A day in the life…February 20, 2006

I think my friends and relatives sometimes wonder what I do here in my basement all day. In fact, one of them actually said to me, “I bet you just sit around drinking wine …” What?! Who the hell does he think I am, Ernest Hemingway!?

To dispel any of those notions, I kept track of my day yesterday – pretty typical. Here’s how it went.

Morning

7:45 – 8:30: Brainstorm on headlines/ideas for recruitment ad series for TQ.

8:35 – 9:00: Go through e-mails; write to K. re: photo to go with Jr. NBA basketball story; write to TDs to ask (beg) for approval on their story, which was due back to me last Friday.

9:00 – 10:15: Call four or five weight loss people and interview them for next week’s update.*

10:15 – 10:35: Deal with photo shoot crisis: Michelle in Iowa (featured person in magazine spread) sent me a slightly panicky e-mail saying she hasn’t heard from anyone about the shoot and needs to confirm that it’s happening or else reschedule; she has 3 kids and babysitting issues. I know rescheduling is not an option, so I track down Andy (photographer) who thought the art director had contacted her re: time, details, etc. He’s planning on the shoot for sure – wants me to ask her if she can arrange to have some photos taken at Y, where she works out. I e-mail her back, apologizing for mix-up, tell her the shoot is on, and I’ll call her later with details.

10:35 – 10:45: Deal with more e-mails – send Lindsey copy of Jr. NBA story for another story she’s working on about it. Get reply from Troy (designer) to my earlier e-mail to him about working on a new project. He says thanks, but he can’t take on anything else right now. E-mail Mark to see if he’s interested.

10:45 – noon: Work on AC’s newsletter. Thank God, things are going MUCH more smoothly on this one versus the hellish situation we had last time. (See Proofreading.)

Afternoon

Noon – 1:00: Listen to Terry Gross, eat, go cross country skiing.

1:05 - 1:15: Get organized for afternoon; call Michelle back and leave her a message based on more info received from Andy re arrival time, etc.…

1:15 - 2:30: Edit heads/write sample copy for sample recruitment ad for TQ; send to client. Clean up/send in copy on Jr. NBA basketball story.

2:30: Call 96-year old mother (who still lives at home) to make sure all is well with her. Praise Jesus, it is, though for some reason, she thinks today is Saturday.

2:35: Go upstairs and do laundry. Give living room wall another coat of paint. (The 4th sample I’ve tried in an attempt to find a color I like.)

2:45 – 3:15: Start calls on new weight loss testimonials. Talk to a woman who lost 85 pounds on the TLS program – turns out she has an amazing story. (She was about to have stomach reduction surgery and thought she’d give the program a try first. It worked, and she’s kept the weight off for more than a year.)

3:15 – 3:30: Go upstairs to check paint and try to decide if I can live in a room that looks more blue than the Silver Sage it’s supposed to be. Realize I hate blue.

3:35: Come back down and check e-mails; e-mail Brenna and ask if her Silver Sage walls look green or blue.

3:40: Receive e-mail from TDs saying they “definitely have changes to the story…” damn…and that they will get back to me “in the next couple days.” Right…

4:00: Finish up loose ends, answer outstanding e-mails, etc.

4:15: Go upstairs for good. Get and go through mail, figure out what to have for dinner, plop down to read the newspaper.

5:15: Receive call from Michelle asking what she can expect during shoot – how long it will last, whether kids will be in it, etc. I fill her in, call Andy and ask him to please give her a call the next day to reassure her. He says he will.

The End.

*I do a lot of weight loss testimonials for magazines, newsletters, etc. One of my current jobs is making calls to 10 people who are in a 12-week program, talk to them about how they’re doing, and post their weekly comments on a website. Weight loss: It’s what America is all about these days.

Things I hate about my job

Being a pest. I can’t tell you how much time I spend bugging people – e-mailing, calling, leaving voice-mails – continually trying to schedule interviews, follow up on things I’ve sent or I’m waiting for, get approvals, etc. The struggle is constant. Then again, it could be worse. I just heard a woman named Jackie Spinner on NPR who lived in Iraq for 13 months while reporting for the Washington Post. Now she had a struggle. I must remember that next time I’m feeling sorry for myself.

No-shows. Here is a great example of something that happens more often than you’d think. On Thursday I got a quick turnaround job that was due the following Thursday. I had to interview a guy for the story and wanted to set it up early the next week to give myself some time to work on it before the deadline. Monday was already full with other interviews and meetings all day, so I had e-mailed him saying, “Would you be available to talk next Tues. around 2-2:30? Or possibly Monday at 11:00 a.m.? If not, maybe you could give me a day/time that you're available and I’ll try to work around it…”

He e-mailed me back: “Let’s meet Monday at 2:30…” Well, I thought maybe he misread my e-mail, but rather than point that out, I decided to let it go and just assumed that was the only time he was available. So I juggled my schedule a little because he’s a very busy guy and I wanted to get him when I could.

I managed to show up at 2:30 on Monday, and when I arrived, his assistant tells me not only is he not there, he’s not even in the office that day! So on Tues. I get an e-mail from him apologizing for the mix-up, saying he had meant to write “Tuesday,” in his e-mail (and that’s what he put on his calendar) but wrote Monday by mistake! I guess I should have questioned it. And the bad news was that now he couldn’t together till Wednesday at 3. But, of course, my copy was still due end of day on Thursday, and am I gonna write my editor and tell her that big ol’ tale of woe? No, I am not. (Note: when I did finally meet with him, he rather lightheartedly told me he’d been skiing with his kids on Monday…Grrrrr.)

Concepting. I used to like doing this, but continually coming up with “fresh” new ideas is hard. People always say, “We want an ad headline that will really grab the reader’s attention.” I want to say back to them, “How about this one: ‘READ THIS F-ING AD OR I’LL KILL YOU.’ Think that’d get their attention?”

Time sheets. It’s not easy keeping track of every moment you spend working on every job. For instance, last night in an effort to get to sleep, I started thinking about a brochure I’m writing. I spent about an hour on it (and actually came up with a good idea) but I feel kind of guilty about putting that down on the time sheet. So I usually don’t.

The other thing that’s hard is that I’ll be in the middle of one job, and somebody sends an “urgent” e-mail about some little thing that “has” to be done asap on another job, so I stop what I’m doing to deal with the emergency, then before you know it, a half hour is gone and needs to be recorded. Kind of annoying.

Invoicing. I really don’t mind doing invoices (nice to see what my hard work earns); it’s the math I hate. All those little quarter hours that have to be added up: .25, .50, .75, 1.5, 2.5, etc. etc, It’s excruciating for someone like me who hates dealing with such an exact science. And I’m always making mistakes! Just today I got an e-mail from a gal who said, “Keasha, are you sure your invoice amount is $2398.75? I get $2388.75 when I add it up.” She was totally right! I had inadvertently written $887.50 for one of the projects that should have been $877.50, so the final tally was off by $10. Thank God the people who hire me are not the same people process the invoices or I’d probably never work again.

Meetings. Corporate people have no idea what they’re asking of freelancers when they invite us to meetings. Easy for them, they’re right in the building, probably happy to be away from their desks for an hour. But for us, a ten o’clock will kill an entire morning. First, you have to take a shower, then find something to wear, get dressed, fix your hair, put on your makeup, gather the files, pray there’s gas in the car and then drive 20 or 30 miles to get there! Geez. Haven’t they ever heard of conference calling? (Preferably the kind without the videocam.)

Those are the only things I hate about my job that I can think of at the moment. But I’m sure there are others, so stay tuned.

Busted

Here is something almost all writers find out the hard way: Don’t put anything in print that you may regret later: things about family and friends they might not want made public; things that might not be true; things that might hurt the feelings of someone you care about, or get them in trouble.

Truman Capote found that out with “Answered Prayers,” his very thinly disguised roman a clef about all his high profile friends. After it came out as excerpts in Esquire (it never actually made it to the book stage) every single one of his pals turned against him. As one said, “I took a cleaver and chopped him out of my life.”

And who could blame them? He completely betrayed their confidences, exploited their friendships and disregarded their feelings, all for the sake of a good story. But didn’t his friendships mean more to him than that? Apparently not. (After seeing the movie, “Capote” this weekend, I understand a little more about that—great flick, by the way.)

Anyway, I’ve done some similar things myself, to a lesser degree. For instance, I once wrote a story in the GR Press about using fabric in unusual ways in your house -- covering old tables, as window dressing, etc. And I used my sister-in-law Mary as an example. She’s an artist and incredibly creative with different kinds of materials. But after the story came out, somebody said to my brother, “What, are you too cheap to buy drapes, your wife has to hang her aunt’s old bedspreads on your windows?” Needless to say, that didn’t set too well with my brother.

And in my Blog about Reading and Writing I mentioned my friend, Bill, implying that he was a great writer, but wasn’t a big reader. Later in that same piece, I also said his brother Dick hadn’t returned a book I lent him, stating that he apparently was a reader, but not a returner.

So last week I was having dinner with brothers Bill and Dick and I said, “Oh, I have to tell you guys about something…” and was going to tell them about my Blog and the fact that I’d mentioned them in it, hoping that it would be ok. As I started to talk, Bill said, “Oh, yeah, I heard about what you said about me, thanks a lot!” Or something like that. Then he turned to his brother and said, “She said something about you, too!” and Dick said, “What did you say about me?”

My first reaction to Bill was, “How did you even know about the Blog?” and I’ll get to that in a minute, but as it turns out, neither statement I made about either of them was correct! First, Bill IS a big reader, and second, Dick never even borrowed my book to begin with!

But the worst thing was that I got busted before I even had a chance to tell them about it. (The way Bill found out about it was that in that same piece, I also mentioned his friend, Bob Tarte’s book, "Enslaved by Ducks.” Apparently, every once in awhile Bob Googles his book to see if there are any reviews on it or whatever, and my Blog came up.)

Bill and Dick were good sports about the whole thing—it was pretty funny–but I told them I’d apologize in my very next Blog, which is what I’m doing now.

And in the meantime, speaking of getting busted, there was a big uproar this weekend in East Grand Rapids about some high school kids getting caught for what they put on their Blogs about partying—one of the parents saw it and now there’s a bunch of students who have been suspended for drinking, which is a whole ‘nother story, one I have no desire get into.

The point is: don’t write anything you’re going to regret later – even in your Blog.

Death Fantasies

My daughter Brenna is working on a writing project right now to help someone out (she’s in grad school) and she’s experiencing something I’ve gone through many times in the past: death fantasies. It goes something like this:

You’re offered a project that looks like it might be hard. You take it anyway. You get into it and realize it is IMPOSSIBLE! You don’t have enough information, you have no idea what you’re talking about, and you feel more lost and confused with each step. Every day begins with this problem and every night it’s there haunting you. But you HAVE to keep going and get it done.

That’s when I start having death fantasies:

• I’m walking down the basement stairs to my office and a man jumps out from the dark hallway, grabs me and strangles me.
• I’m going out to get the mail and I suddenly trip, fall down the steps and bang my head on the sidewalk, resulting in a coma from which I never awake.
• I’m approaching the traffic light and as I go through the intersection, a giant truck runs a red light and crashes into me, killing me instantly.
  
  I’m sorry to see that Brenna is now doing the same thing I used to do; I must remember to tell her to find another way of coping.
  
  What I’ve learned over the years is to just not take the damn job in the first place. For example, I drove all the way out to Muskegon one day to talk to a potential client at Brunswick about a writing project they had. I didn’t know anything about it, and when I got there, the lady explained to me what it was: Writing (the very first) instruction manual for machinery that cleans bowling alleys.
  
  After she finished telling me all about it, I looked at her and without hesitation said, “I’m sorry, but I am not the right person for this project…” What I wanted to say was, “A bowling alley cleaning machine instruction manual? I’d rather be tied down in the desert with fire ants!”
  
  I knew this was one of those things that would eventually bring on the death fantasies, and quite frankly, I’m getting a little to old for that. Or maybe just too close to the real thing. Actually, the truth is I’ve reached the point that I don’t have to take on those jobs anymore – and that is the most life-affirming thing of all.