The Rewardathon Box October 29, 2008

Balancing the ups and downs of breaking into writing has been anything but boring. Meeting deadlines, searching the web for freelance work, coping with rejection, honing my skills, and participating in writing workshops are just some of the many things I’m juggling. Then in early June I crashed.

I woke up early on a Saturday to work on an article. And nothing happened. The only action I got came from the steam rising above my mug of coffee and the vertical cursor flashing on and off across the blank page of my computer screen.  I couldn’t even think of a good leading sentence.  Immediately, I felt the anxiety brewing inside my chest. A self-taught yogi, I grabbed my mat and ran through my relaxation routine. Twenty minutes later, my deep breathing and stretching helped me kick the knotted feeling in my chest to the curb. Facing my laptop once again, I still got nothing. I was getting nowhere.  So, I got dressed and headed to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for a relaxing morning. With girlie magazines in hand, cool stationary, and my Canon I entered the garden just in time to make the Saturday morning free admission.

A few hours later, I left with some helpful tips about summer skin care, a handwritten letter to a family member living in London,  and a great selection of natural pictures (which I’ve included for your viewing pleasure).  I felt renewed and relaxed. I took the rest of the day off and the very next day I had an article I was proud of minus the writer’s block.

The lesson I learned was that as much as I love writing I also have to make time to nurture myself. Now, I make sure to reward myself in small (and sometimes big) ways. This helps to keep my creative juices flowing. All work and no play really dulled my senses because I was exhausted and didn’t even realize it until I shut down.

So what I’ve done is create a rewardathon box for myself. On small pieces of paper, I’ve written some of my favorite treats and stored them in a small box. Every two weeks, I look forward to closing my eyes and picking out one item from the box to reward myself. Even my sister, a busy mother, loved the idea so much that she adopted this practice as well. Some of the rewards I have in my box include:

1. Buying a book from my wish list (I usually borrow books from friends or the library)

2. Picking up a bag of Gorilla coffee (my newest coffee craze)

3. Getting a facial (I save $$ by going to a really great school for estheticians and they give mini-massages to boot)

4. One shoe indulgence (whenever I pick this one it ends up being two shoes – I can’t help it!)

5. My favorite is the “Think Outside the Box” pick. I love this one. I came up with the idea as sort of a free pass to do something I wouldn’t normally do and it’s something that isn’t already in the box. And whenever I select the TOTB paper, I always end up doing something for someone else. Giving back by volunteer my time, helping out a charity, donating food and clothes, and even making visits to the Red Cross have been a few of the things I’ve come up with.

The rewardathon is my way of breaking the bad habit of working all the time. And when I do the floodgates of creativity are wide open because I’ve given myself a chance to slow down and reboot.

I’d love to hear what you do to reconnect with yourself after a busy week of writing?  And while you’re here check out my photos below.

Magnolia denudata (Yulan Magnolia)

Steinhardt Conservatory: Warm Temperate Pavilion

Reeling in the Runaway Interviewee October 28, 2008

It was a strange experience for me when I started interviewing people.  Whether I was meeting with a doctor, a community organizer or a business owner, conducting a good interview meant that I needed to exude confidence and check my worries at the door.  So right off the bat I realized I had to do my research.  Getting my facts together and doing the research has been instrumental in preparing me for interviews.

Though research has helped me a lot in preparing my questions for interviews, I realized quickly that scooping out information was only part of the process.  After my first interview, I realized that things may not always go as smoothly as I anticipate.  Among these problems, I’ve faced voice recording mishaps, the serial reschedulers, and runaway interviewees.

The runaway interviewee types have a tendency to veer off-course during interviews.  In the beginning, whenever I encountered a runaway interviewee I was a bit nervous about interrupting them.  I felt that it would be rude to just interrupt someone while they were speaking.  So off they went leaving me to filter through a lot of information that didn’t really pertain to my article.

But, I soon began to realize that the long way home to answering questions during an interview was both time consuming and unnecessary.  In the end, I found myself scrambling for good quotes and information to bring the piece together with the intended path for the article.  Although everything worked out in the end, I looked back at my transcripts and realized that I didn’t use most of the information.  Everyone seemed happy with the article except me.  I realized I made the piece work with more effort than I needed to because I wasn’t assertive enough to enforce redirection when the interviewee went astray.  And that cost me time during the interview and afterward as well as I tried to pulled information together.  From what I’ve gathered about freelancing – time is of the essence.  So, lesson learned.

There will always be variables to throw me off since I can’t account for everything.  But, it’s how I bounce back that matters.  So I focus on improving the things that I do have control over.  This is why I’ve incorporated some basic strategies to assure that my interviews run much better:

1.    Fact-checking my research with a media contact, publicist or simply checking out their website.

2.    Confirming appointments -Yup, people tend to forget or double-book.  So I save myself the grief and commuting time by making sure we’re still on for the interview.

3.    Prioritizing my questions in an order that makes sense.  I don’t want to appear as if I’m just throwing questions out there.  If something is mentioned that I didn’t think of then I’ll ask about it.

When in comes to reeling in the verbose interviewee here’s what I do:

1.    Piggybacking – When a subject is going off-course I just incorporate what they’ve been saying back to my real question.  For example: “The work you’ve done when you were working for Company X sounds great.  What projects for your new company have been influenced by your experiences there.”

2.    Firm redirection – For the harder, more talkative type (Rule No. 1 simply doesn’t apply) I politely redirect them to my question again to keep them on course.

3.    Specificity over Generality – Most of the time, it’s hard to gauge whether you’ll be interviewing someone with a larger-than-life personality or more of a tight-lipped, terse type of individual.  For the chattier type I tend to pose more specific questions to sway them back in the direction of my article.

Contradictory to what I’ve been saying, there are times when I choose to remain quiet.  Yes, part of interviewing is asking questions.  However, another important part is learning when to keep quiet and let the person just speak.  Sometimes when the interviewee has answered my question I let them go on for a bit before going on to the next question.  Doing so has gotten me some really great quotes, stories and some privileged information that hasn’t been released to the public.  Silence can be golden during interviews.

Antidotes for Scoring Anecdotes October 24, 2008

Two weeks ago, my editor called me with an assignment and I jumped on it.  Both for the experience (since I am a new writer) and the fact that I got to interview an amazing woman who is doing a lot for people right in her community.

While I learn to balance my time between pitching my own ideas and completing assignments, I’ve noticed that I have a few half-baked queries I’ve put aside because they still need a little something extra.  Actually, they need a story to tie in why my idea is informative and exciting for people to know.  Now, I can just tell the editor in the letter why my idea is so great.  But, showing an editor using someone’s story would be a bit more compelling.

So, I’ve committed myself to become a bit of a sleuth when it comes to scoring anecdotes.  For starters, using experiences from my own life has been surprising.  Like the time, I went in for an early morning appointment with my doctor.  After reading even the sports section of the newspaper (not something I do) and shifting my body several times to shush the boxing match in my stomach (we’re doing some routine blood work), I have yet to see the doctor.  If it wasn’t for his wonderful personality and the fact that I’ve been going to him for years, I swear I’d find another physician.  But would that really solve my waiting room dilemma?

The idea of waiting forever in the doctor’s office is something many people experience.  Voila!  I have a great anecdote for a how-to article about optimizing your doctor’s office visit by putting your waiting time to good use.

Besides my own personal experiences, here are some other resources I’ve turned to in my quest for a good anecdote:

• Family/Friends – Lately, I’ve been pitching a few parenting articles on babies and my sister and a few friends have been great sources.
• Bloggers – People blog about so many things and sometimes I come across bloggers who may fit the profile for a story I am pitching.
• Social Networking Groups – I sometimes send out a request to my network of online friends (if they can’t help they usually have a source in mind who just might be able to).

I don’t include a story with all my queries.  But, I find that leading a proposal with a great anecdote has given me some success.  Scoring that great quote or finding a story for my pitch isn’t always easy.  But, I find that some of my ideas need real stories about people that the reader can relate to in the article.

Where do you find anecdotes for your articles?