%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 |
How once woman went from being a SAHM of four to a published freelance science journalist |
|
I'm revising this intro after more than 15 years to better reflect my intention When I started this blog in 2004, I was a stay at home mom to two small children, a college graduate with a degree in English and Astrophysics. By 2007, I had four small children, ages newborn, 2, 4, and 6. For several years, Writing.com was how I kept my sanity. This blog began, first as a way of staying connected. Later, when I worked on a novel, I used it to stoke the writing fires as I plotted out short stories and the next step of my novel. Ultimately, I moved my writing preparation to "Invalid Item"  In 2010, I became a single mom who had homeschooled her children for several years. I had a 2, 4, 6 and 8 year old and had never had a "real" full time job, since I was married while in college. Everyone told me that I would have to buckle down and take on a "real" job. Instead, I decided to attempt to live my dream: to make it as a writer. I knew that if I didn't try then, I would never really dive in. I counted my money and set a deadline. If I hadn't began making a decent (defined) amount of money after so many months, I would suck it up and get a J-O-B. After some thought, I decided to play to my strengths. I served an internship at Sky & Telescope magazine while in college and enjoyed writing about space and astronomy. With an astrophysics degree, I thought I would be able to sell myself more easily, and a small niche should be easier to penetrate. It's been about ten years since I was first paid for an article on Space.com. In that time, writing - journalism - has been my primary moneymaker. I've often thought about setting up a blog on my website - www.astrowriter.com - but just haven't gotten around to it. There are a few things I would like to share for those who are interested in scientific journalism in general. Now that I'm back on WDC, there's no reason not to combine the two and use the site blog for that sort of interaction. There are certainly plenty of folks on this site interested in the publication process. So while I'll probably meander around some, that's the intention of of this blog: to share some of my struggles as a published journalist and to help answer oft-asked questions. |
| I know, I am terribly slack, and this will be a short essay, itself. However, I have been writing fairly steadily in the evil 'other blog', up until this weekend (which I took off to plan and orchestrate my daughter's fifth birthday party). I think I've hit cloes to a daily entry over there. Big news, however. I wrote a book review for Jay Conrad Levinson's Guerrilla Marketing and submitted it to ezinearticles for some free 'notice me' looks. I was randomly looking through the web for a few other things and went to Levinson's site, www.gmarketing.com, when I noticed that one of the links at the top had a familiar sound.... "Guerrilla Marketing Sells Itself", it read. I clicked on the link and there is my article! I about died! We're talking serious visibility on a major site that gets a ton of folks daily! Wow! If only I had linked to my small business page in the bio. Oh well, I will have to remember that in the future! I could use some very serious prominence. Speaking of prominence, I just googled myself and got 8 pages, almost all me. Woohoo! Anyway, I am having a lot of fun blogging. I wish I could convince them to let me steal the position at the gym, LOL. I was looking at some of the craigslist writing jobs, they periodically post looking for folks to blog. There was an ad in the writing section on June 14th for female entrepreneurs wanting someone to blog 3xs a week. I didn't see a pay scale on there, however. I would really enjoy getting paid to do it, I think, but I am not sure how well it would work out. I was thinking that ideally, I could use the same content in both blogs, but it should be too hard to write and reslant. Then again, how big of a difference can there be? Yet again, I could do more work/family blogging for the magazine, as well. Lots of options. I am just not sure I want to make that big of a committment. Then again, I could just give it a shot. Maybe I will spend today thinking about the 'day in the life of' writing sample I would have to submit, and then I can write it tomorrow on my 'break', after talking to my husband tonight. And thinking about whether or not I'd like to make that sort of commitment. Hmmm. |
Today is dh's birthday, so you would think I wasn't around very much; not true. He had two job interviews today (woohoo!). He said last night, hey, I forgot tomorrow is my birthday! Oops!  But I'm all for job interviews.I found a new great thing. I know, I do it too often. I have been submitting various articles on ezinearticles.com and goarticles.com, which gives them 'free usage' for ezines. No monetary compensation but I get my name out, at least (hey, I can't help it, I keep hoping the agents will come beat down my door; can't blame me for being an optimist!). Anyway, I have been putting a link to Redd Infinity in my bio, and I think it has helped up the views on our page. Now if we could just get a job off of it! One of these days. |
| Well, I am back from my road trip. Wow, my fingers feel clumsy on the keyboard - and I've only been gone for three days! Argh! What a trip it was, too - but I had a few good ideas for articles as I rode. I don't remember a single one of them but thankfully I wrote them down. My brand new Writing.com notebook came in quite handy for the occasion (got that in the mail on Thursday or Wednesday and scared the postman by literally jumping up and down!). An interesting turn of events. I took several of my 15-yo SIL's books with me on the roadtrip, all teen LDS fiction. I began wondering if there were any adult LDS fiction books on the market, similar to the inspirational fiction books out there. As I lay upstairs, recovering from my eight hour, three toddler drive, I started thinking about it again. I am going to have to do some more research on the subject. At some point last year, I thought about writing inspirational fiction - I am sure the details are in my blog. It was around the summer, but I was leaning towards nonfiction (hoping it would sell faster ) at the time. I don't have the time to devote towards writing fiction right now - most of my writing is either a) marketing for Redd Infinity or b) paid for by the gym (well, it will be soon), and a great deal of my 'extra' work is stacking up (ie more marketing for RI). However, I am thinking of starting the 'research' by just browsing the inspirational fiction shelves at the library and eventually checking them all out. Then again, I could just work my way through the card catalog; I think I can start at 'A' and go through the titles. Not a bad idea, actually, although it prevents me from checking out various authors. Strike that, apparently there is no 'inspirational fiction' type of search. Maybe I can play around and come up with another idea.Anyway, I don't know. I'll head over to a few LDS online bookstores and check it out. I would go to the LDS bookstore here but I worry that I would walk out having spent more money than I can afford - a possibility because I can easily rationalize each purchase as being 'good', etc. Very dangerous. At least I know my weaknesses.My other thought was to start hanging around some LDS chat boards and forums and get a general idea of concerns, outside those of which I might already have thought of. I actually had an idea about an LDS woman who commits adultery and then regrets it and makes the necessary changes. However, the problem is that we had that happen in our family (well, dh's family), and while that was the springboard in my head, all events would be fiction...but I worry about them not being percieved as such. But I did like that idea and maybe I will hold it off a bit more after I am 'established', LOL. On the plus side, DH knows the owners of the LDS bookstore. So maybe, if I get rejected on all sides and decide to go with self-publication, I can get them to sell my book. Which would be a good start, right? I suppose it is always an option.For now, I'm going to do some preliminary research via reading inspirational fiction, and also at some point hang around said forums and researching the market, while trying to get everything else done...well, I like the idea and we'll see how it winds up working out, I suppose. |
| Lest you question my dedication, I just wanted to let you know we are about to leave on a road trip for the weekend. We are getting up dark and early tomorrow morning. Apparently I have to go sooth dh's rumpled feathers because he isn't sleeping, so I'll skip the long blog here, and just go to bed. We are getting up in about 6 hours and I am thinking a bath would help me fall asleep and prerelax, since we are going to make an 8+ hour car trip with an almost-5-yo, a 3 yo, a 1 yo, and a grumpy DH. This should be a great trip. I'll let you know if we have any hair left upon our return. Stay safe! |
| I don't know what the deal is, but I got what I want and I am still blue. I think it is the knowledge of an editor that is getting to me - an incompetant one. Blech. I finally got the authorization to do the newsletter for the gym. http://www.merchantcircle.com/business/My.Fair.Lady.Womans.Fitness.Center.770-27... I know I am overly anal here, but I'm perturbed about the veto power given. I guess I had visions of creating a 'perfect' format and now I fear seeing them 'attacked'. But I am thinking, perhaps I can create a 'news' section for Gail's part, and then it will flow neatly with mine. That idea has potential. Okay, feeling a little better, but we'll see how it goes. I don't know why I am blue. Probably overload of stress, combined with the fact that we will be out of town for the next few days. I am not looking forward to an 8 hour car trip with three kids in the car, all under 5. This will be murderous torture, I think. I am going to think about some great articles for the newsletter. I am going to take my digital camera on Tuesday and hit up one member of the gym and one staff member, and interview them. I think maybe I'll hit Gail, for fun (and suckup/softening purposes). But we'll see who is there. I will ask Gail for her input on who to include, as in who has been there so long. You know what would be fun? A 'new faces' input. I like that. We pick a club member less than a month old and slip them in. I think I'm going to do that as an 'intro'. Then we can list the name of other new members, so our folks can say 'hello'. Like, a 'joined the club since June 1st' intro. I will see if someone new is there on Tuesday when I go in, and I will create some great questions. Maybe I can do a 'new faces/permanent fixture'. That way, we don't miss out on some of our longer-term members. I like that. I have two possible articles in terms of health. One is on yoga and inflammation. We'll plug our yoga class; I'll get the times on Tuesday. The other is on...what was it? I'll have to look around and see what else we have. Two members, a staff interview, two health articles, and perhaps a local article? I'll ask Kent about my suggestion box idea - I think that one might be interesting. Kisha suggested a recipe idea, but I'm not sure about that one; I'd have to try it first. I also had an idea about creating a few logos to act as headers. I think that might be interesting, if I could only get the title issue to work. It's a shame you can't change the size of the text. There has to be a way to play with that. Alright, see, blogging has brought my spirits back up, lightly. Just a little. I should go pack up the car, I guess. |
I am giving 10,000 gps for the best review in the next 24 hours. That means, until 4:15 EST on 6/21. Please PLEASE stop by and give an in-depth review! |
| Wow, am I having fun or what? I have been really pounding the keyboards on articles for my (other) blog. It is amazing how just having that big empty space calls to me somehow. Eventually Merchant Circle will get their act together so my business (and thus my blogs) will show up in google, which will pull a ton more folks in, I bet. However, my post-in-blogs plan has brought in something like a hundred viewers a day for the last two days. I am hoping that those folks took a few minutes to nose around the company web site, as well. If we can just get one customer it will be well worth it. Today's blasting came from my plan to hit the news. I tried to submit it to the AJC but the losers limit letters to the editor to 150 words and mine was, like, 550. I guess I can print it out and try to trim it down a lot. Anyway, I am up in arms about the firefighters and their pay. I think it is ridiculous that Mayor Shirley Franklin wants to give the a big fat 0% raise because we have no money. You can read more about the insanity here: http://www.ajc.com/search/content/auto/epaper/editions/today/metro_4479d80166de9... Or you can check my other blog entry here http://www.merchantcircle.com/blogs/Redd.Infinity.2.678-468-2664/2006/6/Without-... I won't bore you with repetition. Incidentally, is htere a way to link items without the whole title? Tragic that I don't know that, but I'd better figure it out soon, huh? We are going to a vacation thingy tonight. We are supposed to sit through a presentation and get a 'free' vacation. We'll see how it works out after we here the whole thing (don't worry, we aren't buying), but it would be nice to have a free vacation. <sigh> They said, for one of the two (supposed to be 2 vacations) the airline and hotel is provided. If that is true, I can spend the time on the beach and not eat, no problem. We'll see how it works out. I have been doing research on various local builders so my husband can call them. We had a game plan previously of me contacting builders and setting up appointments, and also contacting small business owners to set up a free consultation. However, our kids have been seriously acting up, and I think it is the stress. I am trying to put a little more focus on them right now. Plus I am no good at cold calling on the phone. We have resolved that I will write the ad for the AJC (local Atlanta paper), which we will run for a month and then renew monthly. Last time we ran it, we picked up this current big job and made about 6xs what we paid on that alone, plus we had several smaller jobs. My husband wrote that ad. I am going to try to carefully craft a new one. In fact, I am going to create it as a static and get some R&Rs. I forgot about that, so I'd better go work on it. I'll post it here so ya'll can view it. |
| I am just sort of wired right now. It has been a...well, not a great Father's Day, but my husband enjoyed it, which is what counted, right? But anyway, I am completely into this whole 'real' blogging thing; I have become a weird voice. I am actually writing 'real' blogs, I guess, or basically submitting my opinion in an organized fashion to the world. Please come and see: http://www.merchantcircle.com/blogs/Redd.Infinity.2.678-468-2664 Any feedback would be appreciated. I have also started researching and reading other blogs. I have a few bookmarked. One in particular is a 'local' blog whose author is a columnist in the AJC and frequently refers to his blog. I checked and he gets a lot of traffic; one assumes much of it is from Atlanta. My hope is that commenting there will lead to subsequent investigation of my blog. Foolish and naive, I know, but there you go. I'll keep an eye out for other localized blogs to read. I am really hoping to hit some sort of small business blog forum, preferably local to the area, and go from there. Anyway, the cool thing is that I keep getting up and being inspired by something to write. It is sort of a new article form, KWIM? I even submitted my last one to the article doohickey, so I get a little wider range out of it. I am thinking of sending it in to a local paper, or maybe just revising it for said paper. I think it might make a point. At the very least, I will send it to the downtown group. Okay, I am going to bed, but I wanted to let you know I was blogging today, even if not here. I will have to get some form of image or something to lead folks to my blog and post it up top. Everyone wants to be me! |
| Well, I have been doing more research for the whole building of an online persona and blogging and whathaveyou for Redd Infinity. I think I am actually going to enjoy this, much as I like my own blog. At first, I wondered what I would say on a frequent basis. However, as I did some exploring, whole avenues opened up to me. I glanced over some other blogs. I couldn't find a lot of buisness blogs, but as I read various 'how to's, I realized that the same message being shared in Levinson's Guerrilla Marketing books works here. Specifically, the customer doesn't care about ME, they want to hear about THEM! So I am thinking I will run my blog very much like a background for my newsletter. Here, I have played around some and used my blog to brainstorm stories or articles. I can do a very similar thing for the business articles over there. In fact, I did - I wrote an article/blog entry on online personas and how they affect small business owners. Then, as I explored some other blog entries on the subject, I left the link to my blog. I don't know how things are generally done, I only left, like, two links, so we'll see if they actually do anything. But, I will continue to explore. The other thing I will play with is local stuff. For instance, as I walked to the library today with my kids, through Tucker, I found myself irate about the lack of sidewalks. This is on a major street with a huge park and a number of neighborhoods around. So I think tomorrow's blog will most likely focus on the sidewalk issues. This is some local flavoring. I have also seen a lot of advice about adding pictures to your blogs to make them more interesting? I thought I could maybe get dh to snap a picture of me and the kids with the running stroller and I would insert it. Not sure about that, but I am lousy with any type of graphics, and I do think the article needs to be broken up. Anyway, that answers the question I was debating on newsletter length. I think I will write the shorter versions for the NL with a link to my blog for the 'full' text. In fact, I finally figured out how to set it directly to the article/entry, smack in the middle of typing this sentence (talk about mutlitasking), so I can send them directly to the correct location. In the meantime, I have found another good reason to stay on top of the news - to react to it. There were a couple of interesting things that caught my eye, but I will analyze them with respect to the small business owner. I will also start scanning the online forums and communities and work on developing an online presence. Of course, the other perk is that I can take these entries and submt them as articles for my contest. In fact, I can link them to my blog, possibly bringing in more interest and readership. Great idea! At the same time, I was thinking it might be interesting to have a 'polished' blog along with Gail's for the gym, if she isn't going to use the one we have that is free. She said she was going to set one up online. I noticed that you can do something with the RSS - I am just not knowledgable about all that - but it looks like it will make the item (newsletter or blog) pop up on your yahoo, msn, or various other pages when it is updated. This means that they can just check the site for the newsletter. In fact, what I can do is start creating the newsletter on a monthly or bimonthly basis (for the gym, c'mon, keep up here!), post it online, and have Gail reference it in her emails while everything gets ironed out. Then, anyone who is comfortable can either sign up to have it emailed to them or can pull the RSS feed. Or they can just continue to view it online. Whatever their comfort level is. I like that idea. It is an option for them. In fact, I am printing the sample email newsletter I have right now to see how it looks on paper. If that works well, then we can have a few copies up front for our women to read. So, now I have two newsletters to slave away on, a business blog that I must write in for professional reasons (granted, I can and will be recycling, but not always), and of course my fun and joyful blog. I thought about it last night. It is odd, because I started out as a fiction writer. I love writing short stories, and it has been quite some time since I actually wrote one. Almost a year, I think. That is sad. However, I am really enjoying writing articles right now (which is good, because I can actually make a little money and/or get a little advertising [which hopefully will lead to money] for it). It feels something like a hunt. I had a great blog for you in my head about teens, egocentricism (is that a word?), and babysitting. I will try to save it, because I have a few things I have to take care of. Maybe I can give it a humerous spin. I need to read some more off-site blogs and get a handle on how these things work! |
| Believe it or not, I am going to try to stay more on topic and make this a more interesting read. I created the newsletter for Redd Infinity yesterday and recieved the first issue. It looks pretty good, but the problem I am having is that it is too long! http://www.merchantcircle.com/business/Redd.Infinity.2.678-468-2664/newsletter/3... Here is the link if you want to read it and/or give me any feedback on how it looks. I think I need to learn HTML so I can make that a handy dandy link. I am going to hit the Redd Infinity blog and go more in-depth on that aspect. Let me tell you a bit more on my writing for the gym. I talked to my boss yesterday about doing a newsletter to replace the one mentioned, and about moving the current 'writer' to a blog. Today, I spoke with Gail (said writer) who said she is in the process of creating a blog for the gym!  Furthermore, she would like to see the NL move towards more articles and less chatty, and she is fine with me taking it over with that goal in mind!!! I talked to my boss; he is going to make sure it is really okay with Gail and that she wasn't just lying to be nice. I don't think she is since she told me in the past that she was interested in me writing articles for the NL. I think I will have the same problems that we had with the small business newsletter (which, as said, will be in my blog in a few minutes), but I am working on fixing those. Specifically, the article (especially the front page) was too long for the internet.Okay, I am excited about blogging for Redd Infinity. http://www.merchantcircle.com/blogs/Redd.Infinity.2.678-468-2664 That is the link to our blog, so please feel free to check it out and comment. Any type of commentary would be greatly appreciated! <scurries off to write that, does that count as my weekly writing goal?> Seriously, I am really excited at the idea of sending out not one but TWO newsletters. If I write one of each article a week (one health, one business) then I should have ample material to chose from. |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
