Why did my PageRank go up?

It occurred to me last time I was posting to glance upward at the PageRank meter in my Google toolbar, which I hadn't done in a while. The last time I looked was months before, and it was ranked a 3 at the time --- that was before I reached my point of winter burnout and returned to full-time hours at work, which has in turn resulted in a complete cessation of my promotional activities (no comments on other blogs) and my, as of late, neglectful posting rate of once-per-month.

So you can imagine my surprise when I saw that Ink and Beans is now ranked a "5." How did that happen?

My understanding was that PageRank is determined primarily by the number of websites linking to you and the relevance of those sites, i.e. how highly ranked are those sites linking to yours? This is why I'd been busting my butt to become an active member of the blogosphere, commenting on other writers' blogs, attempting to trade links, etc.

From what my Analytics report tells me, I have gained no new links to my site, which makes sense considering I've made no efforts to acquire them. And while it pleases me greatly to see that some of my linking, blogger-friends have also become more relevant in Google's eyes (friends like _holm and Highland Madness have also increased in rank since I last saw them... not that I'm keeping track guys :) ), I doubt this would contribute wholly to me jumping two points myself.

Perhaps I shouldn't question good fortune, but it frustrates me when I exerted so much effort to understand and affect a factor that, it now seems, is entirely out of my hands and beyond my understanding.

Has this increase in Google significance affected my traffic, you want to know? Somewhat, yes. I've only been posting once per month and I haven't been sending my usual e-mail and facebook alerts after doing so, yet I seem to be getting about 25 visitors per day. That means a lot more people are finding me via keyword searches on Google, which in turn is explained by my higher Google-relevance.

So I guess I'm only half complaining, but I still wish I knew what I did right, so I could do it more.

Submitting Short Fiction to Literary Journals (Addendum)

Just got one of the warmest-fuzziest comments on my blog since this thing started. The timing is perfect because I'd been getting anxious about posting something --- Lord knows it's been a while.

My newest literary war-buddy, Peter, commented on what has turned out to be my most popular (not saying much really) archived post about "Submitting Short Fiction to Literary Journals," and also checked out the update I wrote a year later. Peter writes:

"Just discovered this post while searching for reputations of literary journals. The Excel spreadsheet you created is a godsend (yeah, that's my emphasis). I've been struggling to figure out some sort of logic for determining to which literary journals I would submit my short story manuscripts and this has been tremendously helpful toward that end.

...Again, thank you so very much for posting this article. At the least, now I know I'm not the only person who was initially overwhelmed by the task of selecting literary journals for story submissions."

Well that easily made my week, and possibly my month. I can't begin to express how much a note like this makes keeping the blog seem worthwhile. Thank you Peter. I concur: It is a tremendous relief to know others find the submission process overwhelming at the start. It's not just that I'm an idiot, yaaay!

Peter also asks:

"Have you considered Glimmer Train? I noticed they were missing from your spreadsheet, but a local writer suggested I check them out."

Indeed I have, and in fact they are one of the first journals I ever submitted a story to --- not my epilogue, but a different one I wrote a while back. I didn't include them in my spreadsheet because, at the time I last updated it, GT did not meet my imperfect criteria of publishing a story that has been featured in BASS or O. Henry in the last ten years. But that may simply be because they're relatively new?

Actually I'm looking now and I see they're 17 years old... so maybe they're not so new. At any rate I sense they may be on the rise. I see them cited all the time, and I remember them featured in a short list as one of the best journals in terms of financial compensation --- $700 for a standard submission! That's like 4-5 times the average payment.

I personally found GT's website and submission process very inviting compared to most other sites. In short, I highly approve of submitting manuscripts to Glimmer Train, and I may send my beloved epilogue there before long.

On a related note, it recently occurred to me in a bookstore what my next source for top-tier journals to add to my submission list will be: The Pushcart Prize, another annual compilation of prize-winning stories.

Best Film of 2008: Rachel Getting Married

Yes I'm going out on a limb. And dammit, I feel alive!

Seriously though, I just watched Rachel Getting Married, and I think I enjoyed it more than any other movie I've seen in the past year (including the best picture nominees though I haven't seen Slumdog Millionaire yet; also, for purposes of gushing here I'm excluding a certain bat-themed movie). I'm not sure I've ever stated this explicitly before on this blog, but I live for good movies and, more recently, good television on DVD. Because of my trouble with reading novels I actually find more inspiration from screenwriting than I do from novels. Doesn't seem quite right, but it is what it is and I've come to terms with it.

That being said, perhaps I should allow myself to include a movie review in this blog now and then.

I figured I'd like RGM for two reasons. First, it received good reviews. Second, it stars my crush of the last four years, Anne Hathaway. Until this movie I was never completely sure whether my future wife was a talented actress in addition to being quirky and beautiful, but I question no longer. Her performance was riveting and worthy of the Best Actress nod she received

But RGM has so much more going for it than Anne. I can't remember the last time I felt so emotionally exhausted after a movie. The film centers around a recovering drug addict, Kym, and her family. After a nine month stint in drug rehab Kym is allowed to leave for the weekend to attend her sister Rachel's wedding. While it is a joyous occasion indeed, the suppressed dysfunction of the entire (in my opinion well-meaning) family begins quickly to reemerge, threatening any hope of happiness or peace for the lot of them. The whole cast was superb --- there was no character I didn't like --- and there was delicious tension throughout, nearly unbearable at times but for the moments of piercing tenderness thrown in. My heart was pounding through most of it, as if I were watching a blockbuster action film. Kym may be the instigator most times, but every family member has their weakness, and despite their love they struggle to get out of each other's way.

And thankfully, though much of the movie was heart wrenching, it is not a tragedy. I found the resolution very satisfying and somewhat uplifting, without being sugary. Thus, I did not walk away saying: "Wow, that was a great movie. I want to kill myself now," which is sometimes the trouble with "realism" in film

The best thing about this movie was the depth of and interaction between the characters, but there's another thing that impressed me. As a cultural treatment, the film is extremely progressive. The families being joined by the marriage both share an intelligent warmth, and a deep appreciation of music, but the similarities stop there. Kym's family is white, but the groom and his family are black. The older generation seemed to have accents I thought placed them somewhere in the Caribbean but apparently they're from Hawaii (which adds even more racial complexity to the mix). The flock of musician friends occupying the house during wedding preparations add several more ethnic ingredients to the mix. And I'm no music aficionado, but I doubt anyone could find a unifying regional theme to the various (danceable) songs performed during and after the ceremony. The bride and bridesmaids even wore saris, though none of them were Indian as far as I could tell. The clash of cultures was overt, joyous, and pervasive, yet it was not spoken about once. Even at the height of aggression and anger between some family members, there was never a hint of prejudice, ignorance or race resentment betrayed. It simply was not an issue, not even unconsciously. How encouraging!

Incidentally, the film was directed by the very capable Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs) which I suppose should not surprise me, but I tell you, I'm very eager to see what else first-time screenwriter Jenny Lumet has up her sleeve.

If I needed any more evidence that this movie did it for me, I've been raving about it non-stop since it ended (always a sign I've seen a winner). Moreover, I'm writing copious notes for a short story idea that came to me, inspired by the film, which hasn't happened since I wrote the epilogue to my novel (which started as a short story) years ago.

There's my pitch. Go see this movie!

Does Revision Ever End?

For those keeping score at home, my epilogue has now been rejected by 16 magazines and journals. The good news is, I made significant revisions that I think will really improve its chances. While I'm encouraged by the changes I've made, it's also a little grueling to revisit the same piece for, like, the hundredth time and see so many areas for improvement. Starts to make you feel like there's no light at the end of the tunnel, like you could revise the piece forever.

I believe the pursuit of perfection is, and should be, endless, but in terms of an artist's craft, not a particular piece. Ideally, a piece reaches a finite point where it is fully "realized," for lack of a better word, where any further changes become almost arbitrary, or even detract from the quality. If such is not the case, then what's to stop an artist from working on a piece indefinitely?

Perhaps "realized" simply means you keep improving the piece until it gains the specific approval you seek for it, whether it be approval from a general audience, or a critic, or a peer, or an institution --- in my case I seek approval from a reputable journal (and subsequently, with any luck, readers of that journal). Submitting the story according to my method, then, the story's development will end when it is published, i.e. when the progressively decreasing prominence of the journals I submit to intersects with the increasing quality of the story.

Still, it would be nice to think my story could be realized without the approval of a journal, that its development will reach some natural endpoint on its own. Next time I review my beloved epilogue (and I really do love it), whether it be published or not, I hope I come away thinking: "Wow, this doesn't really need much change at all. It's great the way it is. Good for me."

Submitting Short Stories to Literary Magazines (Part 2)

Of all the articles I've written so far, the post outlining my method for submitting short fiction to journals (written October last year) seems to be the most successful in drawing new readers to my blog, via search engines.

I'm not talking droves here, but for a while I'd say about a dozen people per month found me on Google (and such) via search phrases like "submit my short story," and actually stayed on my site a while, instead taking a quick look and leaving, as the majority of search-engine visitors do... at least for this site.

Since yesterday I sent the short-story version of my epilogue out to yet another group of journals, I figured I might as well get some mileage out of this popular search topic.

I've updated my submission guide, which now includes, to the best of my knowledge, every journal that's appeared either in Best American Short Stories or the O. Henry Prize Stories at least once in the last ten years. The journals that appeared once and only once --- which are the ones I've submitted to most recently --- are at the bottom.



As before, I sort them by whether simultaneous submissions are accepted or discouraged, and include info about length limits, reading periods, response times, and whether they take electronic submissions. It's an editable spreadsheet so you can add the journal's website, mailing address, and whatever else helps keep you organized.

A Spike in Visits

Obviously I haven't posted anything in a while, so when I checked my Google Analytics report to see what my traffic looked like, I wasn't surprised to see it hovering around 12 visits-per-day. Even on the days I post something new, and send an alert via e-mail and Facebook, I rarely get more than 35 visits in a single day.

But then on Monday, out of nowhere, I had 113 visitors. Sweet!

Naturally I was curious how this happened. The report indicated that the post receiving the most hits that day, by far, was the summary of results from my Blue Pen vs. Black Pen, published two months ago.

Turns out my poll results were discovered and talked about on the Fountain Pen Network --- a discussion forum for ink and fountain pen fanatics. To be sure, my article did not generate nearly the level of in-depth discussion that many other topics on the FPN do, but I was flattered just the same.

My traffic has already returned to normal levels, but this was an exciting blip, and gives me hope that in the future other posts might get spontaneously "picked up" by various online networks, be they discussion forums, e-mail networks, or just other blogs with more activity than the serene pond that is Ink and Beans.

Store and Share Your Fiction Online

Yesterday I learned that Yahoo! Briefcase --- the service I've been using to store my novel (and some other random documents) online --- is shutting down. The service always seemed pretty archaic to me, offering only 30 MB of storage and a rigid interface that never changed in four years, so I thought this day might come eventually. Truth be told, I sometimes wondered whether I wasn't the only person on earth using Briefcase in the first place.

Meanwhile, you may recall that I only just posted my first chapter excerpt a few months ago. Accomplishing this turned out to be an arduous task because, while it seemed like a simple and obvious feature to include. you can't store documents on Blogger. In this case, I wanted to find a web service, preferably free, that allowed me to upload a document and generate a unique URL address for that document, so that people interested in, say, reading my chapter, only had to click my link once and, presto!, my chapter would appear. At the time, the best option I could find was Google Sites. Better than nothing, but it required at least two clicks to get to any document I wanted to share, and the intervening window was confusing.

Hooray for SkyDrive! Store and Share Your Files.

Apparently I was looking in the wrong places. Within minutes of looking for a new place to store my private files, I found this article outlining many free options for storing and sharing files online.

I went with the first in the list, Microsoft SkyDrive, and so far I'm pretty pleased. If I install a little applet I can drag and drop all the files I want into a folder, then simply click an "Upload" button and away they go. Much faster than the Yahoo service I'd been using.

Also, if I place files in a public folder, I can generate a hyperlinked icon that people can click and go straight to the file I want --- no intermediate screens or clicks. Yay! Here's what it looks like (sharing both my first chapter and my short-fiction-submission-guide):