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.)