One of my favorite things about making a living as a freelance writer is that I am always learning something new. Part of this is just the nature of the job. And part of this is because I am always taking on new writing jobs that aren’t in my own areas of expertise. That has allowed me to broaden my experience of the world (and my own expertise for that matter) and to explore areas of study that I would probably never have gotten around to studying on my own. It also makes me interesting at parties and dinner table conversations since there’s always some job that relates to the topic at hand.
Because of my work as a writer, I know the basic qualities of all of the signs in the horoscope. I know the latest medical trends and technologies in preventive imaging software, stem cell research and infertility treatment options. I know that there are certain areas of San Francisco which are said to be haunted including hotels, bridges, forts and homes. I know that black is the new black. The research that I do for my writing has helped me to hone my own use of technology in the home and the office. The articles that I’ve written on plastic surgery and diet pills have reminded me to take a close look at my own relationship with food and my body. And the pieces that I’ve penned on musicians around the globe have helped me to explore a kind of creativity that I would never have gotten so intimately familiar with on my own (since, you know, I’ve got no musical talent).
I was never much of a fan of school. I did it and I excelled at it but it wasn’t for me. One of the problems was that I was always bored with a curriculum. I would read the first assigned book of the semester and then I would become passionately interested in that topic, or a tangential topic, and want to keep exploring it rather than wanting to move on to the next assigned reading material. Being a writer allows me this option. I find out about one new kind of computer software and I want to learn all that there is about related software … and hardware and online applications and careers that use this stuff. And so I find a way to write about it so that I can explore my interest while making a living.
This is what being a writer is all about. I don’t always love every job that I take on (although I try to take on only those that interest me so that I can provide the best writing). But I do generally love the exploration of learning new things. The only drawback is that I always want to visit some new travel destination I just wrote about or to buy some new gadget that I just discovered in my research. But I would say that’s a small price to pay for doing a job that you can always be excited about doing.
I was one of those people who joined MySpace when it was first launched. Ten years ago, I actively wrote handwritten letters to a bunch of pen pals that I had collected over the years. Those people were some of my best friends throughout high school and I remain in touch with a handful of them today. But for the most part, our correspondence has moved on to the Internet. It was one of those people who first introduced me to MySpace and I signed up as a way to stay in touch with her. I was active on the site for a few weeks and then my interest in it tapered off. I just wasn’t interested in what it had to offer and I promptly proceeded to remain inactive on the site for a couple of years.
Then, when I made the move from Arizona to San Francisco a few years back, I discovered that everyone here had a MySpace profile. And not only that, but it seemed to be the easiest way to get to know new people. We’d meet online or through friends but we’d really get to know each other through the comments and conversations we shared on MySpace. So, I dusted off the old profile and began to use the site almost daily. It wasn’t long before I began to realize that MySpace could help me make professional contacts in the area as well. So I adjusted my profile and set to work using it in that capacity.
And then, the floodgates were opened. The more work that I began doing online, the more I found that people wanted to connect with me through some social networking site or another. I began to get requests to join people on sites like LinkedIn. And the world of social bookmarking began to become increasingly important as I was asked to support the work of friends and associates with my votes on sites like Digg. I became an avid fan for a few short months and then, once again, my use of the sites tapered off. I found that it was difficult to actually make use of the sites on a regular basis and still have time for my other work.
Now, I use a few of the sites. And I’m trying to streamline my use to just those few because I feel that gives me the best chance to actually get to know people on the sites. If I’m going to bother being connected to people there, I want to be able to get to know them and to share the new news that’s going on. Otherwise, it seems like a waste of my time and theirs to say that we are “friends” there. But this doesn’t discount the important power of these sites. I still think that they’re a great place for making new friends, staying in touch with people and letting others who might be interested know what you’re up to. I just think that for my own use, it requires that I limit the sites I’m on to really be able to develop the connections that I’m making there.
The sites that currently interest me the most for social networking are MySpace (although I only use my work profile now, not my old personal profile), LinkedIn (which I’ve been on for awhile and am just starting to develop use of) and Bitchy Betty (a new site that allows people to support each other’s non-profit and good cause efforts). I use more bookmarking sites than I do networking sites (Digg, Del.icio.us, Stumble, Sk-rt, Hugg, Propeller … to name a few) although I’m working on curtailing my use of those, as well (with the first three on my list there being my preferred sites). So, I suppose that I haven’t quite decided if I love social networking or not. I do think it’s important and I think it can be fun. That said, you can feel free to contact me through those sites if you’d like; links are available on my contact page.
The last thing that I wanted to do this morning when I woke up was to sit down at my desk and start writing. That’s not normally how I feel. Normally, I enjoy writing. I really do. But today was one of those days when I wanted to do anything but write. I wanted to be creative, I just didn’t want to write. I wanted to make mixed CDs for friends, create a new photo collage for my apartment, figure out how to sew the shirt that I’ve been meaning to sew for … um, like two years. The creative urge was there, but writing was not what I wanted to do.
I made myself sit down and write anyway. I set a writing goal this week of fifteen pages per day on one specific project. And I’ll be damned if I was going to set a goal and not achieve it. I don’t usually make clear goals like that and I wasn’t about to sabotage the entire week by throwing in the towel today. So, I sat down. I forced myself to start typing. I told myself that it didn’t even matter if I didn’t use a single word because it was the act of meeting the writing goal that mattered.
The work was done before noon.
Not all days are that easy. Not most of those sentences are good. But I did what I had set out to do with my writing today and that means something. It means that I took my own self-imposed requirements seriously enough to accomplish them. I think that speaks directly to why I am able to manage my life as a freelancer. And I think it also speaks to the potential for future projects to go more smoothly than some of the ones in the past did.
My day isn’t exactly free now. I have other work that I’m going to do, other commitments to my writing that I have to keep. I’m putting in a full day at the desk. But if nothing else gets done, at least I met my writing goals.
My friends who work in the financial district get lunch breaks. Come to think of it, they also get coffee breaks. And judging from the amount of time that I see them active on their instant message programs, I think that they get a lot of other breaks during the day. But at the end of the two week pay period, their check comes just the same as it always does, whether they’ve taken long lunch hours or not. That’s not a luxury that the self-employed freelancer gets to enjoy.
Don’t get me wrong. We get our breaks. There are days when the work just won’t come and I end up wandering around the city, trying to get inspired. I can take a two hour lunch without having to explain myself to anybody. And if I don’t want to wake up with the alarm, I can meander into my day and no one is going to be the wiser. These are luxuries I don’t take for granted. But on the flip side, when I take long lunches and spend afternoons in coffee shops, I don’t get paid. In order to maintain a living, I must put in a forty hour week. And my forty hour week doesn’t include a water cooler or a smoke break.
This, right now, is my lunch break. I’m working on completing a goal of getting fifteen full single-spaced pages written on the new book today. So, during the time that I’m sipping the Hot ‘n Spicy soup leftover from last night’s order-in Chinese, I’m also taking care of things that are (but aren’t) work. I’m updating my website’s blog, obviously. I’m also going to make sure to leave comments on some blogs that I meant to get to over the weekend. I’m going to finish responding to my work email that got ignored this morning. I’m going to mail some documents that need to be out by the end of the day, make an appointment with one of my editors to discuss some details about my work and place a phone call to someone that I’m supposed to interview. When “lunch” is over, I’ll return to those fifteen pages.
I’m afraid that I sound like I’m complaining. It’s always so difficult to convey emotion in a blog post. I’m not complaining. I adore my job. I think that the fact that I create my own schedule, can jump from project to project and can support myself while writing is a wonderful thing. I’m just saying that it gets overlooked now and then by people who think that working from home is always a luxury. It’s a luxury, but it’s a job as well. And it doesn’t come with paid lunches and coffee breaks.
The above image is not mine. It is the mosaic collage art of Stacy Alexander, a Bay Area artist who works in a number of different mediums to create beautiful, clearly eye-catching work. Learn more about her from her interview at San Fran Voice.
Today I will write at least forty different articles on a variety of topics. People who first find this out are often aghast at the fact that I can write so much in one sitting. But this is my job. In order to survive as a freelance writer in the most expensive city in the country, I am forced to be prolific. As a full-time writer, I pride myself on my ability to continually craft original content that is researched and (hopefully) interesting while turning it out at a rapid pace. Mind you, I don’t always write so much in one day. But I regularly write a bulk of articles in one sitting. When you’re on a roll, you’re on a roll. And when you write to live, you make sure you get on a roll often.
But before I sit down to write those articles, I enjoy my morning routine. When I wake up, I read for a little while. This morning it was a book that I’m enjoying by a Bay Area author who fell in love with a Northern California inmate and writes to tell people how that happened. I brought my coffee to bed and read a chapter before getting up and doing the normal shower and breakfast thing. Then I did the morning work - the applications for new writing jobs, the checking email to make sure nothing needed immediate attention, the dash to the mailbox to send out what needs to go out this morning. Then came the second round of easing into the morning … the second cup of coffee, the journal writing, the making of the To Do list.
It’s eleven in the morning and I am only just about to get started on my workday. But this is the only way that I am prepared to work so intensively for so many hours. And before I do, I’ll make a collage. I don’t do this every morning, but it’s a regular part of my ritual. I usually find an inspiring quote amidst the morning reading or sometimes don’t come up with a quote at all. I sit at my desk with a selection of magazines, cutting out images as they inspire me. Then I arrange them together, sometimes adding the quote, taping them carefully on to a small piece of paper to make a miniature collage. I prop that up on my desk to look at it throughout the day, to remind myself that there is time for the little things.
I’m no artist. Creating these collages doesn’t meet some specific desire to create visual art. But that is precisely the point. What I am is a writer. When I sit down at the keyboard, I need to be focused. I need to remember that I am creating what will be the steps along the path of my career. What I am doing is working. I may love it, I may take pleasure in the projects, I may be prolific at least in small part because I thrive on what I do … but it is still work. I am lucky to love my work, but as with any job, it is sometimes a job. I am not an artist, and so I can sit down and create a collage and there is no pressure, no thought behind it, no concern for the resulting product. If I decide that I hate the piece, I flip the page and start anew the next day. I don’t care if it’s “good” or “bad” … I care only about the few minutes that it takes to make it, the minutes in which I am completely immersed in the physically creative process of crafting that collage.
I think every writer needs a second creative outlet. We need some sort of visual art, performance art, design work that we love to do but only as a hobby. We need a low-pressure way to explore the different things that we are thinking and feeling and experiencing in a way that doesn’t have to do with words. We need to wake up in the mornings and ease into our day doing something artistic that isn’t our work. This is the way that we refill the creative well, the way that we get ourselves ready to be prolific in our writing.
It’s time to do that now, but I have not forgotten the importance of the steps that come before.
[Tags] collage, art, writing, writer’s life, creativity, inspiration [/Tags]
It’s obvious that if you want to get writing work done, you need to minimize the distractions that take you away from the writing. It’s obvious; but it’s not easy. I have offered writing consultation advice to a number of people through one-on-one interaction as well as published articles and I always include ways to minimize writing distractions. But the truth is that the tricks don’t matter. What it really boils down to is having self-control and self-discipline. It’s about committing to your work. Once you’ve made that commitment, cutting down on the writing distractions is really fairly easy.
I was reminded of this today because I feel like I overcommitted myself a little bit to a new project. But I’m excited about it, so I’m happy to do it. It just means that I need to drastically reduce the distractions and increase the focus. So this morning, I woke up at the usual time. (I wake up early but without an alarm clock; I need enough sleep and waking up naturally in order to work well.) I got my normal cup of coffee and eased into the day. I read part of a book from the library because that’s what I do most mornings. But instead of lingering over the pages, considering dipping into a new book or otherwise making reading a reason not to work … I put the book away after a few pages and committed to writing.
The distractions were there if I wanted to entertain them. I’d been working on making a mixed CD for a gift and I hadn’t finished it so I could’ve easily started listening to music to try and complete that project. I wanted to finish the DVD of shows that I’d gotten so I could return it to Blockbuster. But I didn’t turn it on. I didn’t stop to go to breakfast with the friend who asked. I didn’t answer the text messages that came through. These are things that I normally have the luxury of doing during the day. And that’s part of what I like about the writer’s life. Some days are free for indulging in distractions. But some days are not those days and the committed writer knows the difference.
You can get advice from professionals about minimizing distractions. They’ll tell you to only check email once in the morning and once in the afternoon, to turn off IM programs, to set goals. They’ll tell you that if you’re a WAHM, you need to turn a video on for the kids or get a mommy’s helper for the day. They’ll tell you that you need to eat breakfast and lunch and not wander into the kitchen five times in between. But you don’t need them to tell you these things. You know what distracts you. And you know that if you make the conscious decision that you’re not going to let it distract you, it won’t (barring emergencies, of course).
Minimizing writing distractions is about committing to your work. It’s about taking yourself seriously. And it’s about doing what you’re supposed to do instead of what you want to do. But ultimately, if your career in writing is what you want to do, it all serves the same purpose.
[Tags] writing, time management, distraction, writing tips, writing advice [/Tags]
In the past few months, I have taken to rarely eating meals. As a writer with a home office, I have frequent access to the refrigerator and the pantry. As a result, I regularly eat all day long. To cut down on calories and make the most out of my near-constant snacking, I have taken to really enjoying small plates throughout the day. Tiny plates decorated with a couple of orange slices, a single spiced egg and a chunk of pretzel bread make for a wonderful morning treat. An afternoon plate of a single slice off of a sushi roll atop spinach with a side of grapefruit has enough flavor to feel filling. Until the next snack which might be cheddar cheese and spple slices or a tiny bowl of taste-infused soup. The more that I’ve come to enjoy these periodic treats, the less interested I’ve become in big meals. They’re overwhelming, uncomfortable, distasteful.
What does this have to do with writing? Well, I attended a poetry event last night. (It was an inspirational North Beach poet affair, the details of which can be read about over at my San Fran Voice blog post.) And while I was there, I realized that poetry is strikingly similar to these little plates of food which have come to serve as my sustenance. The poetry reading lasted only an hour. For many events, an hour is just getting things started. But for poetry, an hour is plenty. In an hour, you can catch the tiny snippets of phrasing, the intensity of language … the flavor, if you will. You do not need more than this to feel creatively full.
I remember only a few specific lines of the poetry from last night. The line in the image above by Jessica Loos (which I hope I’ve quoted correctly) stood out because of the way that it touched raw truth with such simple phrasing. Another line of hers which I remember distinctly was “his echo punched the beauty inside me”. Who needs to know the entire story behind the line when the line itself is so poignant? Who need the entire three-course-meal when the appetizer alone can satiate?
The truth is that I will probably never be entirely satisfied by poetry as I am by small plates of food. I will always need to fill my mind more with the lengthy books that put weight in my hands and ideas in my brain. I will forever escape to the tales of fiction books when my own tales are boring or unbearable. I will always turn to the pages of non-fiction for advice, information, inspiration and more. But poetry serves an important purpose. It gives us what we need in tiny bites. When there isn’t time or need for more, poetry can fill the hunger.
[Tags] poetry, creativity, writing, life, language [/Tags]
photo link - The image, which I was happy to find easily through an online search related to juggling books and balancing writing, is the work of Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun. My topic doesn’t relate to the one he was using the image to portray; his topics are indigenous, socio-political works. Definitely worth checking out - see the site and blog.
Being a freelance writer means always looking for new work. The ebb and flow is exactly that - swells of work that threaten to overwhelm and drown you and then stretches of drought that are a welcome reprieve until they go on too long. In the midst of those swells, the writer always has to work to regain footing and balance out all of the projects which are going on. The downtimes serve to assist with this because they can be used for planning, organization, and catching up on the little things.
I’ve worked hard in the last few years to garner myself some steady jobs. These are jobs that I am committed to doing well and consistently because I enjoy them and think they’re good jobs. However, I also do them well and consistently because the benefits of steady work from clients who pay when they are supposed to are innumerable. These steady jobs have allowed me to be a little bit pickier about which additional projects I take on, which has made it easier to maintain the balance of a steady work life.
However, there are always those old ebbs and flows. I’d predicted that the end of the year was going to be slow. I try to keep December fairly stress-free in terms of work so that I can enjoy the holidays and trips with friends and family. I also try to use the end of the year to assess what’s been happening in the months before and to make plans and goals for the year ahead. That was what I thought the end of this year was going to look like. Alas, this is not the case.
I’ve been fortunate enough to get some great writing opportunities that will carry me through the end of the year. I’m happy about this. But it also means that I have far more work than I’d planned on. I’ll have to resume that shuffling dance of re-working a new schedule for myself and figuring out what hours I can reasonably plan on being at the office. And I’ll have to take a look at whether there are certain commitments that I’m just not reasonably going to be able to keep up. We’ll see.
But you know what I realized today? I realized that I love the ebb and flow. Sure, it makes me a little nutty sometimes. But it’s what keeps me fresh. It keeps the work from getting stale. New jobs bring excitment and enthusiasm for topics that have gone unexplored for too long. Changes in hours free up different days to explore different aspects of the city that I live in. Balancing writing jobs is part of what a writer’s life is all about. And I happen to love the life of being a writer.
[Tags] writing, writer, balance, projects, time management, freelance, jobs [/Tags]
I love to surround myself with creative people. The set of folks that I consider to be my friends are graphic designers, painters, DJs, musicians, fashion lovers, daydreamers … and yes, writers. But I’ve always had something of a mixed bag of reactions when it comes to being friends with other writers. I like the idea of it. I think that collaborating on written work can be a terrific experience. I also think that other writers are the only ones who can really, truly understand what it means to make your living as a writer. But I haev also found that the majority of friendships that I’ve had with writers didn’t ever really get off the page.
When I was younger, the majority of the friends I had who were writers were poets. I met them through open mic nights at local cafes and loved them because they wrote poems about loving me. We were all narcissistic then. I have mostly fond memories of the nights spent drinking bad coffee and inhaling second smoke around that group of people who played with words. I remember a thriving energy that pulsated amongst us, an appreciation for language that seemed universal and profound … But I can’t say that I was ever really close friends with any of them. We were self-absorbed and dealing with self-esteem issues. And even when we weren’t, we were inhaling the drama of the “poetic life” as often as the smoke. When the need for drama faded, the relationships became faded as well.
I have been friends with writers at other times, of course. A few of them have been actual in-person, meet-for-coffee, talk about writing and the rest of life kind of friends. And then the others have been those people who I’ve never met in person who pound out thoughts about writing on the keyboard and post them in blogs for all the world to see. These people have understood what it means to sit in front of a blank page and have no desire to write, to force words to string themselves together because you need the low pay of a job that you didn’t want anyway, to revel in the success of finally realizing that you have come to make a living as a writer … These are moments and things that only writers can share. But I’ve never been able to move comfortably in a group of writers with these as the only bonds.
I tend to find that other creative people are the ones I prefer to spend my time with. Not that I’d turn my head at the chance to make friends with a writer. But my inspiration seems to sparkle when kindled by those who dabble in arts I can’t excel at. I may not understand the unique situation of their artistic inclination … but that mystery lends to a common language of explaining our work to one anothe, an experience which broadens the relationship and lets creativity thrive. My closest friends are those who probably don’t even consider themselves creative. They aren’t in the typical creative “arts” careers and don’t visit galleries in their free time … but they approach life with interest and attention and spirit in a way that’s more creative than other people I have known.
[Tags] writing, networking, writer friends, friendship, creativity [/Tags]
I still have the first diary that I ever wrote in. It’s ridiculously cliche, but it’s a pink diary that originally closed with a lock and key. I was in fourth or fifth grade when I received it as a Christmas present and thus began the habit of chronicling my daily life. I haven’t always kept a journal consistently … there were years when I barely wrote anything at all … but I have never really stopped being a journal writer. At the beginning of this year, I was writing every single morning. Then the writing tapered off and I hadn’t written in my journal in a month until this morning. But whether I write often or rarely, journal-writing has continued to play an important role in my life as a writer.
I’ve gone through many stages of journal writing. Some of these stages are related to the frequency - or lack thereof - of the writing. Some of these stages are related to the mood of the journal (which can sometimes be evidenced by the type of journal or decorative cover that I’ve used on the notebook). And some of these stages are related to the specific way in which I write. Occasionally, I go back through these journals to read about some mostly-forgotten time in my life. Whenever I get lost on my path through creativity, I turn to the journals - starting new ones to help me get through the writer’s block and reading old ones to help remind myself of where I’ve been and where I want to be.
The frequency of my writing has always been an indication of my general state of mind. I cave in to the cliche that I write most frequently in my journal when I am unhappy or confused. This makes sense, because journal writing for me has always been a means of accessing a part of my emotional mind that I can’t seem to get to in any other way. Knowing that I am discontent, I turn to the page and pummel it out through aggressive language until I have revealed what the problem is. Sometimes it is even just the act of writing, not the words that emerge on the page, which provides the catharsis necessary for seeing the answer and moving forward in my life. But this isn’t to say that journal writing is unhappy. I do sometimes journal for the sole purpose of capturing the beauty of a moment that I know I will otherwise forget. I have been known to grab a pen and jot down a funny line in a random conversation just so that I can go back one day when I’ve forgotten that the conversation ever even happened and return to find it there.
In addition to changing frequency in my journals, there has also been a change in the journals themselves over the years. After that first pink diary, I moved on to writing in basic notebooks because I was eleven years old and couldn’t exactly afford anything else. Junior high was rough for me and I wrote every single day to cope with my life. At the end of those two years, I tore every page out of the notebooks and bound them together with yarn. I moved on to high school and rarely wrote any type of journal entry. I was busy, active in my social life and maintained a group of pen pals that served my writing needs. When I began journalling again at the end of high school, I turned towards those decorative journals that can be found lining the clean shelves of bookstores. I worked at a bookstore then and they beckoned. I would go out in search of exactly the right decorative journal that seemed to fit my mood at the time. Sometimes I wouldn’t finish one book before starting another because the heft and design of the journal didn’t “feel right”. The light blue seashell-dotted notebook with fragile handmade paper pages may have felt right when I was light and airy but didn’t work when tossed into a period of depression. The sturdy muted-tone journal lined with the outline of the world was perfect when I had been traveling on my own for work but didn’t suit the immobile me that came home to no job.
After a few years of money spent on the “right journals”, I started using notebooks again. The guy I was dating at the time wrote his journal entries in composition notebooks. When we took off together to travel the country, little cash in our pockets and no plans for income, it seemed to make sense to go his route with the cheap composition notebook instead of paying money for a leather-bound book. Whereas he always wrote in black-and-white notebooks with black ink, I favored colored composition notebooks. I would add a photograph or postcard to the front of the notebook to give it personality. Sometimes I wouldn’t select this image until the book had been almost completely written in, because I hadn’t quite gotten the feel for my mood yet. To this day, those are the journals that I use. The current one is a purple composition notebook. The image on front is a purple-ish postcard picked up at a music festival. It is of the trunk of a purple tree decorated with dancing bodies winding through it … and it speaks to where I was at at the time … dancing through my life contentedly but without a clear notion of where I was.
As the decorative images on the outside of my journals have changed, so has the way that I write within the pages of those notebooks. As a child, I poured everything out exactly as I was feeling it at the time. In junior high, I wrote more in bad poetry than actual full-blown thoughts, a testimony to the heightened emotions of that time. After high school, I poured confusion out on the page through scraps of thought. During a period when I was certain that a loved one was reading my journals, I began writing in a sort of code, writing with the thought that it was being read and often referring to myself only in the third person. Later, I wrote as though I was writing to someone I knew, trying to describe what I was feeling so that I could figure it out. These days, I write more pragmatically. Writing is what I do and I have become comfortable with that. I used to think that I had to write down the facts of everything that had happened, as though articulating it to someone who needed to know. While I still sometimes do this, it is more so I can see the progression of thoughts and activities. I write in my journal now for me and only for me. It is my safe place, my tool … and sometimes it is an annoyance because I want to want to write in it on days that I don’t.
Journal writing is an intensely personal experience. And it’s interesting because it’s a universal experience as well. We read famous journals to get insight into other ways and times of life. We find out that CEOs, fashion models, political leaders and homeless people all keep journals for reasons that are varied and often similar. It’s a fascinating art … and an ongoing interetsing part of my life. Tell me, why do you keep a journal - and what is that experience like for you?
[Tags] writing, writer, journal, creativity, diary [/Tags]
