Tiny, dark and red, they tip each twig with promise

of, in two weeks time, a burst of Frost’s first green….

16. Make a list of ten images of things you have seen in the last 24 hours. Use all of them in a poem.

And if those aren’t enough, here are some other places you can find poetry prompts to keep you writing…

is still. April snow fell through the night,

frosting the street and lawn. It won’t last,

but for the moment, it muffles the sound of

the drizzle that’s taken its place….

Not long ago, a fellow writer shared the URL of a writers’ support forum with me. “There’s a great group of writers there,” she told me. “Really supportive, with lots of good ideas. Just please don’t tell them what I write. I’d never be able to hold my head up again.”

I understood immediately, because I write the same thing she does. Half the world doesn’t acknowledge that it exists. Those who do – especially other writers – are almost uniformly derisive of writers who choose to make their money writing it. Many sniff and declare that they ‘take their writing more seriously than that’. Others bemoan it as the death of intelligent writing. Do we write porn? Seditious pamphlets? Articles for the National Enquirer?

None of the above. My unnamed cohort and I write – brace yourselves – search engine optimized web content. For those who don’t quite understand what SEO content is, and why it draws such fire from both ‘real’ writers and Internet aficionados, a brief explanation might be in order.

SEO content writing is the art of creating short articles whose main purpose is to get a web site listed by one or more of the major search engines. One does this by fitting particular words and phrases into the body of an article to reach a particular density. The theory is that the software programs used by search engines will assign a higher page rank to a page that has a higher density of keywords. In other words, if you are looking for information about screen houses because you want to build one in your backyard, you type the words ‘backyard screen houses’ into Google. Google checks its index for all pages that have those words in them and returns a list of sites that use that keyword phrase in it. The more times the words are used on a page, the higher on the list of results that page is.

Are you with me so far? Good. Now, that being the case, one would think that a page that consists of ‘backyard screen houses’ over and over in a block of 500 words would rank right at the top of the listings. It doesn’t happen that way because the search engineers are a bit smarter than that. While the exact formulas are closely guarded secrets, every search engine has designed algorithms that look for certain configurations of text around the keywords. Those algorithms try to figure out whether the page actually gives people information – or just those words in a meaningless jumble. It’s taken a few years, but most webmasters have come to the realization that putting up actual articles on their pages is the best way to make the search engines believe that there are actual articles on their pages. Go figure.

With that realization came a whole new market for writers – SEO content writing. Search engine optimized copy for the web has been variously characterized as a cheap way to get a high page ranking, cheating and the death of the internet as we know it. It is, by and large, a low-paying market, despite the fact that its closest cousin, advertising copy, generally pays quite well. Writing web content is often regarded as being akin to prostitution – and lousy prostitution at that. We’re the $5 streetwalker of the writing world. Real writers, after all, don’t write 500 word articles about the history of Windsor chairs for $5 a pop. That, goes the general belief, is hack writing at its worst – commercialization of the written word to make money for someone else. Add to that the fact that, for the most part, webmasters are often working on tight budgets and have found a ready cadre of overseas English speaking writers who are willing to write for less than a penny a word, and you have one of the most depressed freelance markets in the world.

That glut of foreign writers in the English web market has helped create the impression that writers of web content are, in general, poor writers. Their willingness to accept $2 for a 400-500 word article keeps the going price for web content very low. Add in the fact that those purchasing web content often insist on full ownership of the work, including full copyright, and it’s understandable that many writers would look down on those willing to accept those conditions in order to get paid for their work.

But there is the key – I get paid for my writing, which is the work that I most enjoy doing. I exploit my own skills for researching and presentation to make a living – and I do make a living. There is not a month since I started selling web content that I have made less than $1200 from freelance writing – and many months where I made more than $2000. I work with regular buyers who value my writing skill highly enough to pay me premium prices for a steady stream of articles that bring people to their web sites, and more and more of them recommend me to their business contacts. Even more importantly, I’ve done it with writing that is genuinely entertaining and informative, especially because it is targeted to those people who are looking for information about a particular subject. I’ve learned a great deal about things I would never have considered researching on my own – Windsor chairs, backyard screen houses, garden gnomes and the fluctuations of the world interest rates to name just a few. In less than a year since my first paying gig, I am financially solvent and able to name my own articles and prices in many markets.

The derision of “real writers” used to grate on me until I realized this: there is an art and a skill to reusing the same words repeatedly in a short passage without making it noticeable and intrusive. It is no less than the skill required to make effortless rhymes and rhythm in poetry, or in choosing just the right words to bring a fictional character to life in the mind’s eye of the reader. There are certainly poets who force rhyme and rhythm badly enough to make readers cringe, and authors of fiction who are clumsy with description. Writing keyword content is no different. It’s a puzzle in which the fitting of pieces into the right places results in a keyword enhanced article that is indistinguishable from one written with no intent other than to inform the reader. It is a skill at which I excel, and which is earning me a living that is growing month by month. What freelance writer could ask for more?

Watching My Daughter Dance
by chameleon

I like my coffee dark double
roasted with extra kick,
extra flavor, extra spice, extra larger
than life like I like
everything.

So I know how it is when
your days fit your body
like your brother’s shirt
too tight too small not right at all
snugging up against places that
just can’t take that much stimulation.

I do.

I know that stretch inside
you that needs
that needs
that NEEDS
to break through
break down
break out break free
break rules break
….anything

because your chest is so tight
that you can’t breathe inside
a day that’s shrunk too small
to hold you.

I could tell you the tricks
I learned to get through, the ways
to break the rules that no one minds
the things (like
extra cream in double dark
bitter to smooth the edges and
keep the bite from breaking through the skin)
that help

But I’d only be giving you
another set of rules to break.

Instead, I hold my breath when you dance and
I can see your skin stretching at the seams
to try to contain you. I just…
hold my breath and put breakables
in reach so that this time
at least this one more time
when the wave breaks inside
what gets broken
won’t be you.

- c. Deb Powers 2007

Desert Singer

There’s a child
singing softly
in the desert
through the night.
There’s a child
singing softly
in the desert.

Speak softly of lost children
Whisper their names from ear to ear
Speak softly of lost children
Don’t let them disappear.

She is the Keeper of Names for the gods. My people believe that there is power in a name – the power of forever. As long as a name is remembered, the soul lives on. There is no death as long as one person remembers. The gods remember those whose names they hear.

She sings the names
of lost children
in the desert
to the wind.
She sings the names
of lost children
in the desert.

Sometimes a child is lost to us, taken by the wind, or the sky, or the water, or the spirits. Sometimes a child never breathes, never dances, never loves except in a mother’s heart and hopes. These are the children whose names she sings that the gods will remember them and keep them safe.

From the desert
to the mountains
through the canyons
to the sky,
she sings the names
of lost children
so their memories
will not die.

I think of that child in the desert today, in a world of planes and cars, of roaring trains and rushing people and wonder how hard it is to remember, to keep all the names, to sing them loud enough for the wind and the gods to hear.

No child should be lost. So I tell you:

She was my daughter. She never breathed, but in my heart she danced and sang and was loved. Her name is Sara.
Remember.

Sometimes at night, my brother walks beneath the trees with the ghost-shadow of his son. He would be five this year. They would be fishing and playing ball. His name is David.
Remember.

She might have been my sister had she grown to take a breath. Sometimes I watch my mother watch my children and see the shadow in her eyes. Her name was Catherine.
Remember her for my mother.

She was your neighbor’s daughter. He might have been your best friend’s son. She could have grown to enchant the world. He might have married your daughter. His name was Anthony. Her name was Alicia.
Remember.
Whisper their names.

Speak softly of lost children
Whisper their names from ear to ear
Speak softly of lost children
Don’t let them disappear.

- c. Deb Powers

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