Followers, time keeping and my biggest WAH bugbear

I noticed recently that blogger released this 'nifty' function called 'followers'. I'm wondering how different it is from things like myBloglog, because, to be honest, I'm not so worried about who is reading any of the blogs I work on (though, I, and everyone else at MNABC adore you all, it goes without saying) - but who is commenting, and more importantly, why they aren't. It's nice being able to see how many readers a blog has, but I think that metrics, like statistics, are fairly pointless. I've got a PR6 blog (it used to be PR9, and I...ahem...ignored it for a while) that has thousands of readers daily, and dozens of comments, but I write it simply because I want to). Most importantly of all, I'm always most interested in knowing people are enjoying themselves, but that's another one of those 'goes without sayings'.
The thing I love about social networking, blogging and everything that groups into that 'medium' is that it's always moving forward, which, at the moment I'm not.
I'm in the process of testing out yet more time management tools, now that I've discovered I spend 'oh my god too much!' time on email (it's coming out as my top 'task' at two hours every day!). I've been looking at goals and goal setting, specifically for writers, so I'll have lots of fun observations to share. Sorry, did I say fun, I meant, soul numbingly depressing that I didn't work it all out sooner.
Heather's also already hit on my biggest WAH bugbear. It even comes behind people not taking me seriously - spam.
I hate being 'spamvertised' at by people that should otherwise know better. And it's kinda sad to say, but since joining Haro, as that's an address I only USE for Haro stuff, I am getting spammed. Haro's owner has said that he'll take action though, so I might start forwarding the spam instead of deleting it out of hand.
Given my email is my biggest time drain though, it's really not helping my second goal....

So - anyone else got anything they want to get off their chests? Any bugbears? Disagree that spam is worse than not being taken seriously? Don't care about spam? I'd love to hear from you!

Madness...they call it madness

There are a lot of things that make me steaming mad. For example, my phone died on Friday. Its JUST come back up about 20 minutes ago. That makes me steaming mad - cause it interfered with working from home. This is my house phone, so my internet was also gone - other than a very basic 'web and walk' system we bought on Tuesday. I'm so happy to be back online - and this is my FIRST post. Haven't even gotten round to downloading emails yet ;)

And that actually leads me quite neatly into what makes me steaming mad as a writer.
I work from home. I've got my laptop, and two desktops, which means one is for writing (my beloved laptop), one is for artwork - and the final one is for uploading websites.
BUT - because ALL people see me doing is browsing websites, uploading stuff, or playing with pretty graphics, clearly, I don't DO anything.
Its not - really - a 'writing' issue though, is it? Or you'd think.
The majority of home workers that *I* know are not writers. And we all hit the same issue, but with writers, most of the time, we're not even producing something 'solid'. I mean, I know people that sew products - I know people that create diaper cakes - I even know people that make bespoke calligraphy posters - but most writers, short of thier clips, have nothing to show for it. A novel isn't created in a week - overnight - six in a day - ten in a month.
I can understand why people believe that, but it really - REALLY annoys me that some people just don't take the time to ask or understand.
I could get into a huge conversation about professionalism as a writer - I could talk about how we need to respect ourselves and respect our work before others will - but instead, I will say this.
If our families don't understand - don't support - criticise and destroy our confidence, then we need to either make them or ask them to butt out. I've had to do that with a couple of people that just 'don't get it' and it hurts not to be able to talk to people about the things I love, but its harder still to fight against the criticism.
That's what makes me burning mad. That though I'm creating something beautiful, that some people choose not to respect me. I totally get that I have to earn respect, but 'respect' should not equal 'best seller'.
So respect yourself as a writer - get mad, get even by writing your best - but never let them drag you down.

Review: WAHM Magazine

WAHM Magazine - The only content-driven digital magazine for work at home parents

If you're a work-at-home parent or thinking about becoming one, this just may be your magazine. WAHM is a bi-monthly digital magazine covering all the different facets of being a work-at-home parent.

Erika Geiss, founder and publisher of WAHM Magazine, envisioned a magazine dedicated to "the whole enchilada" of working from home. It doesn't just focus on business, but also parenting, personal and professional relationships, health and fitness, time management and more.

(Hey, kind of like Mama Needs a Book Contract, but with editing.)

Ms. Geiss allowed me a peek at a sample of the premier issue, and I like it.

At first, the digital format drove me crazy, with scrolling and zooming troubles, until I discovered that I could resize the window to fit my screen. Then I had few problems, and could settle in for an enjoyable read. (I'll admit, I wish it were available in a print version, but that isn't in the plans right now and won't be unless it can be done in an eco-friendly way. It's just that this is the kind of magazine I'd like to grab and read on the couch, or take a highlighter to, or throw in my bag to read in the pediatrician's waiting room.)

Articles range from cute shorts to helpful features. The premier issue includes a Q & A with Stephanie Gruber (work-at-home-parent and founder of BabyTalkBio.com and FrunchyMama.com) tax-time tips from an expert, and service pieces on beating work-at-home isolation, feng-shui for the home office, and clutter-busting strategies. A section called "Stories from the Trenches" gives first-person accounts of those who are doing it, and the "My Time" articles focus on gardening and relaxation. This issue's "Nitty Gritty" gives the scoop on virtual conferences, and "Health and Fitness" goes beyond the page with two podcasts.

Yes, podcasts! I guess that's one advantage a print version of the magazine could not offer.

I have to say that I am impressed, and I'm not easy to impress. There are a lot of print and web magazines out there competing for my attention. WAHM is the kind of magazine I wish the rest of them could be: smart, relevant, useful, and serious without being full of itself. (Hey, when you are a work-at-home parent, you can't take yourself too seriously. We giggle with our toddlers one minute and hit send on a pitch the next. And it's just hard to get on an ego-trip when you smell like peanut butter.)

And speaking of not taking yourself too seriously - my favorite humorist, Amy Mullis, will have a column in WAHM. That has to be worth the price of a subscription in itself.

So what is the price of a subscription (and what does it include)? $24 per year includes 6 bi-monthly issues, full access to WAHM archives and forums, webinars and podcasts, and 10 e-newsletters per year.

I think I'll spring for it. :)

Summary from the WAHM Media Kit:

Feature Sections
 Voices—a featured interview with a work-at-home parent, ideally a well-recognized figure who has achieved success as a work-at-home parent
 The Nitty-Gritty—a section devoted to work-at-home business issues
 Parenting—from being a work-at-home parent with babies and toddlers to 'tweens and teens and beyond
 Relationships—those with significant others/partners, business partners and associates, and friends and family beyond what would be covered in parenting
 My Time—a section devoted to relaxation, rejuvenation and personal time
 Health and Fitness—a column by Craig Pepin-Donat, International Health & Fitness expert, and author of the Big, Fat Health and Fitness Lie (Waterside 2007)
 Humor Column—a column by Amy Mullis, the “New Erma Bombeck.”
 Stories from the Trenches—a section devoted to creative non-fiction

They take submissions from freelancers! Here's a link to the submission guidelines.

WAHM's and Low Pay

Being a mom is probably the lowest paying job of all, which puts an odd sort of perspective on the following... Recently, one of the major freelance writing job blogs sounded off about WAHM's taking low paying writing gigs. You can read her rant at Freelance Writing Jobs about how the tendency of WAHM's to take $3 writing jobs make people think of them as a source of cheap labor--and take advantage of them in the process. Her solution is the WAHM's should stop taking low paying writing jobs; that this will force article buyers to pay more.

Well, color me as respectfully disagreeing. WAHM's didn't start the race to the bottom and they aren't going to stop it even if they do quit taking low paying scut work. No, they won't be seen as a source of "cheap labor," but they will not turn back the tide any more than King Canute. The problem is twofold--and it's a problems lots of industries have, not just writing:

1. The Internet has created a frictionless marketplace. When sellers cannot find buyers and buyers cannot find sellers, a market has "friction." But when sellers and buyers can come together almost effortlessly, then a market is said to be frictionless.
   With the advent of the Internet, the market for writers has become increasingly frictionless. Snailmail is slow. Email is almost instantaneous. Sending payment cross country used to be slow and iffy. Paypal is fast and safe. And so on. With the advent of Elance and Craigslist, and the increasing acceptance of telecommuting, the market for writers is nearly frictionless. And it's only going to get more so. Not less.


2. The combination of the Internet and Elance (and the like) has made a small buyer's market into a BIG buyer's market by including millions of English-speaking/writing people from all over, most notably second and third world countries with much, MUCH lower wages and prices than in the US/Canada/Australia/UK. The willingness of thousands--if not millions--of people to work for what would be a starvation wage in the west is what has driven prices into the floor--not what a few hundred thousand WAHM's will or will not write for. This is happening all over. Work that my brother contract programmer used to get paid $75/hr for now only pays $35/hr... because international competition has driven the price down. Things are tough all over, but there are opportunities everywhere.

Now, before you accuse me of being racist or xenophobic, I think people from where ever--second and third world countries included--have a right to make a living regardless of their color, nationality or shoe size. But I won't pretend that a huge influx of people willing to write for peanuts didn't drive prices down from the already low $10 each to $2 and $3 each. Economics isn't politically correct. Low paying work isn't going away. There will always be someone desperate enough to do it.

So whether WAHM's take low paying work is not going to affect the market significantly. There are just too many people whose hours are worth $5.25--or worse, $0.50/day--who figure that they can write four an hour with their PJ's on and that's a heck of alot more than they can make on their feet cashiering at Wal-mart. There's nothing shameful about doing honest work when it suits your purpose.

Back in the dark ages, when I considered $50 a good fee, $250 seemed like the moon, and we were going bankrupt supporting a house we couldn't sell, I wrote a handful of articles for Write for Cash (aka WFC). At the time, there was a big stink on the writer's list I frequented because of the low fees: $10-$20 per article. But I was desperate and the couple hundred dollars I wrote for WFC (which are still on the web today) bought two weeks worth of groceries and put something in my kid's Christmas stocking. It suited my purpose. I never spent more than a half hour on the article. I never wrote more than the minimum number of words. As long as my hourly wage came through to $15 or $20/hr, I counted myself lucky... That was as much as I made per hour as a programmer and I didn't have to dress up and commute 70 miles one way to do it. And I used those clips to move on, move up, and get better gigs.

So, having been there, I'll share a few rules of thumb:

1. Figure if something is worth your time based on a target hourly rate, not based on what a particular piece pays. Set your hourly rate, at the very least, as twice what you could make at a part time job. In the beginning (or unless you have special skills), that means anywhere from $10-$16/hr. If you can do three small pieces and hour for $4 each and make $12, and that's better than you could do at the part time jobs you qualify for, it's worth your time. After ten clips (or a couple of months), raise your target rate by $10/hr. Keep raising it at least $10/hr every six months until you get to $50-$75/hr. That's a veteran wage and a decent living.



2. Spend the least time possible while doing a workmanlike job. Don't spend four days researching an article that's only going to pay $15. If your target hourly rate is $15/hr, then you have exactly one hour to research and write that article. Go over and you're reducing your take. This is not to say you should do shoddy work and cut corners. Do good work, but keep in mind that time is money.



3. Never, never, never, never, NEVER write an article for low pay that you could pitch and sell elsewhere for more money. Always start at the top with an article idea and work your way down. You won't know if you can sell an article for $25 (or $250 or wow, $2500) unless you first pitch it to one of those better paying markets. If you come down all rejections and you still want to write it, then go ahead and write it for peanuts (or GASP for free). But start at the top.



4. Do NOT fall into the trap of thinking that because you are busting your arse for peanuts that peanuts is all you deserve. Every freelance writer starts out at the bottom: querying new markets, taking spec assignments, forging relationships with editors. Low paying work is a stepping stone. You don't need more than 10 low-paying clips to move into the next tier ($25-$50/article)--not to say it will be easy, but you should definitely begin your move around your 10th clip. And here's the secret... the editors you're querying don't know how much you were paid. They don't know you got paid peanuts. They see a clip: "Hmm, well written. Got published. Probably met her deadline. Yeah, lets give her a try." A clip, even a low paying one, is a sample of your writing and a demonstration of your professionalism. Not a pro? Fake it 'til you make it, girl!

And so, that is my answer... spent far too much time on this for far too little money. Broke rule #1 and #2. But at least I wrote something.

Happy New Year!

Could this mean the end to my ever-widening rear?

One of the problems about being a writing mom with children in school is that I spend too much of my time curled up with my laptop and not enough time moving around. This results in some undesirable side-effects like weight gain and rear-end spread.

Like most writing moms I know, I'm a busy writing mom with a number of projects going at one time. I do a lot of writing, editing, grading, designing and more every day. All of this involves spending quality time with my computer instead of my treadmill.

In 2005, I decided I needed to do something to give my writing a boost, so I went back to grad school. It is no coincidence that in 2006 I completed 24 credits for my degree and gained approximately 60 pounds. For most of that year, while attending grad school, I also worked full-time as a newspaper reporter and taught three classes at a college. Factor in a long commute, and it comes down to a choice between family, sleep and exercise, and I had to sacrifice all three in order to get everything done.

If you were family and didn't live in my house in 2006, you didn't hear from me very much. If you did live in my home, you spent a lot of time with me while I was doing something else too. My family went camping, and I brought along my homework, laptop and papers to grade, not to mention my camera and reporter's notebook.

I sacrificed sleep. I had to in order to get everything done. There were several times where I would wake up at 3 or 4 a.m. in order to finish my own homework or to grade my students homework. I tried to leave my evenings from 5 to 8 p.m. free to spend time with the kids and from 8 to 10 p.m. to spend time with my husband. Exercise wasn't always a possibility, but I tried to work it in too. Several mornings my husband and I would wake up at 6 and walk a couple miles.

Since I graduated last August, my schedule has slowed down quite a bit. I am working on exercising more and getting enough sleep as well as eating right. I see my immediate family more often, and I have been able to reconnect with extended family too. Yet, I still spend a lot of time sitting on my butt working on my computer.

In case you didn't know, typing, even typing at over 130 words a minute, doesn't tend to burn very many calories. I have long dreamed of a way that would make it easier to incorporate exercise into my life. I already use my iPod to listen to the writing-related podcast Will Write for Wine while on the tread mill.

This week I saw a possible solution on the news: the Walkstation

It's a combination of a treadmill (3 mph max) and a desktop that is perfect for a laptop and other work-related items. It's billed as the "first truly mobile office." A walking worker can burn up to 100 calories an hour.

My butt is ready, my legs are questioning their stamina, and after a glance at the $4,000 price tag, my wallet has left the building, but it is good to know someone is doing something to help me fit exercise into my busy work day.

It could mean the end to one of the most serious epidemics facing writing mothers today -- putting on pounds when pounding the keys.

Out of the Mouths of Babes

I'd asked them to give me 15 minutes (to finish the story I was working on) TEN times until finally I found myself running through the house chasing the loudest one (Hannah, who will now be referred to as The Screamer) in order to put her in her room so I could actually finish my 15 minutes and bake the blasted cookies which at one point had sounded like great fun and were now the bane of my existence.

Not only had they asked me 10 times if the 15 minutes were up yet (this from the Screamer who has not yet learned to count to 60 thank you Jesus and who I was now wildly pursuing) while Henry (now referred to as The Counter) stood at my shoulder counting to 60 over and over again (because he's realized that counting to 60 equals one minute). This activity would be bad enough on it's own for someone attempting to pull words out of their brain in order to create a sentence that makes at least some sense but add to it jarring screeches of discontent each and every time The Screamer interrupts his concentration to query on whether said 15 minutes has passed.

It goes something like this.

"1...2...3...4...5..." the Counter counts.

"Mama, has it been fifteen minutes yet?" screeches the Screamer.

I manage to ignore them until the Counter becomes the Screamer because the original Screamer has interrupted him for the second time in a row.

"I can't count with her screaming," he screams at me.

"I just want to bake cookies," the screamer screams. And well, you can imagine.

Until I've finally had enough because now the Screamer is having a meltdown, just inside the door, because I've taken to giving her the silent treatment. And I'm off stomping through the house like a mama cat whose kittens have outgrown her and are still trying to nurse, with the same look on my face that my grandma gets when the last straw has been broken or ripped into tiny little shreds.

"Mama," the Counter says later, after I've spent 10 minutes chasing the Screamer through the house to no avail. I'd given up, sitting on the couch huffing and puffing like I'd run a marathon. "You know Mama, that when you're mad and you're going to put someone in their room....we always know you're coming."

"You do," I reply, not caring much at this point what they do or do not know as long as it doesn't involve counting or screaming.

"Yes Mama, you might try smiling real big and sneaking up on her," he says matter of factly and I can't help but grin at him.

"You think that would work, do you?"

"Yes, we always know you're coming. Can we make the cookies now?"

My Desk - Heather

I am issuing a challenge to the Mamas on MNABC.

Show me your undewear.

Ok, not really... but almost worse.

Show me your desk. I'll go first.

Let me give you a little tour of The Desk That Shall Not Be Conquered.

1a - My fancy color printer scanner thingy that I had to buy in my last month of writing Rookie Reiner when my daughter knocked over the old one.

1b - The super-fast black and white printer that spit out at least four versions of a 50,000 word book and whose drum is still at 85%.

2 - The November calendar. Strangely blank. Not so strange if you consider that I ripped off "October" just today... um, I'm a little behind. I keep deadlines listed on this sheet, but lately I haven't had very many.

3a - A pile of "to be filed" papers

3b - The little file holder thingies where I can stick more "to be filed" papers and pretend that they are kind of filed.

3c - A pile of "to be filed when the other pile is empty".

4 - Binders for a variety of things: an old photo album from high school, my Pampered Chef binder, my company's record book, blank binders looking longing down at the piles of paper they could be holding if I could figure out exactly how best to use them.

5 - A camera bag with no camera in it because that camera is sitting on my desk next to the lamp. (You can see the strap)

6 - The craziness under my desk. Very tempting to babies who seek to zap themselves. Or turn my external hard drive offonoffonoffonoffonoffon until it has kittens.

7 - Magazines. Waiting to be read. Some are from Spring 2007. *hangs head*. But in my defense I sometimes like to look through magazines to get ideas (no, not STEALING)... for example, I've I'm thinking about an article on horse health, I may look through Self magazine or some human equivalent to spark some parallel thoughts.

8 - I couldn't tell you what is here without looking... it's a place where paper goes to die I think.

9 - Ahhh the bookshelf. Last count, about 800 books. Again, not all of them read. Currently it also serves has holder of the baby products and Fun Toys aka The Books on the Lower Shelves.

So there you go. This is the desk I wrote my first book at. Sometimes I wrote it at the kitchen table on the laptop, but most of it was here... blasting Pink until I was practically a Democrat, cursing photographers who wouldn't send back their permission forms and trying to block the baby from crawling under the desk with my knees.

A Day In The Life

My writing life is a lot more concentrated these days. It is squashed in between 3 and 10 pm. But then again so is the end of the school day, dinner, housework, the good TV shows, my bath time and ... oh yeah... quality time with the kids.

So sometimes my interviews overlap with... life.

Yesterday I had three interviews to do.

One went really well. Of course I had put The Backyardigans on and I might have thrown some chocolate in their general area.

Which came back to bite me with interviews two and three.

During interview two I had to stop to quiet my son (6yo) and say, "Sorry, that was just my son's light sabre. It's a little loud."

During interview (which was post the baby's bath and pre pajamas) three I had to stop typing and run across the room because the baby... she pooped on the carpet. Thankfully interviewee was none the wiser. And at least I noticed before she started playing with it.

Saturday Mornings

Saturday mornings are my favorite. My most favorite favorite. Or as my son says, my bestest. I get to sleep in. DD (1) let DH sleep in until 7:30, my son got up shortly after and came in to lay down with me for an hour. I stayed in bed until almost 10 am (!).

Pause to feel a little guilty. Sleeping in feels a little lazy.

When I climbed out of bed I immediately had to put the baby down for her nap. Then I could come down and observe the chaos that is Husband Watching Daughter.

My wallet was destroyed, thankfully no money or checks waiting to be deposited were seriously injured.

My external hard drive was suffering from a severe case of having it's on button pushed over and over and over and is now self-checking itself for errors (there are many, it's been working for 2 hours now).

My husband's excuse? "I should have known when she was too quiet for a while." These two things occured within his eyeline, but he was watching football and playing games on his laptop.

The reason why I find it hard to concentrate on my work when I'm also watching the kids is that it's actually important to know what the children are doing. Babies chew on cords and stick things in sockets. They push nice glowing buttons and see what happens when they pull things apart. It's kind of hands on, this parenting.

I try not to be irritated. Afterall, I've got six years of parenting under my belt, he has about a year or two.

I'm sitting on my laptop in the kitchen because my regular computer is busy running its self check... except it's the computer with all my articles on it. I'd quite like to get working on them. Any time now.

For some reason I feel like maybe I shouldn't have slept in!

Too awesome not to share

What I like best about this video is the standing ovation that she gets at the end.

Pulling The Words Out

Last night I was tired. I mean bone tired.

I'm not trying to whine, but here's what I did yesterday:

5 am get up. Thanks to Faten, I know that it's just me and the Muslims up at this hour. I don't care how hungry I'd be the rest of the day, I'd fall asleep with my face in the halaal eggs.

6 am - 2 pm work. where I'm convinced that the aging workforce negatively impacts my workday in one very important way: they are all going through The Change and want the office kept at sub-zero temperatures.

2:30 get home and hubby goes to work, we kind of blow kisses at each other... hey, you're cute... nice to meet you... call me.

2:30 - 3:00 track down source for article, interview him and cuddle and nurse the baby (yes, at the same time), want to wring the neck of interview subject who KNOWS SOMETHING and won't bloody well give it up. Leaving me to have to dance around the issue in the article, I'm sure.

3:00 leave early to pick up my son from school, attempt to go through two caffiene related drive-thrus but find BOTH closed. WTH? Baby falls asleep in truck, as intended.

3:40 - 4:10 pick up Boychild and play at park

4:10 - 5:00 go to Toys R Us and pick out birthday present for Friday. Boychild behaves exceptionally well and I pat myself on the back for OBVIOUSLY being an exceptional parent.

5:00 to 8:30 three loads of laundry, a load of dishes, make supper, eat, convince boychild it isn't poison - just porkchops and mushrooms, clean up disasterarea/office/livingroom/kitchen, bath the baby, bath the boychild, lose my temper, find it again, apologize, change three diapers, fold clothes (mostly consisting of pile sorting), put the baby to bed and get the boychild into pajamas and in bed.

8:30 hubby come home and eats my lunch for the next day. Ahem. I coerce him into reading the bedtime books because boychild has been asking for him. I begin article that happens to be due.

8:30 to 10:00 transcribe interview from earlier, finish article and submit, make list of articles due for the rest of the month, cry, catch up on as many emails as I can, ignore the ones I can't. Try not to shoot evil glares at well meaning hubby because he's playing video games and watching TV.

10:00 fall into bed and realize I am really, really, really tired. I hope my article is ok because writing it has been like plucking eyelashes with mittens on.

Dejah: Extra! Extra! Mothers WORK!

This deserves a Fark headline, it really does. "Not News: Working at Home is Durned Tough. Distractions legion. News: It's just woman's work, big deal. Fark: Written by a man."

The NY Times delves into the home life of a work-at-home-father, incidentally a writer. The poooor guy isn't getting anything done, and when his wife comes home from her late-night, high-powered, corporate job asking if he accomplished anything, not only can't he remember, but he can't remember WHY he didn't get anything done. So he begins to make a list of all the things he does instead of working. And it's a mighty long and time consuming list.

And THIS is somehow BIG NEWS?

I mean, work-at-home-mothers handle this stuff in their sleep and still get their work done, don't we? We're not sitting around all day eating bon-bons. Why is this news?

Oh, yeah, right, because it's a MAN doing it. If it was a woman writing this, it would sound whiny--and rightly so. We all know that handling the stupid sh*t is just part of the mother's job. We do what needs to be done, and still do everything else that is expected of us. And we wonder why we cannot keep our houses clean.

(Okay, so DH went away on a business trip 5 minutes after the well ran dry and it took me TWO DAYS fixing the pump to restore water to the house. Yes, I am grumpy! I will officially be grumpy until he is pinned Chief and this hellish indoctrination is over and he can take over his half of the sky.)