Writing

My older two kids have a quirky schedule in the next week as they start taking final exams in 6th and 11th grades. The 2nd grader gets to have fun with an end of the year party and no finals. But 3rd grade is going to be serious business as it’ll be his first year of taking state tests. It won’t be long before he won’t get to do the fun stuff and not have finals.

Then summer begins. I’m not a fan of summer break because of the inconsistent schedule and work disruptions as camp and activities start later and end earlier than school. Of course, I’ll spend time with the kids — I just can’t spend it the entire summer and I like my quiet time and consistent schedule.

Brain food…

• Why I Don’t Count Followers, Mentions, Google Alerts, or Blog Hits Anymore: I try to ignore stuff like this and Klout scores. But sometimes you can’t help it and you wonder what you’re doing wrong.
• Getting Ready for “The Help”: Storyfix deconstructs “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett. I loved the book especially since it changes points-of-view and the main character wants to be a writer. Just a great example for writers even nonfiction ones.
• Why I love writing: my 25 reasons: Did this guy peek into my life? Good reminder especially on rough days.
• 5 Free E-Books Every Writer Needs: A great selection from Jane Friedman.
• Taken to the Cleaners: Clients hire you for your expertise. For example, I’m a writer — but I share expertise beyond general writing advice. It’s up to the client to decide whether to take the advice. Key is to explain the why, don’t just say “I recommend doing this.”

For fun because we’re allowed…

• The Period Table of Storytelling: Wow! If you’re busy — don’t click on this until you have lots of time. You can order this as a print.
• Periodic Table of Swearing: Speaking of periodic table… obviously, NSFW. [Link: Bitrebels]
• 20 Awesomely Untranslatable Words from Around the World: Know a luftmensch? [Link: Michelle Mangen]
• Take the World’s Hardest Vocabulary Test: My brain is tired after studying the first few.

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Whoops. I didn’t publish links last week! Guess what… the sky didn’t fall. Sometimes we can’t blog. It happens. So there are more links than usual because some of them are the ones I saved from last week.

Best quote in ages: “Never compare your beginning to someone else’s middle.” This comes from Michael Hyatt’s blog post, Avoiding One Great Temptation Every New Dream Faces. It’s easy — especially for writers — to dig a big hole for themselves. A friend publishes a book and announces another on the way. {Green} Another colleague writes for bigshot blog. {Green} Writer has 20,000 Twitter followers. {Green} [Fill in something another writer has accomplished that made you jealous.] {Green}

It happens to me. It’s hard not to compare yourself to someone else who does the same job you do. Writers are kind of like snowflakes. It’s hard to find two with the exact same careers. Sure, Patricia Cornwell and James Patterson have published tons of books in a similar genre. But how they got there is different. They do other things, too.

People may be jealous of you, but they’re not going to admit it.

Green is for recycling, the color of my eyes and the rockin’ Dallas Mavericks’ old uniform. What else is green?

Brain food…

• Lower Your Printing Costs Up to 70% Without Changing Printer: Downloaded and installed. This lightens the ink. It’ll take some time to figure out what works best.
• Using Twitter to Support Your Business Social Media Strategy: Twitter does baseball. OK, I tried to do something different…
• 5 Lies Unpublished Writers Tell Themselves (and the Truths That Can Get Them Published): I’ve mentioned this many times include in my most recent real blog post on writer worthiness… writers are a business and that includes marketing.
• You Have to Suck First: When my kids complain they don’t understand something or they’re not good at it, I tell them they have to practice first and that’s what homework, studying and sports practices are for.
• Because Accidents Happen: Top 10 Doo-Dads to Keep Your Gadgets Safe: Love my BlackBerry Otter Box. Initially, I was afraid to order it because I thought it looked clunky and more for men. Well, I got many compliments and love the thing! I don’t use the clipholder. [Link: Erin Margolin]

For fun because we’re allowed…

• Line draw bike art: If you ever wondered how Superman or George Washington would look riding a bike, wonder no more…
• Star Wars and Disney Mashup: Had to share in honor of my dad’s memory. The kids loved hearing him talk like Donald Duck.
• New York Movie Map: Can you find 91 movies — all taken place in New York — in this poster?
• 10 Funniest Badly-Translated Ads: KFC isn’t finger-lickin’ good. They will eat your fingers off in Beijing.
• How to explain social media to your spouse: Tongue in cheek goodness. [Link: Jeff Hurt]
• 20 Funniest Captcha Art Pics: Some not safe for work / kids.

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Writer confidence comes with experience. Even so, many of us — me, included — let things get the best of us and we lose confidence. “Oh, I’ve been lucky to make it this far.” Or we get scared and fear someone will open the curtain and discover no wizard back there.

Photo from sxc.hu user aiyaz

The writing profession is a tricky one. We don’t learn how to cut, repair and sew bodies in grade school. We do learn how to read and write. We don’t learn the law inside out so we can quote cases to defend our client in grade school. We do essays and theses. (I did one on James Thurber.) It’s easy for us to fall in the trap thinking, “What makes me a writer when everyone has to write papers in school?”

What makes you a worthy writer?

You treat it like a business. Guess what? Writers are in a business. Grade school doesn’t require you to take finance or learn people management and marketing skills. The closest required class is economics, which runs for only one semester with government taking up the other semester. (This is a Texas education requirement that was around when I was in high school and continues today.) Much of what I know to run my business didn’t come from grade school. Some of my management and people skills comes from college and graduate school. I also picked up some from past jobs and reading.

Treating writing like a business involves marketing, planning, accounting, management. I don’t simply write article after article, post after post, tweet after tweet. I also do problem solving, project management, research and content strategy.

You don’t do the mill thing. Many writers write for pennies and keep doing it even after producing a bunch of lousy articles filled with keywords and little substance. Confessions of an Ex-mill Writer is a must read. It shows how one person got her start by writing for a mill and it didn’t help her writing career. She had to cut it off and start over. Mills are not a stepping stone to a writing career.

You don’t make “no time” excuses. Many say they want to write and never do it. Many folks say they don’t have time to do that novel, memoir or short story. That excuse is no different from the “I don’t have time to exercise” excuse. Believe me, I’m busy that I gave up some activities because I needed to make time for exercise. So writers who have done it and got paid for it — you’re ahead of the majority!

I started my writing business on the side to my corporate job. With gentle nurturing and without aggressive marketing, the writing business grew. Early on, I had no plans to make it a full-time career. I fell in love with the work and pushed harder in the couple of years before I retired from the corporate world for the writing business.

Successful people occasionally question their worth no matter how long they’ve worked at their careers. That’s being human. That’s our overstimulated or under simulated brain taking over. Just don’t let it stop you from moving forward. (At least, not for too long.)

What do you do to show you’re a worthy writer?

Lori Widmer’s post on Writers Worth Week inspired this post.

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My little guy, who turned eight yesterday, will be in third grade next fall — in the latter half of his elementary school years. Years ago, I started a tradition in writing a letter to my children on their birthdays reflecting the past year. I showed my daughter several letters on her 16th birthday as a way to connect when we went to breakfast for her birthday. But I think I’ll give all of the letters to them on their 18th birthdays. (Unless you have a better idea.) So daughter gets hers next year.

Eight is a great age. Still young enough to be adorable, like cartoon and other movies tween boys typically don’t watch (He asked to see The Wizard of Oz and Aunt E gave him the DVD and we watched it together. 12-year-old brother didn’t join us.) and doing crafts like Pearler Beads. It won’t be long before I’m a mom of “older” kids who don’t do the cute stuff anymore. I try to make the most of every day of his life and his siblings’ too. They’re only a certain age for one year, kids for 18 and adults for way more than that.

Mazel tov, William and Kate.

Brain food…

• The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We’re All Going To Miss Almost Everything: If I can’t get into a book, I dump it. Too many books out there, on my shelves and in my Kindle to waste time on the unworthy ones. I also went through my wish list and deleted a bunch of books with this thinking in mind. [Link: Elisa, my sister -- yes, that would be Aunt E]
• The top 9 lessons I wish I knew when I started my business: I’m grateful I had my meryl.net email long before I started the business. It’s also sad because I’ve used it as my primary email for so long because lots of spam come to that account. I’d love to wipe out and change my email address (while keeping meryl.net, of course). But I’d have to forward all messages to the new address and spam will follow.
• Letter to Beginning Writers: Applies to all writers. [Link: BubbleCow]
• 6 Ways a CRM Tool Can Help a Freelancer: The hard part… finding the right one.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Don’t Just Polish Your Nails — Geekify Them: Takes patience and tiny fingernail brushes.
• Video Game Alphabet Pattern: Lemmings! I spent hours on that game. I feel like a geek failure as I don’t know all of the games.
• 12 Most Bizarre ‘Royal Wedding’ Merchandise: Why would anyone want a life-sized picture of Will and Kate on a fridge? Crown jewels? Prepare to LOL.
• Better Book Titles: “This blog is for people who do not have thousands of hours to read book reviews or blurbs or first sentences. I will cut through all the cryptic , and give you the meat of the story in one condensed image.” [Link: Elisa]

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Calm before the storm. Next weekend is kuuuhhraazzyyyy. Not only is it my youngest child’s birthday, but it felt like everyone wanted to schedule something that weekend. I’ll be heading to a family event with my mom and one unhappy son while hubs and son go on a scout camp out. Then, Sunday is the birthday / movie party for my baby. Dang, I can’t believe it’s been eight years since I held him in my arms for the first time.

Photo by sxc.hu user ba1969

Happy Easter to all who celebrate. Here’s an Easter smile: 10 Geekiest Gadgets to Celebrate Easter.

Brain food…

• 40+ free ebook tools for authors: Mah-velous list. [Link: Porter Anderson]
• The Comfort of Bad Reviews (That Aren’t Yours): Even the classics get bashed. [Link: Therese Walsh]
• Spring cleaning (and organization) for your social networks: By Cousin Sarah Evans. OK, She’s not really my cousin, but I wish because she’s awesome and thanks to her, I dumped big files in Gmail with Find Big Mail.
• 4 PR Lessons I Learned from Saved by the Bell: Yes, that show. I loved it and admit having the theme song on my MP3.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Book rug: <3 this rug by Pamela Paulsrud. She has other book sculptures — just click prev/next. My second fave is alphabook. [Link: Bitrebels]
• iPaw’d: I’d get this for my dog, but she doesn’t hear very well anymore. [Link: Bitrebels]
• 8 Snarky Song Charts Cleverly Illustrated: I had seen “Friday I’m In Love” before, but not the others. Delightful collection. Prepare for songs to play in your head.
• World’s Biggest Pac-Man: Holy, Inky, Blinky and Clyde!!
• The 20 All-Time Funniest Twitter Bios (part 2): S P E C T A C U L A R V E R N A C U L A R

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My older sister aka Aunt E celebrated her birthday this week. Here’s to many more happy and healthy ones.

This week is the third year in a row that my sons will attend the Dallas Auto Show. My older son loves, loves cars. The younger one likes cars, but nothing like big brother. Part of it probably comes from his wanting to be like big brother. Older son loves Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Porsches. Uh oh. I can’t resist this upcoming cliché. You’ve been warned… “Oh, my.”

Bet we’ll have a couple of more model cars coming home to join the collection.

Struggling to make Springpad or Evernote seamlessly work with my process so I can stop relying on Gmail drafts and contacts for notes. Now that I have a tablet, I’ve been looking into this. Springpad requires having the web site open to edit or read notes. Evernote isn’t free. I have Gmail open all the time, so it’s easy to access drafts and contacts (I have notes in contacts). Downside is that you can’t view drafts on other devices. How do you organize your notes?

Brain food…

• What do newspapers pay? WordCount talks newspaper pay rates and shares resources.
• Emotionally intelligent signage on a box: Talk about thinking outside of the box. Brilliant.
• QR Code Generator: Other than the obvious, who’d use this? How?
• Top 100 Social Media Colleges: I love reading about colleges and checking out their programs… that is, until now. Oldest starting the college search thing. That takes the fun out of it. [Link: Mazi]

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Yarn Ferrari: Patience in action.
• Cover Letters from Hell: Love the side comments from the editor, too. [Link: Deb Ng]
• Star Wars If Dr. Seuss Had Created It: Guess who would say, “This body is old, but it’s all I’ve got. When 900 you, reach, look so good, you will not!”
• 8 Actors Who Look Exactly the Same on Every Movie Poster: Eddie Murphy, Denzel Washington, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jackie Chan, Will Smith, Jet Li, Bruce Willis and Tom Cruise.
• Google Exodus: Hilarious video. In honor of the upcoming Passover and another viewing of The Ten Commandments (Affiliate).

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If you do or plan to accept guest posts, it helps to have guidelines before you start reviewing requests. Too many folks have abused guest posting privileges. Besides that, guidelines help you ensure your blog retains its quality, integrity and relevancy also known as “keer” or QIR. OK, I made that up.

Photo by sxc.hu user linder6580

These guidelines will be updated as needed.

Posting Guidelines

• Read the blog before you contact me. The most unbelievable guest post request email came from someone who explained “guest post” to me. This happened within a week after I wrote the Dark Side of Guest Posts article.
• Will there be a similar post out there? I had one guest blogger who had a very similar post published the same day as it ran on my blog. My blog is not the place for rewritten articles. It’s not just about my credibility — but you and your site’s too. A guest blogger said she planned to publish the article on her site a few months later. I had no problem with that as long as it wasn’t word for word.
• The article must have substance. Not just be a list of the top X whatever. One list type post described each item, but used very generic terms. The article turned out 75 percent edited. It took very little to expand on each one, so obviously the guest didn’t invest more than a few minutes putting it together.
• Agree to let me edit as I see fit. Ensure silky smooth writing, fix typos, limit keyword links, verify substance, etc.
• Targets writers, freelancers and business owners. Not very narrow, is it? Really, this is the audience I tend to interact with the most.
• Teaches at least one new valuable thing. I’ve seen guest posts that fly at 30,000 feet sharing stuff everyone already knows like the sun is the closest star.
• 400 to 800 words. Any longer and most of us will tune out. It’d have to take something special to justify 800+ word posts. One guest submitted a 1300-word post. We turned it into a two-parter.
• Solid bio. Yes, we’ll include a link back to your site / blog, but it also must include sentences about the author. (Many of the spammy sites take the people out of the site and anything associated with it.)
• Discuss topics before writing. Why waste your time on topics that won’t fit the blog? The sooner we nail it, the fewer edits the article will need — saving time for everyone.

Feel free to steal them and modify them for your needs. Please don’t copy and paste them into your blog and turn it into a blog entry. It hurts both of our sites when people do this.

What other items would you add to the guidelines?

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One thing about working for myself — no worries about April Fool’s pranks. But I do have kids and one in particular likes to pull stuff. Full alert! Here are some great April Fool’s office pranks [Link: Marc Harty] — fun ‘n safe. #37 cracked me up. What’s your favorite April Fool’s prank?

Legoland Discovery Center rocked. It blew away this adult who has seen many incredible creations. See a taste of MINILAND in the below Dallas skyline picture. That’s only part of it. It also had famous buildings from Fort Worth, my hometown.

A lot of GREAT stuff this week… so go explore.

Brain food…

• On writing: authors reveal the secrets of their craft:  Love Ian Rankin’s response to writer routines. “I have days when I do*bleep* all. I sit down at a computer, nothing’s coming, I’m having to tear each word out, it’s like digging for coal, and I’ll go: ‘No, this isn’t working,’ and I’ll just walk away.”  [Link: Kristin Bair O'Keeffe]
• The last freelance resource article that you will EVER have to read: Nice round up of apps and programs ranging from invoicing and legal to client management and project management.
• Champing at the bit: That’s not a typo. It’s champing, not chomping. [Link: Amber Naslund]
• Work Life Balance in the Home Office: I wear the same thing daily, so the clue to my kids that I’m at work is sitting in my office. It works so well that on a Saturday, my son asked, “Why are you working?” [Link: Alan K'necht]
• Freelance writing jobs: Top 10 places to find quality work: So many awful sites out there — good list to have as starting point.
• The secret to freelance work/life balance isn’t so secret: I’ve created a schedule and that makes a big difference to sticking with things. Need to grow “cheer team” to include writers.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• The Last Supper: 17 of the Best Parody Illustrations: Love the iPod / iPhone picture.
• 10 Real Cars Inspired by Cartoons: Donald Duck car = thinking of my dad. (He talked Donald Duckish to kids and his family spoiled him with a ton of Donald Duck stuff.)
• Cover Tune Grab Bag – “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”: This Beatles song is one of the few I can follow. This simple yet powerful video made me smile all over. [Link: Mark Hurst]
• Noma Bar’s Negative Space Illustrations: You’ve probably seen the young woman / vase picture. Here’s more. Neat, but my eyes have readjusting to do. [Link: Fred Schlegel]
• 3eanuts, Cinema Nutrition and WikiBomb: Three of the websites featured in 7 Sites You Should Be Wasting Time on Right Now. Who knew Peanuts could fall deeper into despair? Just cut the last panel in 3eanuts and it does. You’ll never look at movies the same way again after studying up on your cinema nutrition. Wikibomb captures Wikipedia pages before they’re taken down. In other words, Wikipedia vandalism vandalism.
• The Writing Process: Graph depicting the process of writing a feature. Just needs a ::headbang:: in there somewhere. What? You haven’t noticed a lot of writers walk around with dents on their foreheads? At least, I do [Link: Mridu Khullar]

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You know March roars in like lion and goes out like a lamb? Not this time. It feels like the month whizzed by unless you’re in Japan. I’m sure it’s been a long couple of weeks. I’m thinking of the folks there every day.

The second Legoland Discovery Center in the US comes to Dallas. My family heads there tomorrow as part of a special preview for Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts. I can’t believe Lego built the second one here. Here’s hoping it’s a memorable experience for the boys. I’m sure they’ll be asking for this ‘n that as Lego wouldn’t have this place and no Lego for sale.

The youngest got his braces on this week. He got tired of everyone asking, “Why do you need braces?” Severe overbite in his case. That will be three braces for all three kids.

I hope the younger two won’t need them again in the future. The older brother’s permanent teeth haven’t all come in yet and the latest round tried to mess with his teeth. Poor guy had to have three teeth pulled to prevent damage. Orthodontia has changed since I’ve sported railroad tracks. They put braces on kids sooner because they’re waiting until they’re older and baby teeth fall out can do more harm than good.

Brain food…

• 6 Strategic Approaches for Using Twitter: What I like about this infographic is that it covers customer relations, crisis management, corporate reputation management, event coverage, product promotion and sales and issue advocacy. Applicable to almost everyone. Key: Don’t wait until you need it to use Twitter. Start now.
• America’s 100 Best Small Companies: If you’d like to learn about how small companies succeed, these are a good place to start. Some known and some not known.
• 7 Different Types of Writing Gigs for Freelance Copywriters: When I spoke to second graders, first thing I asked was what kind of writers do they know about? Answers: book authors, newspaper writers, magazines. The usual. You know we can do much more and here are some ideas.
• Is a public post a quotable source? Due diligence in sharing information: Depends on the quote selected and where content posted. Newspaper, blog, testimonial, company website, Twitter etc. [Link: Arik Hanson]

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• 20 creative guerrilla marketing campaigns: I must live in a dull place or don’t get out much. Never see creative campaigns like these around town.
• 14 Funny Warning Signs: Thank you for noticing this notice. Your noticing this notice is noted.
• Angry Birds Papercraft: Made my own! No, I didn’t suddenly find myself with free time on my hands. Need to make ‘em so I could throw ‘em around when I get angry at the game instead of breaking my iPod.
• Magazine grammar fail: Eat, Ray, Love — that works, but they forgot the rest of the commas.
• Star Ways John Williams Tribute: Even Wookie captions! (Thank you, Corey, for captioning the video.) [Link: Lori Widmer]

My family doesn’t have ancestors from Ireland, yet Dad and I always wore green on March 17. Dad went to the extreme and wore a striped green suit to work. He also had a button that said, “Kiss me, I’m Irish” and a couple of others. (He wouldn’t get away with that kiss me button today with sexual harassment policies.)

My ancestry is tricky to trace as many of them came over from Europe and Russia in the late 1800s and early 1900s. However, Facebook connected me with some relatives on my mother’s father’s side. In ONE day, my family tree tripled. The top of this image shows the family tree before I found my cousins on Facebook and the bottom is what I added based on our conversations in Facebook.

Amazing, eh? Despite all of its flaws, Facebook is an incredible resource as so many friends and family members who aren’t social networkers actually use Facebook.

Brain food…

• Be Authentic: Why the World Needs You to Be You: I wish I could remember where I read a conversation between two people and one person convinced the other to stop ignoring a difficult part of her life. Face it head on. It made a difference in her writing.
• The Bare Bones Guide to Twitter: Get what you need to know and not a drop more. [Link: Lydia Ondrusek]
• Browser Evolution – The History of Web Browsers [Infographic]: Wow! I started using the Internet around 1993 with Internet in a Box and Mosaic. This chart begins in 1994.
• Prithee, Inform Me: The Rules of Writing: Kurt Vonnegut’s eight rules for fiction writing. A keeper.
• 100 Exquisite Adjectives: Need to study these. Not familiar with some, but I like ‘em! Can’t use words like these in writing because they’re not well known.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Another 12 Modern Bookcases: I love the US map bookcase. Don’t think I could handle such a bookcase as I like my books in a neat row. Here’s the original 15 coolest bookshelves.
• 12 Most Creative Objects Inspired by the Rubik’s Cube: That puzzling puzzle from the ’80s has a new lease on life… as a bunch of other things.
• Celebrate Pi at piZone: If you enter your email address, you’ll add another digit to Pi. I did this and my position is my birthday (month and day) with the #7.
• Stop-motion chess game: Builds up… give it time… [Link: Guy Kawasaki]

Where are you from?