Of White and Black MacBooks

Me: Wow, your laptop’s pretty clean. Mine looks like it was left in a field of dust.

Friend: Mine does too, usually. I just cleaned her this morning.

Me: Her? Your laptop’s a her?

Friend: What’s yours?

Me: Him. I named him Max.

Friend: Oh, that’s right, you have a black MacBook. So of course it’s a him. *Stroking his white MacBook* Mine’s white. So it’s a she.

Me: Why is white a she?

Friend: *Looking at me like I’m dumb.* White? You know, like a new bride?

.

Uh. And you think I’m a weirdo?

Freelancing as Usual

I did everything in my power to avoid writing the last two days. I’ve watched every news podcast on the planet. I’ve spent hours watching Ellen DeGeneres and Eddie Izzard on YouTube. I messed with the coding and almost killed this blog.

But now the deadline is getting closer, so I must place butt in chair, put fingers on keyboard, and write.

There have been extreme ups and downs lately. I haven’t had trouble getting assignments or even getting paid, but many of the publications I write for have been putting their budgets in deep freeze. This has almost forced me to look outside my comfort zone. Which is not a bad thing, necessarily, but it takes all the more effort to market. Effort I’d rather be spending on stories.

That said, January was the best month (financially) I’ve had in almost two years. And March has already topped that.

I don’t know what it is that I did right, except that I’ve kept my head down and continued to focus on what I do best. I’ve continued to find stories I care about, pitch them, sell them, write them. I’m collecting rejections too, but so what? Regular readers will know that in every rejection I see two opportunities: one, to send the idea elsewhere, and two, to send the publication that has rejected the idea another one.

I just finished writing a long-ish piece as part of a cover story for The Writer about how freelance journalists are surviving in the current economy, so I’ll share some tips from that once it’s in print. I’m quite thrilled to be sharing that story with some of America’s most successful freelancers, including the former President of ASJA (American Society of Journalists and Authors).

In the meantime, to keep it simple, here’s what you need to be doing: connect with editors, find out what they need (their needs have likely changed), provide it, and do the best job you can on every assignment.

Not all that different from freelancing-as-usual is it?

I Broke the Blog. Again.

If you’re wondering why I can’t leave well enough alone, it’s because you have an expectation that I have some iota of sanity.

Which of course, I don’t.

I played, I broke. I tried to fix, I broke some more.

That’s why you might notice that almost all of the blog entries from the last few months are now missing.

Next time I’ll hire a programmer, I promise. Or take back-ups.

In the meantime, I’m going to (slowly) recreate the work of the last four years. (It’s all stuck in an SQL database that I don’t know how to decode, so if someone has any clue on how to do that, please e-mail me. I did take back-ups, you see. I just forgot to download them in an understandable format!)

At least my life isn’t boring. (Don’t laugh!)

(Update: I was able to fix most of it. Only missing a month’s worth of entries now. E-mail me if you reach a 404 page.)

Scrivener: Not Just Any Word Processor

Oh my.

A writer I know and connected with on a message board a couple of years ago wrote to me the other day to tell me that:

(1) I rock. (I know.)

(2) I rock even more now that I’m a hardcore Mac fan. (I know!)

(3) I would continue to rock if I checked out this cool little software called Scrivener. Because you know, you’re not a real writer unless you’ve spent $40 on a program that lets you… well, write.

Well, that’s what I thought initially. The sarcastic part of me. But the geek part of me downloaded it anyway.

And wow. Wow. I’m in love.

The software was clearly created by a writer, because in a single project, you can save parts of the draft you’re working on, you can store research, you can view it all on a single page, and you can access it all in as little as a single click.

I’ve already managed to make some progress on a project that was driving me batty. If you’re bad at organization (and what kind of writer would you be if you weren’t?), you know the frustration of having research that’s scattered across a dozen web pages, stats that are in ten different files, and interviews that are all over the place.

The program makes it easy. Really, it does.

Check it out and watch this video to get a feel of it before you bother spending time learning all the ins and outs to know whether it’s for you.

Holi in Berkeley

Seriously! Awesome, awesome.

(Image by photojournalist and friend Myint Kyaw)

(P.S. That’s not me, by the way. I could never be that happy on Holi.)

It’s Not About Networking, It’s About Community

Writers are the most generous people on the planet. Well, most of them anyway.

I asked a few experienced journalists for tips on how to make my upcoming transition smoother, career-wise, and not only did I get a huge list of tips, but one amazing and generous writer e-mailed me a list of some of her major contacts at national publications! And before this exchange, we didn’t even know each other.

If this writer ever needs a contact, a place to stay, or even just a friend, you can bet I’ll be more than happy to return the favor.

It is easy to see other writers as your competition, and many people do. After all, you’re vying for the same few spots in major magazines, you’re pitching the same editors, and sometimes, you’re even trying to sell the same story (rare, but I’ve had it happen).

But that’s a short-term view. There is nothing and no one who can match the camaraderie shared by fellow freelance writers. If you’re working for the same publications, you can compare notes about easy or tough to work with editors. You can compare pay rates. You can share which editors are buying and which ones aren’t. You can get contacts. And you can get support and friendship when things aren’t going right.

All that is very important, especially in a job that requires that a big chunk of your time be spent alone, in front of a computer screen. It sounds silly in my head as I write this, but some of my freelancer friends, a couple of whom I’ve never met, have helped me get through my tough times and celebrated with me, my successes.

No matter how supportive my family and friends are, they don’t understand intimately the pain of having a story killed, the annoyance of chasing payments, or the joy of receiving a personal rejection from Rolling Stone magazine.

Repeatedly, after having stories killed and feeling like a failure, I’ve asked friends and found they had similar experiences with the same editor or that the publication that owed me money owed them, too. I’m fairly sure I’ll hear of a magazine’s demise or financial troubles before it becomes public because I have a well-connected network of writers and editors, who in turn have a well-connected network of writers and editors, and someone or the other is bound to find out. And that information travels fast!

Many writers interact with other writers simply for the networking. I’d say take it a step further. Get to know people. Not because you can get anything from them, but because in the end, we’re all in this together. And if we don’t look out for each other, who will?