May 17, 2012

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The Urban Muse’s Top 10 Blog Posts for 2009

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Many of you are enjoying time off this week rather than reading my blog. For those of you who are reading, I’d love to give you a medal or something for your devotion.

But that’s not really practical, so here’s the obligatory end of year round-up. These are based on a combination of factors (number of comments, popularity based on site stats, and my own personal preferences as Blogger-in-Chief) and are listed in no particular order.

  1. Musings from the Past Year of Freelancing
  2. Maximizing Your Freelance Income
  3. The Paradox of Personal Essays
  4. 15 Reasons Your Idea Got Rejected (and How to Fix It)
  5. Writing Lessons from Charlotte’s Web
  6. 5 Excuses That Undermine Writing Success
  7. All About Email Week (actually 5 posts for the price of one!)
  8. 10 Things to Tweet About
  9. I Said, He Said, We Said
  10. 5 Low-Cost Ways to Market Your Freelance Business

Bonus! The list above does not include open threads or guest posts, so clicking those links will uncover even more fabulous advice for freelancers. Enjoy!

Filed Under: announcements

‘Twas the Night Before Deadline…

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‘Twas the night before deadline and all through the ‘net,
Lots of writers were typing, except for Suzette.
All her research was saved on her laptop with care
In hope that inspiring thoughts would be there.

Suzette sat there yearning for pillow and bed,
while nightmarish worries all danced in her head.
Her MacBook and iPhone sat mute in her lap,
and every attempt she dismissed as, well, crap.

When all of the sudden, a voice rang out, “Hey!
‘Tis Mindy, your muse. Why this sad, mopey way?”
Suzette told her muse she had bad writer’s block,
So they sat down together and worked through the plot.

Each sentence had substance, each phrase was just right,
Each character quirk made her novel take flight.
Suzette thanked her muse, who proclaimed with a wink,
“You’re welcome, Suzette, but you just had to think.”

“See, writing is tough. It takes disclipline, too,
But all of these words were inside of you.
Remember, Suzette, don’t lose hope or your drive,
Keep typing away, bringing stories alive.”


Flickr photo courtesy of tsuacctnt

Filed Under: holiday, inspiration, parody, writing

Guest Post: Getting Personal with Essay Subjects

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By Meredith Resnick

Before I began writing professionally, I was a therapist. (I hold a license in clinical social work.) Therapists are dedicated to confidentiality—protecting the privacy of clients and patients, individuals who trust you with personal details of their lives.

So how do I reconcile writing essays that include people I care about so that they will feel comfortable reading them—and I will feel okay if they read them, too?

How do I maintain others’ privacy as I write about finding my own truth and a larger universal truth, especially when those people I mention in the essay helped me find it?

Here are my guidelines.

Keep the focus on myself. Having this ground rule has given me more freedom to write than I ever could have imagined. I’m a work in progress—they’ll always be plenty to discover and improve about me, so I’m guaranteed never running out of material. I focus on myself, on the lessons I learned—about me.

Grasp the deeper meaning and higher purpose of “The Essay.” After studying the personal essay with masters like Lori Gottlieb, Andrea King Collier and Beth Levine, this is the [somewhat] distilled definition of the personal essay I live by, based on what I learned from them (prepare for a long sentence!): It’s a true story that utilizes select personal details from my life, to reveal a lesson I learned that deepened my understanding of myself, that proceeds to reveal a greater, wider universal truth beyond me. So, it’s about me, but it’s also not about me (that’s the universal truth part).

No gossip. I don’t “write” behind someone’s back meaning I don’t reveal personal details, confidences, etc that could be humiliating or just too tender or raw, no matter how compelling.

Specifics about me; generalities about them. If I’m going to write an expose, it should be about me, not them.

Ask myself: Is this my story?

View the other person as a gift that contributed to my insight. I might not have learned a lesson or reality about myself had this person not been in my life. Keep the focus on that and handle that “gift giver” gently. For me, this goes for a person living or deceased.

The relationship comes first. I place the relationship, rather than the story of the relationship, as the priority.

Tell my story, not theirs. This means when I’m writing something that includes my kids, my husband, my friend, I do my very best to frame the anecdote to reveal how they enabled/allowed/encouraged me (whether they realized it or not) to find my truth.

The discomfort test. If a person mentioned in the essay reads the essay, the only reason I would want to feel discomfort would be with what I reveal about myself—not what I mention about them.

Lay-my-head-on-the-pillow test. If a piece I’m writing is causing me so much anxiety and fear that I can’t sleep, I put it aside and reevaluate in a day, week, month or year. Sometimes I’m anxious because I’m working the meaning of a situation out, other times I’m anxious because I know in my gut that the personal essay or memoir format is not an option for a particular story, because the details about someone else are way too personal. (Which is why I’m just beginning to figure out what fiction writing is all about!)

What are your guidelines?

Meredith Resnick’s essays have appeared in Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, JAMA, The Complete Book of Aunts and many others publications. She the author of Adoption Stories at Psychology Today and the Older Parents column, coming soon to The Faster Times. She is the creator of The Writer’s [Inner] Journey.

Filed Under: guest post, personal essays

Open Thread: Does Gender Matter to Freelance Clients?

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A lot has changed since the nineteenth century, when women like Mary Ann Evans (aka George Eliot) and the Brontë sisters published under pen names. Or has it?

The recent revelation that “James Chartrand” of Men with Pens is actually a women has the blogosphere abuzz with questions. In her Copyblogger confessional, the blogger formerly known as James Chartrand says she chose to apply for writing gigs with a male name, because she had a higher rate of success with prospective clients. J.K. Rowling employed a similar tactic, but her choice of name was a bit more vague.

Now, I’ve been pretty darn successful using my real name, but it makes me wonder if I would have achieved even higher levels of success under another name/gender. I’m guessing not, because while “James” conducts business exclusively through email (ostensibly for productivity’s sake, but probably also to conceal her real identity), I can’t. I’d like to, but many of my clients insist on phone calls to nail down details and many of my articles require phone interviews so I can capture voice inflection and other attributes of my subjects. Plus, while “James” blogs with a bit of a macho swagger (very convincing, I might add), my sassy writing style is part of my own appeal.

But getting back to the bigger picture, I don’t fault “James” for doing what she felt she needed to do to support herself and her children. It saddens me to think that she felt the sting of gender discrimination so strongly that she needed to deceive her clients and readers. And it reminds me that when you’re reading a blog, even one where the writer seems friendly, collegial, and thoroughly honest, you just never know who that person really is. Not that she’s the first blogger to do this, but maintaining an alter ego like that must have been challenging at times (both logistically and emotionally). On the other hand, it gives me even more respect for “James,” because she’s clearly a very talented and versatile writer.

What do you think? Would you be more successful if clients thought you were man? Would it be worth the struggle to conceal your identify? Men, what do you think of all this?

Filed Under: gender, musings on writing, open thread
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