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Where the *BLEEP* are My Files?!?!

Sunday morning I wake early from sleep, dreaming of the interviews on Monday morning. Or was it today? No, I’m sure it was Monday. A wave of uncertainty washes over. I hit the power button to my computer and go to feed our black lab who is whining to eat. When I return, the computer screen is black. I push the power button again. Nothing. I push the power button five more times hoping that the same action will yield a different result. 7am. My husband wakes up to a blood-curling scream.“My computer crashed! It crashed! And I have an interview tomorrow morning!!!!” I didn’t write down specifics since they were all in an e-mail from my editor, who is also out of town for the next week. Where do I go? What time? Monday 9am. I think. Maybe. Where? A church in North Raleigh. Calling Best Buy, we find out they open at 10am. Calming down, I keep myself busy, make breakfast, take a shower, get dressed. 9:45 am we arrive at Best Buy, along with another 50 people holding tickets to be the first to buy the Wii. At this point, I don’t even know what Wii is, looking at the picture of a guitar on someone’s ticket. Already people in line are complaining. Once making it into the store, a man pushes ahead of us in line. Barton bellow, “Excuse me!” Feeling guilty, the man backs off and insists we go ahead. The manager of the Geek Squad reads all the regulations for a 4-day information transfer, but she’ll push it ahead this afternoon.

When we come home, I am already scheming backup plans. I call our great mentor Don, who suggests I call the paper through out the afternoon. Barton and I spend several hours looking at churches in north Raleigh- is it that one? No, that’s too far out; it’s this one over here.

2:45pm I call Best Buy- taking over thirty minutes of recorded voices and being on hold to be told they can’t find the manager. I just can’t stand it anymore. I rush back down to the store trying not to mow down the gobs of people buying Christmas gifts. Finally, the tech. staff hands me a disk of retrieved files. They have to ship the computer out- for now, it remains dead.

8pm Barton and I stare at the computer screen of his old computer. First, the set up, creating a new log-on account and e-mail account. The sensor on the computer scrolls up and down, uncontrollably. There was a reason that Barton dumped this computer. 10pm We push file folder buttons to find the lost information scattered in some obscure place.

10:30pm Barton finds it and we import Outlook e-mails. We have found it!!!!!

Monday 9am, early to the interview, downing coffee to stay awake. In the afternoon, I am wrangling with Barton’s computer, taking three times the normal speed for me to type one word, and apparently it likes to freeze every ten minutes. I save after every word I type.

Later, our mentor Don writes, “Remember, no matter what happens, it’s not the end of the world. Keep repeating that and you’ll be fine.”

I’ll be repeating it; trust me, I’ll be repeating it.

–Megan Cutter

Oversold!

Maybe I just have the kind of face that makes people feel comfortable talking to me, but lately strangers have been telling me their personal problems. Just the other day a lady was telling me how dry her skin was, especially in the winter. Fortunately, she said, she’d found a great moisturizer that made her skin as smooth and supple as a baby’s tuckus.

Then a guy confided that he had erectile dysfunction, but that he had stumbled across a medication that helped him rise to the occasion. His wife now apparently had a smile on her face you couldn’t erase with a belt sander.

The fact that these people are all on television just makes it worse, because I can’t tell them to just shut up and keep their icky secrets to themselves. There was a time when TV advertising involved a guy in a suit holding up a bottle of oil made of compressed snakes or something and telling you how great it was, or perhaps a black-and-white animation of hammers clanging in someone’s skull, followed by a pitch for aspirin. If I’m dating myself, so be it – there seemed to be far fewer commercials in those days, and they pitched stuff I actually needed.

But now advertising pervades every aspect of our lives, whether we’re interested in the product or not. There’s a scene in the movie “Minority Report” where Tom Cruise’s character walks by a video display and is addressed by name and assailed with advertising targeted specifically at him.

We’re not quite there yet, but we’re close.

If you’ve ever bought anything on Amazon, for example, on return trips to the site you’ll see offers for books or DVDs similar to what you’ve bought before. Computer trojans infect your PC, watching your buying habits so they can report them to a central site which in turn sends you spam. We’re even targeted with product placement on TV these days.

I don’t know about you, but when I think of the word “target,” a gunsight springs to mind. Well, actually, the first thing that comes to mind is a certain department store – because of their pervasive advertising. I don’t think of being a target as a good thing, especially if you’re a deer. But then, at least they don’t have to watch commercials.

Sure, in the old days there were door-to-door salesmen, but you could always tell them where to put their Electrolux and various attachments. Marketing is now a strictly one-way medium, “served” to you on TV, in movie theaters, on your cell phone, land line, the Internet, billboards, magazines, newspapers, email and other conduits. It’s all given me a bad case of TMA – Too Much Advertising.

All those ads clamoring for attention remind me of the overly zealous salespeople on commission who just won’t leave you alone when you’re trying to shop at your local Buy More. Excuse me, but if I need help, I’ll ask for it. Instead, I get an ever-increasing horde of salespeople, all trying to guess what I want to buy or sell me something I don’t want. Enough already.

But I think I have a solution.

Many of us have signed up for the Do Not Call registry, which prohibits unsolicited phone marketing. How about a Do Not Sell rule, where I accept advertising only when I request it? If I see, for example, a really cool car I’d like to know more about, I email the auto company a request for more information, with the understanding that there will be no more communication unless it’s initiated by me.

I can see advertisers rushing to adopt this plan, since they’ll hear only from people who are seriously interested in their products. It’s a revolutionary idea that’ll change the face of advertising forever.

Also, the color of the sky in my world is chartreuse.

- MAC

To be or not to be (a friend)

The other day a friend told me she had viewed my Netflix queue and she thought we had similar tastes in movies. Afterwards, my husband asked me how she managed to see my choices, and I told him that she was my Netflix “friend.” My ONE and ONLY Netflix friend, actually, a fact Netflix reminds me of every time I log on. 

Do you guys have many online friends? 

If you do, you’re lucky. You don’t get these sadistic little messages from everyone—my publisher Lulu included—that say things like “You do not have any friends. How very sad for you.” 

I must be really weird. I’m actually a very nice person, and I have plenty of friends offline. But when I’m working, I’m working. The older I get, the more brain power and concentration it takes. Friends can be such a distraction. 

Beside, I have a full life, a lot of commitments, and way too many relatives. 

So I barely even know what it even means to have a friend on Lulu or Netflix. Or what the implications are. I mean, am I supposed to know when their birthdays are, or watch their kids when they’re sick? 

This is a whole new arena for me, and it’s clearly a generational thing. When my daughter logged on to her much-older brother’s MySpace site a couple of years ago, she was aghast to find that he had no friends. She took pity on him and, in addition to signing herself up, she got all her friends to be his friends. She, herself, already had 75 friends. But that was a long time ago, before all the new friends she got on Facebook. 

I’m just wondering if any of these “helpful” little messages ever actually push anyone over the edge. Say you’re having a really, really, really bad day. You log on to see if some kind person has purchased a copy of your book online, or if your DVD is on the way. And you get that message. “You have NO friends.” 

Or worse. You ARE the kind of person who makes friends everywhere, and you get a message that says, “You have 1750 friends.” Do you realize how many trips to the card shop that is? 

Really, it sounds like such a liability to me. You watch—mark my words—someone’s going to sue one of these websites, because their recently departed loved one took the message a little too seriously. 

So long, friend.

-Elaine Luddy Klonicki

Elaine, Part Three – The chicken or the egg

Remember when you tried to get your first job out of school? More than likely, you were told you needed experience, but you couldn’t figure out how you were supposed to get that experience without a job.

The publishing world works much the same way. You can’t get published without an assignment, but you can’t get an assignment without being published first. What to do?

Now, more than ever, there are solutions, both in print and online.

Most newspapers accept Point of View pieces from readers for their Op-Ed pages. If your newspaper has a community column section, you can submit an essay in the hopes of becoming a guest columnist. Magazines such as Writer’s Digest run regular contests where they ask you to write based on a prompt, and publish the winning entries. There are a number of non-paying print magazines, such as Reminisce, which will publish your story if it is accepted. Some writers’ groups publish anthologies of their members’ short stories or essays.

Online there an endless number of websites that need content—it’s just a matter of matching up what you want to write about with someone who wants to publish on that topic. One way to get started is to post material on a “content” site, such as Constant-Content.com. These are basically auction sites which allow you to offer your work to the highest bidder, but they do allow you to post free content, which may get picked up by a website with a small budget.   

Many startup e-zines are non-paying at first and then graduate to becoming for-pay sites once they gather enough advertisers and readers.

Writing sites which cater to specific genres, such as HumorPress.com, run bi-monthly contests and offer publication and small monetary prizes to the winners.

If you like to write book reviews, you can submit them to online review sites such as Blogcritics.org or BloggerNews.net.

With the proliferation of blogs, you might want to offer to be a guest blogger on a friend’s site. Or you can create your own blog for free on places like WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal or OutBlogger. The current issue of Writer’s Digest magazine (December 2007) compares the features of these sites.

Finally, you can create your own website using free services such as Geocities.Yahoo.com.  

Once you get a few publications—print or online—under your belt, you’ll feel more confident about writing queries in order to get paying assignments. If you’re a good writer, and you’re professional, it’s just a matter of being persistent. It will all be worthwhile when you get the first “Yes” from an editor!

-Elaine Luddy Klonicki

Easy as A-B-C

They say adversity builds character. Frankly, I think I am quite enough of a character, thanks, and Adversity can just trundle off and find somebody else to pick on! That said, it strikes me that adversity also builds writers.

Nora Ephron – whose writing I have loved for decades – found the inspiration for her novel, Heartburn, in the decline and fall of her marriage to Carl Bernstein. Another writer whose work I have enjoyed is David Eddings. His “About the Author” blurbs illustrate Elaine Klonicki’s opening remark in “Walk Like a Duck” (October 12, 2007), listing some of his former occupations: military service (Army), grocery clerk, college English teacher. Having served in the Army myself, and come close enough to the other two, I can attest to the tribulation they engender. John Steinbeck tried to establish himself as a free-lance writer in the 1920s – and failed, returning to his native California, and continuing to write. His books were well-loved by English teachers and students alike (including those in the 8^th grade), as well as by the ubiquitous “they”: He won the 1962 Nobel Prize for Literature.

How many of us, as angst-ridden adolescents, have not put some of the frustration of those years into words? Granted, at least some of them are nothing but bad poetry, but they express what we felt as best we could at the time. For me, it was around 1969:

You say you know me.

But have you ever lived months,

Years of your life, being

With a thousand people every day –

Yet still being alone?

You say you know me.

But have you ever stood on one side

Of a wet cardboard wall

With the rest of the world pushing on the other

To trample you when it breaks through?

You say you know me,

Though you have never known the things I’ve known.

You know my face.

You may know what my name is.

But you don’t really know me.

You see? Bad poetry. The thing is – whether they include contending with an inadequate income while we try to convince potential employers we have brains, talents and skills, or putting on a brave face to keep up the spirits of a family member with a serious illness – the obstacles we overcome every day add to what we have done, and therefore, to what we can do. Conveniently, they also provide fodder for our pens or – more commonly these days – our computers.

Say, Adversity, maybe I can use you for something after all…but do you really need to be such a bloody enthusiast?

- Dara Lyon Warner

So, what’s next?

When it comes to freelance writing, I feel like an awkward eleven year old in junior college, trying to figure out where the classrooms are, who the in-crowd is and where I belong. I have found there is a difference between creative journaling and professional freelance writing, much like the invisible lines of four-square. Navigating the negotiations with an editor, being an agent for myself and marketing my work is a whole different process than sitting down to write at three-thirty in the morning with a cup of coffee and a lit candle.

At a recent TAF meeting, I had talked about an article that was published and some of the obstacles I encountered. The immediate response was, “What are you going to do next?” I felt the joy of celebration as well as an urge to let the piece go and move on to the next project. Last night, a friend from DC called me to let me know she had finished a chapter on a book she was working on, a project she has not touched since last year. Her excitement was contagious. We need mentors to push us forward, guide us down the paths we take as writers. Then, it is up to us to take it to the next step, step out of our insecurities and put our work out there. Letting the awkward school girl grow into a young experienced adult.

So, what are you working on next?

- Megan Cutter

Elaine, Part Two – What’s unique about you?

Beginning writers are often told, “Write what you know.” This is because what you know—and especially what you feel passionate about—will roll off your tongue (and on to your computer screen) more easily than a researched topic. If you write about an area in which you have some expertise, your depictions will feel more authentic to the reader, and your words will ring more true.

Some aspects of freelancing are counterintuitive. It might seem to make sense to write about topics with general appeal in order to attract the greatest number of readers. In fact, it’s better to create a market for yourself by writing about what other people aren’t writing about.

This is one of the joys of freelancing. It gives you license to indulge your obsessions, to embrace your inner nerd, so to speak. The most quirky topic or hobby may prove to be the most interesting to a potential editor.

Think about what’s unique about you. What fan clubs do you belong to? What online forums do you contribute to? What hobbies do your friends tease you about? Try writing about your favorite episode of The Waltons, the best Clay Aiken concert you’ve attended, or the farthest place you’ve traveled to attend a Star Trek convention.

As News and Observer columnist Don Vaughan says in his April 20, 2007,column (www.newsobserver.com/nrn/vaughan/story/565896.html), “Don’t be ashamed – be proud! Stand up and let the world know. By admitting your passion, maybe, just maybe, you’ll open the eyes of someone who has never before experienced that particular joy. And that’s a wonderful gift to share.”

Don happened to be referring to his life-long interest in comic books. I would reveal what my personal obsession is, but I can’t right now. John-Boy’s coming on TV.

- Elaine Luddy Klonicki

Elaine, Part One – Walk Like a Duck

People often come to freelance writing later in life and from other careers. Some switch from other writing fields, such as technical writing. Others have done business writing, including press releases and marketing materials, as part of their job. Exposure to a variety of knowledge bases can be a boon for a freelancer. The more exposure you have to the world, the more you have to write about.

But one pitfall for beginning freelancers is that they often don’t see themselves as writers. New members who come to our group often say the same thing. “I’m not really a writer—I don’t have anything published.”

Although some people have a more natural aptitude than others, thankfully, writing is primarily a learned skill: the more you write, the better you get. There is no acid test to determine whether you are, or are not, a writer. You are a writer if you write.

But thinking of yourself as a writer is a critical step towards being one. If you’re not there yet, you can borrow a role-playing technique psychotherapists use to help people get a jump-start on learning new behaviors. It’s called “acting as if” (known in laymen’s terms as “Fake it until you make it.”)

For example, if you’re uncomfortable in social situations, you can “act as if” you are extroverted. You can walk into a room of strangers, make solid eye contact, introduce yourself, give a firm handshake, and smile warmly at everyone.

People are funny. If they see something that “walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck,” they think it’s a duck. If you appear to be outgoing, they assume you’re outgoing. If you appear to be a writer, they assume you’re a writer.

One of my favorite anecdotes from Sue Monk Kidd’s Firstlight, which is a collection of her early inspirational writings, is her description of how she announced to the world that she was going to become a writer. (She had had a long career as a nurse.) “The world” turned out to be her husband and two-year-old, who were sitting at the breakfast table eating cereal. Her point was that she had decided.

If you’ve decided you want to be a writer, start “acting as if” — by doing the things that writers do. Establish a space in your home to write, buy writers’ magazines, join a writers’ group, take a writing class, talk to people about what you’re writing, and most importantly, write!

- Elaine Luddy Klonicki

It Ain’t Easy Bein’ Beige

When we first moved into our house in Wake Forest eight years ago, there were just two things I really didn’t like about the place: the awful orange carpeting and the beige toilets, showers and sinks. The carpeting is gone now, and there are plans to replace the fixtures as well. Because to me, beige equals blah.

If beige was a flavor, it would be vanilla. If it was music, it would be Muzak. Beige is the very essence of a lack of imagination – selecting it is a sure sign that you’ve simply given up on choosing a hue. Beige is the color you pick in a gift if you don’t know (or like) the recipient very much. Artistically, it’s Thomas Kinkade.

The problem is, I’m beige. I’ve been referred to as white, but of course, nobody is except maybe Johnny Winter, and he leans more toward eggshell. No, most of us “white” folks are actually varied shades of ivory, and “black” folks range from light to dark chocolate. We are all, in fact, various shades of earth, and unfortunately, that includes beige.

What if people varied in color based on how interesting they were? Beige folks would enjoy backgammon and birdwatching, while writers and artists would range from chartreuse to Day-Glo orange. Picasso and Dali would have been a pastiche of psychedelic colors, while Joseph Conrad would have been…OK, he would have been black. But he’s the exception that proves the rule that I just invented.

Maybe getting a tattoo is a sign that you’re tired of being beige, or whatever earth tone you happen to be. Maybe getting a tan is too. All I know is that it would be fun to be – I dunno – green for a while. I hear it’s a lot easier.

– MAC

Does Professionalism Still Matter?

The death of print journalism has been predicted for some time now, as more and more people get their news from the Internet and fewer read newspapers and other paper journals. While that trend is not in doubt, some go further and predict that in the future, traditional journalists will be replaced with amateur “citizen journalists” reporting from cyberspace, ready at a moment’s notice to weigh in on the day’s issues.One of the surprises of the computer revolution was the democratization of information dissemination; anyone with a blog can now be a reporter just like Seymour Hersh or Anna Quindlen, but without the pesky distractions of dues-paying or J-school. While blogs serve a valuable purpose in giving readers alternatives to traditional information sources, bloggers can no more shortcut their way into journalism than a hospital orderly perform brain surgery – at least not yet.

Consider the following recent blog entry from SlashDot:

Seems like the Storm botnet that was behind the last two waves of attacks is also responsible for this new kind of social-engineering based attacks, using spam to try and convince users of the necessity of using Tor for there communications.

Spell-check won’t catch those mistakes, and a freelance writer would receive a stunningly rapid rejection after submitting an article query with that kind of error. On the web, it’s met with a communal shrug, if it’s noticed at all. Of course, “legacy” news outlets aren’t immune from glitches, as demonstrated in this AP snippet from CNN Online:

The provocative characterization came just days after bin Laden attracted international attention with the release of a video in which he ridicules President Bush about the Iraq war and reminds the world that he not been captured.

The difference: The latter seems to be a dropped word (most likely a technical error), while the former is a rookie mistake that an editor would pounce on like a Swift Boater on John Kerry.

What’s happening with online writing seems to mirror the revolution in digital photography, which suddenly made it possible for anyone to share their photos online. Sites such as Flickr and Snapfish sprang up to host them, and some became portals for photographers to offer their work to stock photo companies, greatly increasing traffic on those sites.

But just as submitting some pictures to a photo agency doesn’t make you a professional photographer, blogging doesn’t make you a journalist. That comes from just one source: experience. And as any freelance writer can tell you, that doesn’t happen at broadband speed. That said, blogging is a great place to begin writing, as long as the writer is willing to learn the craft. If not, as Truman Capote once said, “It’s not writing, it’s typing.”

Nascent bloggers would do well to check out the sites of established professional writers; they’re great places to get free training in sentence structure, punctuation and all the other tools a writer must master in order to be worthy of the moniker. Even old-fashioned books made of (gasp) paper can be useful.

Because professionalism does still matter, and it will – at least I hope it will – for the foreseeable future. And now that I’ve answered that question, it occurs to me that I’m writing for free.

So, I’m outta here…

- Mark