Archive for ◊ November, 2008 ◊

26 Nov 2008 Thanksgiving Break
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I’m taking a little break from blogging this week for the Thanksgiving holiday, which I’ll be celebrating by having people over, cooking (yeah, I know– who would have thought I could?), and being lazy. Because that’s what Thanksgiving is all about, isn’t it? (No? Well it is in this household!)

I’ll return on Monday with why I believe some people are just not cut out to be freelance writers (or writers in general), why advice about saving a year’s worth of wages before going freelance full-time is a load of bullshit, and why even though a lot of work is being thrown at freelancers in this economic climate (some writers are reporting more work than ever before), it’s probably not a good idea to take most of it without a background check.

In the meantime, here are the promised pictures from the Women’s Conference 2008.

25 Nov 2008 More Reasons To Love This Writing Life
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* You get to meet cool people and ask them all sorts of stupid questions. Sometimes, you get to e-mail them and tell them that you were completely star struck and hence need a second appointment, just so that you can practice not being star struck this time. (Oh yes, I did.)

* You get all sorts of free stuff (books and movies for me), for merely saying the words “writer” or “journalist.”

* Reading a novel in the middle of the day is “studying technique.” Learning how to go to school in Second Life is research.

* You can get out of pretty much anything with the excuse, “I have a deadline.”

* People think you’re smart and sophisticated, even if you’re secretly an unshowered, geeky hermit.

* You can show up at any event, flash a press pass, and more times than not, be granted entry. And usually, a backstage interview.

23 Nov 2008 The Hard Sell
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I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow, but today, right now, I hate query letters. Truly detest them.

I like thinking up brilliant ideas, I like discussing their potential with friends and editors, I love engaging in stimulating conversation about why they may or may not not work. I do not like thinking about their marketability. I do not like thinking about why they’re important now. I do not like having to sell them to people. I like them to stand out on their own.

Distilling down an important story to one sentence about its marketability is, in my opinion, a completely ridiculous concept. Writers should be allowed to play and experiment with ideas that interest them.

Unfortunately, real life doesn’t work that way.

Tonight, I get to figure out why a story I’m writing about a certain food trend needs to be told now. Or at all.

I have a feeling it will be a tough question to answer.

22 Nov 2008 What I’m Doing This Weekend
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I currently have three assignments on my plate:

(1) an ongoing how-to gig that I’ve been ignoring for way too long, but which could prove instrumental in paying the bills over the next couple of months,

(2) a research-intensive piece that needs me to put together a list of small things people can do to make the world a better place, and

(3) an article on Mahatma Gandhi and his philosophies on life.

I’m also designing a website and working on four distinct ideas. Without giving them away, I’ll tell you that one is about a food trend in the San Francisco Bay Area, another is about the contrasts between the thought process of Indian communities in the West to those in India, my favorite is about certain communities in American prisons, and the final one is about overseas banking.

I’m going to spend the morning shooting emails to people who can help me get these ideas together, my evening will involve lots of tea and research.

Tomorrow, I get to do the fun part. Write.

21 Nov 2008 Taking Stock
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It’s been an interesting journey. And some of you have followed from the very beginning.

I started writing in 2002, a couple of years after I failed my first year in college, and decided that engineering held no interest for me, but maybe I could try my hand at this writing thing. For months, I read websites, newsletters, journals, and magazines, never once having the courage to write anything of my own.

But in 2002, I finally put my fingers to keyboard. I learned how to type, I submitted my first manuscript and my first query letter, I got published, and I started a website. I started chronicling my journey on a weekly basis, and many writers, some of who still remain readers of this blog, followed.

It’s been interesting looking back over my shoulder this past week as yet another writer who started out with me has closed the doors of her office to venture into teaching. I don’t see this as a negative thing. She thought she was a writer, achieved some success with it, and during the process, realized that her true passion lies elsewhere. So she’s off to teach kids in school.

But others I started out with have remained. Some have becoming best-selling authors, some have become Hollywood scriptwriters, others are ghostwriters for celebrities, and even more, like me, have continued writing for magazines and newspapers– expanding, experimenting, and changing, no doubt.

I hadn’t realized until I stepped back this week and looked over my shoulder, how far I’ve come from where I started. Maybe it’s a good idea to remember that every once in a while.

20 Nov 2008 When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Become Web Designers
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Ask, and you shall receive. Has anyone else noticed that every time I wish for something or mention a problem on this blog, a solution magically appears?

(I wish I could earn a million dollars this year, get a six-figure book contract, and win the Booker Prize. Just making sure I have that covered.)

Anyway, I’ve been whining and moaning and groaning about money lately. I didn’t really expect any new assignments, because well, I haven’t pitched anything lately. But a friend I knew in middle school wrote to get in touch, let me know where he is and what he’s up to, and said we should keep in touch.

“Oh, and you have a beautiful website,” he said. “Could you tell me who designed it? I’d like to hire that person.”

I told him I’d designed it myself, and then, without thinking of the consequences, I wondered if he might like to hire me to do his company’s website. I’m not a web designer by any stretch, but I’ve been sitting in a class lately, and I’ve realized that I’m familiar with pretty much everything that we’re learning. I know all about the different platforms, I’ve done coding on websites in the past, I know how to work with databases, I’ve worked in Photoshop and Flash, I’ve designed graphics, and I worked with content management systems before Blogger and WordPress were even invented.

I don’t know what made me offer, but he accepted, and I am now officially a working web designer.

I freaked out for the first two days, then realized that I’m more than qualified to do this and got to work.

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