New voicemail from (xxx) xxx-xxxx at 11:30 PM
Monday, March 1st, 2010 |This is a test of using google voice to post at my blog. Hopefully global voice can transcribe my voice accurately. Let’s see how well pool voice can do. Thank you.
Archive for the ‘Life As a Writer’ Category
Writing on Your Blog From Your Mobile Phone
Sunday, February 28th, 2010 |
About eight yours ago, I purchased my first PDA. It was a Windows Mobile phone from Cingular, before it was bought out by AT&T. Back then, I never considered that I’d be writing on my blog from a mobile phone, as I’m doing now.
That first phone was a Cingular 8125, and I bought it so that I could access Ebay while attending antique auctions. My plan was to look up the market value (average completed sale price) of an item so that I knew the max I could bid on an item without taking a loss.
Riding the Wave of a Technical Trend
The plan was clever, because at the time, noone was using mobile Internet…it had just hit the market and hadn’t quite caught on yet.
The plan wasn’t foolproof though. First, I had to figure out how to get the phone to access full browsing, not the scaled-down ‘media-net’. As insane as it sounds, most of the help desk folks didn’t know the difference. So, I was on my own to figure it out using tips fromk the gurus in the various mobile phone forums.
Next, I learned that the mobile version of Facebook didn’t offer a view of completed items. Once again, I had to figure out how to trick the Ebay website into thinking I wasn’t a mobile phone. Once I accomplished that, I was in business.
Unfortunately, in full browsing mode, conducting the completed item searches on Ebay was unbearably slow. I realized that living life on the technological edge of the mobile Internet was not going to be easy.
Finally, the ease of use of mobile technology is becoming much more manageable. Everything comes pre-programmed and ready to go. Upgrading to the Motorola Droid this year was the best thing I ever did.
It helps me to blog more often than I ever could before, with a very cool mobile Wordpress app called WPtoGo. It let’s you post full blog entries, complete with formatting, pictures, links and more. It rocks, and I highly suggest it to other blogger riding this mobile tech wave into the future.
Tips for Staying Cool Under Pressure
Friday, February 26th, 2010 |
Well, it’s been about a month since my last update, and I’ve decided to focus today on tips for staying cool under fire…this, after writing religiously every day for a couple of weeks. I confess, after writing my last entry about regulating tasks and maintaining a decent schedule - my tasks exploded and my schedule went to hell. This is called not practicing what you preach!
Because of the insanity of this past month, I’ve decided to put together a list of tips for staying cool under pressure - a new, streamlined approach to handling an overwhelming, almost impossible list of tasks and projects in a way that lets you complete them without sacrificing your livelihood or your family life. It really is possible - and I’ll show you how I’ve finally done it with my own schedule (it’s also the reason that I’m finally blogging here again).
Taking Stock of Projects and Status
So, you’ve got 5 or 6 clients and they all want a piece of you? The better you are as a writer, the more likely you’re going to find yourself in this situation. Once people recognize that you are able to produce quality content at a reasonable speed, you’re going to discover that opportunity knocks. The downside is that opportunity is going to knock from so many sides that you’re simply going to run out of hands to open those doors. You can’t do everything for everyone.
Once you’re at a successful point in your writing career where you have more opportunities than you know what to do with, it’s time to take a step back and reorganize.
From day one, you probably wrote for peanuts just to get your name out there and your writing recognized. After a while, you went from writing for practically free, to writing $10 to $20 articles. The next thing you know, you’re getting offers to write for professional blogs at $35 to $50 and up, as well as job opportunities for editing and management. This is what you’ve worked so hard for - but if you just keep taking more work, eventually you’re going to run out of time and burn out.
So, take a few moments to create a complete and detailed list of all of your current job responsibilities, as well as any upcoming opportunities that you’ve been offered - and make sure to associate an earning amount and “time to complete” for each task. This will help you gauge the true value of your work as well as priority.
Shift Priorities to Higher Paying Work
Here’s the scenario: You have two clients who both want you to write for them as much as possible. You are completely tapped out on time, but you have space to fit in about three more articles per week. One client pays $25 an article, and the other pays $45 per article. Which client should you offer to write more articles for? It certainly doesn’t seem like rocket science does it?
What complicates matters a little bit for writers is when you’ve been writing for a lower-playing client for a very long time, and then a higher paying client comes along and offers you work. Most writers take on the extra work, but maintain their previous workload with other clients.
However, if your new client is offering you even more articles (if you had that time to write them) at such a higher rate than your old client pays, wouldn’t it make sense to cut back on your writing for the old client? This seems intuitive in writing, but you’d be surprised how many writers I’ve met who simply can’t let go of any work, even if it means they’ll be able to replace it with work that pays more. It comes down to your ability to say no to people.
Tips for Staying Cool - Plan Out All Hours Available for Work
I’ve tried all sorts of approaches for scheduling and managing my work, from utilizing online calendar applications like Google Calendar (which I do still use), as well as Astrid for my mobile Droid. It seems that, inevitably, I always come back to using my trusty Excel spreadsheet.
This week I tried using a new color-coded schedule system in Excel, with a different color representing a different client, and assigned blocks of time for the tasks that I need to accomplish every week.
Originally, I had an Excel spreadsheet that just listed all of the tasks I needed to do without any color coding at all, but by coloring blocks of time, it better differentiates the limits of your blocks of time - and there’s no question where the task starts and stops. Most importantly, use large gray areas for periods of time when you simply do not do any writing work, whether that’s time off, time with family, or otherwise.
This approach insures that not only do you get your work done when you’re supposed to, but it also assigns blocks of time to not working, which is just as important to not getting burnt out.
Respect Your Schedule!
Rule #1 to making an efficient schedule work is this is more important than any other one of these tips for staying cool under stress - follow the schedule you’ve defined. Don’t overrun the block of time you’ve set up for work and then eat into your evening sleep, because the next morning you’ll never be able to get up and accomplish the block of time you’ve set aside there. Each overrun will intrude on the next until you’ve completely burnt out.
What makes a schedule work is when you respect it and follow it. Trust that you’ve analyzed your demands properly and that you’ve assigned the right priorities. After that, stop worrying about what you’ve got due next - just focus on that task at hand and get it done in the time that you’ve assigned (or earlier). Make sure to assign enough time to the tasks (don’t short-change yourself), and you’ll find that not only are you less burnt out, but when you are not working and taking time to relax, you’ll worry much less.
Scheduling Your Writing Without Driving Off The Road
Sunday, January 24th, 2010 |
We’ve all been there; those months when you carefully plan out your writing and editing work, and then something unexpected strikes. When you plan out your trip with the assumption that you’ll have to drive 80 mph or faster to get to your destination, anything unexpected can lead to disaster.
I learned this lesson the hard way this month, and it’s going to require a couple of all-nighters and a lot of coffee to meet all of my obligations this month.
I know I can accomplish what I need to accomplish before the end of the month, because I’ve done it before. However, if I’d just planned a little better, I wouldn’t even be in this situation.
Plan Your Writing Work With a 30% Buffer
My typical mode of operation each month is to plan out enough writing work to account for about 90% of my available writing time. The problem with this approach is that it assumes every month will be a perfect month where you will always have the amount of time to work that you expect you’ll have.
What happens is that essentially ‘life’ happens. Family gets sick, major life events like funerals or weddings come up, or the worst thing that could happen to an online writer happens - you burn out.
The moment you burn out, work that used to take an hour takes several, and a sickening feeling comes over you as you realize what’s happening, and as you watch your precious work hours fade away.
Plan For a Hard Month and then Overachieve
Instead of accounting for 90% of your estimate work hours, cut back your planned work to only 70% of those hours. On a bad month, this allows for a stress free month even when the unexpected occurs, because you can give up 30% of your work hours and still accomplish what you need to accomplish.
Even better, on a good month, you’ll easily finish everything you planned, with lots of time left over to finish extra tasks - and come out shining like a hero.
Managing All of Your Online Activities
Monday, January 11th, 2010 |I received a really interesting Tweet a couple of days ago, where a reader asked me how I manage all of my online activities. I immediately understood his question, because to the outsider looking in, I’m currently all over the web.
There are a lot of online writers out there who are just like me - with their hands and their words in everything. Submitting writing and content for clients and at websites throughout the Internet. In my case, I do paranormal research and writing with RealityUncovered, I explore conspiracy theories at TopSecretWriters, I write countless informational articles for LoveToKnow.com, technology articles for MakeUseOf.com, educational articles for Educational-Freeware.com, and I’ve published numerous articles for Associated Content, Helium and even eHow.
As I said to my friend and RU colleague Steve recently - it’s like I’m a grenade victim and I have bits and pieces of me that have exploded all over the Internet.
Managing Your Online Activities in a Sane Way
The first thing I should point out is that I don’t do all of these things all at once, or all of the time. Building a powerful online presence and a solid reputation as a professional writer takes a long time, and a lot of building blocks. All of these pieces throughout the Internet are simply stepping stones toward a larger and greater future. Some of them will become cornerstones of that future, while others will not.
The benefit of distributing almost 50 articles every month, to a variety of online destinations with your name credited to each one of them, is that you control your online identity. Even if anyone attempted to write something negative about you, you’ve overwhelmed the Internet with so much of your own work, that anything anyone else writes will never see the light of day - it’s a perfect online insurance policy. Plus - whose going to take you on when they see that you are such a prolific writer, willing to take on any topic and any issue?
Tools You Can Use to Organize
The key to managing all of this is organization. While Twitter and Facebook can certainly turn into a time-drainer, they can also provide a perfect platform to distribute new material of yours to your fans. And yes, you will soon have fans because people have preferences - and your writing will appeal to a specific crowd.
Don’t doubt it. But when that happens, you need an easy way to let those people know that you’ve just written something they may be interested in reading.
Another approach is something that I’ll be writing about soon at MakeUseOf, and that is this - one of the best ways that you can organize yourself online is by creating an author profile blog. I know, you’re thinking not another blog!? However, this one isn’t a blog that you’ll need to babysit. It’s one where you can embed all of the feeds from your online endeavours, and where you can offer an occasional update about your work and your current activities.
A personal bio blog can also help you organize all of the places that you’ve already been published, and it can land you some amazing opportunities for even better places to get published in the future.
So, here’s to staying busy and profitable in all of your online efforts!
Writers and Sedentary Lifestyle
Thursday, December 31st, 2009 |As the holiday season approaches and we’ve all finished gorging on a Christmas ham (only to turn around and gorge once again on a New Year’s feast), I’d like to take a moment to talk a little bit about writers and a sedentary lifestyle.
One of the hardest things about being a write is the fact that 100 percent of your job consists of you sitting on your backside, and the only part of your body that’s moving is your fingers. Sure, you’ll end up with some pretty dexterous fingers, but I can guarantee that your midsection won’t turn out quite as well.
Yes, being a writer involves a lot of sitting, but that doesn’t mean you have to end up three times you’re optimal body weight and with a waistline the size of Texas. As you enter the new year, you know that you’ll be faced with the same writer demands and deadlines, but I’d like to offer a few very effective tips that you can use to maintain your health while also maintaining your schedule.
Effective Writers and Sedentary Lifestyle Changes
Sitting for many hours a day is probably more hazardous to your health than the coffee you drink, the cigarettes you smoke, the fat-laden steaks that you eat, or how fast you drive. Every hour that you sit there not using most of your muscle mass, you are burning almost the least possible number of calories you can.
While your brain may be getting all of the exercise in the world, the container that supports your brain is going to start falling apart. There are several important things you can do to maintain (and even strengthen) the parts of your body most negatively impacted by a writer’s sedentary lifestyle.
The great image above comes from the University of Illinois. It shows a series of exercises that you can do to maintain your spine posture and keep a healthy flow of circulation through your arms and legs. And speaking of circulation, don’t forget the tender tendons that channel through your wrist.
At about thirty years old, I had carpel tunnel syndrome. I seriously thought my life was over - I live on the computer. In my twenties I figured I was invincible and such things would never happen to me, but if you aren’t careful, you can pinch the tendons and nerves within your “carpel tunnel” by not taking care of how you hold your mouse. Using a soft soft cushion
like this can help tremendously.
If you’ve never tried yoga, this is a great time to start. By taking a break every 30 minutes to an hour, getting on your yoga mat and going through a few yoga exercises. You’ll find yourself not only losing the weight you gained through your sedentary lifestyle, but you’ll also find yourself feeling more energized and stronger than you ever did before.
While it might take time out of your schedule to do these exercises, in the long run it will give you more time because you’ll feel more energetic, refreshed and awake.
Finally, I wanted to save the best for last. The device above is called an exercise ball chair. Want to get transform your body out of that sedentary lifestyle the fastest? Give this baby a try.
All you do is use it instead of your regular office chair. Sounds simple right? It takes some getting use to. The balance required to sit on this ball forces your body to make the necessary weight changes using almost every muscle in your body to maintain equilibrium. These subtle changes, over time, keep your body in a constant state of energy and balance - so while you’re writing, your body is building it’s core strength…it’s like the best of both worlds.
With that said, while the FitBall Exercise Ball Chair
I hope some of these ideas can make a change for the many writers and sedentary lifestyles that they maintain. I know that I’ve made it my New Year’s resolution to get back to the healthy young lad that I was only ten years ago - and I know that you can too!
Come back and let me know how you do with your health goals in the comments section below!
Happy Holiday Wishes to All Readers
Saturday, December 26th, 2009 |
As the New Year approaches, I would like to pause and take a moment to wish everyone a joyous New Year.
It’s been an amazing journey over the last few years, culminating in the creation of this blog as part of my growing writing career. I never imagined that things would turn out quite like this - but with hard work and dedication, things always work out.
So, with a full heart and with immense gratitude for all of you, loyal readers and fellow bloggers, I wish you great joy and overwhelming prosperity in 2010.
Definition for Technical Writing
Sunday, December 13th, 2009 |If you’re interested in a career in writing, then a good definition for technical writing may come in handy, because for the right person it can be a very lucrative career. Technical writing is exactly what it sounds like - it’s a form of writing where you take information or concepts that are technical in nature, and you put them into coherent written form.
The end product could be a manual, a technical paper or proposal, reports, newsletters and even web pages. The true value of a technical writer is in their ability to convey either simple or complicated technological ideas in a way that’s targeted toward a specific audience. This is important considering that the audience could either be a layperson reading a product manual, or a fellow scientist conducting a peer review of a scientific finding.
A Definition for Technical Writing as a Career
A technical writer usually focuses on a topic or niche that revolves around a particular skill that they may have. This means that technical writers aren’t usually effective covering a broad range of topics. This means that if you want to be a technical writer, you need to have a good grasp on your own skills, training and expertise. Your background training and experience will define the fields that you should focus on as a technical writer.
Every field has an entire library of terminology and lingo, which is why the core definition for technical writing is that it’s a form of writing centered upon a specific skill set or career - such as lawyers, psychologists, computer experts or any other profession that requires specialized knowledge. It’s also important to remember that technical writing isn’t always even your standard form of writing. Sometimes you’ll find yourself creating forms, detailing step-by-step instructions with diagrams and schematics, or developing multimedia presentations and similar content. For larger projects such as these, you’d likely be involved in a team that includes graphic design artists and computer programmers, especially if a website is involved.
Translating and Conveying Technology and Specialized Knowledge
A truly skilled technical writer has the ability to take concepts that are conveyed to them from one highly specialized group, process that information and then convey it to a second group or individual in a way, and using terminology, that they can understand. Sometimes this might involve incorporating detailed information from programmers or engineers into a summary report or a project status report that executives and managers can understand and process. In order to do this, you need to understand what terminology they can understand, and how to translate the terminology that they can’t understand into something that makes sense for them. Technical writing is very much like acting as a translator of sorts.
This is also why technical writers are necessary within almost every discipline. Most scientists and experts have little ability to convert their highly specialized language into concepts that a lay person can understand. A technical writer is necessary, because the person has just enough knowledge about the specialized field to understand the scientist or specialist in their lingo. However, the technical writer can do what the specialist can’t - and that is to convey that highly technical information in a language and in a way that others who are not specialists can understand, and with appropriate grammar, punctuation and spelling. Unfortunately many technically trained individuals, like engineers, are very poor writers.
If you’re considering entering the field of technical writing, understand that it can be a grueling career at times. However, the fact that you are making good use of your training and specialty, in combination with your excellent writing ability will result in a writing career that you will find very fulfilling and rewarding.
A Stephen King Interview and Commentary on Stephenie Meyer
Thursday, November 19th, 2009 |This week, I’d like to share a great video interview with one of my favorite writers of all time - Stephen King. Mr. King was born and raised in my home state, and he has always served as an inspiration for young Maine writers. In this interview, Borders interviews Stephen King on writing short stories, writing scary stories and much more. It’s a very enjoyable interview - check it out!
Stephen King points talks a bit about the importance of the short story in the story writing process, and how in his case many of his early short stories ended up evolving into novels, such as Carrie. He points out that about 22,000 word pieces are too long to be a short story and too short to be a novel. This is only a partial interview - to see the entire interview you have to visit Borders Media.
With that said, while I respect the man for his rise from the ashes into fame for his horror novels, I also have to say that being a long-time fan for many years, I also noticed that he’s quite arrogant. A friend of our family worked as a security guard at UMO and had an interaction with Mr. King while trying to enforce University safety rules, that ended in King making a statement to the effect of, “Do you realize who I am?” Apparently King thinks very highly of himself, and apparently forgets that it’s the fans that make a successful writer, not simply a name.
Another example of this was his comment about rising writer Stephenie Meyer, where during an interview he was asked about J.K. Rowling and Meyer, and his response was, “The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.”
While I’m not particularly a fan of the Twilight series, I found Stephen King’s comments very hypocritical in light of his words in his book On Writing, where he even mentions this sort of elitist attitude among published writers, especially when you’re getting started in the business. The fact that she sold 29 million books in 2008, making her the best-selling author of the year, is a testament to the fact that she’s a brilliant writer who can command the attention and interest of a significant audience. Yes, that means in 2008 she sold more novels than Stephen King. Money talks, Mr. King.
Then again, if Stephen King is simply alluding to the fact that a writer can sell millions of novels while not having the foggiest notion of decent grammar, punctuation or how to avoid a plot line that isn’t some boring cliche used millions of times in other novels…maybe he has a point and should consider examining his own humble beginnings.
Articles, Articles Everywhere - The Life of an Online Writer
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 |You know, it’s one thing to maintain a forty hour a week job to begin with, and it’s certainly another thing to do freelance writing work as a full time job, but have you ever wondered what it’s like to do both?
The Life of a Workaholic - Must…Take….A Break…
This all started when I got involved with eBay in order to earn some extra cash. In my usual all-or-nothing approach, I ended up as an eBay PowerSeller in less than a year. I wrote about that a bit in one of this month’s articles at MakeUseOf. There’s plenty of money to be made on eBay, the only problem is that 75 percent of it involves doing work outside the home. You can forget about having a life on “shipping day,” a tortuous day where you spend 4 or 5 hours rapidly packing up oddly shaped items in cardboard and bubble wrap. The next day you arrive at the post office carrying a mountain of packages (as other customers eye you up and down with disgust for taking so much time), and then you pray to the United States Postal Service gods to *please* not break anything, because dealing with USPS insurance claims is like expecting your health insurance premiums to go down next year…it ain’t gonna happen.
The Life of a Workaholic - Must…Take….A Break…
This month, I decided to share a bit of the madness. Here are a few of the projects that I somehow managed to complete this month.
- 10 June articles on MakeUseOf (so far).
- 3 Articles on the RealityUncovered Paranormal/Ufology blog.
- Almost 15 articles at LoveToKnow on the web-design, online, sci-fi, and paranormal channels.
And something I’m very proud and happy to report, a few of the best interviews I’ve had the honor of doing so far. Jim Harold of the Paranormal Podcast, an interview with popular science fiction novelist Kevin J. Anderson, and finally a very cool chat with Scott Swedorski - the VP of Product Development over at CoffeeCup (the creators of the famous free web design software).
All in all, it’s been a fun month. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade in my day job as an Engineer - but I gotta tell you, this writing thing is a total blast.
