Articles written by Rebecca Laffar-Smith

This month, Writer’s Round-About welcomes Melissa Hart, a talented memoirist and freelance writer as she tours the Web with her new book, “Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood“. You’ve already heard from Melissa with her fabulous guest post, “Writing, Romance, and Child-Rearing: A Critical Balance“, and Cindy Hudson reviewed Melissa’s book for us sharing the warmth and insight of the book and giving us an eye into Melissa’s world.

Melissa, thank you so much for joining us this month. It’s an pleasure to have you with us and I appreciate your taking the time to talk with me today. Lets get down to finding out your answers to some of my burning questions, then we can open up the floor to let others ask theirs.

1. In “Gringa“, you write about “a lesbian mother”, how do you think your relationship with your mother, and her inter-personal relationships, affected the way you develop characters as a writer?

My mother came out when I was a pre-teen, but I didn’t know what being a lesbian meant. For a few months, there was all this secrecy around her moving in with a woman; my father and his mother whispered about it and told me my mother was “ill.” He took us to a social worker who grilled us about where my mother and her partner slept and whether they hugged and kissed in front of us.

I learned to analyze people both for how they presented in public and for their hidden motivations. I don’t mean to sound paranoid; we all hide our motivations, and the emotions driving them, on occasion. I learned to develop multifaceted characters by studying both the public and private persona of my family members. Every other Friday and Sunday night when I traveled up the Pacific Coast Highway with my mother, we discussed how we’d been separated by the legal system and why. She was studying psychology at the time, and I remember talking about our family with respect to Freud and Jung and Rogers, and later–when I took psychology classes in college–to my social psychology professor Eliot Aronson.

In Gringa, I’m particularly proud of resisting the temptation to portray my father as simply a homophobic bully. Many reviewers have noted that I don’t place blame in the book. While I’d disagree that I don’t blame my father for some of the events in my childhood, I’ve tried hard to show his side of the story, as well.

2. The Latina culture is considered deeply sensual and erotic, how do you feel that culture and “a deep desire to be a Latina” influences your writing?

My perceived lack of culture shaped my writing for years. Growing up as a minority in multicultural schools, and visiting my mother who lived in a Latino neighborhood in Oxnard, I felt inadequate in terms of my skin color, food and music choices, lack of religion with its white dresses or Buddhist shrines. I didn’t perceive the Latina culture to be “deeply sensual and erotic” until college, however, when I was still figuring out who I was as a sexual person with an older, very sexually-secure Latino boyfriend. I’ve got a story coming out in The Los Angeles Review in a few months that illustrates my struggle to be erotic without really knowing what that meant.

3. You’ve had the opportunity to travel to other countries, each with a unique culture and people. What do you feel is the most significant lesson you’ve learned about the people and relationships in other countries that finds its way into your writing?

There’s a lot of hype about how people from other countries don’t like Americans. I’ve been traveling internationally for a couple of decades, and I haven’t found this to be true. I think when you approach a new country and its people with an open mind and an open heart, with humility and curiosity, people welcome this.

I went to Amsterdam a few years ago to present a paper on training a permanently-injured Snowy owl for the International Association of Avian Trainers and Educators; here, touring the Artis Zoo and sharing our various bird-stories over meals, I felt so much mutual interest and respect. I work as a travel writer for newspapers and magazines on occasion, and I try to approach each new location and its inhabitants with this same interest and respect.

4. In a review of “Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood“, Booklist writers, “LGBT families and immigrant kids will want it for honesty, humor, and love. Every lively chapter ends with a detailed recipe that mixes food and feelings.”

Food is such an integral part of life. How do you feel these things, honesty, humor, love, food, and feelings, come together when writing?

Cooking is just so much fun, and so meditative when you’re chopping vegetables or beating egg whites or shelling peas. I always remember Laura Esquivel’s novel “Like Water for Chocolate” and how whatever emotion the protagonist, Tita, was feeling while she cooked somehow made it into the meal she served. I’m careful to think kind, loving thoughts when I cook, just in case I’m imparting emotions along with my enchiladas and carrot cakes.

When you get to cook with people, creating a meal all together, opportunities for intimate dialogue abound. I grew up cooking with my mother and her partner, my grandmother and my sister, both in the kitchen and around campfires. We talked constantly during these hours, and since my family comes from show-business stock, we did plenty of dancing and singing and joke-telling, as well. Now, we tell stories about memorable holiday meals–the time Mom and Annie dropped the cooked Thanksgiving turkey on the kitchen floor, the first time the man who would become my husband dropped a beautiful unbaked pie on the floor–and just howl with laughter. One of my great pleasures in life is to visit my mothers in Southern California and help them cook a big meal. It’s very easy to recall the emotions inherent in cooking together when I need to write a scene involving food and/or cooking.

5. Conversation is vital when developing relationships. It is what makes dialogue such a key element in fiction. When writing memoir it is very rare that a writer has transcripts or recordings of actual conversations. What tips do you have for writers writing memoir dialogue?

This will strike some writers as shameless, but I make the point in the workshops I teach on memoir writing that we do not go through our lives carrying around a digital recorder and video camera, and so we sometimes need to create dialogue. If you can’t recall what your great-grandmother said word-for-word when you were six years old, does that mean you shouldn’t give her a voice in memoir? I believe there’s an understanding between the memoirist and most readers that dialogue has been created out of memories which stay true to the character. For Gringa, I relied on journals I’d kept since age 9, as well as photographs, conversations with my mother and sister, and in one case, a recording I’d actually made of my grandmother.

There are other ways to approach dialogue as a memoirist, of course. The writer might craft something speculative, such as “Although I can’t recall her actual words, my great-grandmother might have said, ‘Why, yes, honey, I had a Latino boyfriend in the circus.’” (That’s true of my great-grandmother, by the way, but I find such speculative sentences awkward, with the effect of pulling people out of a narrative story.

I’m interested in how David Sedaris refers to his work as “stories” rather than “memoir.” I think he saves himself a hell of a lot of trouble in making this distinction. To close on this controversial subject, I think it’s all right to recreate dialogue if you stay absolutely true to your characters and their situations, but I don’t admire those memoirists who make up entire pasts for themselves for the sake of sensationalism.

6. You teach a wonderful memoir writing course with U.C. Berkeley’s online extension program that is open to the public. Is there anything you learned while writing “Gringa” that you share with your students?

I share my views on dialogue, and I urge my students to experiment with a blend of narration and dialogue, plus vivid sensory description and subtle characterization. I encourage them to play with the form of memoir; one student eventually turned his memoir about being a boxer-turned-tap-dancer into a one-man show in San Francisco. Another student wrote her final memoir in stream-of-consciousness narration similar to Dorothy Parker’s short story “The Telephone Call.” I thoroughly enjoyed writing Gringa, even when the process felt painful, and I teach my memoir students to approach their memoir with the same levels of honesty, commitment to emotion, and humor.

7. One of the aspects of our upbringing which shapes the adults we become are our family. Family is also a defining factor in your memoir. What do you think makes family moments memorable for readers?

If they’re written well, family moments in memoir trigger the reader’s own notable family interactions. I hope readers of Gringa will relate to some of the absurd, whimsical family moments with my mother that made our situation bearable (I’m thinking of dressing up in Halloween costumes and driving in her VW bus to Sambo’s for nighttime pancakes). I know, too, that some people who read the accounts of my father’s volatile outbursts will recall similar instances in their childhood. I’ve received lots of fan mail which either commiserates with my position as his daughter, or celebrates the humor that provided salvation during the four days a month I got to spend with my mother.

8. Finally, you have a family of your own now, juggling the roles of mother and writer as many of WRA’s readers do, what do you think is the biggest benefit, and what the greatest pitfall, of being a mother-writer?

Before my husband and I adopted our young daughter, my writer-friend Jamie Passaro told me that becoming a mother would make me much more efficient as a writer. I didn’t believe her at the time, but now–a year and a half into being a mother–I see that she’s right. I carve out hours between caring for my daughter to write. Gone are those daylong stretches of free time during which I could just wander in and out of a chapter or essay at will, going for a long run in between, and maybe meeting a friend for lunch. Now, I have to write down and dirty during naps and preschool. Honestly, I don’t mind this at all; I think it’s made me a better writer.

The pitfall, most definitely, is having to be away from my daughter and husband while I’m on book tour or teaching workshops. I’ve done an awful lot of traveling since Gringa came out in October, and I’m scheduled to do much more in the form of writing conferences and classes. I adore teaching, and while I’m in the midst of interacting with students, I’m fine–but I hate telling my family goodbye before even an overnight trip. I guess I need to bring my laptop and Skype with them!

Thank you for sharing so much with me today, Melissa. It sounds like you live a full and busy life. I’m in awe of all you’re doing for yourself, your family, and the greater community. I’d like to take this opportunity to open the floor up for others if they have any questions.

Talented romance author, Kat O’Reilly, joins us today to share a little about writing romance.

Hey Kat, thank you so very much for joining us this month. As you know, we’re all about “Romance and Relationships” at Writer’s Round-About this February and with Valentine’s Day just last Sunday, love is still on many of our minds.

1. You’ve written a series of historical romances already, what inspired you to begin these novels and to write in the historical romance genre?

Honestly? I had a dream that started the first book, “Kiernan’s Curse”. Half of the dream is the opening of the prologue. The other half is later on in the book. That’s really pretty much why I started writing the books. From the way Kiernan was dressed in the dream, I knew it had to be historical, but I didn’t know what era, so I had to do quite a bit of research to find that out.

2. There is at least one key relationship in any romance, what is involved in developing the relationship between your hero and heroine?

Mutual attraction brings them together initially and that does remain, but there has to be something more. And it’s not always about chemistry. No relationship is without conflict, so a big part of why they’re together is how they work things out. It’s different for each one, but the key is that they grow individually and as a couple with each one.

3. What do you think is the most important aspect a character needs to truly connect with your readers?

Likeability. Even the antagonists need to have at least one likeable trait. You hear about characters people love to hate. That’s because there was something the readers identified with that they actually liked in the character even if they (thought they) hated them.

4. Do you find this aspect is also what brings your Hero and Heroine together?

Definitely! If the hero & heroine weren’t likeable, there’d be no reason for the story.

5. Although the romantic relationship between your Hero and Heroine is the most significant in a romance novel, do you think it is important for the characters in romance novels to have relationships with additional characters? How do these other relationships benefit the story?

Again, definitely! Without the other relationships, the story is flat and readers don’t really get to know the characters as people. That’s important to me in books I read, so I want to give the same feeling in my books.

6. Recently, you mentioned that your current work-in-progress, “Trevor’s Triumph might be the steamiest of the three…”, what makes a romance novel “steamy”?

I have a friend/mentor who would say the “smut factor” makes a romance novel steamy.

Sexual tension definitely contributes to the steaminess of it. Some romance novels stop there. I don’t. I actually go behind closed doors. In the beginning of the book, if Trevor lived in modern times and were a woman, he’d be called a slut. He meets the woman he’s supposed to be with and immediately gets the hots for her. He respects her father, the head of another clan, so he doesn’t try to get into her skirts (yet), but he goes back home and gives himself a hand-job. That’s in chapter two. (I’ve had another hero do that, but not until quite a bit later in the book.)

I do my best to keep from including such scenes gratuitously, but I can’t give a guarantee that all of them (usually 2 per story, if that many) are absolutely 100% necessary.

7. One of the aspects that make romance novels distinctive is the broad variation of “love scenes“, from the tender caress, to the no-holds-barred sex scene. What do you think is most important when writing these kinds of scenes?

Even with a no-holds-barred scene, you’ve got to leave some things to the imagination. Otherwise, it borders on porn. While I might write erotic scenes, I don’t do porn. Some writers do (and I’ve actually read some that has been done well). I try to be erotic without being too smutty.

The most important thing in these scenes, other than the imagination factor, is if the scene works. How does a love scene work? If you get turned on. At a conference one time, I heard a romance writer (I can’t remember who at the moment) said if you get turned on writing the scene, your reader will when they read it. And you know the scene works.

8. What do you think is the true purpose of “love scenes” in romance writing?

I think it varies. Sometimes it’s meant to show that the main characters are sexually compatible. Sometimes it’s to show some character development. I try to do a bit of both in the scenes I include.

9. Reflecting on the novels you’ve written yourself, which lines stand out the most in your own memory? Why do you think you’re drawn to those in particular?

Do you mean actual lines I’ve written? That’s a tough one.

In “Navajo Rose”, which is a contemporary romantic suspense, it’s during the second intimate scene with Paige and Ricky. The first one, she panicked and made him stop. Here’s the bit from the second one that stands out the most for me:

• She squeezed lightly and smiled when he moaned. She did it again and sat up to give him a lick.
  He stopped her then. “I can’t do that right now.” It sounded as if someone else spoke. He had never heard his voice so husky.
  “Then what?”
  “If I start, Paige, I won’t be able to stop.”
  She frowned and growled at him. “I’d kill you if you stopped right now.”
  His shaft jerked at her tone. “I don’t have a condom.”
  “I don’t care!” She squeezed again.

The key part of it is where he tells her he wouldn’t be able to stop.

10. Which book do you think has had the greatest impact on your romance writing? Why do you think it influences you so greatly?

I don’t think there’s one book in particular. There are four authors who do, though: Sherrilyn Kenyon, Christine Feehan, Karen Marie Moning, and Katie MacAlister. Each of them have some aspects that I try to learn from. With Sherrilyn & Katie, it’s their immediacy. With Karen, it’s her description. With Christine, it’s the closeness to her characters. (They all have great closeness, but with her Ghost Walker Series, it’s even more pronounced since they’re all somehow psychically enhanced.)

Here’s a little secret: The first sex scene I ever wrote, I read one of Sherrilyn Kenyon’s intimate scenes (I think it was in Dark Side of the Moon) as a kind of guide as to how to structure it. *s*

Thank you again for your time, Kat. I truly appreciate having this opportunity to share in your experiences. Writing for the romance genre can be particularly challenging but it’s a very popular theme and it has universal appeal. We all want to experience a little love in our lives. Writing romance must be a wonderful way to be immersed in the sensation of new love and the roller-coaster of romantic relationships.

What do YOU think makes a romance “steamy”? Have you read a love scene that really turned you on? What do you think is the true purpose of “love scenes” in romance writing? Have you ever written any of your own?

How important are relationships to your freelance writing business? If your business is anything like mine word-of-mouth accounts for up to 80% of your paid commissions so building relationships is vital. Meeting new people is important but it is just as, if not more, important to develop and reinforce the relationships you’ve already established. Is strengthening your working relationships one of your goals for 2010?

Writing a recommendation or testimonial is an effective way to boost morale and deepen a professional relationship. If you value the professional courtesy and service you’ve received one of the simplest ways to give back is by recommending that individual to others. A recommendation or testimonial for a job well done creates a lasting impression. People remember you for saying something encouraging and positive.

“Who are the people you most value professionally? Do they know it? More importantly, do others know? In a perfect world, we would all proactively make sure that the people who have earned our trust and respect knew it, and that others knew it as well.” ~ Adam Nash

Write A LinkedIn Recommendation

One of the reasons I love building my network of LinkedIn freelancers is because, as a community, we are encouraging and positive. No matter what level of the industry we stand on there are others around us who support our business and want us to succeed.

On LinkedIn we have an opportunity to connect with new friends or colleagues. We can create a new impression on people we’ve worked with in the past, see what our associates are doing now, find professionals to work with on new projects, and reconnect with talented minds to deepen relationships. But how many of these connections will think of you if they need to hire a writer? What sort of relationship have you developed with your connections?

Writing a LinkedIn Recommendation is easy and it’s one of the most effective ways to put your name on the lips of the person you recommend. It is important to be honest about your experience with that person but every interaction we have with another individual offers us insight into their professional atmosphere. Think about the other writer’s amongst your LinkedIn connections… Have you enjoyed a post or article they’ve written? Have you read their latest book? Have you used them as a source for something you’ve written? Have you interacted with them via social media? Have you been touched by their experience? In what way has that person affected you positively?

“Be aware that the person you’re writing the recommendation for is looking for your words to help act as leverage with a prospective new business partner.” ~ Chris Brogan

Get Started Now! I’d love to connect with you on LinkedIn and exchange recommendations in our quest to get to know each other better. A special shout-out goes to the five wonderful ladies (Michele L. Tune, Mysti Guymon-Reutlinger, Kimberlee Ferrell, Hope Wilbanks, and Jenn Greenleaf) who have recommended me in the past!

#FollowFriday on Twitter

Perhaps the quickest and easiest way to say, “This person is great” is to join the #FollowFriday trend on Twitter. Every Friday, Twitter enthusiasts offer up name after name of fellow tweeters they recommend. I suggest adding a few words about WHY you recommend a particular Twitter user because I like to know why “I” should follow them. But even if you don’t offer any detail, just taking a moment each Friday to name-drop is a rewarding way to let those you admire know they offer value in your life.

“The idea is to think of interesting people you already follow and recommend them to others.” ~ Micah Baldwin

Not only is this a great way to show your support and respect for the people you follow on Twitter but it is also an opportunity to grow your following. You recommend your friends to others and they recommend people you might be interested in getting to know. Writers are constantly recommending fellow writers on #FollowFriday and your recommendation can lead you into further Twitter discussion with your personal Twitterati.

Get Started Now! Follow me on Twitter and join the #FollowFriday craze.

Testimonials, Endorsements, and Reviews

Twitter’s #FollowFriday and LinkedIn’s Recommendations are all about WHO. But another way to build relationships is to share the WHAT. That is where testimonials, endorsements, and reviews carry the most weight. On Writer’s Round-About we have a whole category dedicated to Reviews and Reviewing. If you’ve read a fantastic book, watched an entertaining movie, used an effective tool, or purchased a quality product you can build a relationship with the creator by writing a recommendation of their product.

You can even recommend content you find online by sharing a link. Use bookmarking and sharing tools available on most blogs. Take a moment to thumbs up on your StumbleUpon Toolbar. Use your favorite social media networks to spread the word about what you’re loving online. Write reviews for blogs, send testimonials in to website owners, add your reviews to sites like Amazon, etc.

And you can do this with anything at all. People talk about the food they love to eat, the gadgets they want to buy, the brands they love to use. These simple recommendations develop relationship, not just with the creators of the products you recommend but with the people you are recommending them to. If I’m looking to buy a new game console I’ll remember how much you raved about your Wii.

Get Started Now! Have you used a product or read a book that has helped you be a better writer? I’d love to take this opportunity to invite you to submit your review to WRA. Tell others what you think and share your recommendation with WRA’s readers.

A Final Word: Recommendations in Reverse

One final thing to remember is that recommendations work in reverse. If you feel a product fails to live up to expectations, a practice is shady, or a person has falsely presented themselves you can say so. Act with integrity, be honest and forthright. A balanced review will have more weight with readers than a biased one but you should avoid sounding trite or petty.

Remember: What you say about others says a lot about you.

Writing recommendations is a fantastic way to develop relationships with others and there are lots of ways you can express your opinions. Who has added value to your life? How do you show your appreciation? What have you done today to strengthen your business relationships? Share your thoughts and opinions in the comments!

What have you learned from the past that allows you to create a new beginning in 2010? January is a great time for new beginnings and this month I’d like to introduce “beginnings” as a theme.

In November 2009, Web Betty gave Writer’s Round-About an excellent technical review. She corroborated some ideas I had for changes I wanted to make to the blog theme. Today, I launch WRA’s tweaked theme, version 2.0, and I’d love to know what you think about the changes. What do you like? What do you hate? Do you have suggestions for things you’d like to see done differently?

Launching a new version of the WRA Theme is just one of the “beginnings” we’ll see on Writer’s Round-About this month. Later in the month we’ll share posts that relate to how beginnings affect us as writers, from how to find those first words that begin a new story or article, to how our beginnings, our headlines, our hooks, our opening paragraphs, impact the way readers interact with our content.

What comes to mind when you think of beginnings as a writer? Write about it and then consider beginning 2010 as a WRA contributor where you can share your writing with other freelancers from beginning to end?

Have you wondered about writing a guest post for Writer’s Round-About? Have you been thinking about joining the collaborative blogging project but just don’t know if it’s right for you? Do you want to know some of the benefits of writing for Writer’s Round-About?

Everyone, from those just beginning to inspect their writing bug to the experienced explorers of the writing world, are invited to take part in our collaborative blogging project but read on now to find out 7 reasons why you might like to join us.

1. The biggest draw card is freedom. Unlike Demand Studios you aren’t given a title for which you have to research or scrimp for words. You have the freedom to follow what captures your interest, fires your passions, or intrigues your inspiration. As long as you can tie your topic to freelance or fiction writing you have free reign to explore anything that interests you. You’re also free to decide when you write and how often you contribute. You are not tied to any specific posting schedule and can contribute several posts when you’re visited by your muse or one or two as inspiration strikes. Even if you post sporadically your readership will continue to grow because Writer’s Round-About has a growing base of contributors allowing us to publish fresh content regularly.
2. Qualified contributors are given the opportunity to subscribe to the WRA-Writer’s Mailing List. This is a huge plus because around once a month I send out a short newsletter packed with ideas, keywords, sometimes a theme, and some gossip about what our readers have been wanting to read and what we’d love you to write about. You don’t have to write about those topics if you’re fired up about something else but if you’re ever feeling short on ideas you have a well of inspiration in these newsletters. And I’ve got thousands and thousands more where they came from so if you want even more all it takes is a quick email and I’ll brainstorm with you to come up with some great content.
3. WRA has a flexible word count. 400-800 words (longer if prior arranged) is the bottom line. This is because this is the ideal length for blog format and it’s what I know my readers prefer. Most of them are busy writers, like us. They need inspiration and education; they aren’t looking for an epic adventure. But they’re also readers in the true sense of the word. If a topic interests them they’ll read several posts as it goes into more detail so series work well.
4. WRA also has an awesome, professional, human editor who likes to pretty up posts, is happy to make edits if needed or requested, manages the posting schedule for you so you can write your posts whenever you want to rather than keeping to a strict schedule, is easy going, and is a firm believer in only doing it because you love it. She’s not pushy, she’s not about to demand several rewrites or delete your content without giving advance warning. Um… Ok, enough tooting my own horn.
5. WRA is growing in popularity and developing it’s brand as a writer resource and community. There are plans in the works for expanding the reach of the site and the services it offers. There is an opportunity to get involved in the creation of electronic products exclusive to WRA and your ideas regarding the site will always be heard and considered carefully. It also has a standing history having lasted the test of time for blogging. It’s not a fly by night and it’s not about to disappear off the web never to be heard or updated again. Writer’s Round-About is also 100% financed and maintained by my freelance business so I’ll never ask contributors to assist with costs associated with running the site such as hosting and domain name fees.
6. You maintain rights to your posts. While I do ask for first time electronic rights you can republish your posts after they’ve launched on WRA. That means the post you wrote for us could go on to make money when you pitch it as a reprint to other publications or post it as a guest post on other blogs. We’d love you to give WRA a nod as original publication but we don’t require that because what you write will always belong to you.
7. Finally, clips, experience, and full credits, are pretty strong draws in and of their own. Some of WRA’s writers write for that alone. And the knowledge that they’ve got a ready-made audience. Writing for WRA is more effective than writing a blog of your own because there is a team of people working to promote each post and an established readership already coming to look. You don’t have to do all the legwork to find readers. It is also a great way to practice writing online content and if you want any feedback or advice regarding your writing I’m happy to critique or copy-edit your posts. And, your byline, bio, photograph, and up to three external links go right there on the page with every single one of your posts.

Are you excited? Do these fantastic benefits sound enticing? Do you have any questions?

Happy Holidays! Around the world there is a special celebration at this time of year. Whatever you choose to believe I hope you have the opportunity to enjoy peace, love, and the joy of giving with your family this holiday season. The holidays are a magical opportunity for writers to experience new wonders in their life. This holiday season, watch and listen for the beautiful stories that exist in every moment.

On behalf of all the writers at Writer’s Round-About, and especially from me, I wish you a very special holiday.

Merry Christmas!

*jaw drops* Ok, my head must have been in the sand yesterday because I didn’t hear about this until late this afternoon (5 hours ago). It’s taken me that long to read, let it sink in, ride the comment wave through 343 amazing, deep, and emotionally motivated comments, and still get kids fed, bathed, and into bed.

So, the Men With Pens James Chartrand is actually a woman…

My initial reactions were heartbreak, anger, and frustration. Like others have mentioned, my anger wasn’t directed at James for any sense of ‘deception’. Writers use pen names all the time. I have another name, another persona for a different aspect of myself, there is nothing wrong with choosing to put a different label on one compartment of your life.

What I was angry about is the “need” to use a MAN’s name and the YEARS I’ve put into building my business under my own name. I had no idea that my being a woman could play a significant role on how others treated me. Blind, naive, and perhaps just a little stupid. I let it sink in. I let myself feel the anger and resentment and yes, even jealousy that James had figured out that key early on and found success by presenting an alternative image. I let myself feel it and examined those emotions and motivations.

I pulled out a notepad and wrote angry and heart broken rants. I snagged comments that I resonated with as I read down through them all. I examined my feelings and the reactions of others.

James has always commanded my respect but even I am guilty of gender bias. I held off reaching out to establish a more personal friendship with James because I thought he was a man. I don’t feel as confident of myself when I deal with men, and I often feel a sense of resentment when I consider men doing what I do. Freelancing men.

In one comment, Andrew Lightheart said, “Why should it matter to me that you’re a woman? But it does – I’m amazed at my hidden sexism. Not in a ‘I’m never going to read her writing again’ – more that it changes the way I read it.

And not in a bad way, but it *shouldn’t* make *any* difference.”

Me too. And I’m disappointed with myself for the same reason. Gender shouldn’t matter, but it does. It completely changes our perception. It even changes each word she’s ever written. We see it differently. That fact, underlines exactly why we need to be aware of this issue. It SHOULDN’T be so, but it is.

I have this insidious voice in my head that says, “Men have it so easy.” Some of that comes from having been raised by a mother who struggled to make it in a man’s world. By having a father who paid lip service to parenting, who barely acknowledged me as his daughter and instead gave his all to raising someone else’s children. By being divorced, having an ex-husband who rarely bothers to contact his two children. By having experienced in my own life men who “had it easy”, walked away from responsibility, and accomplished in stride what I struggle to achieve every day.

But not ALL men are like that. On a conscious level I know that. On a sub-conscious level “knowing” doesn’t silence the voice.

James followed up with: “This was very often one of the reasons I *hated* telling people who I was. I didn’t change, my work didn’t change, NOTHING changed…

Except *their* perspective of me. And I disliked becoming someone else in their eyes in that way. I wasn’t that person. You know?”

And yet, the person James DID appear to be created an image, a perspective too. I’m not the only one who mentioned that ‘his’ being a man, influenced the way I treated him.

I think we all have our little voices. We all react from the prejudices and imprints our personal experiences have left on our soul. We all treat people differently, even when we “know” we shouldn’t.

How important is gender for freelance writers?

Would being a man, improve a female writer’s chances of success? If she were a man would she have landed that gig?

It’s scary to wonder the implications. What do you think?

When James asked, “Are Bloggers Creating Their Own Sweatshop?” we discussed what a blog is, and what it isn’t. Ok, so our blog isn’t our product, it’s our platform, right? Why put so much time into maintaining a dynamic site? Couldn’t a static website be just as effective as a business card, portfolio, or sales rep?

Yes… & No…

A site’s effectiveness is measured on many scales. One must consider visibility, function, conversion, and return on investment. All of these factors are influenced by your readers and your content.

A Static Site

• The Business Card

If your site offers your contact details and a description of your services/business, it is a business card. But, as with the cards you keep in your pocket, the best way to get your card into the hands of your potential customers and clients is to give it to them. This is 100% “push” marketing. Almost everyone who visits your site already knew about you and what you do. They may even be existing clients/customers.


• The C.V. or Resume

If you’ve added details of your past success, gigs, clips, testimonials, etc. you’ve taken your business card site one step further. Now you’ve got a C.V. or Resume. This is where you not only give your existing contacts a way to reach you but also a way to see what you do. With this additional information they can evaluate your services/products and decide to contact you to get more information or place an order. 80% “push”, 20% “pull”. You’re still doing the majority of promotion but the site is making more conversions and your portfolio will begin to bring “loose change” traffic based on key words (ie. keywords) in your services and products.

A Dynamic Site

Now you’ve decided to step up another notch. This is where you can take one route or the other. The first maximizes your return on investment, it puts in place your potential income streams, and begins promoting product from the beginning. The second is usually done first, because most people don’t realize they need the first to make the second’s ROI (return on investment) profitable or they begin as a hobby and later realize their hobby could make them money.

• The Catalog

Before you develop your blog, I recommend you establish your catalog. A catalog site is not necessarily a list of products with a fully integrated shopping cart. In the simplest terms, a catalog is a showcase of marketable goods and services. Each good/service should have its own sales page, optimized for search with clear calls to action and compelling copy.

Your products/services don’t even have to be your own. If you can recommend useful things to people who would be interested in your CV/Resume you can affiliate and make money in commissions.

Once you have a solid catalog your site is ready for a fourth dimension.

• The Blog

The purpose of the blog isn’t to sell content. It’s soul reason for being is to give your potential customers exactly what they initially arrived at your site seeking. Your blog content is written in a way that encourages indexing and sharing. You want to maximize your blog’s reach.

A blog has the greatest potential for “pull” marketing. You can spend less time actively handing out business cards because your customers are handing them out for you. You’re giving each visitor exactly what they want and word-of-mouth fires up with positive reviews and natural testimonials. Friends tell friends, who tell friends, to the full six degrees of separation.

And, because you update frequently, search engines tell everyone who asks about something you write about that you’re in the know, right now. Search engines LOVE fresh content, in the eyes of those little bots if it’s new its news. If your site was established ten years ago and hasn’t been changed since the search engines don’t come back to look at you. It assumes you’ve said all you’re going to say. It wants to see what people are saying today, not ten years ago.

And, because you’re giving away your blog content for free, customers are getting what they need, loving what they get, signing up for more of what they want, and giving you free access to the upsell.

Building On Firm Foundations

Blogs have the potential to grow larger still. They break out of blog bindings into networks and communities. Every stage increases visibility, functionality, conversion, and return on investment. But you can see why blogging for free isn’t really blogging for free at all. If you approach your site with the mind of building a marketing platform, you build a business, not just a blog.

Want to take your site to the next level? Yep, that’s the business I’m in. Contact me to find out how to put together, the best showcase for your products and services, the best web solution for your business.

On Monday, James of Men With Pens, challenged the idea that bloggers ‘must’ post their content for free. He asked, “Are Bloggers Creating Their Own Sweatshop?” Well? Are we devaluing ourselves? Why aren’t we charging readers to read our blog posts?

I left a detailed comment expressing my thoughts in the moment, but there is so much more to this topic than surface opinion. James isn’t the first or the last to question “Free” as a business model. Let’s face it, as a statement toward the financial viability of a business it doesn’t seem particularly sound.

Why “Free” Works

Over hundreds of years, society has been opening the door to free thought. Now, more than ever before, every person is invited to express their opinion, to have their say, to participate in an expanding global community. This exchange of thought has always been free. Every man, woman, and child is allowed to share openly. The only bar to communication is an unwillingness to “give”.

Freelance writers, and professional bloggers, put a new slant on the freedom of self expression. The difference, primarily, is motive. Everyone could blog, that is hobby blogging. Professional writers/bloggers write with an intent to earn. They may still write because they love to write, in fact, it is almost a pre-requisite in this industry, but they don’t write to be heard.

Professional writers write for the dollar. Freelance writing is a business. (If you don’t acknowledge that you’re in for a hard haul toward profit just like in any other business.)

So, why does “free” still work for freelancers? Because…

Let me stress that again, blogs are a “platform“, NOT a product. Your blog is a showcase, a portfolio. It is your business card, the company logo on your car, the mass mail campaign fliers, the t.v. commercial, the full page newspaper ad, the press release, etc. Your blog is your advert, the quarter inch of niche you’ve carved out where you can say whatever you want.

How are you using your Ad space?

The real question is, “How are you using your ad space?” Choosing to blog is not the only way you could fill your ad space, but it is one of the most effective. Each post puts your ad into a fresh print run with a potential circulation in the millions. What is more, many of your readers WANT to read your ad. They’ve subscribed or searched specifically for you or the information you’re offering.

You have the opportunity to run as many ads as you have time to write, or funds to outsource. But you must make good use of your content. Remember, each post is an ad space; an opportunity to reach your target audience with an offer they truly want or need.

Consumers like to be informed, they like to be educated, they like to be entertained. Your readers also love to be engaged which is why blogs have grown to incorporate more interactivity.

Your content is free because it is not your product. Your blog is your commercial and blogging is one of the most cost-effective ways to advertise. The great thing about your blog, from a business perspective, is that it is a jumping off point for your products and services.

The Blog As A Marketing Funnel

Have you ever heard of the term upsell? It’s a marketing term. Let me describe it with a story.

One day, you decide to go to your local bedding store to buy a new quilt set for the master bedroom. The store has a broad range of products that seem daunting so you approach a salesman for assistance. The salesman is a friendly bloke (man to the non-Aussies), he is happy to help you find what you need, but to get there you have to walk past the king and queen bed frames. He ignores those, you asked about linens not frames and that need is his focus.

As you walk to a far wall where the bed linens are arrayed, this salesman, lets call him Bob, talks with you about the linens you’ve had in the past. Bob asks how you have been recently, he asks you about your favorite materials and fabrics, he asks you about the colors you love and the other decor in your home. He asks you about the bed, it’s size, etc.

When you reach the bed linens, Bob knows exactly which quilt sets to recommend, that you suffer heart-burn and back ache, that your mattress is sagging to the left, your queen-sized bed is several years old, you prefer 100% cotton sheets in shades of purple, your bedroom has apricot tones, twin bedside tables, a large recliner in one corner, and that your name is Jill. But, you came looking for linens so that is what he pitches you. He knows what to show you because he’s canvased your preferences so what he shows you on the shelf is exactly what you’re after. You’ve had a pleasant experience and found exactly what you wanted so you grab the quilt set and head for the counter.

Then comes the first upsell. “You know,” Bob says, “from time to time beautiful 100% cotton sheets in a range of purple colors and patterns are marked down. I could send you an email/letter or give you a call when we have something you’ll love if you leave your contact details with me.” Snag, ‘the list’, the right to contact you in the future.

Next month, you get an email, “Special deal, today only, purple 100% cotton bed sheets for your queen mattress. Buy two and get one free.” Upsell! Now you’re interested in paying for two bed linen sets to get one free.

A month later, “Did you know, aged mattresses can cause heartburn and backache?” (Remember, you mentioned suffering those symptoms to Bob.) “Improve your health and get a better night’s sleep with any of our wide range of circulation support queen-sized mattresses.” Upsell! Now, instead of linens you’re considering buying a new mattress.

This upsell action is one of the true powers of blogging. You’re blog is that first salesman. Blog Bob greets your potential customer, finds out why they came to you, and gives them exactly what they want, regardless of the depth of their pocket. That initial salesperson offers to give the customer more of what they want by leaving contact details (subscribing). It is then the platform for an upsell and can be combined with other promotional tools for maximum effect.

The most important thing is to provide the service that discovers what the customer initially wanted, delivers that, convinces them to subscribe, and continues to target their individual needs over time.

Is your blog your sweatshop or your sales representative? How could your blog more effectively showcase your products or services? Do you think this method is effective or could blogs be used in other ways to return a profit?

Yay! It’s DECEMBER!

*starts singing* “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…” I love December and the holiday season. I’m wrapped in the excitement and community spirit of Christmas. Despite the queues at the store, the impatient bustle of traffic, and a sudden dip in my bank account balance, there is something magical about December.

Did you know, however, that almost all of the fresh, new content that fills the world this month was written months ago? The advert for those holiday sales, the gift catalogs of your favorite stores, and the press releases announcing this party and that holiday event were put together at least several weeks past, usually around August/September.

Guess what that means for seasonal writers? You should be working on content for Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s, and even Easter. The only people who get to write about December in December are bloggers (ok, I guess the “breaking news” journalists do too, sometimes). Which is another awesome reason to blog don’t you think? We can write about the holidays when we’re fired with the passion and excitement of the moment. Or, if you’re fired in the moment, consider writing in advance of next year’s holiday season.

What are you writing about this December? And how do you prepare in advance for seasonal writing?