Christmas is coming…

Christmas is coming!

(Okay, I cannot write or say those words without seguing into the little song from the Muppet Christmas movie–you know, the one with John Denver—so bear with me while I do that real quick.)

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat! Please put a penny in the old man’s hat. If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do. If you haven’t got a ha’penny, then God bless you!

Okay, thanks for indulging me.

So let me get to the real point of this blog entry. Christmas, indeed, is coming, and there are all these Christmas-type activities that I want to do with my three-year-old. But I just don’t have the energy for them. The spirit is willing, but the body, not so much. My mother-in-law has graciously volunteered to take my son to have breakast with Santa at a local bookstore in a couple of weeks, and for that, I am very grateful. But there are all these other things that we could do, but part of me just feels too tired to even attempt them. I could take him to a huge tree-lighting ceremony, complete with country music stars and visits with Santa, tomorrow evening at a local college…but wow, the thought of parking and walking to the event alone makes me want to lie down. And there’s a Christmas parade downtown on Friday night, but oh, the logistics. Oh, the parking issues. Oh, the traffic.

And then there are the Christmas activities that would be very cool…but they cost too darn much. Unless I land some unexpected and hugely lucrative assignment in the next week or so, I just don’t think I can justify taking my preschooler to an hour-long gingerbread house-decorating workshop for $45 or $60. He’s likely to be enthusiastic for about five minutes, and then he’ll just start eating all the candy. I can buy a few bags of candy or a gingerbread house kit at Target or Publix for about $10, and he’d be just as happy. But there’s this weird little part of me that thinks, wistfully, “Oh, but it would be such a nice Mommy-Son bonding thing to do for Christmas.” Yeah, I’m a sucker. Luckily, I’m a sucker who knows she can’t justify the cost, at least this year.

So I’m trying to talk myself into recognizing that we have plenty of time ahead of us to do fun, warm-and-fuzzy holiday-memory-building activities together. I don’t have to cram it all in this year. My son is likely to be thrilled by just making Christmas cookies with his grandmother and picking out a few new ornaments with me at Pier One and Ten Thousand Villages. He’d be happy to watch the “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” special on TV with me. We don’t have to do all the big fancy stuff to have meaningful holiday experiences. Isn’t that why I’m instituting the weekly lighting of the Advent candle on our family Advent wreath every Sunday? That’s not big and fancy, but it IS meaningful. And my son does seem to get it.

And I know that, too, I really do. I’m just trying to remind myself.

Working on Thanksgiving?

A friend of mine posted on Facebook earlier today that she was dreading having to deal with the work that she brought home with her for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.  That’s a lousy feeling. I am feeling extremely thankful myself that I managed to jigger my schedule so that I will not have any work to do on Thanksgiving or the day after–and more importantly, I’ve also somehow managed to also arrange things so I shouldn’t have any guilty about not working either day. Woot! Not that I normally try to have work to do on holidays. But sometimes it happens. It’s not that big a deal, but it is nice to be able to anticipate a few work-free days.

That’s one of the nice things about being a freelance writer, too. You really can (usually) arrange your schedule so you don’t have to work on holidays or other special occasions. That’s not always the case when you’re a full-time staffer somewhere. For example, the first year I was a staff writer at The Desert Sun in Palm Springs, the managing editor basically told all the city desk reporters that we’d have to divvy up all the major holidays and work at least one, and maybe two. I agreed to work Thanksgiving so I could have Christmas off that year.

And you know what? It actually was a lot of fun, working on Thanksgiving. I had two stories partially reported in advance that I worked on that day. I visited several local soup kitchens so I could write about people volunteering their time to help the less fortunate, which was very uplifting. And then I spent some time with a family who was hosting a bunch of international students at the local college who had never had an American Thanksgiving turkey dinner before.  The stories practically wrote themselves. Afterward, the paper hosted a full-metal turkey dinner for all of us working stiffs and our spouses. So David drove down to the office to join me, and we ate a big meal, complete with turkey, dressing and a selection of pies, with some of my colleagues. 

(Side note: as a Thanksgiving purist, David also insisted that we also make our own turkey dinner at home later that weekend. So we cooked, yes, a whole turkey just for the two of us on the following Saturday because he wanted to make sure that he achieved some predetermined but non-negotiable optimal turkey satiation that could not occur with just a catered Thanksgiving meal.)

Anyway, even though I had to work, it actually turned out to be a rather nice memory. Not too shabby.

I’m still glad that all I have to do this year, however, is make some mashed potatoes and pass around a few trays of crudite before settling in for the big meal with my family. My work can definitely wait…at least until Monday.

Checking off the items on the to-do list

Two weeks ago, I submitted an article that I’d written to a first-time client. Later this week, I’ll be submitting a sidebar for that project to wrap it up. I also submitted a major article plus sidebars to another new client this past Friday. In just a couple of days, after I finish that first sidebar, I will have checked two major projects off my to-do list. W00t! Even better, I checked off two projects that I’m really pretty proud of.

I do still have some ongoing work for regular clients, and of course, I plan to be proud of that work, too. But I think I may actually be ready to sit down and do some brainstorming for some new story ideas that I can pitch to other magazines and websites. I genuinely haven’t had time to do that in awhile, so I am looking forward to doing it again. And more importantly, I need to do that again. After all, I never would have landed those aforementioned two big projects if I hadn’t done it to begin with!

Distract me

My good friends C and M are currently renovating the second story of their house. They’re expecting a second child, and they figured it was time to make sure their house had enough room for everyone in the family.

Right now, their house is…well, let’s just say that some days it has a roof and some days it doesn’t. The builders are working at a fairly good clip, but the reality is, the house is in a state of upheaval right now and will be for some time. I think their house is going to be fabulous when all the work is finished, and I’m excited for them. But I know it’s a challenging situation for them to be in. They’ve got many of their belongings stored off-site for a few months, and they’re relying on take-out meals because the kitchen is being renovated, too.

Luckily, at least they don’t have to worry about working in their house.  Like many (most?) freelancers, I work out of my home office. I can’t even begin to imagine how I’d get any work done if I had people around constantly, stepping through my dining room ceiling while gutting the attic or systematically removing the stop story of my house. Granted, I’m going to have to uproot myself from my home office pretty soon while we convert it into a nursery, but that’s just a matter of getting rid of some stuff and moving other stuff around. That can be done in a weekend or two. It doesn’t impede my ability to, say, hear myself think over the noise of construction.

For me, the biggest distractions to working aren’t wearing hardhats. In no particular order, they are 1) a small boy wearing polar bear pajamas, 2) the lure of the Internet, or 3) meetings and other obligations that need to be done but interrupt a good long stretch of working time. For example, on Thursday, I have an OB appointment in the morning, then I have to take my son to his Encore class, and then that evening, I have a volunteer obligation that I signed up for months ago. However, I am also trying to fit an interview or two in there somewhere, and oh yes, I have a big feature story due Friday. I’m pretty good at tuning out noise while I’m sitting at my computer–right now, I am filtering out the sound of the electronic keyboard in the room next to this one–but it’s harder to work around things that require me to actually be away from my work.

What are your biggest distractions? How do you work around them?

Don’t tell me what your interview subject had for lunch

I have a pet peeve when it comes to many profile articles ( that is, an article that profiles an individual for a magazine or other publication).

Over the last few years, I’ve noticed that many writers (way, way too many, if you ask me) have this little habit of deliberately alluding to the interview itself within the story. It removes some of the focus away from the subject of the article and puts attention back on the writer. And sports fans, we all know that it’s not supposed to be about the writer. The article is supposed to be about the person who’s being profiled.

The most obvious, and in my opinion most annoying, way of doing this is to talk about the interview setting itself–the location, the mood, the lighting, etc. The writer might write something like this: “Over a lunch of tofu salad on carb-free bread with a side of couscous and a tiny glass of wheatgrass juice, Grungy Rockstar/Sensitive Actor/Wide-eyed Starlet confided his deepest fear….” Sometimes the writer pounds out something more like this: “Acclaimed Director/Reality TV Star/Trashy Heiress dashed into the organic cupcake shop twenty minutes late, dripping wet and making apologies for her appearance–her chauffeur had bailed at the last minute–before sitting down and removing her Lanvin/Rag and Bone/TJ Maxx jacket and ordering a cranberry-banana scone without the cranberries…”

So. Annoying.

Hell, why don’t you just go ahead and also write, “And I had a tall non-fat pumpkin latte with organic nutmeg sprinkled on top. And then I giggled and batted my eyelashes at Sensitive Musician/Grungy Actor/Bleached-Blonde Starlet and pretended that we were best friends. Because after all, isn’t this story also about how co0l it was that I got to have a meal/snacks/coffee with this person?”

NO! It is not about YOU, fellow writer person! You’re supposed to be writing about this person! Not insinuating little random factoids that don’t actually add to the story except to remove a reader from the story and throw them back into the interview process. No one needs to know about the interview process, unless something really crazy or jaw-droppingly sordid happens. Haven’t you ever heard the old saw about how no one needs to see laws or sausages being made? Interviews are like that. The interview exists so that you can pry information out of your subject and then shape it and sausage-make it into something readable and interesting for other people to digest…er, read.

Women’s magazines tend to have the most egregious examples of this annoying little trend. I’ve rarely noticed it in newspapers, although they are not completely immune (I have to pick on a story in today’s Tennesseean about Olympic gold medal winner Scott Hamilton who apparently likes to chat with reporters over grilled chicken salads. Although I might be willing to give this one a pass, since the rest of the article is fine, plus it does address the issue of Hamilton trying to lose weight and be healthy enough to return to professional ice skating).

Now, I will admit that there may occasionally be a time when a nugget of information about an interview might actually provide something very telling about the interviewee. It might really impart some useful info about Celebrity/Starlet/Who is She Again? to note that she orders complicated food items that aren’t on the menu but expects to receive them anyway.

But really. Most of the time these interviews seem to take place over lunch or coffee, which hello, is where MANY interviews take place. And you don’t read too many articles about bank presidents or biomedical researchers or even sports stars eating ham-and-turkey-on-wheat while talking about what’s going on with them and their industries. I once profiled a really interesting television news anchor. But when you read the story, you didn’t learn that she offered me iced tea in her living room while I fiddled with my tape recorder. So I expect other writers to be a little more creative in describing their subjects, too. Unless you conduct the interview someplace really, really off the wall. Or in a war zone. Then you get a pass. But not for a coffee shop or cafe interview. I know you think it might be a good example of “show, don’t tell” to note that your interview subject slowly stirred non-fat creamer into her coffee, but honestly, it really doesn’t. If she dreamily refers to her habit of rereading “Macbeth” on dark, stormy nights while she stirs said creamer into said coffee, then please, tell me that. But leave out the coffee, ‘kay?

And no, to my knowledge, I have never done anything like this in my writing, athough I am VERY sure I’ve committed plenty of other writing-related sins. And if I ever do slip up and fall into this little habit, you have my permission to call me out on it. You can even invite me out to lunch and write down what I’m eating.  (But please, don’t tell everyone what I’m wearing.)

H1N1, be gone

I got my H1N1 injection today. Hallelujah.

The health department got a limited shipment of vaccine in, and it announced that it would reserve them for high-priority cases today. So, along with a bazillion other mommies, I hauled myself downtown and got in line. My son got the injection, too. And not to brag, but I think he was the bravest kid in the whole room. I am very, very glad that I’ve gotten that taken care of. I really did feel like I was living under the Sword of Damocles, especially after David got so sick. I was having a hard time imagining how I’d wait until the injection form of the vaccine became available

So, whew! Now I can concentrate on work again.

Don’t get sick

Should anyone out there be wondering, “Hmmm, should I get the swine flu vaccine?” let me just say one thing:

YES. DO IT. AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

Otherwise, you may end up like my generally healthy 35-year-old husband, who we’re pretty sure has H1N1. (He’s been exposed at work.) He has been in bed with fevers of 102 (and occasionally higher) for five straight days. It has been awful. He has been miserable, just wretchedly miserable. Neither of us can recall him ever being this sick…and maybe he hasn’t ever been this sick before. I’m hoping to score a same-day appointment tomorrow at the doctor to have him evaluated, because now I’m starting to get all worried about him developing pneumonia.

My son and I are both taking Tamiflu in the hopes of warding off the illness, since we are both high-risk cases (William has asthma, and I am pregnant). But now I am pining for vaccines for us. Neither of us can take the H1N1 FluMist version of the vaccine, or we’d have already done it. Earlier this fall, I had toyed with the idea of signing up for a national clinical trial for pregnant women to receive the H1N1 vaccine in injection form before deciding against it. I figured, “Oh, I’ll just wait ’til the injection is widely available. It’ll only be another month or so. I can wait. Isn’t that what all this Purell is for?” Then David got sick. And the scales fell from my eyes. And I read up on the vaccine for pregnant women on the CDC’s website (Pregnant Women and the Flu). I just don’t want to take any more chances at this point, not after having seen H1N1 up close and especially not in my condition. I’m going to call my OB tomorrow to discuss enrolling in the trial so I can go ahead and get vaccinated. Even the thought of being as sick as my husband AND being pregnant (and oh yes, still having some sickness associated with pregnancy) just makes me want to cry. Loudly.

As for my son, well…I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to wait ’til the injections are available here in Nashville. And be crazy-vigilant about hand-washing and hand sanitizer use in the meantime. I’m nervous, but I don’t know what else I can do. Hope and pray, I suppose. Try to keep him away from his father as much as possible.

What effect has this whole experience had on my work, you might ask? Well, I had to turn down an assignment on Friday because I simply did not have the time and energy to work on it. It killed me to do it, too, because it was from one of my favorite clients and it focused on a topic that really interests me. But I was just done. I couldn’t do any more than I was already doing.  Caring for a delirious sick husband and an active three-year-old while maintaining a regular workload and also doing some volunteer work and church projects was just enough.

Hopefully we’ll move beyond this soon. As for the rest of you, if you’re in the prime H1N1 target demographics, go take a bath in Purell and then think about where you can get an H1N1 vaccine.

Where to work when you work from home

So as you all know, we’re expecting a baby around here. The only bad thing about the prospect of bringing home that shiny new addition to our family is that my home office is going to have go bye-bye. The Room Currently Known as My Office is going to become a nursery. That causes some problems, of course, seeing as how I work from home.

We’ve got a couple of possibilities we could explore. We could move my office equipment into the computer nook that is built into a corner of our upstairs play room. We could turn our guest room into an office. Or we could make a small office in our (pretty much unused) living room downstairs.

There are downsides to all of those options, of course. Let’s look at the situations:

First, the play room. The play room is my son’s domain. It is full of Legoes, Thomas the Tank Engine gear, dress-up clothes, Fisher-Price Little People sets, Star Wars figures and Lord knows what else. It would be hard for me to interview people by phone with him clanking around four feet away, especially if he’s trying to watch a vitally important episode of “SuperWhy!” or “Dinosaur Train.” I could tune him out while I’m writing, but I’m worried about him pestering me or being noisy when I’m on the phone. I can’t exactly shut him out of his own play room, you know?

Secondly, the guest room. I am the proud owner of my great-grandmother’s beautiful antique bedroom furniture, which currently resides in our guest room. It is by far the nicest–and the most nicely furnished–room in our house.  We do not have anywhere to store the furniture, and I am certainly not willing to get rid of it. There is no room in the guest room for any additional furniture, like a computer station, either.

Thirdly, the living room. We have a mostly unfurnished small living room at the front of our house. We want to eventually buy a love seat and a nice chair and coffee table for it, but we just haven’t gotten around to doing it yet. So it houses a set of bookshelves and my son’s Geotrax train set right now. It does not have its own door, so there is no way to shut the room off from the rest of the house. Anyone entering the house could immediately see all the mess that is going to be a part of any home office that I ever have (I’m a realist about myself). And there’ s no way to have a private phone conversation in there, either.

So what should I do?

The strategy that I’m currently thinking of entails moving all my existing office stuff into the computer corner in the play room anyway. There’s room for the desktop computer, monitor, fax machine/printer, files, etc. I’d use that as a primary work station. BUT a good friend has offered a pretty little writing desk to me for next to nothing. I think I could install that downstairs in the living room, and I could set up my laptop and the portable phone down there for interviews during the times when my son is at home. That way, I can let my son stay upstairs in the playroom (with the door shut) while I conduct phone interviews downstairs. I can email the files to myself. Then I can go upstairs when I’m done and print them out or use them at the playroom work station. Like I said earlier, I can usually block out most of the noise from my son when I’m writing, unless he’s really bellowing or something. Or I can write in there when he’s at school or in bed.

It’s not ideal, but I can’t really think of anything better to do. Thoughts?

Is it a good career choice?

One of my tried-and-trusted sources for info on freelance writing is Allena Tapia’s About.com page about freelancing. In a new item, Allena answers the question “Is freelance writing a good career choice for a mother who wants to work at home with her children?” and she does an admirable job at laying out the pros and cons. And I can say, as someone who’s been freelancing regularly for several years, there are definitely pros and cons, and anyone who’s considering a career as a freelance writer should probably carefully consider them before taking the plunge, especially if the plunge entails quitting a full-time job.

My initial reaction to the question, however, was, “Well, are you actually a writer? Or are you just looking for something you think you can do at home, and writing seems easy enough?” Because here’s the deal: writing is not like selling Pampered Chef products or scrapbooking supplies. It’s a skill, one that needs to be honed with plenty of practice. The average person can’t just pick it up, just like that, after a couple of orientation sessions and some tips from the experts. Many of us who are freelancers are actual trained writers, with extensive backgrounds in professional writing. We have degrees, experience, clip files, writing seminars, professional memberships. We take this seriously. We’re not just doing it because we don’t want Johnny and Susie to go to daycare all day. Personally, I am freelancing for a couple of major reasons, including 1) I’m a professional journalist with years of experience to draw from, and it’s logical for me to continue my career in writing and 2) I have one young child and another one on the way, and it’s wonderful to have the chance, the opportunity, to not have to work away from them in an office full-time during this time in his/their lives. I can schedule interviews and writing sessions during preschool and around visits to the pediatrician. I contribute to our family income, and I am keeping my writing and reporting skills, not to mention my clip file and resume, current.

Now, I’m not saying that you can’t start out with zero experience  and work your way up. You certainly can, and lots of people do. But if you are not truly dedicated to not just becoming a writer but to writing and to working on improving your writing, then this is not the career move for you. If you’re just settling on “freelance writing” because it doesn’t require you to have any special degrees or training or background, well, try again. Find something that does match your skill set, or your background. Or if you are bound and determined to become a freelance writer, then, by God, work at it. Take it seriously. Because I do. And lots of my colleagues do, too.

Okay. I’ll hop off my soapbox now. After all, I have a new assignment to tackle…

Laboring on Labor Day

Happy Labor Day, folks. Let’s see a show of hands. Raise your hand if you’re actually working today.

Let’s see…you there, is your hand up or down? Down? Okay. Is that one over there…no? Mmmmm, looks like it’s just….

Me.

‘S okay, though. For years, I actually got Labor Day as a paid holiday. Now that I’m my own boss, I have to accept that I might have to work at weird times. And actually, I got a lot done today and feel pretty good about it. And that’s made it worthwhile for me.

And now that I’ve gotten so much done, I’m off to investigate the goodies that my husband brought home from the grocery store. Do I smell watermelon?