Informercials and Advertising yourself

I love informercials. We don’t have cable right now, though mom is pushing for it, so my Saturday morning programming consists of watching early cooking shows and lots of really nifty informercials in the afternoon. So far I’ve watched three of them, the shark steam mop, Nu-wave Oven Pro Infrared Oven, and the GT Xpress 101 and I‘m acting just like the average consumer looking to blow my money on as seen on tv products!  Keep watching I’ll be adding more to this post!

Dealing with Carpal Tunnel, Muscle Cramp and Broad Butt Syndrome

I’ve been freelance writing just long enough to start experiencing some of the health problems unique to writers.  Some of these of problems you’d normally expect like muscle cramps and carpal tunnel and others are things they don’t point out in those writers workshops we used to take. 

For instance, my butt is changing shape to look like the bottom of my office chair.  Was not expecting that.  Not only does my tail bone start hurting if I don’t get up and move around every few hours, but my back-end is growing exponentially with the number of hours I spend typing.  Oh dear.

                            

The carpal tunnel I’ve managed to handle fairly well.  It only comes when, I’m working for long periods of time on projects and not typing properly.  I have a terrible habit of letting my wrists sit on the keyboard or desk when I’m typing, which of course leads to wrist pain and carpal tunnel. 

Suggestions for Carpal Tunnel and Neck Pain

If you are finding that you develop some carpal tunnel after writing for a few hours or several days, I suggest looking at how you work.  Keep those wrists up and straight!  I also like to start taking a daily multivitamin when I start noticing the wrist pain and muscle cramps.  It really seems to help repair some of the damage from sitting improperly.   It also helps to have your keyboard at about lap height and your monitor high enough that you can sit up straight to read without bending forward and getting all crunched up. 

That’s another problem, neck pain.  If you don’t have your computer monitor at a good height you are going to bend forward at the computer and get your neck all out of alignment.  I also find that my jaw tends to tighten up and give me some TMJ problems, even when I’m not sitting at the computer anymore.   

You can easily adjust the height of your monitor with a couple of thick books underneath.  It’s cheap and it saves lots of money, since no one wants to get enough freelance health insurance just so they can visit the chiropractor! 

January is Never Too Early for Freelance Tax Preparation!

It’s January of 2008 and that means a few things!  I’m still writing the wrong year on my personal checks, every writer should have a great set of New Year’s Resolutions for themselves, and it’s time to start thinking about taxes again.

I did my self-employment taxes for the first time last year and it was a bear.  Not to mention how shocked I was to find out how much moolah I still owed the IRS after all of those deductions I made.  This year is probably going to be worse, I’ve got some carry over from last year’s bill, depreciation to appreciate and a pile of saved receipts to start going through. 

If you have made more than $600 in your business or as a freelancer you’ll need to report that income as self-employment on your taxes this year.  January is the time to start worrying about it too.  Here are a couple of things you can start doing to prepare for doing your taxes or having someone else do it!

1. Start looking for those deductions.  You may have a shoebox filled with old receipts or a habit of stuffing your receipts into your wallet.  Either way it’s time to dump them out and start separating the fast food orders from potential tax deductions.  Anything you paid for as a part of your business or freelance work is pretty much a deduction.  Did you send out short stories or poems?  Deduct the postage.  Have you signed up for special classes or a paid organization?  Deduct the costs.  You’ll want to check out the IRS website for more information on what qualifies as a deduction.
2. Find out just how much you’ve earned gross and adjusted in 2007.  Hopefully you were writing this down somewhere, like a notebook.  If you had been paid through Paypal or even directly to your checking account you can download the information and organize it in excel or one of those popular money accounting programs.
3. Start picking up the IRS forms.  So you aren’t running around at the last minute to find this form or that form, start picking them up now.  You may be able to find all the forms and schedules you’ll need at the library or post office.  You can also go to the IRS website and order the forms you need through the mail for free.

A good head start in preparing for your freelance income tax will work wonders in helping you stay on track and keep your stress level down.

Let’s All Finish Ziggy the Blobfish’s Story!

I’ve noticed that only five people have continued the round robin story about Ziggy the Blobfish. Be sure to click on the link and help him out of his quandry. Don’t leave him hanging man!

Also, I still need a little help deciding if I should keep the superman image from The Organizational Quest post I wrote in September. It’s still bringing in a lot of hits, but not a lot of readers are sticking around. : (

Don’t forget about Ziggy!

To Keep or Not to Keep Superman

I’ve been getting an amazing number of hits on my blog lately.  I mean like 500 or so visitors in a week, which is about triple my normal number of visitors.  At first I thought great, this is fantastic, then I thought, wait a minute, I don’t post often enough for that many people to keep coming back…

Turns out that people are googling ‘Superman’ or ’super man’ and end up clicking on here because one of my posts has an image of superman on it.  Pop…Ego balloon deflated.

Although, I’m still getting this little thrill whenever I check my stats and see that 70 some people popped in, if only for a second or two.  Yet, it’s not really my thrill to experience, it’s Superman’s.  I’m not certain if I should take the image down on that post or leave it up.  So, feel free to chime in with your opinion in the comments section.  Should I rely on Superman to increase my number of hits or not?

Excerpt from NaNoWriMo Work

Tomorrow turned into a few days later, but here is a small excerpt from my NaNoWriMo work.

          He had patches of fur poking out of his skin and a slightly snout-like face.  He was stuck, trapped almost between his half-man, half wolfish transformation.  The ears pointed and turned of their own volition.  He stunk of sweat and something else, dung like.  It occurred to Harold that the wolf man may roll in shit on a regular basis.  Perhaps to make himself smell like his prey?  Harold wondered where the wolf man found large enough quantities of shit to roll in.  Unless he collected it himself during those other days of the month when he was most fully human.  Harold had an unpleasant image of the wolf man taking craps into his bath tub, saving up the foul mixture for times when he needed it the most, those times when he was fully a werewolf.

            The strong smelling man turned from ripping into the plastic sheeting around the pallet to jump, snapping at Harold.  Not wanting to become vampire tartar for the half-crazed wolf man, Harold backed up in a hurry.  Something slithered across his tennis shoes in the darkened alley created by the thrice stacked food pallets.  A small hysterical cry forced its way up out of Harold and he immediately clamped down on the sound.  Even amongst others with natures similar to his, a sign of fear was a very stupid thing indeed, especially when the others were self-starved.  The irony of having the meetings in a large warehouse of food struck him.  Food that they could never eat, never digest, never again partake of, even if some of these creatures had been normal at one point.  They certainly weren’t now.

            A joke, he thought, this is all some terrible joke.  They can’t honestly believe they can change themselves through will power.  I can’t believe I’m here.

            Harold wandered further into the warehouse, past moaning things and others like him who looked mostly normal, except they seemed wasted away to nearly nothing.  Harold cringed away from them, sought out the comfort of the dark and kept moving forward. 

He found the meeting area in a cleared space amongst the pallets and assembly lines and silent forklifts.  A banner hung against a wall of pallets announcing with words in blood red (Someone’s funny sense of humor coming in?) the name of the group; Flesheaters and Bloodsuckers Anonymous.  Otherwise known as F.E.B.S. Thirty or so metal folding chairs were filling up rapidly as flesheating and bloodsucking creatures poured out from between the pallets.  They pulled the chairs into a lazy circle, not quite round enough and not quite closed all the way with gaps large enough for things wandering in and out.  If Harold weren’t peering out from behind a stack of pallets at the assemblage he might have been able to continue telling himself this was all a joke.  

I didn’t make it to 20,000 words.  My final word count came in at 18,111 words for the 2007 NaNoWriMo, but I’m glad I finally got to take part in the monthly adventure.  I like the story that has developed so far and will be continuing it into the rest of the year.  I’m thinking about putting it on my New Year’s Resolutions list to make sure I finish it and get it edited by the next NaNoWriMo.

NaNoWriMo Update!

Well, it’s getting on towards the end of the month for NaNoWriMo.  I didn’t get up here and post those excerpts like I promised, but I’ll try to come back with a few later today or tomorrow. 

I surprised myself by keeping up with the daily requirment for about 12 days or so.  Then I slacked off to about a 1000 words a day, which was still good since I didn’t think I’d make it all the way to 50,000 words. 

Unfortunently, I was struck down with a stomach ulcer on the seventeenth which took me out of the race.  For those who are interested, never, never get yourself a stomach ulcer.  It just isn’t fun. 

I’ve had one previously and it took me months to heal.  Luckily, this time I knew what to do;

• dropped everything but the essentials
• spent three days in constant pain, three in sporadic moderate pain and a few with very mild heartburn sensations
• got onto a special starchy and mild diet, can anyone say applesauce
• 5 to 6 small meals a day
• and a steady diet of two separate antacids ever since

It was very lucky that the pain started improving within a few days, but I’ve had to be careful since then about what I eat and staying on top of the medication.  It can take up to six weeks for an ulcer to fully heal.

Anywho, the writing practically stopped for about a week and I fell behind in everything.  I’m still creeping along though with a word count of about 17,600 words.  I hope to hit 20,000 words by the end of the month and will continue working on my book from here on out.

NaNoWriMo Begins!

I’m four days into the NaNoWriMo challenge and all is going well so far.  I’m a little over 5,000 words on the book which I’m tentatively calling, Flesheaters and Bloodsuckers Anonymous.  I should be over 6,000 words by the end of the day.  I know I should have updated my word count at the NaNo website but was having a little trouble logging in.  Their servers must be swamped!

I’ll post a few longer excerpts when I get the time on here.  For now I’ll be posting little quotes at the Nano page.

Already I can tell that the opening paragraphs are going to need a rewrite, my main character isn’t funny and everyone is going to need a new name.  However, in good faith to the NaNoWriMo challenge I am resisting the urge to edit, just to see how far I can get in the book.  This is the time I take a dump on the page, let it all out, have writerly diarrhea and so on and so forth.  

Many strange feelings are also popping up right now.  I’m starting to wonder if I can really reach the 50,000 words by the end of the month that so many others have attempted and completed.  Can I really finish off this mammoth project in such a short period of time?  Where did my favorite tan cargo pants go?

It’s really interesting.  I’m experiencing some fairly new emotions and taking on a new kind of project.  I did write a book once and completed it a few years ago. Not published, but valuable experience.  The book also took about six years to write. Ha!  Hopefully, NaNoWriMo will get this next book done a lot faster.

A Round Robin Story: Ziggy the Blobfish

I saw this picture over at http://divaboo.info/ and just had to post it.  It is an actual creature called the blobfish.  You can see why…

 

 This photo is actually somewhat inspiring for the Halloween holiday.  So I thought I’d borrow a trick from my flower smelling buds over at GoSmelltheFlowers and try to start up a round robin based on this photo. 

Rules…well, you are limited to three or four lines at the most.  I’ll get us started off.

Ziggy was having a bad day…

10 Dirty Ways to Reach 50,000 Words in NaNoWriMo

When taking on the task of creating a 50,000 word manuscript for National Novel Writer’s Month (NaNoWriMo) one should be prepared to pad their stories just a little bit.  There are plenty of ways to add extra words, some of them quite dirty. 

I was perusing the forums at NaNoWriMo.org and found a couple discussions on dirty, cheap ways to reach 50,000 words.  The rules for National Novel Writer’s Month do state that you can’t type the same word 50,000 times, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make use of the cut and paste feature in other ways.  I haven’t decided if I’ll be making use of some of these tricks or not, guess it depends on how desperate I get.  Of course some of the ‘tricks’ sound a lot like regular exposition too.

Ten Cheap, Dirty Ways to Reach 50,000 Words

1. Type one word such as ‘potato’ between every other word in your novel.  (courtesy of satachan)

2.  Remove all contractions, like ‘don’t’ becomes ’do not’.  (courtesy of J. Kreth)

3. Copy and paste extensive sections from early on in the book into the later sections of the book and call them flashbacks. (courtesy of Fallen Grace)

4. Paste in lots of song lyrics. (courtesy of Romancegirl for her idea to keep replaying love songs each time her characters meet) 

5. Have your characters write up every article, blog post and report that you also end up writing during the month of November.  (Courtesy of Erin Kelly)     

6. Describe each new character introduced in the story in detail, then copy and paste in every time that character shows up again.  (Courtesy in part to MelBell for her lovely descriptive in the 50,000 words forum.)

7. Break up the scenes/sections in your story with stars (**) or some other symbol such as the wingdings type font, as your computer will recognize them as words. (courtesy of ShadowedWhispers)

8. Create very long chapter titles including chapter synopsis’ for each chapter of your book. (courtesy of SnowLhite)

9. Add a long famous quote to the beginning of your book and each chapter and the end and anywhere else you can think up.  (courtesy of me)

10. Use lots of hyphens between words but put a space before the hyphen and after the hyphen so your hyphenated word will register as three words by the computer. (courtesy of GeorgeEliot)  

There you have it, 10 down and dirty ways to reach 50,000 words in your manuscript for NaNoWriMo.  It’s entirely up to you whether or not you wish to take advantage of these little tricks…