I've actually had lots of things to blog about over the last week - our latest book club meeting, a new split pea soup recipe, my dilemma over whether to buy new windows for the house - but no time to do it. I've been busy finally getting my professional act in gear.
Although I've been an independent contractor in the web and graphics design business for most of the last 6 years, the preponderance of my work was for a single client. The work from that direction has been drying up, though, and it's time for me to become a real freelancer. That means buying my own domain for my online portfolio, updating my resume, printing my own business cards, putting together sample contracts and invoices, and setting up appointments with several prospective clients - plus telling my previous "boss" that our relationship is changing. Fun (and not-so-fun) stuff.
While uploading my portfolio files to my new domain yesterday I realized that it doesn't have some of my best recent work on it, so today I'll be revising the website. I hope. I'm on the fence as to whether I should just rebuild it from scratch. My previous host was my Internet ISP; they provided free personal webspace for email clients, but didn't allow it to be used for business. That meant I could use it to display my work but not to actively solicit clients. This is probably the right moment to say, "Show me the money!"
Next step: call my accountant and see what I need to do to keep things straight from a tax perspective. More not-so-fun stuff - but when I'm all done I should have the pleasure of choosing my own clients, preferably all within easy commuting distance. I'm starting to feel like a real grown-up.
"The freelance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps. " ~Robert Benchley
Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Friday, August 5, 2011
A Less-Macho Hemingway
Over the past few days, during the breaks from unpacking, I've been re-reading A Moveable Feast, my favorite book by Ernest Hemingway. Written in fits and starts during the four years before his death in 1961 and published posthumously, A Moveable Feast looks back at Hemingway's life in 1920s Paris, when he lived there with his first wife Hadley and (later) their son "Bumby" (Jack).
As an undergraduate English major I struggled my way through Hemingway's more famous works, most of them dripping with machismo. I first read this "lesser" work a few years ago and was pleasantly surprised by its gentle treatment of Hadley and of F. Scott Fitzgerald; his friendship with the latter appears to have been rockier than one would expect, but Hemingway lays most of the turbulence at the feet of Fitzgerald's mentally unstable wife Zelda. Hemingway's incisive portraits of his fellow ex-pat writers are sometimes hilarious; I particularly liked his description of the poet Ernest Walsh as consciously "marked for death." (Apparently Walsh had tuberculosis and milked it for all it was worth.) Other descriptions - such as the cause of his break with Gertrude Stein - are quite disconcerting. These were the years when Hemingway was consciously paring back his writing style to develop the sinewy prose that eventually won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 "for his powerful, style-forming mastery of the art of narration," and his discussions of how he did that and his struggles to find a market for this new type of prose are very interesting.
Between the personal and literary anecdotes Hemingway talks about the food, wine, art, cafes, and architecture that made Paris "the town best organized for a writer to write in that there is" in a way that makes me want to revisit Paris in a time machine. Of course, 30+ years after the events described Hemingway's memories of the discomforts of their often unheated cold-water flat have probably dimmed somewhat, and I'm still wondering how, during the lean periods when he often went without lunch to save money and wrote in cafes in avoid buying fuel, they could still apparently afford a cook; was Hadley really that hopeless in the kitchen? I may have to buy a copy of Hadley, the biography by Gioia Diliberto, to fill in the gaps.
"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast." ~Ernest Hemingway
As an undergraduate English major I struggled my way through Hemingway's more famous works, most of them dripping with machismo. I first read this "lesser" work a few years ago and was pleasantly surprised by its gentle treatment of Hadley and of F. Scott Fitzgerald; his friendship with the latter appears to have been rockier than one would expect, but Hemingway lays most of the turbulence at the feet of Fitzgerald's mentally unstable wife Zelda. Hemingway's incisive portraits of his fellow ex-pat writers are sometimes hilarious; I particularly liked his description of the poet Ernest Walsh as consciously "marked for death." (Apparently Walsh had tuberculosis and milked it for all it was worth.) Other descriptions - such as the cause of his break with Gertrude Stein - are quite disconcerting. These were the years when Hemingway was consciously paring back his writing style to develop the sinewy prose that eventually won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 "for his powerful, style-forming mastery of the art of narration," and his discussions of how he did that and his struggles to find a market for this new type of prose are very interesting.
Between the personal and literary anecdotes Hemingway talks about the food, wine, art, cafes, and architecture that made Paris "the town best organized for a writer to write in that there is" in a way that makes me want to revisit Paris in a time machine. Of course, 30+ years after the events described Hemingway's memories of the discomforts of their often unheated cold-water flat have probably dimmed somewhat, and I'm still wondering how, during the lean periods when he often went without lunch to save money and wrote in cafes in avoid buying fuel, they could still apparently afford a cook; was Hadley really that hopeless in the kitchen? I may have to buy a copy of Hadley, the biography by Gioia Diliberto, to fill in the gaps.
"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast." ~Ernest Hemingway
Friday, October 8, 2010
How I Won't be Making Money with My Blog
Earlier this week I browsed the latest Blogs of Note and happened upon Beta Dad and his contretemps with Single Dad Laughing. My newbie blogger's curiosity was aroused by all the bitter comments from Beta Dad's readers about things SDL had apparently done in order to generate income with his blog. Coincidentally, the next day I went to the library and stumbled upon How to Make Money with Your Blog by Duane Forrester and Gavin Powell. I didn't start this blog to get rich, but I wouldn't turn down cash if someone threw it at me, so I checked out the book and dived in.
HTMMWYB was a quick read and full of practical, if useless to me, advice from experienced bloggers. Why, you ask, do I say their advice is useless to me? Well, apparently the commentators on Beta Dad's blog are correct; the keys to making money with a blog are shameless self-promotion and crafting one's posts around wildly popular keywords. "How do you like me so far?" has never been my style, and the idea of writing on topics because they're trendy rather than because they interest me set off bad creative-writing-class flashbacks. Not going to happen here.
So, I may never have more than seven followers (thanks for hanging in there, folks) and I'm sure I'll never have thousands of page views per month, but I'll still be having fun, which was the main reason I started this blog in the first place. That and keeping my head from exploding, of course.
You go, Beta Dad!
HTMMWYB was a quick read and full of practical, if useless to me, advice from experienced bloggers. Why, you ask, do I say their advice is useless to me? Well, apparently the commentators on Beta Dad's blog are correct; the keys to making money with a blog are shameless self-promotion and crafting one's posts around wildly popular keywords. "How do you like me so far?" has never been my style, and the idea of writing on topics because they're trendy rather than because they interest me set off bad creative-writing-class flashbacks. Not going to happen here.
So, I may never have more than seven followers (thanks for hanging in there, folks) and I'm sure I'll never have thousands of page views per month, but I'll still be having fun, which was the main reason I started this blog in the first place. That and keeping my head from exploding, of course.
It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.~ Judith Martin (aka Miss Manners)
You go, Beta Dad!
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Tag, I'm It
I've been so verbose this month that my faithful followers are probably starting to hope I'll develop writer's block. Unfortunately for them, this no longer happens since I learned to write first and edit later. I picked up this technique and many others from Henriette Anne Klauser's Writing on Both Sides of the Brain, which earns my vote for Most Useful Book On Writing Ever.
Even before I encountered Henriette, though, I could usually kick-start the writing portion of my brain. As an English major in college I frequently had to produce a paper or more every day, so writer's block was just not an option. My favorite method, however, couldn't be used for class assignments because it integrated the work of two different authors; it was the literary equivalent of "tag, you're it."
My best friend in college was also an English major. She had an unfettered imagination and a wicked sense of humor and we wrote several things (including an entire science fiction novel) together. One of us would draft the first paragraph, page, or scene and pass the manuscript to the other. We would write alternate passages until the entire first draft was done, and then we would edit. This sounds as if it would produce a rather patchwork narrative, but after it was typed we ourselves often couldn't tell where the seams had originally been.
When we were working on something serious, each of us tried to make the hand-off to the other as smooth as possible, with no dropping of the compositional baton. When we were writing for fun, though, we tended to end the sections with peculiar dead-end sentences like "I've been experimenting with making liquor from pole beans." Trying to craft a cohesive narrative around these literary landmines was like taking a master class in free association.
(Hmm...that would make a great business card: Have Thesaurus, Will Write. Quill pen salient.)
Now that I'm writing on my own I have to find other ways to prime the creativity pump, and I'm usually successful, but I miss the fun I had trying to stump my friend with a hopeless cliffhanger, or waiting to see what horrible dilemma she'd left me with in our latest epic. Ah, well, I'll just have to tell myself that writing a longer work now is exactly the same, except I'm always "it."
Even before I encountered Henriette, though, I could usually kick-start the writing portion of my brain. As an English major in college I frequently had to produce a paper or more every day, so writer's block was just not an option. My favorite method, however, couldn't be used for class assignments because it integrated the work of two different authors; it was the literary equivalent of "tag, you're it."
My best friend in college was also an English major. She had an unfettered imagination and a wicked sense of humor and we wrote several things (including an entire science fiction novel) together. One of us would draft the first paragraph, page, or scene and pass the manuscript to the other. We would write alternate passages until the entire first draft was done, and then we would edit. This sounds as if it would produce a rather patchwork narrative, but after it was typed we ourselves often couldn't tell where the seams had originally been.
When we were working on something serious, each of us tried to make the hand-off to the other as smooth as possible, with no dropping of the compositional baton. When we were writing for fun, though, we tended to end the sections with peculiar dead-end sentences like "I've been experimenting with making liquor from pole beans." Trying to craft a cohesive narrative around these literary landmines was like taking a master class in free association.
(Hmm...that would make a great business card: Have Thesaurus, Will Write. Quill pen salient.)
Now that I'm writing on my own I have to find other ways to prime the creativity pump, and I'm usually successful, but I miss the fun I had trying to stump my friend with a hopeless cliffhanger, or waiting to see what horrible dilemma she'd left me with in our latest epic. Ah, well, I'll just have to tell myself that writing a longer work now is exactly the same, except I'm always "it."
“I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.”
Oscar Wilde
Oscar WildeFriday, September 24, 2010
Flirting with DID
You've been asking yourself a lot of questions in this blog. Why is that?
I think I've been watching too many mockumentaries. We rented Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman, and the original Spinal Tap movie last month; maybe the spurious Q&A format imprinted itself on my subconscious. The other possibility is that the disparate parts of my personality have started to separate. I can only hope they don't decide to divorce; I can't afford the alimony.
What's the advantage of the mock interview in humorous writing?
I get to talk about several different topics in a single post without even pretending to link them together logically. Scrapping transitions significantly speeds up the writing process. If I can just get over my unreasonable attachment to grammar and spelling, too, I'll be able to really increase my output.
Why don't you include illustrations with all of your postings?
I'm a slow artist; my illustrated posts generally take much longer to produce. Besides, I can't always think of an appropriate picture for a specific article. This one, for instance; I suppose I could slap a face on a giant puffy question mark, but would it really add anything to the text? I don't think I'm meant to be a cartoonist. I can write and I can doodle, but I'm not mentally coordinated enough to do both at the same time. The left and right halves of my brain don't play well together.
Does it bother you that they don't?
Only when they start throwing dishes at each other.
[Update: OK, here's the puffy question mark. You be the judge: witty and debonair addition to the post, or stupid waste of space?]
“One advantage of talking to yourself is that you know at least somebody's listening.”
I think I've been watching too many mockumentaries. We rented Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman, and the original Spinal Tap movie last month; maybe the spurious Q&A format imprinted itself on my subconscious. The other possibility is that the disparate parts of my personality have started to separate. I can only hope they don't decide to divorce; I can't afford the alimony.
What's the advantage of the mock interview in humorous writing?
I get to talk about several different topics in a single post without even pretending to link them together logically. Scrapping transitions significantly speeds up the writing process. If I can just get over my unreasonable attachment to grammar and spelling, too, I'll be able to really increase my output.
Why don't you include illustrations with all of your postings?
I'm a slow artist; my illustrated posts generally take much longer to produce. Besides, I can't always think of an appropriate picture for a specific article. This one, for instance; I suppose I could slap a face on a giant puffy question mark, but would it really add anything to the text? I don't think I'm meant to be a cartoonist. I can write and I can doodle, but I'm not mentally coordinated enough to do both at the same time. The left and right halves of my brain don't play well together.
Does it bother you that they don't?
Only when they start throwing dishes at each other.
[Update: OK, here's the puffy question mark. You be the judge: witty and debonair addition to the post, or stupid waste of space?]
“One advantage of talking to yourself is that you know at least somebody's listening.”
Franklin P. Jones
Sunday, September 19, 2010
OAQs, Part 2
More Occasionally Asked Questions
Why did you decide to start blogging?
To keep my head from exploding. See the post entitled "Thar She Blows!"
Why did you decide to call your blog "Continually Surprised?"
Because I am. Also because I live in Surprise, Arizona. Is that too cutesy? Yeah, I thought it might be. Too late now.
Why did you adopt the onion with the pencil as the mascot for your blog?
I had some fuzzy idea that I would be writing about food and writing and grumpiness, so I thought a vegetable with a writing implement would cover two out of the three.
But why an onion? Is it meant to imply that you are a complicated personality with many layers?
No, it's because the onion is the easiest vegetable to draw - a circle, a few shadowy stripes...I guess a cherry tomato might be even easier, but the onion fits in better with the whole crankiness theme. A cherry tomato would be too cheery, if you see what I mean.
How did you decide on the design for the header?
I was originally going to post a photo of myself, but I decided I would rather use a cartoon, because even though it looks like Betty Boop's less-sexy older sister, some deluded reader may still have a mental image of me as tall, svelte, and mysteriously attractive. A photo would remove the mystery by revealing that I actually do look like Betty Boop's less-sexy older sister.
Now that you have a little blogging under your belt, do you plan to change the focus of your blog?
I didn't know that random thoughts could be considered a focus. I'm not really planning anything at this point - I'm just relying on the Internet as a cheap substitute for therapy.
“Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'” - Charles M. Schulz
Why did you decide to start blogging?
To keep my head from exploding. See the post entitled "Thar She Blows!"
Why did you decide to call your blog "Continually Surprised?"
Because I am. Also because I live in Surprise, Arizona. Is that too cutesy? Yeah, I thought it might be. Too late now.
Why did you adopt the onion with the pencil as the mascot for your blog?
I had some fuzzy idea that I would be writing about food and writing and grumpiness, so I thought a vegetable with a writing implement would cover two out of the three.
But why an onion? Is it meant to imply that you are a complicated personality with many layers?
No, it's because the onion is the easiest vegetable to draw - a circle, a few shadowy stripes...I guess a cherry tomato might be even easier, but the onion fits in better with the whole crankiness theme. A cherry tomato would be too cheery, if you see what I mean.
How did you decide on the design for the header?
I was originally going to post a photo of myself, but I decided I would rather use a cartoon, because even though it looks like Betty Boop's less-sexy older sister, some deluded reader may still have a mental image of me as tall, svelte, and mysteriously attractive. A photo would remove the mystery by revealing that I actually do look like Betty Boop's less-sexy older sister.
Now that you have a little blogging under your belt, do you plan to change the focus of your blog?
I didn't know that random thoughts could be considered a focus. I'm not really planning anything at this point - I'm just relying on the Internet as a cheap substitute for therapy.
“Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'” - Charles M. Schulz
Saturday, September 18, 2010
OAQs
Occasionally Asked Questions (I don’t have enough readers to have Frequently Asked Questions)
How long have you been writing?
Since I could almost spell. I remember having to recite one of my sixth-grade poems in a school program. It was very deep. None of the parents understood it, but they clapped politely anyway.
Have you always wanted to be an author?
No, originally I wanted to be a veterinarian, which was totally unrealistic for someone who faints at the sight of blood. I was an English major in college mainly so I could earn course credits for reading instead of being accused of wasting time with books.
Have you ever considered writing a novel?
I’ve written several, but I haven’t been able to sell them. This must mean I’m a bad writer or a bad marketer or both. That’s pretty unfortunate, since I have a degree in English and another in marketing.
When did you learn to draw?
I hope to start on that some time real soon.
No, really, when did you learn to draw?
Seriously, I can’t. When I told my high school art teacher that I was planning to minor in art at college, he visibly winced and said I had a good sense of color. I do all my artwork on the computer with software like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop or Corel Painter. I have a Wacom tablet and stylus, but I don’t use them for anything a traditional artist would consider drawing.
Does Barry read your posts before you publish them?
Heck, no. He wouldn’t think they were funny, which would suck the life out of my desire to publish them. As it is, I’m not sure he even knows I have a blog, which is just the way I like it.
Didn’t you tell him you were starting a blog?
Yes, but I don’t know if he heard/understood/remembers. He never looks at my other website unless I force him to do so.
Aren’t you worried he’ll be offended by things you’ve said about him?
I have three readers – who’s going to tell him? Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
Do you have anything you’d like to say to your readers?
Yes, I do. Thank you for reading, and please tell your friends about this blog. I have no hope that it will go viral, but if all three of you tell somebody else, we may be able to work up a mild sniffle.
"You mustn't always believe what I say. Questions tempt you to tell lies, particularly when there is no answer." - Pablo Picasso
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Thar She Blows
You may have noticed that the tagline for this blog is "venting random thoughts before they injure my brain." I'll bet you think that's supposed to be a joke, right? Well, not really.
I used to think I was a pretty funny person. That was before I met Barry.
Don't get me wrong; Barry has many wonderful qualities. That's why we've been together for almost 6 years. However, he has two characteristics that make him an unsatisfactory audience for witty remarks: damaged hearing and Asperger's syndrome. For those of you not familiar with Asperger's, it's an autism-spectrum disorder; without a lot of work, the sufferers never pick up the social interaction skills that most of us acquire naturally in childhood. Because of his hearing loss, Barry frequently can't hear my attempts at humor, and because of the Asperger's, when he does hear them, he usually doesn't understand why they're supposed to be funny. I think his sense of humor stalled at about the third grade. I hadn't known him for very long before I just gave up trying to tell him jokes; few things are more deflating than laughing wildly at your own remarks while your audience stares at you in total bewilderment.
Unfortunately, this is also the first time in my life that I haven't had at least one kindred spirit among my co-workers, or a funny female friend that I spend a lot of time with one-on-one. This means a huge backlog of sarcasm has been building up inside my head and I've begun to worry that one day soon it will spontaneously erupt and spew forth in a torrent of malice that will ruin my home life or my job or both. Hence this blog. Hence my recent frantic spate of daily postings. Maybe I can bleed off the pressure gradually before my head explodes like Krakatoa.
"Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it." - E. B. White
I used to think I was a pretty funny person. That was before I met Barry.
Don't get me wrong; Barry has many wonderful qualities. That's why we've been together for almost 6 years. However, he has two characteristics that make him an unsatisfactory audience for witty remarks: damaged hearing and Asperger's syndrome. For those of you not familiar with Asperger's, it's an autism-spectrum disorder; without a lot of work, the sufferers never pick up the social interaction skills that most of us acquire naturally in childhood. Because of his hearing loss, Barry frequently can't hear my attempts at humor, and because of the Asperger's, when he does hear them, he usually doesn't understand why they're supposed to be funny. I think his sense of humor stalled at about the third grade. I hadn't known him for very long before I just gave up trying to tell him jokes; few things are more deflating than laughing wildly at your own remarks while your audience stares at you in total bewilderment.
Unfortunately, this is also the first time in my life that I haven't had at least one kindred spirit among my co-workers, or a funny female friend that I spend a lot of time with one-on-one. This means a huge backlog of sarcasm has been building up inside my head and I've begun to worry that one day soon it will spontaneously erupt and spew forth in a torrent of malice that will ruin my home life or my job or both. Hence this blog. Hence my recent frantic spate of daily postings. Maybe I can bleed off the pressure gradually before my head explodes like Krakatoa.
"Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it." - E. B. White
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