I’d forgotten how draining editing can be. I used to be really good at it a long time ago. Having spent the past four weeks pouring my guts into getting out volumes of words to build the foundation of my site, I had left the finishing touches to a marathon of editing that I am just now finishing up. Monday through Thursday of this week has been even more draining that the previous four weeks putting the writing together. However, it’s invaluable time and effort.

I know damn well that typos can kill you. That’s actually a quote from a publisher I encountered two decades ago. What I had learned in recent years at a .COM was that sometimes you have to make sacrifices in quality to get your product out. One should only do so if there is genuine benefit. In this case the benefit was SEO: Search Engine Optimization. You see, web-crawlers and indexers don’t give a damn about anything other than the assortment of words on any page it reaches via internet linking. The people I’ve posted these bits of writing to probably think that I’m a bit of a hack, and for this my apologies. It’s a small group of people, but I had to make that sacrifice in the interests of Google, Bing and other engines.

By COB today my site should be cleaned up. It’s not unlike building a home from scratch. When you’re putting up the foundation, frame, electrical, plumbing, drywall and fixtures, you give almost no thought or effort at all to what the walls are going to look like the day before people move in. Now is the time to start making sure that there are no holidays in the paint, no missing trim, no faulty wiring and no leaky faucets. Now is also the time to start working like a real writer. It means that editing takes place before it gets posted out in the real world and it also means that what is posted is tweeted, linked and shared all over creation.

Now is the time to start being an artisan rather than a builder. They are completely different mind-sets and are done at completely different paces.

Thanks to all of you who have reviewed and contributed. I appreciate it. From here on out look for art not drywall.