Whenever I feel professionally insecure, I watch this. Then I feel a whole bunch better. I think I need a flugelhorn. In other news, I had my first orientation at the gym as an employee. I think it’s gonna be a nice place to work. Cheerful and friendly suits me fine. Also, they’re paying for the CPR course, and I get a discount on my lifeguard certification if I want one. I was warned if I get that cert, I’ll be called on to use it. Oh weep for me.
Busy
I have a bigger contract and a little article to work on today. I really, really enjoy being a writer when I have work! LMAO.
One of the neat things about what I do is that I often have to do research on subject. Basically, my job is learning stuff, then reporting on it. There are days when I feel like the main character in Friday during her Pajaro Sands days1. This is not a bad thing.
The gym was fun today. Workouts were all good, people were just… friendly today. I always like it when people seem to be in a good mood.
There was a new woman doing weights and was doing most of the same exercises I do, but using dumbbells. She looked at me a little funny when I was doing bench presses. I have to chuckle, because she was using almost exactly the same amount of weight I started with back when I started lifting in the summer of ’06. If her goals are to get strong, in a couple of years, she’s gonna look back amazed.
I tried a new exercise, the Vertical Leg Raise. This is hard, friends. I was getting bored with incline situps. It’s not that they’re not a challenge. I was just sick of them. So, I went ahead and did the new exercise, then commented to the woman who’d just come in for the first time today that I finally got up the guts to try that exercise2. She laughed and said she was surprised I had to get up the guts to do anything.
I told her that for the first year I was lifting, I was using a set of adjustable dumbbells at home, and that at my weight, I was actually a little scared to step into the room with all the free weights.
‘Course the real answer is that unless you’re goofing off and hogging equipment, you’re probably gonna be plenty welcome in the weight room, no matter what your fitness level or size.
1Though without nearly as much sex, dammit!
2Yeah, there really are times when I have to work up my courage to try stuff.
Looking for the mouse
Believe it or not, this video has given me a far greater understanding of and sympathy to fanfic.
Thing is, it’s not about fanfic at all, but about an amazing cognitive shift. Please do watch it. It’s fantastic.
Martian Death Flu
You know how working out is supposed to boost your immune system, and make you strong and all that smack?
I have a case of the Martian Death Flu. You know the one, where air molecules bumping against your skin hurt like crazy and your joints are on fire and you have a hacking cough and a fever that trips up and down teasing you so that you think it’s gone away until you get the shivvering chills again and your head aches and the idea of food is appalling and you feel yourself getting weaker by the hour and…
Yeah, that one.
I don’t get sick often so this is getting on my nerves. I want to train, but… Well, Rule One. I’m weak enough I’m not sure I could squat with an empty bar and keep my balance. So, I wait.
Not only that, I think it would be a bit inconsiderate to go to the gym and pass this along to other people.
But I’m feeling cranky and ill and moody and want a mood lift.
And I have work to complete for a client. Thank God I’m disciplined about research and outlines. But writing when your think is broken and you can’t brane? I know there’s this famous idea of people turning to writing when they weren’t well enough for other work, but I guess I’m a crap writer. I write best when I’m well.
Oh, and open message to all you macho assholes who go to the gym and train while dripping snot into tissues and horking lung butter into your hands:
STOPPIT!!!!
It’s really inconsiderate. Just sayin’. Use a mask if you’ve just gotta train, please? (You wanna hurt your own body, go for it. It’s spreading your illness around to other people that’s my concern). I’m right up the road from a fancy, schmancy research hospital that’d be delighted to give you a mask if you ask for one. Really. But you can buy ’em cheap in drug stores, too. I know they’re dorky lookin’. But I’d respect it. Honest.
Writing, Books and Marketing
There’s a fantasy writer who has put out a series of courses on how to write, get published — the whole round of business stuff. Her name is Holly Lisle.
I’ve found her work valuable. (Thanks Holly!) I’ve never managed to do what I’d like with my fiction, but her advice and the stuff she’s put out there has definitely been instrumental in me being able to earn a large percentage of my living as a freelance writer. Since many of my favorite writers got their starts as journalists, I can only hope the the rigors of producing good copy to a tight deadline will hone other skills and improve my fiction.
She mentioned in one of her Q&A emails (one you have to sign up to get and can unsubscribe from!) that she’s come under criticism for mentioning her own work as examples for stuff she’s talking about and shame on her for “advertising”.
Sure, there are times when promotion becomes irritating and probably isn’t going to get you a customer. Joining an internet discussion board that has a social or community aspect to it only to discuss a book you just wrote might irritate people. But I think it’s unrealistic to assume that a writer who is spending time teaching about the craft would refrain from mentioning her own work in a newsletter she writes and owns. It’s very clear from her site that she’s interested in making money from writing and from teaching about writing. And what in the name of God is the matter with that?
This rant comes from two places for me. I make part of my living as a writer, and part of it as a teacher. Developing a course, even a minor one, takes time and energy. If you have a quick example that will prove your point about something quick to hand, that’s what you’ll use. It would be inefficient not to.
The writer part. There are writers who don’t promote their work. You’ve never heard of them because… they don’t promote their work. See, making a living as a writer isn’t just about sitting at the keyboard pounding words out in a flood of prose — though those moments do feel a bit godlike. Which, I suspect, is why many of us do it. It’s about research, it’s about development. It’s about finding someone who’ll pay you to do it, and that’s no trivial task. Of course you’re going to mention your work! If you don’t, you stop having work.
Have I ever been irritated by someone promoting their work? Yep. The poly community, ferinstance, is loaded with people who write a book, then join online communities for the basic purpose of promoting that work. They’ve forgotten a very basic premise of networking. You have to have an established relationship — you know, maybe made friends before that sort of informal marketing works well. Otherwise it’s gonna backfire.
But if someone owns a site, has a mailing list for which on can sign up for, and then you do? Yeah, it’s only reasonable to expect the person is gonna mention his work! That’s not crass. It’s only sensible.
A Really Fantastic Book for Free
American Gods by Neil Gaiman is available as a preview copy online for free.
Yep, you can read it online for free.
Now, I loved this book so much that not only do I own a hard copy, I bought the audiobook. It’s one of my favorite books to come out in the last few years.
He has encouraged people to put this link around, saying that if it was popular, he’d “be able to” do this again. I’m not entirely sure how this is really going make a profit, (other than if they’re like me, this book got me hooked on Mr. Gaiman’s work), but I’m willing to spread the word.
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Musing
My job is to learn stuff and tell people about it — more or less, anyway.
When I was a young kid, the professions I fantasized about (Paleontologist and Marine Biologist) certainly had that quality to a degree.
Between the ages of 12 and 15 or so, I wanted to be an actor.
During all of that — say from the time I was 12, I was also writing. I didn’t think of it so much in terms of work. I just… did it. It just felt natural to put thoughts on paper and play with them until they communicated something.
The first “serious” piece I wrote was a script for the Dukes of Hazzard. It was bad. Okay, no…it wasn’t bad. It was appalling. I tried some ten years later to write a script for Star Trek: The Next Generation. My husband at the time still has flashbacks from having to live with me through that.
Not long after that, I got a job — a work for hire deal, writing a manual on how to open a business. I remember clearly writing it and being scared because it was “too quirky” and was wondering if it would work or if I’d piss off my client. This was before the “For Dummies” manuals became as popular as they are, but it was written in that chatty style. In school, I always got fussed at for turning in chatty work. (I know, you can’t write like that academically!) But I used to get mad because it felt right somehow when I would write it. I really wish one of my teachers had pulled me aside and explained that chatty had its genuine and real place.
He liked it.
Why I didn’t pursue that at the time, I do not know. Part of it was that I wanted to write fiction. Honestly? I’m a hell of a lot better at non-fiction — teaching someone how to do something or poking at an illogical thought directly.
I wish I knew why. It kind of depresses me. I feel like Salieri when I read really good, moving epic pieces. And I don’t write epic well.
Maybe I oughta take a page from John Varley’s writing style. He makes it work. I just don’t see how I could write Stoneflower from a first person perspective and make it work.
The first novel I ever wrote was in the style of Heinlein’s Number of the Beast — shifting first person. It was easier to write, but I don’t think there’s any way in hell I could live some of the characters in Stoneflower for the time required to write them first person.
Be Yourself
Yesterday was fantastic, professionally. I delivered some kick-ass service that’s really helped a couple of clients get to where they wanna be. Projects like that are just plain fun.
I learned an important lesson, too.
You get advice as a youngster starting out in the world that seems conflicting. Goodness knows I always thought it did! You’re told on the one hand to “be yourself”. Then you’re told “be professional.”
Well, “myself” is hardly the image of the professional woman. All suits, sobersides and cool efficiency isn’t me.
I didn’t claim the stuff I did in the poly community on my resume.
I would even tone down my accent in the office1. Now, I did that even when I lived in Virginia, because there is a perception that thick accent indicates a lack of erudition.
When I quit working as an administrative assistant, I was taking a big risk, and I really decided to go whole hawg. I re-wrote my resume as a CV. If I had relevant experience, I claimed it, by God! That means my CV2 shows the polyamory stuff. And I found out that it worked. It got me shots at work I wanted.
When I teach? I let the accent run wild and free. It doesn’t make me appear stupid. It makes me appear approachable. The colloquialisms that come out when I relax my diction are funny. When you’re teaching something as dry as computer applications, humor is necessary or your class goes to sleep. Approachability? That’s even more important. Students have to ask questions to learn!
Part of it had to do with a misunderstanding of what “professional” means. To be professional only means you’re delivering a good service in the context of your environment. If you’re a lawyer, it might mean a suit. But, I know of at least one lawyer, however, who has her own version of a writin’ chair and probably works in her robe and slippers as often as I do. Your eccentricities are assets if you take the trouble to understand them.
Being yourself just as hard as you can is really what works, because then you’re centered in the joy of what you’re doing. As foo-foo and woo-woo as it sounds, the other rewards come when you do it. Every dollar joyfully earned is worth two earned with grudging effort. When you’re centered in being you you’re delighted to work as hard as is necessary to get what you want, but it doesn’t feel like work. You’re just doing what you do and it’s great.
1 Mostly Richmond, VA with overtones of Stafford County.
2A Curriculum Vitae is not only for the academic or the medical professional. If you have a “nonstandard” life of any sort, if you do volunteer work that is experience in something you’d be interested in being paid to do (organizing cons translates into events planning!), if you’ve written a lot… All these things are life experience you can put on a CV. It’s more useful than a resume and gives a clearer picture of what you have done and can do.
Repeat after me: I brought this all on myself! [1]
My kids are going to be with me this weekend, and I don’t often get a whole weekend to play with both of them. They wanna game. I made up this diceless game based on the Discworld many months ago. I’d call it more interactive storytelling than “gaming” per se, but the kids really enjoy it. I’m just glad I have had the experience of being a GM before so that I knew to take notes. I suppose there are advantages to have a Mama who is a writer.
Speaking of being a writer, this is the weekend that the Universe has decide to gift me with a lot of work. I guess I can scratch the goal of writing an effective proposal off my to-do list. This is my opportunity to make sure I can use effective time management skills, right? Unlike the cliché, I don’t miss deadlines!
However, I am going to be spending a lot of the weekend doing fun stuff with the children, ’cause, well… I have my damn priorities straight! Hello coffee, my old friend…
It’s funny. I’ve sat at the very desk at which I am now sitting2 writing queries to magazines that were (I now know) way the hell out of my league before I graduated from High School, for God’s sake, because this is what I wanted to do. At the time, I’d read science fiction stories that portrayed technology that had… well, more or less the Internet as we know it3. I remember thinking, “God, that world seems neat! Too bad I’ll never live in it.”
Well, I do live in it now, and ya know what? It is neat!
1 RE: the title. One of the attendees of PolyFamilies CampCon 2004 had a habit of saying this. I found it both funny and oddly comforting.
2I have a laptop. I don’t always work in the same place. These are my two other common workspaces:
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3Friday, by Robert A. Heinlein leaps to mind.
"Real Writer"
I remember reading something some years ago about being a “real” writer or a professional writer. It went something along the lines of:
If you write something and you get a check for it, it doesn’t bounce, and then you go pay the electric bill with it, you’re a professional writer.
I think it may have been Stephen King. I’m not a fan of his fiction particularly, but I’m very fond of what he has to say about being a writer.
Well, I’m a professional writer. It’s weird to wrap my mind around that. I don’t earn all of my living writing, but I don’t earn all of my living doing any one thing. I teach, give advice… buncha stuff. I was asked in the gym a couple of days ago where I worked. When I said I was self-employed, she asked me, “Doing what?”
Um… Everything?
I didn’t self-identify as a writer the first time I earned money as a writer1. To this day, I do not know why. I think I had the idea that “real” writers saw their work in bookstores. It bothers me, sometimes, that I did not embrace the label. I think I might have been more serious about my career. But I only saw it in terms of big magazine sales or book contracts.
I remember all the pre-Internet advice on getting started freelancing. What no-one said, and I wish someone had was, “Don’t sell yourself short, but don’t be afraid of the chump change assignments at first. Everyone pays their dues in a profession.”
I’ll be the first to say that the skill of good writing is shamelessly undervalued. A “real” published author of my acquaintance cautioned me that she could have earned more per hour working at McDonald’s than she did on a book I had been rather fulsome in praising.
True enough, but you cannot flip burgers from your writin’ chair, either! I mean, this is my office!
Honesty forces me to point out that this pic is somewhat neater than my office at present. There’s a sweater I am working on at the foot of the ottoman, and there is a coffee cup on the table as well as some balls of yarn. Oh, and there’s a phone and iPod cable on the arm of the chair. But, yeah, that’s where I work (cum laptop) unless I’m offsite for something. I don’t teach from that chair! No, I’m bouncing around the classroom throwing erasers and telling people clip art is the tool of the Devil2.
This is something I’ve wanted since I was in my late teens. Now, when I was sixteen or so, laptops did exist (they were invented in 1982), but hardly commonplace, powerful tools they are today. If I wanted to write somewhere besides a desk, I was writing on paper and in longhand. The internet as we know it really didn’t exist, either, so the virtual office or hiring people thousands of miles away wasn’t as common as it is now. I may do most of my work in that comfy chair (and god is it comfy!), but I could do it in an airport or on a beach just as easily.
Ain’t modern technology grand?
1It was a book on how to open a mailing business for a course my client intended to teach on the subject. I’ve since made extensive use of the research I did for it for my own business work. The fringe benefits of the profession can be amazing!
2 Don’t ask me why. This guarantees a laugh and a good review from the student.