Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Dear Writers: Don't Fall for a Line Like That

"This position is really meant for people who know how to bring in real traffic. We pay a $2.50 CPM (That's $2.50 per 1,000 pageviews your article attracts) with a cap set at $25 per article."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

If the line above - from a real, recent post on a quite-respected job board - had you going at first, I hope you did the math at the end and got the same answer I did.  Sorry, but "$25 cap" isn't appropriate or respectable, even for a "small but respected social media reporting site."

SMH.

Thursday, September 19, 2013

We're all writers so read this before sharing on Facebook (or anywhere else)

This is something of a public service announcement. If you use Facebook, please invest a little bit of time into understanding the basic functionality of its privacy settings. Also set aside a few minutes every couple of weeks to review them, as they change frequently and frankly, you may not fully understand that by clicking on something, you can change your own settings quite unintentionally.

For example, I have changed my own posting/privacy settings multiple times and for various reasons (some I understand, others not so much) they have changed back, or changed again.

Here's an example: it's extremely easy to set your status-posting setting to "private" - which means, of course, it's not private at all, but shared with all your friends.  It's also very easy to change your status setting to "public," which means it's really public, out there for anyone to see, like, forever, or until you delete it.

Ok. Those of you who are Facebook gurus know exactly how these things work. And you can still make mistakes.

What's worse, a disturbing lot of you are thinking, well, I don't use Facebook enough to worry about all that or I don't have time to mess around with all those settings and to you I say, yes you do.

If you use Facebook at all then you should learn how to use the privacy settings to your advantage, and be vigilant about understanding the changes. And there are always changes!

It doesn't take that long to learn the ropes, and Facebook has helpful "help" pages that explain things well. Use them. Don't take the advice of post-of-a-repost on one of your friend's friends' walls. Go directly to the current Facebook help page and learn how to do it.

I manage Facebook pages for nearly a dozen businesses and organizations (and my own book!! < that's a plug) and I assure you that if I can screw up a "simple" privacy setting, you can too. Shame on all of us who don't take the time to learn how to use them properly.

Lecture over! Class dismissed! Thanks for reading!

Thursday, September 5, 2013

OH, that's why I hate to cook...

In TheKitchn blog, poet, Zen master, and masterful chef Jane Hirshfield very artfully explains why I don't like (borderline-hate) to cook:
The only way to answer the question "what else" is to imagine a range of possibilities, and then, before adding one in, taste them first in your mind and then with your nose (the miraculous kitchen organ of first-draft preview, since, unlike words on a page, ingredients added can't then be removed). It’s the same with a poem, of course—you may have some starting direction of thought or feeling, but the actual poem will be made by its "what elses"—the details of world and word that make it the only possible way to say what it says.
Yep. It's that whole ingredients-added-can't-then-be-removed thing that disturbs me so.

In writing, there's editing.

In gardening, there's weeding, pruning, uprooting, replanting...

But in cooking, there's toss it in, and then like it or lump it.

I think I'll go out for lunch now.