of Lily’s fans illegally download music but they support her in other ways like buying her concert tickets. “I think they’ve stopped seeing her as a happy-go-lucky pop star and more as someone who would tell you off.”

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I don’t run a huge publishing platform, but that doesn’t stop me from not caring when people plead for resolution of continuing issues. The most common plea is, “Can’t we get the platform stable, even if for a day?”

The second most often annoying plea I hear is,  “Please, I’ll even settle for an hour of stability.”

I think these are possibly the tenth and eleventh pleas that I really don’t want to have to deal with, and really, why would I even want to hear ANY in the first place? If you take your writing somewhere else, someone will step up and give my platform more content.  So, I really don’t give a damn. Here’s my list of difficult and important questions I have to answer before I can justify any of your sniveling  my site administers bout the constant bugs and your time spent for the paltry few bucks and ego stroking  “Atta Boys”:

• What is the goal of MY site and why should I care if it is constantly limping?
• In other words, if you ever catch it working 100%, what specific income will I incur (that’s ME, not YOU)?
• Who are I trying to please? If it’s the content provider, what the hell more do they want? They get all the ego stroking they need in the ranking drug the platform feeds them.
• How many people  do I need on MY team? Can I get away with fewer, say at the overpaid and under-worked engineering level?
• Whose pockets am I trying to fill? Can I stuff more in all of them? Do I need to wear two pairs of pants, you know…..more pockets?
• What groups inside my platform can my team get to blindly publish content while the damn thing is broken?
• Are we really trying to fix it, or can we fool the sheep with smoke and mirrors?
• Are we telling a convincing enough story?
• Are we earning respect as the nuts and bolts rattle out?
• Are we trying to get folks to watch one hand while the other is hiding the brass ring?
• Do I actually want someone to post a chart that shows an amazing increase of visitors from outside, while we keep the payout to content providers the same or on the decrease? Well, maybe it doesn’t matter to sheep.
• Are we building a flock of sheep  who will use the platform even if it is constantly broken?
• Do people find the platform souring in their mouth and should I really care?
• Is there an ongoing propaganda program?
• Is the platform part of a larger scheme to fill the pockets of the pants hanging in my closet?
• Do we want sheep to be able to bleat at us?
• How much content can we trick into our system and keep all the juice for ourselves?
• Who needs to fix the platform? Why?
• Do we ever really need to spend some of my pocket change to fix the platform?
• Why would we push showing up in the search engines? That just means my content providers will be spending time doing keyword research when they could be providing more content for the good of my platform.
• Do I really need to spend cash to fix the damn thing? Won’t the propaganda help with this?

And finally,

• Do the content providers really need to understand what this is all about, or is it good enough for them to be swallowed up by the popularity contest?

(Please note that is a complete satire wrought out of increasing frustration)

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Let’s work this one out. If you write 300 words at 60 words a minute, that’s a dollar a minute. Not too shabby. On the other hand,Crack whores might have to work for as long as twenty minutes to get that five bucks, which comes to .40 a minute. Pretty lousy for the mess and short high.

I hope the urge to mock me is setting in right now, because if it isn’t, I can point you to all the five dollars for 300 word jobs you want.

If you ARE mocking me, you know it takes a solid hour to get 300 words researched, drafted, finalized, and approved. No, that hour doesn’t happen all at once, but it does happen.

The question remains, What should we expect to get paid for 300 words? Ooooops. Trick question. The real question should be, what do we think our 300 words is worth?

The answer is all up to the freelancer. There is damn good money being paid to writers who deliver quality with every word. There is just good money passing hands to good writers, and there are the five dollar jobs. It all depends on what you think your work is worth.

I know it takes time to gain a reputation, but to take those cheap jobs, one after another, after another, and so on will dilute your reputation and self esteem. You are providing a solution to a problem, and that problem shouldn’t be the client’s cheap needs. Your solution should be to provide the client with the best work you can, and you’ll soon find that your work is worth more than five dollars an hour.

If you don’t think it is, you’ll be on the streets, turnin’ tricks and smoking the glass god before you know it.

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