WritingThoughts

I love the way Jennifer Mattern has merged SixFigureWriters.com and AllFreelanceWritingJobs.com to form this great new blog, All Freelance Writing. (Update September 2014: All Freelance Writing is now part of All Indie Writers. It is still an excellent resource.)

The new, combined blog has just the right balance between information for new writers, job leads, and tips for working writers (see Portfolio Tips for Freelance Writers).

All Freelance Writing is a terrific writer’s resource to add to your list of bookmarked sites. I know that I’ll be turning to All Freelance Writing as a resource for months to come.

Note: If you’re consistently posting great information and haven’t seen your blog featured in Of Note yet, I apologize. I’ll probably find you soon. I know there are a lot of great blogs out there; I discover more new ones each day. (So many blogs, so little time.)

Contents (c) Copyright 2007, Laura Spencer. All rights reserved

Today’s WAHM Wednesday is dedicated to my memories of a former coworker who, when hearing that someone had taken their work home and was not coming into the office on that particular day, would snicker and say:

“I hope that they enjoy their day off.”

I believe that it’s attitudes like hers that have kept many companies from adopting more liberal telecommuting policies, despite the fact that telecommuting saves companies money.

My own feelings about the subject is that work is work, whether it is done from home or in an office building. In fact, from my perspective, working from home has the potential to be more efficient than working in an office. (There’s certainly less absenteeism!)

What’s your take? Do you think it’s more efficient to work from an office, or out of your house? Where do you get more done?

Contents (c) Copyright 2007, Laura Spencer. All rights reserved.

I thought I’d take some today to answer some frequently asked questions about WritingThoughts. Some of these questions I’ve gotten e-mails about, others have appeared in past comments.

FAQ 1: Are you available for writing projects?

Answer: You can view my terms on this page or contact me directly for a free, customized proposal at the following e-mail address: laura [at symbol] writingthoughts [dot] com.

FAQ 2: Does your site accept advertising?

Answer: Yes. There are a limited number of advertising slots available for family-friendly advertisers. Placing an ad on WritingThoughts can be an excellent way to get your message in front of a diverse group of freelancer writers and work-at-home moms.

FAQ 3: Do you do paid product reviews?

Answer: Yes. WritingThoughts does a limited number of paid product reviews each month for products that fit into the theme of the site. Each review is disclosed per my disclosure policy. If you are interested in hiring me to do a paid product review you may contact me at the e-mail address listed above.

FAQ 4: Why don’t you post more often?

Answer: I would love to post more often, but right now I’m a working writer with two growing kids to feed. Family and paying jobs come first. I haven’t yet broken even from my blogging, but I hope to soon.

FAQ 5: How did you get your start as a writer?

Answer: It’s difficult to say exactly when I began writing since, to some extent, I’ve always written. I would say that my interest in writing as a career probably began when I was asked to edit my college newspaper. After college I was hired as a marketing writer and then I worked as a technical writer.

FAQ 6: I tagged you for a meme, but you haven’t responded. Why not?

Answer: I love to get tagged for memes, but I can’t always fit them into my schedule (see FAQ 4). Although they are fun to participate in, some memes take a surprising amount of work. In addition, I like to balance the fun content on my blog with more meaty anchor-type pieces. Finally, since Google may penalize such posts, I don’t participate in “train-type” memes that end up as nothing more than huge lists (over 50) of links.

I hope this helped!

Contents (c) Copyright 2007, Laura Spencer. All rights reserved

I remember when my first (and at that time only) child was a toddler (not quite three years old) and my husband and I decided to go on a beach vacation.

I carefully packed her things, including the bag with a change of clothes and a couple of toys. We ate a good breakfast, loaded her into the carseat (where she promptly feel asleep), and got an early start driving to the beach.

All was calm and quiet for a few hours. My husband and I talked, listened to the radio, and generally looked forward to our much-needed break from work.

At nine a.m. it was like a switch went off. Our daughter awoke.

“I’m hungry,” she said. “I wanna eat.”

Had I remembered to pack her a mid-morning snack? No, I had not.

Five minutes later. “Time to eat yet?”

“Not quite yet, honey,” try to wait.

Two minutes later. “Mommy, I’m hungry.”

Did I mention where we were at this point on time?

Yes, not only were we in the car, but we were driving on a fairly desolate stretch of highway out in the middle of “nowhere.” There was not a convenience store, not a grocery store, no fast food restaurants, nothing that sold food in sight — just miles and miles of empty highway.

Not even a minute later, starting to sob, “I wanna eat now, I want something to eat.”

She’s screaming now: “MOMMY, THIS IS THE WORST DAY OF MY LIFE!!” (This from a toddler who is not yet three years old.)

We finally did come to a small town with a mom and pop hamburger stand and you’d better believe that we stopped.

I’m sure the wait staff wondered about the weird out-of towners who stopped and ordered burgers at ten a.m. in the morning.

Have I ever forgotten to pack a snack on a roadtrip with the kids since that time? You’d better believe that I have not. To this day we always travel with a well-stocked car.

This has been an entry into Lillie Amman’s It’s Funny Now group writing project AND the Family Vacation group writing project at Babylune. I hope you’ve enjoyed it!

Contents (c) Copyright 2007, Laura Spencer. All rights reserved.

At the beginning of the summer I asked, what are your summer plans? Now that the kids are headed back to school, I’d like to ask the same thing. What are your plans?

Just like there were options for WAHMs at the beginning of the summer, I see several options as the kids head back to school:

• Business as usual
• Gear up
• Slow down

Business as Usual

These WAHMs keep their work schedule constant throughout the year, perhaps using childcare during the summer months. Because they didn’t slow down during the summer, there’s no need to gear up now. Or, perhaps the kids are too little to go to school, so back-to-school doesn’t mean a schedule change for the family.

Gear Up

Now that the kids are back in school, these WAHMs will be going at full speed with their businesses. Having the kids at school allows you to have several more hours of work time each day, and you plan to use every minute of it!

Slow Down

You’re a homeschool mom or a student yourself. Now that classes have started again, you’re busier than ever. You plan to slow your business down and take on fewer assignments so that you can get it all done.

How about you? How are you affected by back-to-school?

Contents (c) Copyright 2007, Laura Spencer. All rights reserved.

One of my pet peeves is when words are used wrongly. I’m not talking about spelling errors or improper grammar, although that can also be annoying.

What I am talking about is words that are used in ways that they should not be used. Some examples of words, wrongly used include:

1. Words that are used to deceive.
2. Words that are used to hurt others.

Do you have some examples of words, wrongly used? Leave a comment and let me know.

Contents (c) Copyright 2007, Laura Spencer. All rights reserved.

Today’s “Of Note” blog is Get Paid to Write Online by Sharon Hurley Hall. The blog’s banner proclaims it to be the ” The Freelance Writing Mentoring Blog,” and it is surely that. Sharon has packed the blog full with tips for writers and aspiring writers.

Great posts for writers and aspiring writers this past week include:

• My Writing Calendar
• Inspired Author Relaunches
• How Have You Promoted Your Writing Today?

If you’re already a regular visitor of Get Paid to Write Online, then I’m sure you’ll agree with me that the blog is both interesting and helpful. If Sharon’s blog is new to you, then you’ll want to make it a regular part of your reading.

Note: If you’re consistently posting great information and haven’t seen your blog featured in Of Note yet, I apologize. I’ll probably find you soon. I know there are a lot of great blogs out there; I discover more new ones each day. (So many blogs, so little time.)

Contents (c) Copyright 2007, Laura Spencer. All rights reserved.

Yvonne at Grow Your Writing Business has tagged me for the recycling meme. This is a meme that started at William Tully’s Logical emotions blog.

Since it’s a sleepy Friday morning (well, actually it is Thursday night), today seems like the perfect day for it. (I’ll cross my fingers and hope my links work since I’m posting in advance.)

I am supposed to gather together ten posts that give a picture of WritingThoughts. It took me a while to pick out the one that I feel are most representative of the site, but here is what I’ve come up with:

• Ten Reasons Why You Should Hire a Professional Writer
• Harvesting Ideas from Everyday Life
• What Kind of Writer are You?
• Do You Write to be Paid?
• So You Want to be a Professional Blogger?
• I’m Baking a Blogging Cake
• Don’t Be A Stranger: Five Reasons Why You Should Leave A Comment
• Five Proofreading Tips That You Can Use Right Now By Yourself
• For Those Who Have Served and Sacrificed
• A Country Founded On Words

I hope you’ve enjoyed my recycled entries. The next step is the fun one. I get to pick five bloggers to pass the meme on to. Before I do that I’d better share the rules:

1. Limit your list to 10 posts or less.
2. Take your time.
3. Link to where this meme first started.
4. Link to this post.
5. Tag five folks.

I’m going to tag five recent commentators. The lucky taggees are:

• Charity at All Things Hold Together
• Robert at Middle Zone Musings
• Mary Emma at Home Biz Notes
• Joanna at Confident Writing
• Courtney at Web Writing Info

Contents (c) Copyright 2007, Laura Spencer. All rights reserved.

It never fails. The best ideas for stories, articles, and blog posts come at a time when you are completely unable to make a note of them, much less follow through on them.

Maybe you’re driving down the highway at 60 miles an hour and something that you see along the road triggers a great idea for a story. Or, you’re in a concert hall, movie theater, or even in church, and you think of something to write about. Naturally, you don’t have a notepad on you to write your idea down.

Then, when it comes time to write, you can’t think of anything to write about. You know that you had a good idea yesterday but you can’t really remember it.

What do you do when you think of a great idea and you can’t jot it down? I used to get really frustrated whenever this happened until I discovered a way to hold onto those great ideas.

A friend of ours commented that he could memorize the essence of anything if he studied it three times. Since I’ve always been good at memorizing details for tests, I decided to use his technique to hold onto those stray ideas.

For the past few months, whenever a stray idea for a post or article pops into my head, I mentally study it the way that I used to memorize facts for a test. Basically, it works like this — I mentally repeat the idea to myself about five times. I include any details that I think will help me to remember the idea.

It works like a charm! In fact, I had the idea for this post a few weeks ago as I was driving. (As a mom, I find myself driving a lot.) I never wrote the idea down and I’ve had no trouble remembering it during the weeks between when I thought of it and now.

Best of all, I can use this technique while I’m doing something else.  Of course, I do often jot ideas down on paper or in Notepad on my computer if it’s convenient to do so.

What about you? How do you hold onto your inspiration?

Contents (c) Copyright 2007, Laura Spencer. All rights reserved.

That’s right! I’m blogging over at Principled Discovery this week while the blog’s owner goes on vacation. The Principled Discovery blog focuses on education and homeschooling.

Here’s a link to my posts over there (I’ll add a link to each post as it is published):

• Introduction
• Part 1
• Part 2

The topic of my guest posts will be earning money from freelance writing. I hope you’ll stop by and say “hello.”