Recording Devices

Do you use a gadget to record phone interviews? Can you recommend something, please?

Quick and easy one today.

I’ve never found anything I like for my phone. I’m an iPhone user and you can get an app on it that records. However, it’s only available to users in the US and Canada, so no luck for us there. I don’t actually use my phone for interviews. I prefer to use Skype and use the Skype Call Recorder to record the calls that I can then play back on my computer. (This, unfortunately, is only for Mac users though.)

On the rare occasions that I have had to use a phone to record an interview, I’ve put it on speaker and then just put it very close to my actual recorder. It’s not the best quality sound, but for transcription purposes, it works just fine.

Any PC users want to chime in with software or recording device recommendations?

The Eternal What-to-Charge Question

You know, when it takes you three hours to write a blog entry that would have typically taken you no more than ten minutes, I’d say it’s a sign that you’re tired and should slowly step away from the computer. Don’t you?

Well, anyway, on then to today’s question:

I read your blog regularly, and needed a bit of advice. I’m a features writer with 7 years of experience that includes a national tabloid and a national magazine. I’m currently deputy editor at the Sunday tabloid where I work. I’ll shortly be beginning a freelance assignment with an e-commerce website which includes overhauling their content entirely by rewriting it to make it sound younger, fresher, and less technical. I’ll also be writing the matter for a couple of advertising kiosks they’ll be placing at an e-commerce exhibition in Dubai in a couple of months. I’ve never done content writing before, but I have solid experience and am a good writer who delivers on time..not to sound immodest but I will be bringing quality to the table. And it will be a fair bit of work for sure. I wanted to know if you could help me decide how much I should charge for this. I have never done this kind of writing before, so I have no idea..is it per word, per website link, a bulk amount…no clue. They’re a really big, top company in their area of work, so money is not a problem. But I want to be fair, obviously, to both them and me. Any clue at all?

My rule of thumb for a “how much can I charge” question is typically, as much as you can get. I say this very seriously. There’s a number value that you think you have and there’s a number value that a potential client thinks you have. When the value in your head is higher than the number in the client’s, you reject the work and walk away. When it’s equal, perfect, you get to work. When the number in your head is lower in YOUR head than it is in the client’s, well, that’s when you need a lesson in negotiation.

The first two situations are easy: you walk away and you do the work. But the third situation, which I think may even be the most common, is when you don’t realize how much a potential client may be willing to pay for you or how much you may be underselling your own worth (and we do that too often, don’t we?). Now obviously, you’re a writer, not a mind-reader, so you don’t quite know what number they may have in mind. In addition to doing research online and talking to other writers to find out what the current market rates look like, here’s what I typically do:

1. I have a number in my mind that I will not go below, no matter what. That’s my minimum, period.

2. I try to get my client to give me a number. If they say, oh, we’d like to know what you charge, etc, just say, look I charge depending on a lot of factors– audience, time taken, whether you’d prefer hourly or total for the project, etc– so why don’t you give me a number that you think is reasonable?

3. Now this is the crucial step and one of the basics of negotiating– whatever number they come up with, pitch a higher number. Let’s say they’ve offered you $X. Ask if they might be able to do $X + 10% of $X. 99 times out of hundred, they’ll agree. Congratulations, you’re now a master negotiator.

4. Now then, if they don’t come up with a number and you’re still required to come up with a figure, think of what you’d like to be paid (not your minimum, what you’d LIKE TO BE paid) and… are you ready for this?… add 10% to it. Remember, rule of business, they’re going to try to negotiate down. So let’s say they negotiate down 10%, you still get what you’d have liked to get and if they negotiate even lower, well then, you still have a bit of wiggle room and might still end up making more than what you’d set as your minimum.

It’s hard to talk numbers, because so much of it depends on where you are in your career, your experience for a particular project, and mostly, what the company’s budget is. But how can you set your minimum? Well, personally I have a very simple formula. I don’t work (or calculate) by hour, but per day. So I figure out, realistically, what I want to (or can) make per year, and then I divide it by the number of days in a year that I’ll work (say 300). That give me what I should be making  as a minimum per day. So let’s say I want to make $30,000 a year, then I need to be making $100 a day. If I then get a $500 assignment, I know that I can’t afford to work more than 5 days on it. Similarly, if someone wants me to work for 10 days, my minimum fee will be $1,000.

Remember, many of your days will be spent marketing, querying, and at least initially, not doing paying work. So you should try to get more than your minimum whenever possible to make up for those days in which you’re simply not able to meet that $100 target.

Finding Time to Write

I am working full-time in the public sector and have a school-going son. I like to write and as I wrote to you once, have managed to get only two articles published. My question is how do I find time to write? My day starts at 4 a.m. and ends at 11 p.m. I have managed to write a few pieces, short stories, a script for a short animation film, poetry, but do not know what to do with them. Where do I begin, who should I approach as I want to get these published. Due to time constraint I am not able to write in a structured manner or do some networking. I read your blog where you discussed the book `Writer on the Side’ but I want your advice, keeping in mind the situations in a typical Indian home.

First of all, kudos to you! I can’t imagine just working full-time and having that kind of output, but with a child, forget about it! So you have major respect for me for doing all that you’ve done so far.

That said, while I’m not a mother and don’t have a full-time job, I do know someone who once had a similar routine to yours: a 5 a.m start and a midnight end, two bratty children, a very demanding mother-in-law, and almost no help. That would be my own mother. Some way or the other, though, it never occurred to me growing up that my mother’s life was so full-on. She seemed to effortlessly do everything, yet still have the time to gossip with me for hours on end whenever I needed, feed the many friends who passed through my home, sew, knit, bake, talk to the neighbors, keep in touch with all our relatives, and still have a bit of time left for emergencies that popped up daily.

Looking back, I realize that my mum was very easy-going in most ways, but she had a schedule that everyone had to stick to. She made our lunch before we arrived from school and then gave it to us on our return. If we didn’t want it, fine, it was there. She didn’t wait on us in the hopes that we’d eat and cook it right at the moment we demanded it. No siree– her job was done. If you want to be a brat, be one on your own watch. Similarly, dinner was served at 8.30 p.m. By 9, she was finished in the kitchen and the time after that was her own, to watch TV or relax or whatever. No spoilt kids allowed to keep her running around. I too, have found that when I have a fixed schedule, knowing when there is time for what, I function a lot better. I know exactly how much time I have in my day and I can schedule accordingly. Even if you’re able to take that one hour before bed or that one hour after you get up to write, it’s enough. Let it be your sacred time until you can find more. Also, are there breaks at work that you can take advantage of, though admittedly that’s a lot easier said than done. Can you schedule four (or more?) hours every weekend for uninterrupted writing time? If you have a fixed schedule and your family learns to function according to it, I promise you, you’ll be able to find an hour here or there that you can take out just for yourself.

For me, there are three things that have really worked wonders. On the days or weeks that I have a lot to do, I’m just really honest with the people around me. I let my husband know, but more than that my parents and in-laws know that I’m swamped as well and maybe they’re unlikely to hear from me for a bit. I admit, I do a lot of apologizing for not replying to e-mails fast enough or for not taking calls. My mum knows now that if I’m in the middle of a writing session, there’s a good chance that I won’t take any calls, so she just waits for me to call her back when I’m done. Even better, she’s wonderful enough not to call me before 5 p.m. anyhow unless it’s important. But I feel like if I’ve set out three hours to write and all I’m doing in those three hours is answering the door or taking calls, I’ll never get anything done. Especially now that I make a distinction between my regular work (paid) and my novel writing (unpaid). I’m honest with friends and cousins as well and while no one likes to hear someone say, “I’m too busy to see you,” it’s different when you explain that you’re trying to write a novel or whatever and have been spending every waking moment on that. If you include them and are forthcoming, people not only get it, they appreciate it. Cut out the unimportant activities. So you can’t say no to a relative’s wedding, I get it. Fine. Go. But maybe you don’t have to go to your colleague’s daughter’s mother-in-law’s funeral. (And for those who think I’m kidding, I’m not. We’re Indian. We get invited to those things.)

The second thing for me that has been extremely important is asking for help. I was one of those people who believe they can do it all and brilliantly. But I can’t. I know because I’ve tried and I’m crazy enough to keep trying, only to fail each and every time, because even though I might like to think so, I’m not super human and I will never be. So I ask for help from my husband, my parents, the vegetable vendor, and any other person who’s kind enough to be taken advantage of (kidding!) I guess when someone offers to do something for me, let’s just say my automatic reaction is no longer no. Living as we do in India, I think we have it really easy in this department. We don’t have to iron all our clothes or scrub our own floors each morning, so take advantage of those things. We try to take very good care of our cleaning lady and she does the same for us. It’s made my life a lot easier.

Speaking of no, that’s the third thing I’ve gotten very good at: saying no. I think I’ve become quite unpopular for this reason since I say no to a lot of social engagements, but that’s okay. Like I said, I can’t do it all and I know what my priorities are, what I’m working towards, and to be honest, what I enjoy. I like lazy Sundays in bed, evenings in front of my computer working on my novel, and days on end when I don’t have to see people and pretend to like them. That’s perfectly fine with me, so I don’t feel like I’m missing out when I’m not going to endless parties or events or gatherings. I’m lucky enough to really really like my home life. Some would, of course, consider not going out routinely a sacrifice. I don’t. I’m also getting really good at saying no to work. Earlier, I had to say yes to EVERYTHING. As long as I wasn’t being taken advantage of, I said yes. Article? Yes. Research? Sure! Another writer’s group? Why not? Now, I’ve had to cut down on some of those things. I mean, how am I supposed to tweet three hours a day if I’m working all the time? Okay, that’s a joke, but you get my drift.

So that’s my advice. Find blocks of time wherever you can, even if it’s half-hour intervals, and cut out unnecessary activities that you don’t enjoy.

Readers with full-time jobs and kids, how do you manage? Do you have any advice for our lovely busy lady here?

Finding Inspiration

Wow, so many questions have come through in the last week or so that I’m going to have to do another couple of weeks of “Ask Mridu.” Which, of course, I’m always happy to do.

I have space for one more for the last day of the Q&A weeks, so if you have a question hacking away at your brain that you’d like to find the answer to, send it my way and I’ll do my best with it.

Okay then, on to today’s question:

You always seem very on-the-go. Who or what keeps you inspired?

Part of it, I think, is just the way I’m built– obsessive, ambitious and restless. A part of it is cultural– it’s ingrained early-on in our brains that the only way to a good life in this country is through doing well at school and at work and that hard work is always rewarded. Partly, again maybe a bit cultural, but I live in a city and country where people have such challenging lives, so even if I were looking for some, I have absolutely no excuses. I lead a very easy life by comparison and so there’s no reason why I can’t do the absolute best at what I’ve chosen to do with my life.

Mostly, however, I think it comes down to the incredible and inspiring people I’ve been lucky to be surrounded with. Take my own parents, for instance. My mum, who is a teacher, officially retired last year but she just hated the idea of not having anything to do, of being home all day, so she asked for an extension and got it. She’s already figuring out how she’s going to continue working next year, because she can’t imagine not doing something productive each day (even if that involves getting up at 5 each morning). You don’t want to know how much time she spends online looking for side businesses to open up. My father continues to be the most hard-working man I’ve ever known. Mum would leave at 6 in the morning to go to school, so my father was the one who would get us dressed, make us breakfast and send us off in the mornings. On the days he had off, he was busy helping out in the home, doing laundry by hand, shopping for groceries, fixing things, etc, and I don’t remember a day when he came home from work early, took a day off, or complained about how hard it all was, even though everyone could see that it was. Even now, after he’s retired, he wakes up each morning before my mother does so that he can give her morning tea in bed before she leaves for work. He doesn’t have to, but he does. It’s habit. And love.

Or take my in-laws. A couple of weeks ago, I received an e-mail from my mother-in-law, which said, in part, “I don’t want to be one of those people who wished they had done this or that and never got around to it. After my trip to my aunt’s funeral I suddenly realised that this is my life and I had to do my own thing while I was still able and keen.” She then took off to Paris for a few days.

I could tell you several more stories about my husband, my brother, my cousins, my friends, other relatives and acquaintances. I’m surrounded by them, these people who believe they have one life to live and God help them, they’re going to do the best job they can.

Most of us who’re in the position to be full-time freelancers have incredibly easy lives, even if there may be challenges now and again (and who doesn’t like a bit of challenge?). Despite the realistic view of freelancing that I try to give here, I never allow myself to forget how incredibly lucky I am. All I have to do to see how easy my life is compared to that of my parents or even, in some cases, my peers. At least for my generation of Indians, I can safely say that we never had the difficulties of our parents did but have been given so many more opportunities, and hence can aim to do a lot more and achieve so much more with our lives, both in the personal and the professional sphere. Unlike my parents, I’m not focused on survival.

So those are my grand motivations. Knowing that I belong to a generation and a country where anything is possible. I never forget where my family comes from, but even in my own life, I never forget my failures, my early freelancing days, or how tough, financially and emotionally, independence can be.

My day-to-day inspirations vary. I read quite a few personal blogs of writers (I’ve unsubscribed from pretty much every how-to blog, however), a couple of books a week, and several newspapers each day. I love the Guardian books podcast, which is my weekly hour of bliss. I read about authors and their back stories, their roads to publication. I love reading author interviews and if there’s an author I take a fancy to, I’ll often read their entire body of work, including the back entries of their entire blog. Being an ambitious person, I think I’m very driven to achieve goals on my own terms. I try not to get too cocky or overconfident (and when I do, ten rejections arrive in the same day), but I like to believe that my work matters. That even if I’m writing a novel or short story, there’s a larger point to be made from it. I’m very passionate about everything I do, and when I begin to lose that drive, as has happened often recently, I try to remind myself of why I do what I do and why I’m so lucky to be doing it.

And then I have the small sillies, of course: I’ll write in a pretty notebook with a red pen or change the font on MS Word to Handwriting or pretend I’m a nineteenth century undiscovered female writer working away at my typewriter, writing the novel that will make me a household name. (Once I’ve finished writing the first sentence, thankfully, I’m too engrossed in my work to worry about all that.)

Oh, and finally, I love watching movies about writers. There’s nothing more inspiring to me than watching a fictional writer get knocked down by the world and then achieve literary success. (The Hours is one of my favorite movies and highly recommended. It’s based on the book by the same name by Michael Cunningham.)

So there you have it. The long and short of things that inspire me to keep going. What’s your story?

Structuring Your Day

Ideally, I’d like to have some structure to my day, because I’m not very good at working on-the-fly. I’ve been trying out different schedules over the past month to see what works best, and unfortunately I am a night owl. I write best after nightfall. But, that means that I end up waking up late around 9-10 a.m. which means I don’t get to my marketing/pitching until later in the day.

Any suggestions on how I can create a more concrete schedule?
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I am probably the worst person to be answering this question, but I have personal experience with it, so I’ll take a stab. (And know that I really didn’t have this aspect of my personality sorted until very recently.)

I truly believe that I’m a night owl, that I do my best work at night when I have ten continuous hours stretching in front of me. Maybe it’s a silly belief (and I’m beginning to think it is), but I actually think I write better at night, more easily, more fluently, without routinely pointing a (metaphorical) gun to my head.

But I met a guy. I got married. I wanted to be able to actually see him once in a while, which for the first year or so of living together didn’t happen much. He would come home from work and I’d be asleep and he’d be falling asleep just when I’d be beginning my work day. I didn’t like that and I really had to consider whether I could go on like that once we had kids. We didn’t have kids right away, but we got a cat. We got a dog. The cat demanded to be fed at eight in the morning. The puppy needed to be walked each morning and evening. Not only did I no longer want to work all hours of the night, but I just couldn’t.

Now, here’s the thing: I’m a recovering insomniac. I can easily go twenty-four hours without sleep (though I haven’t tried that recently) and early on in my career, I’d routinely go two or three days without going to bed (don’t try this at home; I’ve read it could seriously impair your brain functioning). Even now, there are times when the insomnia kicks in, and I struggle to sleep. Those nights, you’ll find me clutching my pillow at 4 in the morning, on the verge of tears because I so desperately want to sleep and I can’t.

Like you, I knew I needed a concrete schedule and I just sort of made my peace with the fact that I wouldn’t always be doing my best work (because I’d be writing in the day) but I’d get it done anyway and that it wouldn’t matter because I would at least have some semblance of balance in my life. And the payoff was greater than the sacrifice it took.

You know what? I don’t think it’s made a massive difference. Words come easier to me at night (possibly because I’m more relaxed and the doorbell isn’t ringing every thirty minutes) but the quality has remained the same. I have not become a lesser writer for working in the day. And because I’ve programmed myself to write at my desk, I’m actually just as productive sitting at my desk and working in the day as I was when I was working at night in my bed.

Here are a few things that worked for me during this period of transition:

1. If you want to have a normal workday and want to get up each morning at say 8 a.m., then you can’t, simply can’t, work until 4 in the morning. But if you’ve started writing at 11 p.m., I know all too well how tempting it is to just continue, to just keep on writing, finish this sentence, that paragraph. Set a time– say midnight– and make sure your computer is closed by then. At midnight, no matter what you’re in the middle of, the computer leaves your bed, the lights are turned out, and you try and sleep. Toss and turn if you must (and you will) thinking of how you could be productive and using this time instead of wasting it. Don’t give in to the temptation. Lie there. Even if you don’t sleep, you’re resting. Eventually, your brain will give up. Maybe not on the first day, maybe not even the second. Eventually, you get into bed and the brain will know that no amount of jumping up and down and misbehaving is going to get it what it wants and it will begin to chill out.

2. Something that helps me relax immensely is reading a few pages of a classic novel before bed. I don’t read on paper, because I’d have to have the light on and sit up, but on my phone. I lie in bed on my side, the covers over my head and read in the dark. Eventually, my eyes get tired and start closing and before I know it, I’m fast asleep. Audio books help too. And you could, of course, read on your Kindle or other electronic device.

3. If you know you work best at night and want to utilize at least some of that energy, write two hours from 10 p.m. to midnight. Or have dinner very early and spend the evening in your office writing instead of watching reality TV. Remember to have a fixed bedtime though, because those midnight writing sessions can be super productive, but also super brutal and will likely leave you wiped out for the entirety of the next day.

4.  If you’re having trouble marketing, make it the first thing you do each day. All the things that can only be done in the day, such as phone interviews, meeting people, going to meetings, should be done first thing in the morning when you’re still fresh. You can do your writing in the middle of the night, but you can’t do your interviews then. So make sure you’ve planned for that.

5. Have a to-do list. Make it reasonable, so that you don’t have fifty items on there instead of the ten you can actually do. Once you’ve finished, stop. Leave the rest of the work for the next day. Or give yourself time limits, if that works better for you. You’ll work eight hours in the day and no more.

Setting structures is easy, it’s sticking to them that is the hardest part. Make sure you put down your structures in writing and keep to them. And if you mess up one day, try again the next. Keep doing it until you have a routine you’re happy with.

My Research and Writing System

Recently I wrote, “I do very thorough research until I’m confident that I’ve understood the subject matter quite well, even before I’ve contacted my sources.”

A reader asks, “Do you have a research ‘plan’ or ‘system’? Where do you start?”

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I mentioned last week that I typically have ten steps to every article and that as soon as I receive an assignment, I just note down those steps in my to-do list, knowing that they’ll be tackled one after the other. While some can be done simultaneously, I have to wait for others to be finished before I can move on to the next task (I can only transcribe an interview once I’ve actually interviewed someone, for instance.)

So here’s my system. The good thing about it, I might add, is that it works just as well for 1,000-word pieces as it has done for 6,000-word pieces. Take a stab at it!

1. Preliminary research
Pretty much the first thing I do when I start working on a story is to log on to Google, type relevant search phrases and then start reading through the articles that I come across. I might make notes, I might not. I save all relevant articles to a research folder in Scrivener (I start a new document for every piece I write) so that I can come back to them later when I start writing. I may have already done some research into the story if it’s something I pitched, in which case I’ll already have something to work with. I also look at books or other magazine articles, if relevant, but I have to say, lately most of my research has been online.

2. Find people to interview
There are several ways in which I do this. I read through the articles I’ve found through Google and make a note of who’s been interviewed and whether they’d fit into my piece. If there’s any contact information available, I make a note, otherwise I just write down names and titles. If it’s a general-interest or business piece, I might post on HARO or Profnet asking for experts. Sometimes, I’ll need to find “real people” for my stories, in which case I might look on online forums, ask friends and acquaintances, post on Facebook or Twitter, etc. I make sure I have a few more leads than I need in case some sources are unresponsive or don’t want to talk.

3. Contact people for interviews
Sometimes, this stage can take a long, long time. The whole world is yet not on Facebook and Twitter. Who knew? I try to find phone numbers, e-mail addresses, any contact information for people I need to interview and while sometimes this is fairly easy, say for service articles, it’s when it’s a newsy story that this can get difficult. Any government official is almost ridiculously difficult to get hold of in India (or anywhere in the world, really), so depending on the story, I may spend countless hours having the phone slammed in my face (you get used to it, eventually). The Indian officials do, however, top the world in being exceptionally rude and egotistic.

4. Set up interviews
Once I’ve contacted my sources, I’ll set up a time for interviews. I try to do these as much in advance as I can because sometimes things come up and interviews get canceled. Don’t leave this until the last day! If I’m sending questions via e-mail, I do mention a deadline that I need the answers by, otherwise I might be waiting forever (it’s happened before).

5. Write interview questions
I’m sure many people think this is a bit of a silly step, but I take time — sometimes a couple of hours or so– to frame my questions properly. Everyone I interview usually gets a different set of questions based on what their experience is, what’s been written about them before, or what they’ve said to other media outlets. For instance, recently I wrote a few pieces on road safety and had to interview several experts for the pieces. These people have given speeches, talks, and interviews on the subject, so I didn’t want to ask basic questions that I could find online or in their interviews. Instead, I picked up on what they’d said in the interviews and dug deeper into their personal lives. Questions that had no direct relation to road safety, but gave me some wonderful anecdotes for the piece, such as “What does a typical day for you look like?” “What motivates you?” “What have been your biggest mistakes?” and questions based on things they’ve already said, for instance, “You said in a recent interview that road crashes in the country have a direct impact on GDP. How so?”

For this story for the NYT, I’d interviewed two gay couples but the piece was getting very source heavy and my experts gave me such great anecdotes (simply because I asked about their personal experiences) that we just decided to go with them instead.

6. Conduct interviews
I usually record my interviews so that I can transcribe them later, whether on the phone or in person. For phone, I use Skype and I have the Skype Call Recorder, one of my favorite pieces of software. For international calls, Skype is a lot cheaper, too. It’s my preferred mode of communication and I even use Skype for calling my editors and for conference calls. I used to be terrified of phone interviews, but now it’s my medium of choice and I’ve called everyone from local wastepickers (yes, they have mobile phones!) to Cabinet Ministers. This is also the point where, if I need to do any independent verifying or investigation, such as observing how an organization works from afar, I’ll do it. If I need to visit organizations, talk to people on the street or be an observer of an event, this step is usually the time in the process when I do all those things.

7. Transcribe interviews
Many writers don’t like transcribing their interviews, but I’m not one of them. I’ve found that for me, the structure of the piece starts taking shape during the time I’m transcribing and it becomes clearer to me what I’m going to keep and what I’m not. I prefer phone and face-to-face interviews because you get so many better quality quotes when people are just talking and sharing with you rather than sitting down to compose a perfectly-written e-mail. Recording my interviews ensures that I can focus on what’s being said and ask follow-up questions without being distracted by note-taking (I’m not the world’s best note-taker.)

8. Research based on what I’ve learned
Now that I have my interviews in hand and my wonderful experts have answered my queries and explained things to me so that I’m clear about how things work and what I’m talking about, I’m ready to go back in and do some additional research. They might have talked about studies or statistics that I’ll need to check or they may have talked about a historical event that I’m not familiar with. Or I might just like to re-read what I already have, now with a better understanding. This usually takes me somewhere from fifteen minutes to an hour depending on what I’m writing.

9. Outline
I’m big on outlining. I can’t just sit down and start writing and hope that the article will turn out the way I want it to. It might change shape during the writing phase, but I still need a structure to work with. I’ve written about my very intense, very anal outlining process here.

10. Write
Time to get creative! I usually have so much research and so many wonderful quotes by now that the writing is usually a breeze. If I’ve done all the steps above properly, a 1,000-word article will usually take me from half an hour to an hour tops. There have been times when it’s taken me as little as fifteen minutes. I edit as I go along, and after I finish it, I let it sit for ten minutes, give it a read through, attach it to an e-mail to the editor, and hit send.

I know it sounds like all this is so much work and that these articles take so much time, but depending on the research and ease of interviews, I’m sometimes able to do all these steps and finish the piece within three or four hours. I’ve had one-day deadlines where I’ve finished pieces in just one or two hours as well. This method just outlines the steps, how much time you spend on each one– five minutes or five hours– is totally dependent on your topic and your efficiency.