Real Words

I almost didn’t get out of my pajamas on Friday. I lingered in bed for awhile, doing some of my work there from my laptop. I moved to the living room for awhile and worked on my computer. I went back to bed and did some reading that I was able to justify as research for an article that I was working on.

This is the kind of life that my friends say that they envy. They always say that if they could work from home like I do then they would never get out of their pajamas.

Usually, I disagree with them. I think there are a lot of good reasons for freelance writers to get up, out of bed, showered and dressed at the start of each day. Some of the reasons that I do that include:

• I feel better about myself. Maybe some folks feel comfy and cute in their pj’s. I prefer to wear cute clothes. I feel better about the way that I look if I’ve put on something besides what I slept in.
• I feel better emotionally. The days can really blend into one another too much if you don’t separate them with basic rituals like showering, dressing, changing into pj’s at night. When this happens, I just don’t feel good.
• Getting up marks the start of my work day. I do linger in bed each morning. It’s a luxury I enjoy. I read, I journal, I answer email. But when I actually get up, my day has begun. I’m ready to work. Or sometimes I’m not ready but getting up helps to signal my body and mind that it really is time.
• It’s good to be able to leave the house at the drop of the hat. There are times when you need to get out and interact with the world even if that means just doing your work at the local coffee shop or co-work space. It’s a lot easier to do that when you’re already ready to go.

My big writing project for 2010 is to go through all of the old writing that I’ve been meaning to go through for years. I have tons of projects that relate to this. I’ve got old files on my computer that need to be organized, some of which can be deleted and others that can be re-worked into new articles. I have an entire box of old scraps of writing that date back more than ten years. I have several poetry and fiction projects that were started and have been ignored. It’s my goal to go through these, save the stuff I’m actually going to use, mine some insights wherever I can and then toss the rest. The goal here is to clear out the old writing (either by using it or tossing it) in order to make room for new writing.

What I’ve discovered is that it’s not easy to accomplish this task (which is why I’ve been starting and stopping it and putting it off for so long). But I think I’ve found a system that works for me. Here it is:

Identify all of the writing to go through

The first step for me had to be to get organized enough to know what I wanted to look through. Then I needed to prioritize. The main things I want to look through are computer files, that box of writing and my unfinished projects. I prioritized them in that order.

Define clear goals for what to do with the writing

My biggest problem with going through my writing has always been that I don’t really know what to do with it as I’m going through it. Sure, there are some scraps that I clearly just need to toss but mostly there’s a bunch of stuff that may or may not be useful to me in some form. Defining exactly what I’m looking for as I go through my writing makes it a lot easier to actually sort through it. For me, the goals are:

• Repurpose any work that can be used somewhere else. This goal needed to be even clearer so I had to set specific things that I was looking for such as writing to use in my personal blogs, writing to repurpose for clients, writing to turn into magazine articles for specific magazines … By defining this, I am able to do a much better job of organizing existing writing for new uses.
• Look for any insights into myself. Much of my writing, especially on those scraps of paper, reminds me of things about myself that I had forgotten. That’s why it’s so hard to get rid of some of it. What I’m doing is setting aside anything that provides specific insight and then journalling about it now before I get rid of those original pieces of writing.
• Save any great lines. Usually there are only one or two great lines of writing in a whole stack of papers. I’m learning to look for those and then set them aside while getting rid of the rest of the writing junk that is there.

When I first wrote up my personal statement for my application to law school, I struggled over every word, trying desperately to fit the nuanced details of a life full of changing decisions in to what amounted to a five-paragraph essay. In the copy of my first draft of the paper which I have tucked away in to a scrapbook, there is a bulleted outline of my working life. It reads:

· Age 15 – began full-time employment at daycare

· Age 16 – receptionist at civil engineering office

· Age 17 – dropped out of high school, certified in massage therapy

· Age 18 – traveling portrait photographer

· Age 19 – founded non-profit working with incarcerated adults

· Age 21 – developed literary magazine for said non-profit

· Age 22 – group home staff worker

· Age 23 – completed manuscript about group home staff experience

· Age 23 – certified in therapeutic in-home foster care

· Age 24 – finished four year college degree in two years of full-time school

I remember staring down at that piece of paper and thinking that all it looked like was a litany of, “I started and then I quit, I started and then I quit”. I hadn’t even bothered to list the numerous bookstore, barista, babysitting and bartending jobs I’d begun and then backed away from off and on and off and on throughout the duration of my short life.

Staring at the list, I put my pen to the page and began to scrawl. I wrote lines and lines about why I had left each job that I had started. It was probably the most cathartic writing experience I had ever had in my life. I learned, through a close look at my own ebbs and flows, about the motions of my own internal alterations. And what I saw when I looked at the final pages summarizing my life was that I was not someone who always started and quit things. Instead, I was a girl who was not afraid to say that something wasn’t working for me anymore and to move on to something else which might. I was a girl who was interested in having as many new experiences as she possibly could and being okay with letting one lead in to the next.

In the end, I sized that multi-page self-realization in to a concise description of why I would be able to meet the challenges of law school with an efficiency and dedication which would wow the school’s staff and make marks upon the world around me. The funny thing was that despite those layers of self-knowledge I was staring at, I had completely convinced myself that law school was the right path for me. I was certain that I had finally figured out what was exactly right for my changing life, sure even that I could continue to change within the boundaries of that profession without compromising my own free spirit.

I began law school with the kind of gusto with which I begin all of my endeavors. I fell head over heels in love with legal language and buried myself happily in books as children will bury themselves in the sands of beaches. This experience was going to be just another step on the boardwalk of my life and I was excited about the chance to wind my way along the coast of this new career.

But, alas, the excitement was short-lived. I liked law school well-enough, but I have never been a woman suited to a life of structure. I was fine on days when I had no class and I could linger in coffee shops, reading my books and working on cases. But on days when I had to go to class, it was a struggle to force myself to conform. Every fiber of my being fought against my logical insistence that it was just class and that I could go; I felt weighted down by my own insistence that I stick to the plan.

Lying in bed one day when I was supposed to be attending a seminar for my contracts class, I came across that life list in my old scrapbook. I remembered the fervor with which I had crafted every word of that essay. And I remembered that what I had always wanted to be was a writer. I wasn’t certain what that meant. I didn’t know what I would write. Or for that matter, how I would pay my bills without the security of a law firm check coming my way every two weeks.

But I knew one thing for certain: every time that I had quit something in my life, I had left behind an important chapter of my personal story to move on to an even better selection. My life is not a book with a neat and tidy plot, a single climax and an ultimate ending. Instead, my life is a library full of books. That day, I walked away from a law school career as easily as I had walked away from the bartending jobs that hadn’t even made the cut on my life list of career-ending decisions. Today, I am a writer. In total, I have about ten years of professional writing experience behind me from various positions. I’ve been a full-time professional web writer and blogger for nearly five years now. So I can confidently say that I won’t quit this work anytime soon. But who knows? I’ve never regretted quitting anything yet!

As a professional blogger I have a number of steady clients who I have been blogging for over the course of several years. This year a couple of them have already sent me Christmas bonuses via PayPal. Totally unexpected and so sweet!

I am happy about this for three reasons:

• The money is nice of course. But this is actually a small reason compared to the other reasons this makes me happy.
• It makes me really feel like a part of the team. I work every week for these clients. I do all that I can to promote and build up their website and blog traffic. It’s nice to know that I am considered a regular “employee” deserving of a Christmas bonus even though I work remotely because it really makes me feel like I’m recognized as an important part of the company’s team.
• I think this is a hint that things are shifting in the world of freelance and independent contracting work. More and more people are doing this type of work. I think that there are more “freelancers” who are really functioning as work-at-home employees for specific businesses. The Christmas bonus is one sign that this is beginning to be recognized. Another sign was a recent announcement by oDesk that their freelancers can start getting group health benefits through them. This recognition of the difference between true freelance work and work-at-home independent contracting is important and I think it suggests bigger changes to come.

There is an episode of Sex and the City which I only vaguely remember where the girls talk about what they have in the “goodie drawers” beside their beds. They are talking about sex toys, of course, and I recall Samantha joking about how she has a whole goodie closet.

I bought a new bed frame for myself over the summer. It has a bookcase headboard and it has drawers underneath the mattresses. I, too, have a goodie drawer. It is the drawer closest to where I lay my head at night and the drawer which is easiest for me to reach in the morning. It isn’t sex toys that you’ll find in there, though … it’s journals.

I have been keeping a personal journal off and on since I was about ten. Writing in this journal is an important part of my regular routine. I used to hide the journal to make sure that no one would find it. These days I tuck it away so that it’s not tempting to the curious eyes of people who happen to be in my house but I don’t worry much because I don’t think that anyone I let in my house would actually violate my privacy by reading my journal. It’s one of those journals that wouldn’t be that interesting to others anyway; it’s filled with the banalities of life and my thoughts about nothing much. It’s something I do just for me.

This isn’t the only journal that I keep these days. I also try to keep a gratitude journal in which I regularly note the things that I am feeling most thankful for. I don’t do this daily (although I once did and think it’s good to do so) but I do it steadily enough. And I have a journal for affirmations and a journal for writing exercises. I certainly have plenty of private things that I could keep in my goodie drawer but it’s these things that end up being most important to me.

And of course then I have the bookcase headboard which is filled with the latest two dozen books that I’ve gotten out of the library and may read voraciously or may not read at all. I can see them there and be motivated to pick them up and do some reading though and that’s why those are left out in the open instead of tucked away into drawers.

What do you have in your goodie drawer? Where do you keep your private writing?

I just wanted to send out a quick reminder to all of my writer friends that writing is a gift to be shared with others. It is actually one of the best gifts that you can give to someone else this holiday season. You can write love letters, heartfelt Christmas cards, songs, poems, and stories for the people in your life. You can combine your writing with photographs to make memory books that will touch their hearts.

So often we think of writing as our work. However writing is also our life. It’s what we have to share with others. Those others shouldn’t just be the readers that we have come to love. We should also share our writing with those we love who may or may not be our regular readers. Even if your hubby doesn’t read your blog or your mom doesn’t quite “get” your books, these people will appreciate the writing that is written just as a gift for them.

Check out my recent hub 15 Ideas for Using your Writing as a Gift to get some ideas for word-based Christmas gifts that you can give this year.

I just spent some time back at home in Tucson with my family. While I was there, I went to the local independent bookstore (Antigone’s) with my dad and my sister to check out a book reading that was being done by an author named Richard Polsky. I admit that I had never heard of this author before my dad suggested that we go to this book reading. However, based on the reading alone, I am now a fan of his.

Richard Polsky is an author who has spent the last several decades working as an art dealer. His first book was called I Bought Andy Warhol and is all about the art world. He wanted a good piece of art as an investment but it took him twelve years to pick what he wanted. He tells the tale of looking for this piece of artwork and uses that tale as a framework for describing what the art buying / art dealing world is all about.

The book that he was specifically promoting at this particular book event was his new book, I Sold Andy Warhol (too soon). It’s essentially about the fact that he eventually sold his piece and made a pretty penny but that he would’ve made millions more if he’d held off for another couple of years on that sale. In more depth, this book is about what makes art valuable in the art world today. Interesting topics.

What really interested me, however, was not the books or their topics so much as the approach Polsky took to his book reading / book signing event. If you’ve attended many of these things then you know that they typically involve a brief introduction to the author followed by him (or her) reading a passage from the book and then doing a brief Q&A. Polsky threw that plan of attack out the window. Instead, he decided to give us just the briefest overview of what’s in the books and then to tell us what is not in the books.

He described the things that had been taken out of his books by his editors or his legal time or by himself at the last minute due to external circumstances. This was interesting because it gave us listeners a lot more insight into his writing process. It gave us greater insight into the topic that he chose to write about because we learned what can and can’t be talked about in this art world. It showed off a more personal side of the writer than what you normally learn from a standard book reading. And, undoubtedly, it was a great marketing approach because as Polsky said, “you can just read the book to find out what’s in the book” and his approach surely made more people there want to buy the books themselves.

This whole thing not only got me interested in Polsky but also got me interested in the book signing event in general. I am curious now to learn more about how different authors have taken creative approaches to their book reading events. I am interested in coming up with my own creative ideas for book signings that are out of the norm and therefore more interesting to potential readers. Are you aware of any authors that have taken a creative approach to their book signings? If so I’d love to know more about them!!

One of the things that I’ve thought about doing off and on is hiring a social media person. This would be someone who would have the job of doing the social media promotion for all of my work as well as for all of the posts that I do for my clients. It’s a tempting thing to consider doing but in the end I’ve decided that the cons outweigh the pros so I’m not going to do it.

Benefits of Hiring a Social Media Person

There are a lot of good reasons for me to hire a social media person. Doing so could benefit my own blogs as well as increase the traffic that I’m getting for my clients. The core benefits of having someone else do this instead of myself would be:

• That individual would be sole focused on social media promotion. Social media promotion is only one of the tasks that I perform as a blogger. Things I do as a blogger include defining the content, writing the content, adding images and videos to the posts, scheduling the posts, doing internal and external linking and then promoting the posts through various methods. When time gets tight, it’s hard to focus completely on social media. Hiring someone to do that would guarantee that the time and focus was on that regularly.
• It would mean I wouldn’t have to do social media stuff. The truth is that I don’t like doing a lot of social media promotion. There are things that I like using Facebook and Twitter for. I am starting to get into LinkedIn for various uses. However I don’t particularly enjoy the promotion of my own posts on these sites. Hiring someone to do it would mean I wouldn’t have to.
• I’d get an outside opinion on my social media strategy. Working alone means that I end up doing everything on my own and can get really stuck in my own way of doing things. This isn’t as bad with my clients’ blogs because I get their feedback on the social media strategy that I plan out for them. However it can be bad for my own blogs. It would be nice to have that second person giving me suggestions and feedback on how I approach my blog promotion.

I am always on the lookout for new freelance job leads. I like to know what’s being offered and what the average expectations are of the people who are hiring freelance writers and bloggers today. I also like to have a steady stream of new opportunities available to me.

I typically use the same few resources when looking for these job leads. I use Craigslist under both writing jobs and writing gigs. I use Problogger since I’m primarily looking for blogging work. And I use Deb Ng’s daily list of leads. However, I also like to play around with new options for finding work as these options emerge.

One option that’s emerged recently is TwitterJobSearch. Through this site you can enter a keyword for the job that you want to find and it will provide you with a list of such jobs that have been posted to Twitter. You can sort the results by date or relevance.

I have tried to use this tool to find blogging jobs and it doesn’t seem to be particularly useful. I’ve entered “blog”, “blogger” and “blogging” as my keywords and yet most of the jobs that come up don’t seem directly relevant to hiring a blogger. However, I’ve seen more success for general writing jobs when typing in either “writing” or “writers”.

I’m curious – is anyone else out there using TwitterJobSearch to find freelance writing / blogging jobs? Has it been successful for you? Is it any better than searching Twitter directly?

Yesterday I attended a free class by the SBA which was all about the other free small business resources that exist in my city. I learned about a lot of great resources but the one that I think is going to be the best one for me is the public library. Of course, I did already know that I could get some free stuff from the library (like books) since I use my library regularly. What I didn’t know was that there is a lot of free information on the line that I can access through the library which I can’t actually access through the Internet.

The main thing that I learned is that my public library system subscribes to numerous databases that would cost me a fortune to sign up for on my own. These are databases like LexisNexis (which I used during my brief stint in law school) and databases to help you find certain companies or suppliers. There are also databases here filled with journals. I’m so excited about this for my online writing work.

The one thing that I dislike most about writing online is that so much of the information that I write about is something I read online elsewhere and am repeating. Sure, I provide my own take on it. I try really hard to do outside research and to interview people to get a new perspective on these re-hashed topics. But the truth of the matter is that, beyond what I share of my own experiences, you can get most of the information that I provide somewhere else on the web.

What I’m hoping is that having access to these databases will change that. I feel like I’ll be able to do much more comprehensive research into scholarly levels of a topic. I could do that before by actually going to the library but I rarely do that because of the time it takes. Now that I’ve discovered that my library card gives me online access to these databanks, I’m going to be able to do that level of in-depth research at home. I think it’s going to benefit my clients and make my writing a lot more interesting.

Yay for San Francisco’s Public Library system!