Back at it with a vengeance!

I've spent the last week or so redoubling my freelance-writing efforts. Now that Willy Wonka is done, I've got my evenings and weekends back, and I've got a lot of time to fill. No worries, though---I've managed to find plenty to do. Here's what's on my list for this long weekend:

• A proposal for what's shaping up to be a major project for an existing client;
• A test for wiseGEEK---three articles due by the end of the weekend. If I pass, I'll be a regular contributor for them, which is exciting;
• Three articles for Demand Studios, which I picked up earlier last week because things were slow (ha).

If everything works out, it'll be a busy summer. But that's the way I like it.

Be happy.

Yesterday, Deb Ng, the writer who runs my favorite freelance-writing site, Freelance Writing Gigs, turned over her blog network to a new owner.

Every freelance job I've ever landed has come from the leads on that site. I don't participate in the discussions often---I'm more of a lurker---but it's been a wonderful resource since I began freelancing two years ago. And while I'm sure good things will continue to come from the site, it feels like the end of an era now that Deb has moved on.

In her goodbye post, Deb left her readers with the following thought:

"You are responsible for you. Only you know the choices that work best for you and your situation. Don’t be the person a blogger wants you to be. Be the person you want to be. Be happy."

If that doesn't sum up my experiences, dreams and goals in one tidy little package, I don't know what does.

Thanks for all you've done for other writers, Deb. We'll miss you.

Willy Wonka

One of the reasons I want to freelance full-time is to make time for other creative endeavors. My favorite art form is live theatre. I love it. Exposure to theatre on both a professional and community level keeps me going and makes me happy to be alive. I try to see as many shows as possible, and when I have time, I perform in local productions. Because of time commitments to my full-time job, my commute, and my side freelance business, I’ve had to choose my shows carefully. But I’d like to have the freedom to do a lot more in the future.

I just closed a production of Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka this past Sunday. It’s a stage musical based on the 1971 film. It has all of the songs from the movie, plus a few that were written specifically for the stage show. I played Mrs. Bucket, and it was some of the most fun I’ve ever had on stage. I’m actually having a hard time letting go of my attachment to this particular production, and I’m already growing antsy and looking forward to auditions for future shows. It’ll be a few months before I’m ready to try out for another production, though. For now, I’m looking forward to a (somewhat) relaxing summer and the extra time to work on writing projects.

(The Bucket Shack! Grandparents in the first photo; me with Mr. Bucket and Charlie in the second.)

The Pitfalls of Writing Web Content

Any other freelance writers out there struggle against the “it’s not a REAL job” stereotype? Particularly web content writers?

It’s no secret that I want to take my freelance business full-time someday. It won’t happen anytime soon, because I’m comfortable and generally happy in my full-time job, and the money I make from my freelance business is helping me pay off some old debts and build savings and pay for things I wouldn’t be able to afford otherwise.

But.

The fact of the matter is that my regular job, while enjoyable and fulfilling, is a 30-mile drive from my home. I happen to love my hometown and have no intention of moving to be closer to my workplace. So I have to ask myself—will I still want to make this commute in two years? Five? Ten? And if not, then what are my plans?

This line of thinking always makes me refocus my freelancing efforts. Because when it comes down to it, I want to be in charge of my own career, my own salary, my own life. I want to stop polluting the planet with my daily drives. If GrammarHubby and I have kids eventually, I want to be able to stay at home with them and not have to drop them off at some daycare at 8:00 in the morning and not see them again until 7:00 at night. So taking my writing and editing business full-time eventually is a major goal for me.

However, I’ve noticed lately that whenever I bring up the topic, GrammarHubby gets uncharacteristically quiet. If he responds at all, it’s usually to point out what a good job I have now. (And I do have a good job; don’t get me wrong. But I’d like more freedom and flexibility down the road.) I’ve suspected for a while that he (understandably) is nervous about the idea of me giving up a full-time job with regular pay and benefits and venturing into the “unknown.”

We got to the heart of the issue last night. I’d run some numbers through an online commute calculator and was horrified to discover that my daily commute costs me close to $10,000 each year when you figure in the costs of gas, car maintenance, insurance and depreciation. It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. We bought a brand-new car in 2006. Four years later, that car has 120,000 miles on it and we’ve had to replace some fairly expensive parts. Sooner rather than later, we’re going to have to trade it in for a new one. I used this as an argument for freelancing—once I take my business full-time, I won’t need a new, low-mileage car anymore. We can sell whatever car we have and pay cash for an older car, and I can bike or take the bus to as many places as possible while running errands. Based on the money I’ve been making part-time as a freelancer, I’m certain that I could at least match my current salary if I jumped to full-time. And with the money saved on commuting, we’d actually come out ahead of where we are now.

So I presented all this to GrammarHubby, but he still wasn’t convinced. After some probing, I finally managed to get him to admit the real problem.

He doesn’t think freelancing is a real job.

Okay, maybe that’s not fair. He knows I’m really working. He even admitted that logically, his fears don’t make a lot of sense. But because I do all of my writing for the Internet, he doesn’t ever see concrete evidence that I’m actually working. My articles usually don’t get a byline, and I’ve never been published in a print magazine or written a book—and after all, those are the marks of a “real” writer, aren’t they? And since I’m the one who handles the finances, he doesn’t even really see the money I make from my writing. In general, he knows that I do some mystery work and get paid a couple of times a month, and that’s it. “It doesn’t seem like something you could do full-time,” he admitted.

So I fired up my laptop and showed him some of my most recently published articles. I also showed him a spreadsheet that has all of my current projects listed on it, as well as our bank statements from the past few months that reflect my freelancing income. By the time we were done, we both felt much better. He has a better understanding of what it is that I actually do, and I feel like he’s more supportive of my goals now that he understands them better.

But this misconception of freelance writing is a real issue. I’ve found that most people I talk to don’t really understand what a freelance writer actually does. And they definitely don’t understand that you can make a real living doing this type of work. I’ve had this argument many times with several members of my family, and I know I’ll have it more and more often as I start to make serious plans to make the leap.

Obviously, I shouldn’t care what people think of my career choices. As long as I’m happy and making a decent living, that’s all that should matter. But it seems like anytime you proudly say, “I want to be a freelance writer,” you’re met with gloom and doom and expectations of failure. So how do you deal with that? Any advice from longtime freelancers? How did you deal with naysayers in the beginning of your career?

I'm baaaaack.

Um. Hi.

I've let this blog go a bit. For roughly nine months, actually.

Sorry about that.

Life has been pretty crazy lately, though. Here's what I've been up to since May of last year:

• I continued to work my tail off at my full-time copy-editing job. The great thing is that my work was recognized--I nabbed a nice bonus and an award for my service.

• I also had a stellar part-time freelance year, adding almost $10k onto my regular income.

• I went to Disney World and spent an absolutely magical week at Wilderness Lodge.

• Most fun of all, I rehearsed, opened and closed two community theatre shows: Into the Woods and The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. They'll both always have a special place in my heart, especially Into the Woods. I've loved that show forever, and thanks to a very fortuitous turn of events, I got to join an amazing cast at the last minute and play Rapunzel. Once I got over my fear of heights, it was an amazing experience.

Things are still going well. I'm getting ready to file my taxes for the first time as a serious part-time freelancer, which is a bit of a wake-up call. (Note to future self: File estimated taxes throughout the year. Thanks.) It's almost review time at work, which is always interesting. I used to dread performance evaluations, but now I almost look forward to them because it's a great chance to see if your hard work was recognized.

And I'm still freelancing. I've toned down the aggressiveness a bit for now, just writing for one or two regular clients. I still want to take this business full-time eventually, but I like my full-time job and, at least for right now, I've got a lot of reasons to stay there. The freelance business is a nice addition to my regular income, not to mention a safety net in case anything did happen to my full-time job, so I'm continuing it. But for now, any definite plans to take it full-time have been put on hold.

I'm planning to give more love to this blog in the meantime. There's so much to write about, and so many grammar lessons to have. I look forward to re-starting the discussion with anyone who's reading this.

Limericks and Other Creative Writing

Over at Livejournal, where my (much more personal) blogging alter ego resides, there was an interesting writing prompt today. Apparently today is “Limerick Day,” and the challenge was to create a short poem that followed the AABBA rhyme scheme of a typical limerick. (The responses make it appear that sticking to the anapestic meter of a traditional limerick was optional, however.)

So I figured, what the heck, I’ll give it a try. I haven’t done much creative writing in the last few years, mainly because the writing and editing that I’m paid to do gets in the way, and it turns out I kind of miss it. So I sat down and cranked out two limericks.

They suck. (I’ve posted them at the end of this entry. Feel free to make fun of them in the comments.) I’m not a humorist, and writing things that are supposed to be witty or clever is not exactly my forte.

But it’s okay that they suck. Because writing them turned out to be a surprisingly fun and educational exercise. It’s really, really difficult to write a limerick---especially for a stickler like me, who was determined to not only work with the rhyme scheme, but also conform to the correct meter. With so many constraints, it really makes you think about your word choice, and swap out one word or phrase for one that might work better.

So without further ado, I present you with two really terrible limericks:

Annemarie was a girl who loved cheese
And she’d say, “Mom, just give me some, geez!”
Her mom said, “You want Swiss?
“Well, I’m sorry, you’ll miss
“If you don’t say the magic word: please!”

***

Mrs. Potts had a young son named Chip
And he had a small crack on his lip.
When Belle drank from the cup,
Young Chip cried, “Bottoms up!”
As the crack caused the teacup to drip.



If you’re a nonfiction writer, do you find it benefits your writing if you try your hand at another genre, like poetry or fiction? Leave a response in the comments and let me know!

Learning to Live With a Train Commute

This week, I switched my normal driving commute to a train commute.

On paper, this makes absolutely no sense. I live in Delaware and work in a suburb of Philadelphia. When I drive to work, I bypass the city, and the total drive takes about 30 minutes. (If there's no traffic. More on that later.) When I take SEPTA (the Philadelphia-area public transit system), I have to commute through the city and take two trains, and the total commute time is about an hour and a half.

Here's the crazy thing: I don't mind it. Not one bit.

I did this commute for a few months last summer, back when gas was around four bucks a gallon. I hated it back then and spent most of my time cursing the economy for making it too expensive to drive to work. I switched back to driving in September.

But this spring I was faced with a choice. GrammarHubby nd I currently share a car, and that's been working out well for us. He started a new job at the beginning of the year at an office in downtown Wilmington. His shift starts two hours earlier in the morning than mine does. So for the past four months, I drove him into work every morning, went home, put in an hour of freelancing, and then drove myself to work. He took the bus home, and it was a pretty good arrangement. But at the beginning of May, his position moved to Newark. And suddenly our fantastic arrangement was impossible. My choices were: a) buy a second car; or b) start taking the train again.

I really didn’t want to buy another car. *grin*

The funny thing is, everyone else seems to think it’s this huge chore to do a long train commute. And honestly, before this week, I probably would have agreed. But I find it so much more relaxing than driving. When I drive, the morning commute is usually relatively painless, but the drive home is always congested with traffic. It’s not unusual to have my evening commute stretch to 45 minutes, an hour, or more. When you’ve just had a long day at work, the last thing you want to do is sit in traffic. Not to mention you can’t take a catnap on a stretch of highway when you’re driving.

So since this is how I’m going to get to and from work for the foreseeable future, here’s my Top 5 List of Things I Love About Train Commuting.

1. I now have three hours a day of uninterrupted time for writing. When I commuted on the train last year, I was just getting started in freelancing. I took a serious hit on my freelance work during the three months on the train, because I didn’t have a usable laptop and I didn’t have a lot of time in my evenings once I got home. Now I have a laptop to take with me, and WOW, what a difference it makes. SEPTA doesn’t offer Wi-Fi on their trains, which is both a blessing and a curse. It’s unfortunate because it means I can’t do research for my articles and projects on the train. On the other hand, it takes away the constant online temptations of trolling Facebook, obsessively checking e-mail, and reading blogs. I’ve been doing research at night, copying and pasting my findings into a Word document. Then when I’m on the train, I simply bring up the Word document and begin writing using the research I found the night before. And it’s amazing how much work I can get done when the Internet isn’t just a click away.

2. I have time to read. Of course, I don’t spend all three hours of the commute working. Generally, an hour or so of solid writing is enough to keep me on track with my current projects, assuming I can put in an hour of online-based work once I get home. So the other two hours serve as glorious “me” time. The freelancing has been going extremely well lately, but combined with my regular job and housework and time with the husband, I haven’t had any time to do one of my favorite things: read. And I hate not having time to read. I always feel like my writerly polish goes down the drain if I’m not regularly reading other people’s work. So it’s nice to have the commute time set aside for that. Right now I’m reading Austin Grossman’s Soon I Will Be Invincible (on GrammarHubby's recommendation) and also working my way through Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series. Once I’m through with those, I’m planning to scrounge up my old library card, pay off the very very past-due late fees on it, and get a slew of books from the library. Anyone have suggestions for anything I must read? I’m not partial to any specific genre; I just like a good story.

3. Is it naptime yet? It’s amazing how getting up at 6:30 am seems more possible when I’m able to tell myself that I can catnap on the train. And if I’m feeling particularly crappy at work, it’s nice to know that I won’t have to force myself to stay awake for a long drive home.

4. The quiet car is my best friend. Earlier this year, SEPTA introduced a Quiet Ride program, which they’ve now rolled out to all their peak-hour trains. It is amazing. I don’t take it all the time---as a writer, almost nothing is more valuable than an overheard snippet of interesting conversation---but it’s a lifesaver on the last leg of my trip in the evening. At that point, I’m pretty much spent. All I want to do is stare out the window or nap on the 45-minute ride from Center City to Delaware. The Quiet Ride system lets me do that without being bothered by loud conversations, music, or cell phones. All I have to do is snag a seat in the first car on the train and I’m guaranteed a peaceful ride home.

5. People watching. When I’m not looking for a quiet car, taking the train offers some of the best people-watching you can get in normal everyday life. I have about 20 minutes in Center City between my two trains in the evening, and I usually take that time to stroll around the station (or even go outside) and just observe. We spend so much time rushing from place to place, looking without seeing, that it’s incredibly valuable to be able to take a few minutes to study what’s around you. Even if all that’s around you is a train station, it’s a wonderful opportunity to surreptitiously watch people as they go about their lives.

And of course, there’s the obvious savings. My monthly train pass saves me untold dollars on gas and wear and tear on the car. I don’t take advantage of the tax savings at work (did that last time and it was way too much of a headache), but even without that, the savings are pretty substantial. And it’s nice to not have to watch the mileage on the car rocket up over the course of a month.

Any other train commuters out there? Do you love it or hate it?