freelance pants

I've moved...

2006-10-02T09:37:00.000-07:00

...to WordPress and a new domain. You'll now can check me out at The Anti 9-to-5 Guide, a blog dedicated to my book The Anti 9-to-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube, which hits bookstore shelves February 2007.

What the heck am I blogging about now? My so-called freelance life, tips culled from my 15 years of self-employment, articles on wage slavedom I found interesting, the glass ceiling, and of course the shameless yet obligatory book peddling. You can also find updates there on what classes I'm teaching and what articles I'm writing. Yay.

Oprah, you're scaring me

2006-01-29T11:42:00.000-08:00

Hey, I'll be the first to say I wasn't sure how James Frey was sleeping at night, not because he made shit up. That's what writers do, we tell stories. But because he swore up and down before Oprah and her almighty viewers that his memoir or novel or whatever-the-hell-it-is was entirely true -- and subsequently made a mint in royalties.

But when Oprah took the entire publishing industry to task, she crossed the line. And even though Oprah guest Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute was probably just trying (albeit unsuccessfully) to add a bit of levity to Oprah's public flogging of Frey, I shudder to think of publishers adopting a Hollywood-like rating system for the truth factor of outrageous works by literary geniuses like David Sedaris.

The debate about creative license is nothing new. Use some of your life experiences as fodder for your novel and you risk lawsuit by an estranged family member or a jilted lover who catches a glimpse of themselves in the fictitious boss, shrink, or proctologist you painted in a less-than-flattering light. And we all know what happens when you excessively exaggerate your True Tales of Trying Times and How You Lived to Tell the Whole Ugly Truth About Them.

Maybe what we need is yet another literary genre, one with a name that's easier to remember than creative non-fiction. One that the Oprah crowd will have an easier time with. One with less syllables. We could call it something like femoir, or friction, or maybe just fraction. Still working on this and very open to suggestions. Use the comment button below to give me a hand.

shameless shameless shameless

2006-01-28T15:18:00.000-08:00

danger, self-promo ahead:

1. my upcoming media bistro class (feb 23; seattle) with the fabulous diane mapes. enroll if you want to know how to write for a living.

famous freelance foul-ups: how to avoid them, how to undo them

2. my recent seattle times piece. read if your back hurts.

practitioners using yoga therapy to mend bodies and spirits

3. my recent black table piece. read if you have a sense of humor. don't read if you ever parented or dated me. and, RIP black table. we'll miss you.

waxing off: come back! you're the one who got away.

back in black

2006-01-28T14:58:00.000-08:00

i've been a very delinquent blogger. but now i'm back. i was hiding out a while (ok, like three months) while i got my book-writing mojo going. wasn't sure i needed another distraction while trying to write the dang thing. i already have reality tv on my back. but now that i'm cranking on the book (sort of), i kinda want my blog back.

some not-so-surprising things i learned (actually confirmed) about my writing preferences and capabilities during the first few months of this playing-author experiment:

1. i need structure. in a big hairy way. like for the rest of my life. having the whole day free to write is a surefire recipe for getting less than nothing done. and it's certainly not a guarantee that you'll be more productive than your friends who can only write before and after their day gigs. hence, i started scheduling interviews in the afternoons, so i had to write in the a.m. and when that didn't work 100 percent of the time, i took on some client work to further light a fire under my rear. besides, my bank account was hurting. we'll see how i do in feb.

2. i most definitely only know how to string 10 words or more together before 8 p.m. and i'm freshest in the a.m. in other words, writing in the evening is one big shitty-first-draft fest.

3. i'm still not very good at writing when i'm NOT under pressure. but i'm working on it. really i am. really and truly.

4. this feeling of having finished my day's work long before sundown is still kind of (ok, extremely) foreign to me. i'm used to procrastinating till the prime-time tv witching hour. i'm used to the pain from smacking myself in the head for starting too late in the day or getting next to squat done. now that i'm making headway with writing and not enjoying my usual shame spiral, i almost don't know what to do with myself.

5. email is the enemy. trying my best to ignore it till evenings. i have a new rule: look but don't touch. and now i'm starting to think my addiction to the Send And Receive button stems from my days at that giant software conglomerate. and of course my days as an AOL-personal-ad slut in the mid-90s. ah, good times.

lit envy: war of the muses

2005-10-14T07:54:00.000-07:00

For a peek at shameful writer envy and lit-crit blogging gone awry, check out this Salon piece by the hilarious Steve Almond. Note that if you don't have a subscription to the site, you'll have to view an ad to read the whole piece. The piece is well worth sitting through the ad, though. I promise.

The blogger who loathed me
My cyber-nemesis had been trashing me for months. Then we met, and I had a chance to take a terrible revenge.

required reading

2005-10-14T07:23:00.000-07:00

Some publications/sites I heartily recommend, despite the fact that the eds. will surely think me some sort of kiss-ass or, better yet, stalker:

Black Table
Bust
Fresh Yarn
Salon
Swivel
Write Habit

once more, with feeling

2005-10-14T05:28:00.000-07:00

Dear A, C, G, and the 1.7 other people who had the distinct displeasure of reading past entries of this blog:

I regret to inform you that Winston is dead. I had to wipe the slate clean, stop griping about the alarm clock and ungodly commute and bad fluorescent lighting, for reasons you can probably imagine:

1. I'm no longer a cube monkey (at least for the time being). Instead, I work at home in my underwear.

2. My therapist thinks I'm too negative (not really, but it sounded good).

3. I recently became a homeowner. Meaning if anyone wanted to make a stink about my purported cube-bashing, say, in the form of a pink slip, blacklist, or subpoena, I could be really, really hosed. Or I could get a six-figure book deal like every other shameless blog warrior who fancied herself A Writer, dissed the hand that fed, and wound up in bed with Random House. But since I'm not the gambling sorta gal, I'll play by the rules. At least for now.

Do not despair: Winston will always, as they say, be right here in my heart (I'm thumping my chest now). Freelance pants 1.0 may have died an ignoble death, but a new day is dawning and it is my distinct and dubious honor to welcome you to FP v2.0. Here, I offer you my shiny new blog-masquerading-as-website -- you know, so I can shamelessly self-promote my publication antics and achieve swift internet immortality.

So there we are. And here we are. Thanks for playing.