Off to Austin, See You There!

I fly out to Austin for SXSW tomorrow, a day early, but then the craziness starts in earnest soon after. Heading down? Hit me up on Twitter and maybe we’ll meet up. I wasn’t super excited about a lot of the proposed panels at first, but with a little digging I’ve found a significant number … Continue Reading

Testing MacJournal

I’m testing out MacJournal, from Mariner Software. It’s an offline blog editing client that works with WordPress and a few other blog hosts. I’m told that it even works with WordPress.com (i.e., you don’t have to have a self-hosted blog to use the client.) The software is a hefty $40, but there’s a 15-day free … Continue Reading

Coding, coding, and more coding

I’ve finally gotten my website to a state where I’m happy with it..for now, though in a few months I’m sure the renovation bug will hit me again. Some people buy new curtains, I play with style sheets. It does give me satisfaction to use that side of my brain, which isn’t always taxed (or … Continue Reading

Freelance Ethics Part 2

I had the opportunity earlier this month to be a panelist at the Vocus User Conference here in Washington DC. All the flacks wanted to hear what the Future of Media looks like from a freelance perspective…and out of all the freelancers in the DC area, they chose me. I’m humbled. I’ll be honest with … Continue Reading

Social Media Success

As some of you already know, this year I’m making the transition from “writer, editor, and blogger” to “writer, editor, blogger, and author. That’s right. I am gonna sell a book this year, darn it! As part of that goal, I’ve added a bunch of agent blogs and writing blogs to my RSS reader, figuring … Continue Reading

Nanowrimo 2009

That’s right, folks, I’ve finished Nanowrimo 2009 with a steampunk story starring the spunkiest wrench wench ever to walk the streets of New Bombay. Considering the speed at which I churned out either 50,419 words or 50,093 words (depending on whether you believe Nanowrimo’s word counter or Scrivener‘s), I’m actually happy with the way the … Continue Reading

Story outlining tips

This post came my way courtesy of the hive mind (Delicious popular bookmarks) and it was worth a mention: how to outline a big piece. Meranda of Meranda Writes posts her outlining method here. It’s analog and oldschool, but effective…she writes each “fact” on a post-it note sliver and rearranges. I did something like this … Continue Reading

Products Versus Services

I’ve “read” (skimmed) two books in the last few days: Be The Media and The Four-Hour Workweek. They’ve gotten me thinking about quite a few things. Despite the totally different audiences and topics, the books are fundamentally about the same thing: You, you brilliant snowflake you, can break out of the molds The Man’s put … Continue Reading

Journalism Ethics: Who’s Paid By Whom?

I thought this piece from Edward Wasserman at the Society of American Business Writers and Editors was very pertinent to today’s world. In essence, he says, today’s journalism comes from interested citizens, freelancers who may do other, non-journalism writing on the side, and writers funded by direct advertising, grants, or some other model. In other … Continue Reading