An Eradication of Crickets and a Return to Real Estate Writing

Vancouver Clark County Real Estate and Home Blog back on track.

The only thing we’ve heard around this blog the past several months have been the crickets.  That’s not good.  But it’s not like I’ve been Around the World in 80 Days or anything.  It’s just I’ve been really, really busy.  Honest.  Both in my real estate activities as well as the design and launch of some new blog and social media marketing activities (lots more to come on that subject later, stay tuned).

But I’ve decided to write here again.  Coming back to the blog, some things will change.  It’s going to be more diverse.  If nothing else to keep my attention.   Sure, we’ll still have all the goodies from my real estate reporting and analysis.  But I’ll tend to go off on a tangent here and there.  Some zigs when I might’ve zagged before, that sort of thing.  You never know.  One thing that’s not likely to change though is my, um, lack of any adherence to writing rules.  I’ve always said that my blog activities have made many an English teacher grimace.

As I prepped for getting back to writing, I recently read this post in my Google reader.  Surprise of surprises, I guess there are some rules out there:

* Dangling Participles – happen when you write a sentence and a clause in the sentence is related to one that it wasn’t intended for.

* Homonyms – are words that are pronounced the same, spelled differently, and have different meanings.

* Split Infinitives – occur when an adverb is placed between the bare infinitive of a verb (ie. to boldly go.

* Transitive Verbs – a verb that requires a subject and an object.,

* Prepositions – link nouns, pronouns and phrases to other words in a sentence.

* Relative Pronouns – Relative pronouns are that, who, whom, whose, which, where, when, and why. They are used to join clauses to make a complex sentence.

* Spelling – spellcheck, anyone? [this one is a pet peeve of mine]

via 50 Writing Errors that Continue to Haunt Bloggers.

Hmmm.  I wonder if there is a reward for breaking every rule?  Or if I get some special recognition for being able to blog without even knowing these rules existed?

Regardless, rules or not, attempting to get back on track with my blog starts today yesterday.

A Month of Sundays…

I should have known it was coming… that question. I set myself up for it, really did.  “So, how’s that blog thing going?” he said with that “you-can’t-have-a-comeback” smirk.

He threw me a JJ Putz fastball and I stood there like I was looking for a Little League change-up. See, after my first post I was so gung-ho, I was popping off to a colleague about how much and how often I was going to blog. Big ideas. Grand plans. Primed and ready to roll. Um, then reality set in. You mean I still have to sell real estate AND find time to blog? Ooohh. That changes things. Or does it?

Now time management has never been one of my strong suits. I have to simply work harder at working smarter to keep from having to work three times harder. Throw this new blog thing in with one wife, three kids, two baseball teams, two soccer teams, a football team, a gaggle of geese and a partridge in a pear tree, plus a bunch of clients who are very important to me, and well, you have a recipe for Chaos that would make Emeril proud.

But I knew my colleague’s question was a challenge of my manhood, (or at least I’m going to look at it like that to properly channel the motivation). And it has been a month of Sunday’s since I last posted. So I am re-committing myself to this blog thing. I think my problem is not time. It’s not content. It’s that I want every post to be as enthralling and well read as the next JK Rowling novel. High expectations, indeed. I need to come to grips with the fact that not every post needs to be a 1000-word treatise worthy of worldwide adulation. Not that I’m capable of such, but nothing like putting a little pressure on yourself to really induce writer’s cramp.

So, how about simple items of interest for those that drop by? That’s not too much to ask, is it? No, it’s not. While I might not revert to the Twitter concept of slapping out six words to the world about what I’m doing every 15 seconds, a happy medium might suffice.

I can do that. And I hope you’ll continue to drop by and join in the game. At least I’ll feel like I put that fastball in play.

If You Build It…

“Ray, people will come Ray. They’ll come… for reasons they can’t even fathom.  Oh… people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.”  Terrance Mann (James Earl Jones) to Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) in “Field of Dreams”.

Like Ray Kinsella’s feeling towards his cornfield-turned-baseball diamond in “Field of Dreams”, I launched this blog with a leap of faith and a dose of apprehension.  While I didn’t plow under my crops and I only hear those pesky voices from the fields on certain days, it’s still an undertaking of uncertainty.

Will they come?  And who are they anyhow?

I’m not a big fan of doing things “half-baked”.  So as I contemplated launching a blog, I was concerned about the commitment of time and the creation of content.   Could I find time to write? Would there be anything to write about?  And even if I satisfied those concerns… would I have an audience?  Fortunately, after talking to my high-profile focus group (that would be my mother, my wife and my sister), I am guaranteed at least two readers, (my sister is still undecided).  With the comfort of that safety net, I dove head first into the project.

Then the light bulb went on.  It was then that I realized, with hundreds of transaction sides over the past ten years, there was an absolute potpourri of tales and tidbits to type about.  Something to be gleaned from every purchase.  A lesson to be learned from every sale.  Something of benefit for others from others.  Experiences, and not all good, mind you, which can – really should – be shared.  No gory details.  Nothing personal about people.  And the names will be changed to protect the innocent and guilty alike.  But experiences, nonetheless.  A chance to “learn from history, lest we be doomed to repeat it”, kind of thing.

The wheels were spinning now.  In addition to real-life experiences, there were market trends to be analyzed, evaluated and discussed.  There was news and events to be translated to help normal people (those without the warped perspective that a license and a title can give some folks) find a better grasp of the complexities and idiosyncrasies of the real estate industry.  There were simple, fun and entertaining things going on in our hectic everyday lives that might be of benefit to share.  I was really on a roll.

At least for now I was content to know I had content. As for time, we’ll just have to see how that one works out over, well, the course of time.

So thankfully, for now, Terrance Mann was right.  You came, as evidenced by the fact that you are reading this.  I hope you will come again and again.  Stop by often. Join in with a comment.  Become part of the audience, or better yet, the community.  It sure will take some of the pressure off my mother and my wife.