Time sure flies when you’re writing articles like a madman to abolish abortion. Last month, some expectations were set in our December 2022 update. In this update, we’ll review where we are towards meeting those goals, updates to our website, some rantings about March for Life, and some thoughts for February.
As with all of these articles, these aren’t merely housekeeping articles, though they tend to be far less formal. Be forewarned, contained within are the musings of someone who has spent too much time in front of a keyboard writing. I may or may not have consumed copious amounts of caffeine. My primary company are a cat and dog who like to loudly argue over, what I like to assume is, philosophy and politics. If I’m honest, it’s probably senseless bickering. That is all to say, bear with me.
Nullify Abortion Home Page improvements
Improvements were made to the homepage. Among those include a “featured articles” section. Self-explanatory. Additionally, we’ve made more articles visible right from the homepage. Our main “product” is articles, so it makes sense to make them more accessible.
To that ends, everything is being recategorized. By everything, I mean everything. The navigation menu will include links to find articles by topic. We already have a few already up there. This will be fleshed out over the next month or so. Making content more accessible is my goal.
Status on meeting article deadlines
As it stands, I could publish several mediocre articles right now. I don’t want to do that. I believe in doing my part of abolishing abortion is the Lord’s work. A balance must always be struck between actually doing something and quality. If you’re always waiting for perfection, you’re never going to get anything done. That said, I know the articles in progress right now need more work to reach that maximum trade-off point.
My goal is to create an article in which I know I worked hard enough on it that I’m not tempted to revisit it in the future — even if I know I can do better. Unfortunately, some of my past articles have failed that test. For example, I completely rewrote the article for the fungible comic. Most recently, I made major revisions to Abortion is Murder. Apart from the odd volunteer, I’m the sole writer. It’s better to do it right the first time.
Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. Serve the Lord Christ.
Colossians 3:23-24 LSB
All of this said: January’s article is just about done. I want to publish it on or before the March for Life on January 22nd. You’ll see why when it’s published.
Future me, update this spot to include a link when it’s done.
Note to Future Me
Update this spot to include a link when it’s done.
How articles are made
Writing original feature articles is tough. There is something to be said about writing articles responding to laws and news. They write themselves. Even though it may require reading a hundred or so pages of painfully dry legalese. Once you actually get what’s going on, you just need to communicate that. Commenting on complicated and polarizing issues like politics, culture, society, theology and more require significantly more research and care.
The biggest challenge, which I hadn’t anticipated, was starting back up cold turkey with no articles in my “hopper.” Back in May, June, and July, I had anywhere between four to eight articles in various stages of development.
This created some chaos and was overwhelming at times. Flipping through several tabs trying to pick one to work on was often times debilitating for someone with significant ADD. But once a groove was found, a groove was found.
If one article didn’t pan out, I’d have another already in progress. Often times, bits of one article might become another, and then another, and… Having multiple articles in the workflow means more content coming out faster. But creating this buffer requires a build up time. This something I hadn’t anticipated in December. In December, I was starting with next to nothing. All of my articles had been more or less published or scrapped.
How an article on culture becomes something about Christian theocracy
This is all said to illustrate the process that goes into content creation for Nullify Abortion. Articles don’t just appear after I sit down for five minutes. Maybe I need to be better at what I do, but with what I have, I do my best.
When I was writing Culture Barbarians last summer, I originally had a significant portion dedicated to the history of Christendom and the Christian influence on Western culture and government. For Culture Barbarians, I wrote somewhere between 3,000-4,000 words, most of which nobody will ever see because I kept having to trim and delete them. I couldn’t get it to work. I eventually had to pull most of the section about Christendom out, realizing it needed its own section.
After the article was published, I teased an article on “Christian Theocracy.” There was a lot of interest expressed from our Facebook page followers. I’ve been working on it since. When I had posted the update in December, I was neck deep in actually writing that article.
I gave myself a Christmas deadline. But as the deadline approached, I fell down a rabbit hole of research as can happen sometimes. The next thing I know, I don’t know nearly enough to speak authoritatively on the exact topic of my article. In fact, I need to do a lot more research before I feel comfortable writing and publish that article. Suddenly, the article which was slated to hold things over until I could finish the next one sometime in mid to late January was no more.
There were no other articles in the hopper. I would have to start a new article from scratch. January’s article(s) were going to be late.
March for Life 2023
Coming up is the 50th anniversary for March for Life. We went to March for Life in 2013. It was an experience. While it did motivate us to action (Nullify Abortion would be founded the following year), we also walked away from it wondering: What’s the point? Not to be the perpetual Debbie Downer, but so many converged on the capital with overwhelming passion but abortion remained legal. What were we all doing?
Politicians would give prepared speeches where they’d swear allegiance to our cause and discuss how difficult the fight ahead was. Mind you, as they actively worked to sabotage it. Leaders in the pro-life industry would cheer them on and talk about all the great work they did. Everyone would cheer. Then we walked in one of the coldest, snowiest winters in years around the National Mall. Yay.
I see little value in hyping up the next generation of pro-life industry lobbyists. Enough money has been spent reinforcing abortion with the votes and money of people who want to end abortion.
If we’re gathering thousands of people together, it shouldn’t be to march ceremoniously, it should be to march demanding the end of genocide. The abortion militants aren’t going to be there playing games, why are we? What is it with Christians and Christian-wannabes putting on shows instead of laying hold of victory?
February and Forward
Rantings aside, next month things should be easier. I now have several articles prepared and more ideas going. I can tell people are looking for the new articles because I can see around the middle of the month website traffic spiked. I appreciate you. It’s coming, I haven’t forgotten. It’s almost done.
Going into February, the goal is going to be one major article and possibly a minor article. That’s the goal. If I can do more, great. If not, well, at least I didn’t set the expectation.
If you have any experience writing or copyediting and would like to help, please check out our volunteer page and send a message. Even if you’ve written something previously and would like to grant us permission to use it here. One thing I’ve found, a lot of people put a lot of effort into Facebook and other social media posts, but then it gets lost to obscurity. If you’ve written something relevant to our mission, get in touch. This could be a way to give new life and more permanence to something you’ve written.
God bless and see you soon.
Featured Image Writing for Life by Matthew Semrau Copyright © 2023. All Rights Reserved.
