Writing Tips From Stanley Fish, With References To Frankenstein and Dan Ariely

I’m continuing my tour through writing books by reading Stanley Fish’s How To Write A Sentence.

I’ve been a writer and editor for 20 years – starting seriously in college, where I worked for the student newspaper at the University of Maryland, the diamondback. The need to meet a deadline (and earn a living) sometimes overtakes good writing habits. Stanley Fish’s book reminded me to pay attention,  in ways that were clear enough for anybody who writes — lawyers, marketers, journalists, executives — to learn from.

Most practical for professional communicators are Fish’s observations on the subordinating style of writing, which is deliberate, ordered and analytical. Here’s an excerpt from the chapter.

You can practice writing sentences that breathe unshakeable conviction. Keep them short, employ parallel structures, use the present tense and limit yourself to relatively small words. “If you’re waiting for fortune to smile, you may endure many a dark day.” “When someone rises to a point of principle, watch your back.” “A discipline in form is a discipline in thought.”

Consider, too, what he refers to as the “they say, I say” template for a sentence, after Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein’s book of the same name.

Speakers and writers who can deploy this template know how to summarize conventional wisdom on a topic on the way to disagreeing with it. “They say that money talks, but I say money corrupts.”

Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist whose blog I follow, uses variations on this template fairly often, as in the beginning of this blog post.

Plato once said that people are like dirt. They can nourish you or stunt your growth.  This seems sage and reasonable, but I think people are more like Swiss Army knives …

Of course, a good part of the book looks at beautiful sentences, too, such as the last line of Frankenstein.

“He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.”

Fish writes:

The sentence communicates the desolation and finality of his journey. There are two stages to it. Because soon precedes born away, we have a sense of rapid movement before we know what kind of movement it is; and then when we find out it is already movement “away.” … “Soon” is carried over silently from the first part of the sentence and attaches itself to “lost” at once literal and the final allustion in the novel to Milton’s great epic. So lost is he that his loss is describd in two measures that alliterate, “darkness and distance,” words that themselves have double meanings.

Wow, right?

I hope I sparked a few people to pay closer attention to their sentences today. A day in which you write a good sentence qualifies as a good day. 🙂

Growing Your Business, Reviews, Uncategorized , , , , , , ,
Posted on September 5, 2012 by admin Leave a comment

Lessons on Thriving in the New Economy

I was riveted by Hanna Rosin’s cover story in the New York Times magazine, “Who Wears the Pants in This Economy?”

The story looks at how the power balance has shifted in the community of Alexander City, Ala. as prestigious jobs at a local textile firm dried up–leaving many men who held them sidelined in their careers in midlife. In some of these very traditional families, wives who never intended to become the breadwinner have found themselves in that role.

The story raises the intriguing question of why the men in the community have struggled to adapt to new economic realities, such as the migration of manufacturing to other countries, while the women have adjusted successfully. And it has bearing for the freelance world–an important source of work outside of the world of corporate America–though it’s not a story about freelancing.

“An important long-term issue is that men are not doing as well as women in keeping up with the demands of the global economy,” Michael Greenstone, an economist at MIT, told Rosin. “It’s a first-order mystery for social scientists, why women have more clearly heard the message that the economy has changed and men have such a hard time hearing or responding.”

Rosin’s conclusion is that the Russell, the textile company, provided structure to almost every key area of the men’s lives. It was a way for them to define themselves, particularly for those with high-status jobs. “When that structure disappeared, `there was no place for us to go,'” one displaced man told her.

While women also worked at Russell, “they were never allowed to be part of its ruling fraternity,” she notes. Because the female employees typically viewed the less prestigious work they did as “just a job,” they essentially had less to lose by making a change to another gig when their work dried up.

“Once it all started to fall apart, some women in town took out loans or used savings to go to school to become nurses, human-resource managers and legal secretaries,” Rosin writes.  “Many were willing to take low-paying jobs because they hadn’t spent their lives expecting to be the primary breadwinner.” Thrilled to be earning a steady income, they eventually got promoted to the point where they were earning decent salaries–while their husbands remained on the sidelines.

One of the new realities of the global economy is that more companies are moving to a business model based on contingent labor. There is a lot of opportunity for freelancers and contractors who are good at what they do and build businesses around serving these clients.

But for someone who has enjoyed the status of having a powerful, high-paying job in corporate America, building a business as a solo professional can feel like a bit of a comedown–probably akin to taking one of the jobs the women of Alexander City are willing to accept. Even with the potential to make a great living as freelancers, many corporate folks miss the status of being the big boss and the prestige and feelings of belonging that come with being part of a well-known company. They let that derail them from self employment and wind up getting stuck sending out resume after resume, to no avail.

The women who are thriving in Alexander City have taken a practical approach to their situations and seized the opportunities to work that still exist around them. Because their mindset has allowed them to try something new, they’ve been able to pivot into new and often very rewarding careers.

If you’ve been finding yourself struggling to adjust to life outside of a big corporation and are considering freelancing or just starting out as an indie professional, you’ll find that these women have a lot of valuable lessons to teach all of us. There’s a tremendous amount of power you can unlock if you’re able to put your ego aside — hard as that can be — and dive into a whole new career. Facing unexpected twists of economic fate, these resilient women have found that by really applying themselves, they have been able to reap nice dividends–often more quickly than they expected.

Making the Break, The Lifestyle, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , ,
Posted on September 4, 2012 by Elaine Pofeldt Leave a comment

What You Can Learn From HuffPo’s Misstep At The Republican Convention

The Huffington Post’s practice of not paying people for their work has been riling writers lately. In the latest irritant, the Post convinced massage therapists to go to the political conventions for free. The national exposure was supposed to serve as payment of sort.

The National Writers Union was up in arms, according to a listserv that I subscribe to, WriterL, presumably because of the general idea that HuffPo is creating some sort of all-volunteer economy, as Alex Pareene called it on Salon.com. HuffPo does not typically pay writers.

We’ve never blogged for HuffPo, but we have done bits and pieces of content for other big aggregators that pay nothing or very little, like Forbes.

Without trashing HuffPo – a site that we have mixed feelings about — we’d suggest that writers treat that kind of writing like an investment.

Use those sites to accomplish very clear goals. Perhaps you’re experimenting with a new audience, or you are trying to drive traffic to a site that actually pays you. If the latter is what’s on your mind, though, make sure you’ve done the math. Is the end result of the traffic worth your time on an hourly basis. Does it come close?

If you’re going to work for free, there may be much better places to support than Huffington Post. Wouldn’t you, for instance, get as much exposure — and perhaps in a more targeted way — by volunteering some writing services to a nonprofit, or an professional organization?

It may be satisfying to think of  “national exposure” and to watch the traffic numbers tick upward. Neither satisfaction nor traffic pays the bills.

Here’s an interesting piece by Nate Silver on the economics of blogging for HuffPo. Reading it will probably convince you not to waste your time. http://nyti.ms/fD20AL.

Here’s a story we wrote a while ago about a journalist who made a decision to break away from the traffic addiction: High-End Business Model Helps Freelancer Thrive.

 

 

Growing Your Business, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted on August 31, 2012 by admin Leave a comment

A Great Site To Help Freelancers Find Health Insurance

I’ve been covering the health insurance market on-and-off for almost 20 years now and have reported on many different efforts by local chambers of commerce, city administrations and state departments of health and insurance to give people who aren’t covered by company plans a way to find health insurance.

That’s the first hurdle to getting coverage if you are a freelancer: finding how which companies offer plans in what’s called in most states the individual or private marketplace — meaning people who are self-employed or can’t get insurance through their organization or a company for some reason.

Affording a plan is the second and larger hurdle — and Elaine is going to write about that soon — but first things first.

I just came across a fantastic site put out by the federal government that I thought was really helpful. After I filled out an intuitive web form in under five minutes (I told the questionnaire I was losing coverage that I’d had through a company), it told me that I should look into six different options, including COBRA coverage, special enrollment in a spouse’s plan, and individual health plans.

I clicked on the last. The site asked for my location (that’s usually a big issue, because health care plans are governed by state laws). Then the site offered 85 different plans, 10 different ways to sort them, and an option to compare three plans at the same time.

Sweet — as my younger brother used to say when something clicked into place for him.

I hope this web site is helpful to some people — I was pretty impressed.

 

Reviews, Uncategorized, Your Back Office , , , , ,
Posted on August 30, 2012 by Elizabeth MacBride Leave a comment

The Scoop: High-Paying Contract Work

Mentors and freelance buddies can be a great way to prevent isolation as an independent contractor–and help your business grow. Credit: Stock.xchng

If you’ve been fantasizing about leaving a nightmare job to go out on your own or have discovered that your days on the corporate mothership are numbered in this tough economy, you won’t want to to miss the latest New York Times Career Couch column, “Making a Living, One Project at a Time.” (One very successful freelancing friend, who found the Harvard Business Review story on Supertemps overly rosy, thought this story was a lot more realistic).

The column offers an excellent overview of how to start doing project-level work as a full-time career–an option that, like it or not, many Americans are likely to find themselves doing at some point in the future. One interesting insight: While many seasoned professionals network their way into high-level contracts, some are also using agencies to find projects (a promising route for those who are better at executing jobs than marketing themselves). Another intriguing tidbit: These professional-level gigs–available in niches from supply chain management to nuclear science–often pay 50% to 100% more per hour than similar staff jobs (subject to regional demand).

Eilene Zimmerman, the author of the piece, is a top-notch freelancer whom I frequently hire to write articles at one of my contract editing gigs (and whom I’ve known since my first full-time journalism job). Her knowledge of the realities of freelancing informs the piece, as she looks at challenges like gaps between projects, high health insurance costs, and the learning curve that comes with starting a business. (For some help in deciding if the freelance life is right for you, check out Six Questions to Determine if You Are Cut out for Freelancing).

She also offers a great tip for addressing these downsides from Gene Zaino, chief executive of MBO Partners, an outfit in Herndon, Va., that provides back-office support for independent contractors: Look for a mentor who is a successful independent contractor.

Going out on your own can be lonely, but it doesn’t have to be that way. If you can find at least one accomplished freelancing buddy you can trust when you need a sounding board, you’ll find your business runs a lot more smoothly.

 

 

 

 

Growing Your Business, Making the Break, The Lifestyle, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted on August 28, 2012 by admin 1 Comment

Balance Your Kids’ Lives–and Your Own

My husband and I spent our first six years as parents raising four small children in Jersey City, N.J. We lived on a gentrifying block in a city where a substantial portion of the population lives in poverty.

Because we weren’t happy with the results the public schools were getting we decided to home school our oldest girls, who are twins, for kindergarten. To make sure they had opportunities to make friends, I spent hours searching for activities for them. I found a few good ones–an occasional arts and music program that a local artist had set up in the library, a karate school, a private Spanish class, and a homeschooling play group. The options were pretty limited, and sometimes sporadic, and we never became overscheduled.

We have started to think this deer likes to pose.

When we moved to a town in suburban, N.J. known for its great schools, I was thrilled to see the number of activities for kids. In  my town of just over 20,000 people, the choices are staggering. They include not just basic sports like soccer but niche programs in areas like fashion design and robotics. Most programs are run by groups like the YMCA or the town, which keep the prices affordable. It was exciting to finally be able to offer our kids activities that really fit their interests. But quickly, our family schedule got packed. At one point, the girls had four extracurricular activities each. My husband and I were exhausted from driving our kids around continually.

This summer, we decided to take it slower. We signed up for a couple of weekly sports activities at a nearby YMCA but decided to give them time to do things that it’s hard to fit in during the school year, like play all day if they want to.

It’s been a really happy summer for everyone. My kids have done things like build a beading station where they churn out necklaces, written story books, made hand painted puppets, and taken photo after photo of a mother deer and her fawn who show up outside our house every day–without my prompting. And it’s been the first time I’ve really had fun living in suburbia, instead of feeling oppressed by the lifestyle. I’ve been enjoying my daily life much more without having to constantly dash out for yet another enriching activity.

So I was glad to discover a new book called Teach Your Children Well by Madeline Levine, a private psychologist who works with teens in California. After decades of treating children of affluent parents, she has gotten frustrated with how our culture is running kids ragged with constant structured activity, both at intense, high-pressure schools in extracurriculars that can be just as demanding. The families she sees are often so busy that parents can’t be emotionally present for their children–and it shows. She shares cases of kids who are crushed by anxiety or act out by abusing drugs, drinking, etc.–sparked by a frenetic lifestyle that well-intentioned parents have planned for them.

“Our children are increasingly deprived of many of the protective factors that have traditionally accompanied childhood–limited performance pressure, unstructured play, encouragement to explore, time to reflect,” she writes.

Dr. Levine encourages parents to push for changes in our educational system to lessen the pressure on kids and also to rethink the choices they make on behalf of their children. “Your child’s `self’ is not lost or hiding, waiting for you to flush it out…” she writes. “Your child develops a sense of self not simply because you’ve paid attention to and cultivated every interest your child has.” Children also need time to be part of a community where they have an opportunity for “meaningful contribution and connection with others,” she says.

Dr. Levine has been surprised by the size of the audiences that have come to hear her speak, and by how receptive parents are to her, but I’m not. It’s hard to say no to activities that seem like they will be a great experience for your children. Many parents are having a hard time with this.

One of the benefits of freelancing is being able to be available to our kids during the day. But as Dr. Levine points out, there’s a difference between being ready to chauffeur them to yet another drop-off activity and taking times to do things as a family. She suggests a more balanced mix of both–and it’s a good reminder, with school getting underway.

 

 

 

 

 

Reviews, The Lifestyle, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted on August 27, 2012 by Elaine Pofeldt 1 Comment

Writing Ebooks: A Crash Course

Recently, I discovered a terrific new Writer’s Digest ebook, The $1,000 Query Letter: Real Queries That Helped Land Dream Contracts and Assignments, when author Diana Bocco, interviewed me about how I pitched Money magazine. The book, which sprung from an article she wrote for Writer’s Digest magazine, offers actual pitches used in a wide variety of niches–from magazines to horror novels and literary fiction–to sell projects, and interviews with the queries’ authors. We all know how much agonizing can go into pitching, so I found it very useful to get a glimpse at the thinking process that went into each missive, especially in genres I’d like to try.

Diana has written a number of other ebook titles, including some self-published ones, in addition to contributing to many publications on topics such as travel and health and wellness. Among her ebook titles: How They Did It: 25 bloggers, authors and writers share all their secrets about earning a living and how you can do it to, The Ten Habits of Successful Writers, and Vegetarian New York City. She’s also written the horror titles Don’t Turn the Lights On, and The Bleeding Trees.

I was curious about how she writes ebooks–and know that many of you are, too–and she was nice enough to do an email interview from Thailand, where she’s living as an expat. Whether you’re a professional writer or an expert in your field who wants to make some money by publishing an ebook on what you know, Diana’s advice will save you a lot of research time.

How did you get into publishing ebooks? And how did your pitch to Writer’s Digest morph from an article to an ebook?

I’ve always been interested in ebooks. In fact, I teach an online workshop on how to write and publish ebooks. When you travel a lot, you can’t really afford to cart books around everywhere, so my Kindle became my best friend.
The transition from the WD article to an ebook felt really natural for me. Once I started interviewing writers and reading their query letters, I realized they had a lot more to say than I could fit in an article. I thought, “Hey, this would make a great ebook!” And that was it. I’m always coming up with new ideas for ebooks. I actually keep a list of ebook ideas. Last time I checked, I had over 40 titles waiting to be written!

How did you learn how to prepare ebooks? How much time does it take, all told, to write and format an ebook?

I’m a fast writer. My first drafts tend to be very clean and I usually don’t have to do a lot of rewriting/editing to get the ebooks (or my articles) where I want them to be. I do have an editor/proofreader who goes over the copy to make sure I haven’t missed anything. Formatting is a breeze. There are actually a number of programs, such as Calibre and Mobipocket, that you can use to format your ebooks. Takes seconds to do it.

How did you get professional covers designed? And how much does that usually cost.

You can find cover designers for all kinds of prices. Anywhere from $25 to over $500. Googling “ebook cover design” will get you lots of potential options. Another route (especially for fiction) is going over to Deviant Art and finding a piece of art you like, then contacting the artist to see if you can agree on a price. For simple covers, you can get a picture from istockphoto.com and use that. A couple of my covers cost just a few dollars to produce because I found the right (read: cheap) images.

What ebooks platform do you prefer?
I only self-publish through Amazon. This is because I enroll my ebooks in their Kindle Select program, which requires exclusivity. In exchange, you get a number of perks that help increase your visibility and sales. I know other writers choose not to be part of Select and also publish through Smashwords and other platforms, but my experience with Select has been great, so I’m staying with them for now.

What is the difference for you, financially, when you work with an established publisher for an ebook and when you self publish it?
I actually make a lot more money with my self-published ebooks. With Amazon, you receive 70 percent of your cover price as royalties. Ebook publishers usually pay 40 percent royalties. [Editor’s note: Bocco’s ebooks sell for $2.99 a download on Amazon].

Of course, if you’re going to self-publish, you need to do it right: get a professional cover, pay an editor, set up a nice website to help you promote your books. When you self-publish, you have to embrace all the roles: writer, publisher, publicist. If you’re willing to do that, then the results can be great.

I still work with established publishers because you can reach a different type of audience. I think it makes sense to combine both options, because they each offer different benefits.

What should would-be ebook writers know about publicizing their work? What strategies have worked for you?

The best way to sell more ebooks? Write another one. Seriously. The more ebooks you have out there, the more you will sell. Sure, you can spend some time spreading the word, writing guest posts, talking about your ebook. But nothing works better than publishing more ebooks because this causes a sort of snowball effect. Readers who discover one of your ebooks will buy others. And the more ebooks you have out there, the more chances readers will discover you. I know writers who are putting out 20-30 short ebooks a year. It sounds like a lot, but it’s very doable once you find your rhythm.

 

Growing Your Business, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted on August 23, 2012 by admin Leave a comment

Surprise Winner: Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’

When I asked my writing group for recommendations of great books about writing, I was surprised to hear them say Stephen King’s On Writing. Here’s a blog post that excerpts the book, which I downloaded on to my Nook and have begun to read.

Let me start by saying that I read a lot of Stephen King when I was a teen-ager — and haven’t read much of him since. When I had children, my taste for fear declined radically. After I went to graduate school for an MFA, I started reading what most people would call literature and eschewed popular fiction. King’s little book is a reminder of how seriously every kind of writer should take his or her craft.

The part of the book that I’ve come to so far, after an hour or so of reading, is about the toolbox. He identifies four levels.

• Vocabulary and grammar go on the top shelf. “One either absorbs the grammatical principles of one’s native language in conversation and in reading, or one does not,” King writes, making me feel happy. I remember being befuddled by my English teacher’s insistence on diagramming, and still to this day when people ask me a grammar question I just say, “Well, it sounds right.”

• He also includes this wonderful paragraph: “Adverbs are not your friends. … I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs and I will shout it from the rooftops. To put it another way, they’re like dandelions. If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day … fifty after that … and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, completely and profligately covered with dandelions.”

• Elements of style form the next layer of the toolbox — and King is a big fan of Strunk and White (What professional writer isn’t?). “Use no unnecessary words.”… Remember that simple rule?

• Then King waxes on about sentences and paragraphs … the latter being, he says, the basic form of composition. They are the bottom of the toolbox. “Topic sentence followed by support and description insists that the writer organize his/her thoughts, and it also provides good insurance against wandering away from the topic. … Writing is refined thinking.”

 

Growing Your Business, The Lifestyle, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted on August 22, 2012 by admin 2 Comments

Best Apps For Freelancers (It’s Not Just About Google)

Last week, BestVendor, a review site that looks pretty interesting, released an infographic that shows some of the most popular apps for freelancers. Venturebeat covered the release here.

Some of the results were predictable. In a survey of 97 freelancers, the company found that various Google apps made seven appearances in the top 25 — Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Analytics. (I don’t know about anybody else, but I find most Google apps to be blunt tools. Google Calendar is OK, but it has more functionality than I actually need. I prefer the streamlined Apple iCalendar that came on my Mac. Likewise, Google Analytics is incredibly powerful … but there are other, simpler traffic analytics services that have served my purposes better. We use Jetpack here at $200kfreelancer).

There were a handful of interesting apps on the list, though, including Dropbox, which Elaine and I have used for several years, as well as Evernote, which I would love to try.

Please let us know if you have any favorite apps. And here’s a previous post on a trick with Gmail that I found really useful: A Killer Work Habit That Is Easy To Adopt.

Growing Your Business, Reviews, Uncategorized , , , , , , , ,
Posted on August 20, 2012 by admin Leave a comment

99 Weeks of …. Insanity

The New York Times just ran a cover story called “Long-Term Jobless Regroup to Fight the Odds,” looking at how a group of employment-seeking professionals in California, have been gathering weekly in a group called Experience Unlimited to stay motivated to apply for jobs.

The article discusses the ego-battering the folks in the group have suffered in sending out resumes and getting rejected. One man estimates he sent out around 1,600 resumes since he lost his accounting job.

Their situation is pretty desperate. Some folks have seen their unemployment run out or are about to lose it.

The story notes how, recently, the human resources manager of a big home improvement chain came to encourage these former accountants, marketers and other seasoned professionals to apply for roughly $12-an-hour jobs on the sales floor.

Is this what it’s come to?

These highly-qualified folks don’t belong in an entry level job selling plywood and bird feeders. They’re serious professionals, who are committed to finding work and motivated enough to show up to this group week after week.

Why aren’t programs for the jobless helping them to cash in on their skills through self-employment? Why can’t these programs break out of the mindset that for legions of people, getting a traditional, well-paying job with benefits is the only viable route to reentering the work force?

While unemployment programs do offer some help to those who want to start a business, it can take a lot of research to find out about such programs. Many people don’t even know they exist. The jobless persist in fruitless activities like sending out resume after resume, because they don’t really know any other way out of their predicament. Self-employment is a big unknown, so they don’t consider it. It’s hard to gather specifics, like what healthcare coverage will cost on the open market.

The professions of the people mentioned in this article–who also included engineers, teachers, social workers and purchasing managers–all involve skills that can be sold on a freelance or consulting basis. For instance, teachers can become tutors. In fact, the Times just wrote about tutors to children of the wealthy who earn $300 an hour. Why aren’t options like these being promoted?

It takes a lot of discipline and can-do spirit to send out 1,600 resumes. Imagine if that energy were directed to where the opportunities really are for seasoned professionals in many fields: in freelance, consulting and contingent work?

Many people earn six-figure incomes and beyond in freelancing and self-employment, and it’s possible for them to pay for healthcare out of their earnings. There’s no age penalty in freelancing, as there is in corporate America.

We’re here to offer an alternative to the rut of unemployment. If you don’t have a job but have valuable skills, you don’t have to wait for a boss to finally spot your talent. You can start freelancing today. It’s better for your self-esteem than being on unemployment. It can lead to valuable contacts and possibly a job, if that’s what you want in the long run. And we’re here to tell you that you can make as much as you did in your corporate career if you apply the same energy and discipline to it.

It’s sheer craziness for our employment system to leave highly capable people suffering on the sidelines for years when they have so much to contribute–simply because self-employment is treated like a second-class option or ignored outright.

Making the Break, Uncategorized , , , , , ,
Posted on August 17, 2012 by Elaine Pofeldt Leave a comment