then I went to work on the support websites:
http://thefranciscanessay.wordpress.com/
(This Franciscan Essay) for a brief introduction to that essay;

http://thefranciscanview.wordpress.com/
(This Franciscan View) for a brief news on the essay;

then I submitted the essay to the American Chronicle
(you can read it here once it is accepted for publication):
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewByAuthor.asp?authorID=700

Then, since the copyright to the essay is mine, at about 0800 hours, I had a flash of inspiration, so I decided to publish it also in my other name site:
http://frankahilario.wordpress.com/ (This Wizard of X).

I’m not finished. This is what happened:
Actually, I uploaded two slightly different versions of the essay.

This is the version I uploaded to This Franciscan Writer and submitted it to the American Chronicle:

Title:
A Thinker’s Faith. Rebel Thinker Writes, ‘PS, I Love You’

Last line:
The writer’s fate is writing; this writer’s faith is thinking the best.

And now this is the slightly different version I then uploaded to This Wizard of X:

Title:
A Writer’s Faith. Rebel Writer Writes, ‘PS, I Love You’

Last line:
The writer’s fate is writing; this writer’s faith is writing the best.

Do you notice the differences? The bodies of the essay in those 3 different websites are exactly the same but the titles and the last lines are not. They differ in 4 crucial words. What I want to find out now is which version will attract the higher attention or interest, will be read by significantly more, will be commented upon by the greater number? Since I have click statistics for The Wizard of X (which has the ‘Writer essay’) and the American Chronicle (which has the ‘Thinker essay’), I can compare the data.

No, this is not a ‘scientific’ study since the conditions are dissimilar – The Wizard of X is personal while the American Chronicle is commercial – still, I think it would be fun having a good idea whether a word can be so significant that it can attract far more attention than another if used in the exact same essay in the exact same (unobtrusive) position in the exact same sentence. So as not to affect the results, of course I’m not going to tell anyone about this day-old website of mine or this little day-old experiment in vocabulary until maybe on my birthday, and that would be 6 months from now. That would make a nice gift, wouldn’t it?

PS: About 1 hour after writing the above, I have just added a slight twist, changing the title to a third difference and uploading the essay in another, new mirror-image website:

A Writer’s Faith. Rebel Thinker Writes, ‘PS, I Love You’

And, an hour later, I have already changed the title of my book to
Rebel Thinker Writes For Non-Dummies

And about 2 hours later, to this:

Rebel Thinker Writer’s Guide For Non-Dummies

Any which way you’ll have it, the adventure is exciting as that of ‘The Three Princes Of Serendip,’ a fable of royalty making discoveries when they were not out making discoveries; I call mine Serendipity X because this one is not accidental but deliberate serendipity (see my essay ‘Serendipity X. The Rebel Writer Writes, ‘To X Or Not To X‘). Going the way of Serendipity X is not unlike Dorothy and her friends, The Cowardly Lion & The Scarecrow & The Tin Man travelling the Yellow Brick Road on their way to find the Wizard of Oz, as written by Frank L Baum. In which case, if you call Frank A Hilario the Wizard of X, I wouldn’t mind, no, not at all.

I assure you that Serendipity X is perfect for you if:

(1) you don’t have any idea what to do.
(2) you have a title already, or topic – and that’s all you have.
(3) you have a vague idea, and you don’t know how to begin.
(4) you don’t know where you are and how you got there.
(5) your mind is blank.

After this, for your exercises, I will be giving you actual examples from my own writing.

By the way, Serendipity X as a paradigm for creative thinking / creative writing is a lot more exciting than Edward de Bono’s lateral thinking, and the way he explains it in his many books. It is a lot more fun than Tony Buzan’s mind mapping, which requires you to draw lines to signify relationships, which is linear thinking, not much different from lateral thinking. It is a lot more relaxing than Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, which requires you to keep a regular journal: too much trouble! I can’t be bothered with it. eXciting is not an eXaggeration of it.