Time for a bit of summer fun!
Meet you back here in September.
The fantasy of the freelance life is that you are your own boss, free to call the shots, work as you like, and pick the assignments that suit your interests. All of that is true when the economy is booming and there’s a lot of work to be had. When things are tight, it’s a bit more frantic with a lot less choice.
I’ve been doing small business consulting and freelance writing for several years. During that time, I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to run and manage a freelance business. It occurred to me that I could have a link to this site from my other site. Why? There is info on this site that’s geared to writers – and other creative types – and info on the other site that is more general in nature yet still applies to creative types.
You don’t need to do a thing. You will notice that you can now click onto a site with more detailed information on QuickBooks Online, Creating an Online Presence/Platform, Creating a WordPress Blog and/or Web site, Managing Social Media, Business Plan, Plans & Goals … This way I’ll post once and related content will show up where it’s supposed to show up, and we’ll all get the benefit of my MBA and QuickBooks certification!
I’m excited about this and can only attribute my glacial pace in reaching this realization to my constant state of sleep deprivation. I know you can relate!
Gina
Working on the sample chapter for a book proposal. It’s amazing how many times a sentence can be tweaked before it “sings.” But once it does… I guess that’s the moment writers live for – that moment when it just sounds right.
I don’t know about you, but for me, once the first section is set, it all falls into place. I know that’s supposedly because my vision is clear then, but it’s more than that. I can have a detailed outline that tells me each thing to cover in sequence, along with a killer topic sentence, but that’s still not the same as when the first section takes on a life of its own.
I think moments when it all clicks are the reason I’m a writer.
So many things to write about! I want to write about them all!
Gina
I’m glued to my video stream – as are many of you, I’m sure – as events in Boston unfold. I can’t help but remember back to 9/11, when the source of ongoing news was the television.
I’m not one to watch the same coverage over and over and over. I also tend not to watch most unfolding news coverage because frankly, I don’t think most of what is shared is information that should be shared. My concern is that it provides “tips and tricks” for those who are intent on causing harm while giving me information I simply don’t need.
Maybe it’s because Boston is in a part of the country I know well. Maybe it’s because it is such a horrific story. Maybe it’s because it is all unfolding in real time. Whatever the reason, it’s a story I want to follow. It’s also a story that has made extraordinary use of social and digital media. From smart phone footage to Twitter tweets, streaming video, and text message alerts, the events of this week have unfolded in a way that can be followed independent of a conventional television set. Continue reading
I was so proud of my new blog. It is a WordPress.org site. It was gorgeous. At least it was gorgeous until I needed to do something with the header.php file. That evidently overrode much of what I’d done in CSS. Now it looks sort of like alphabet soup – and yes, I’m being generous.
At least I know where I went wrong. I also know how to fix it. And I now know how to generate a screen that tells people I’m working on my site and gives them a link to click to get to the old site. All in all, I’d say I’m doing very well.
I’m certain that any of this I can do, anyone else can do. I encourage you to give it a try if you’re just not happy with the way your blog looks or you want a widget that contains script. That was the motivator for me. I wanted to help the kids at One Simple Wish badly enough to go through this rigamarole at this precise moment. These foster kids are well worth the time invested in the switch.
So what is your reason for wanting more control over your blog or Web site? We want to know.
Oh. Yes! I have gone the way of WordPress.org for one of my blogs and am alive to tell the tale. I’ve removed spaces between widgets, reduced the size of the text in the text widget, centered things, squished things, AND discovered the meaning of the post formats.
More to come in the future…
If you’re going to go it alone – or at least try to – in establishing yourself with a blog and various other social media accoutrements, here are some things that can save you some sanity.
Podcasts: Yes. You create the audio recording. You can use GarageBand for that. It works great. You might want a different mic. All of that is discussed in this post. However, unless you bleed through your eyes, you may not discover that you need to burn a feed and submit the feed to Apple. How do you do that? My suggestion is to run to Feedburner. It works. Oh. And you’ll also need to upload your audio file somewhere. You can upload it to your WordPress site, but you have to upgrade it first. You’ll find that info when you click on Media and look closely at all the stuff you ignore when uploading images. Continue reading
“Winning Takes Care of Everything”. Thanks, Nike. Good to know.
I can now stop telling my kids that personal integrity, character, making things good, and not getting into a mess in the first place are all essential parts of being a person with integrity.
They’ll be delighted to hear that all they have to do is win. The other stuff is so much more work. Continue reading
I’ve noticed I can add CSS to my blog to make it do what I want. That has not made sense to me until now!
Yes. Going with the theory that knowledge is power, I am tackling HTML and CSS – in the most basic sense. Continue reading