One of my undergraduate degrees is in women's studies. I've been a feminist since about 8th grade, and though my understanding of feminism and exact location on the spectrum has changed, my basic position has not. Women and men are not equal, and it is my obligation to fight for changes to the gender structure in our society.
With that said, my new writing is focused on gender issues. My first goal is to work on a full project I'm short-handing the "Gender Studies Project." Well, maybe that's not really short-hand, but you get the idea.
The project has 4 parts:
1. I'm revising and re-releasing a booklet I wrote in 2006 called 101 Careers in Gender Studies.
2. I'm putting together a website for gender studies majors.
3. I'm working on a graduate school directory for women's studies.
4. I'm putting the booklet and other information along with some statistics into a book proposal.
Yesterday I located 4 potential publishers for the book. Work on the proposal will take a bit of time, but I will be doing it in the next month.
I also worked on the website and getting it planned out. Today's project is to start on the articles. I can hardly wait!
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
New Writing Career Starting Today
My writing career has been on a spiral downward for the past year or so. I've been unable to commit myself for the past six months to a legitimate plan for content writing. Today I'm starting my new writing career. To make sense of it all, allow me the chance to give you some background.
I started writing in college where I worked as an editor for the university paper and wrote a few disparate pieces for a local newspaper. After college, I became a general assignment reporter. If you're unfamiliar with newspaper reporting, let me share a secret with you. "General assignment" is a euphemism for "junk stories no one else wants." I was a "community reporter," so I did get some juicy stories in here and there. Mostly, though, I covered stories about Jane winning a cello competition or Bob leading the city council to rename a boulevard after a fallen soldier. These stories grew old - quickly. I lived for the few nuggets of good stories I could find - the school district working for a levy only to consider buying Palm Pilots for studies, the disputed election for the Ohio legislature. I even enjoyed the high schooler who ran a dog-breeding business. He was a sweet kid, and yes, I did tear up when he said that he'd gotten into working with dogs because it gave him time with his dad, and that was very important to him.
Still I found myself longing for something more.
In June 2004, I left my excellently-decorated cubicle to pursue freelance writing. I thought I would have the glam life. I realize now I wasn't prepared for freelancing. Not. At. All. Within a few months, I realized that I needed to make money faster than what was happening with magazine writing. The couple of acceptances I'd gotten really weren't going to sustain us.
I found a job through a relative working on web writing. The man I worked for paid quickly and had few demands. He was impressed with my writing. I realize now that was because I was selling myself short in writing for the crummy pay web content offers.
Over the next 3.5 years, I worked on web content writing. Some jobs paid much more than others. I worked my way up, landing writing gigs with companies known for treating their writers well.
Last November, though, I started to melt down. I lost a job I'd wanted. It is a coveted writing job in web content. I just couldn't do it anymore. I think the awareness that this company - this ULTIMATE WEB WRITING JOB - still paid so little for my time hit me hard. I would always have to produce content constantly to get anywhere writing web content. The only answer would be generating passive income, which I didn't have time to do because I was so busy writing about sports-themed credit cards and Viagra and the symptoms of fibromyalgia.
Since January, I've been struggling everyday with producing enough web content to justify calling myself a "writer." It's gotten tougher each day.
Then last week I got the flu. Let's just call that the wakeup call. The stress and worry and feeling like a failure all came together with a 102-degree fever and terrible body aches. When I couldn't work, I got farther and farther behind. There *are* no sick days for the work I do. There's no way to make up work. Editors breathe down your neck when you're 24 hours late, even if you tell them you're going to be because of the illness. Of course, when you only have 48 hours to complete work to begin with, 24 hours seems like a much longer time to those "editors."
So after a lot of anguishing discussions with my sounding board...er, husband...I decided to quit writing web content to pursue writing about politics, specifically gender issues.
It's been a long time since I've written about anything serious - and even longer since I've researched and written about topics that are my passion. But damn, it feels good.
I started writing in college where I worked as an editor for the university paper and wrote a few disparate pieces for a local newspaper. After college, I became a general assignment reporter. If you're unfamiliar with newspaper reporting, let me share a secret with you. "General assignment" is a euphemism for "junk stories no one else wants." I was a "community reporter," so I did get some juicy stories in here and there. Mostly, though, I covered stories about Jane winning a cello competition or Bob leading the city council to rename a boulevard after a fallen soldier. These stories grew old - quickly. I lived for the few nuggets of good stories I could find - the school district working for a levy only to consider buying Palm Pilots for studies, the disputed election for the Ohio legislature. I even enjoyed the high schooler who ran a dog-breeding business. He was a sweet kid, and yes, I did tear up when he said that he'd gotten into working with dogs because it gave him time with his dad, and that was very important to him.
Still I found myself longing for something more.
In June 2004, I left my excellently-decorated cubicle to pursue freelance writing. I thought I would have the glam life. I realize now I wasn't prepared for freelancing. Not. At. All. Within a few months, I realized that I needed to make money faster than what was happening with magazine writing. The couple of acceptances I'd gotten really weren't going to sustain us.
I found a job through a relative working on web writing. The man I worked for paid quickly and had few demands. He was impressed with my writing. I realize now that was because I was selling myself short in writing for the crummy pay web content offers.
Over the next 3.5 years, I worked on web content writing. Some jobs paid much more than others. I worked my way up, landing writing gigs with companies known for treating their writers well.
Last November, though, I started to melt down. I lost a job I'd wanted. It is a coveted writing job in web content. I just couldn't do it anymore. I think the awareness that this company - this ULTIMATE WEB WRITING JOB - still paid so little for my time hit me hard. I would always have to produce content constantly to get anywhere writing web content. The only answer would be generating passive income, which I didn't have time to do because I was so busy writing about sports-themed credit cards and Viagra and the symptoms of fibromyalgia.
Since January, I've been struggling everyday with producing enough web content to justify calling myself a "writer." It's gotten tougher each day.
Then last week I got the flu. Let's just call that the wakeup call. The stress and worry and feeling like a failure all came together with a 102-degree fever and terrible body aches. When I couldn't work, I got farther and farther behind. There *are* no sick days for the work I do. There's no way to make up work. Editors breathe down your neck when you're 24 hours late, even if you tell them you're going to be because of the illness. Of course, when you only have 48 hours to complete work to begin with, 24 hours seems like a much longer time to those "editors."
So after a lot of anguishing discussions with my sounding board...er, husband...I decided to quit writing web content to pursue writing about politics, specifically gender issues.
It's been a long time since I've written about anything serious - and even longer since I've researched and written about topics that are my passion. But damn, it feels good.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)