The Village Playlist

18 May

This is for my #villagebythesea fans, most of whom are from Twitter. There’s a coastal village with a complex past, and I’m going to be playing it its sunshine this weekend. This a little sneak peak for y’all:  my primary playlist for all work village related.

See you lovely folks on Monday.

 28 Tracks. 1 hour of playtime. Listed in alphabetical order.

The Ghost Inside, Broken Bells
Little Bird In Coffin Come, Chris Bathgate
Shipping News, Christopher Young
Jenny Says, Cowboy Mouth
The Garden, The Creepshow
Cantara, Dead Can Dance
Tais-Toi Mon Coeur, Dionysos&Olivia Ruiz
Fleur de saison, Emilie Simon
Sleep To Dream, Fiona Apple
What The Water Gave Me (MTV Unplugged 2012), Florence+The Machine
Comes and Goes (In Waves), Greg Laswell
Alchemy, Johnny Hollow
Golden Frames, KT Tunstall
Better Run Away From Me, Miss Derringer
Tonight You Belong To Me, Nancy Sinatra
Red Right Hand, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Nice Day, Persephone’s Bees
Love You More, The Pierces
Running Up That Hill, Placebo
Welcome to Mystery, Plain White T’s
1816, The Year Without a Summer, Rasputina
Annabelle Lee, Sarah Jarosz
Ahead Of My Time, Teddybears Featuring Daddy Boastin’
Crossroads, Tom Waits
Seven Sisters, Tori Amos
Gan To The Kye, The Unthanks
Dead Angels, VAST
We Insist, Zoe Keating

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A Lesson in Death

17 May

It’s 3:45 a.m. PST as I start this. I’m breathing slowly while doing a breathing treatment: ipatropium bromide and albuterol sulfate are turned into a fine mist in a reservoir in the base of this oxygen mask. The air to do this is fed through a piece of oxygen tubing that plugs into a small, heavy portable-model nebulizer. It’s currently humming quite loudly.

I’ll be stuck here for awhile, so I might as well use the time for writing while I can, even with the low-blood-oxygen headache.

I was reading Deadline by Mira Grant again, which was sharing brain space as I fell asleep with thoughts about Jewish horror, oxygen masks, what makes things scary, visuals in horror, where pieces of my ‘affinity’ to the genre come from. Dozens of conversations I’ve had, past and present. I asked myself those stupid questions, like

What’s the earliest memory you have that, looking back, influenced you writing horror?

Well, it goes like this.

Continue reading →

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Industry Talk Released.

10 May

It’s in the wild!

Resident fabulous mentor Jennifer Brozek’s book Industry Talk is out. It’s a nice mix of previously published content (Dice&Deadlines, Making of an Anthology) with some brand new tricks from Jennifer’s tool kit sprinkled on about surviving as a freelancer without your head exploding. Ivan Ewert is the fantastic man behind the cover, and I had so much fun editing the book. It’s my first non-fiction book as an editor, and my first project with Apocalypse Ink Productions. I’m excited for what’s going to be a very crazy, hectic year of publication.

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Making The Effort

7 May

I’m pretty bad at video games that involve action. I’m synesthetic, and I process stimulus in ways a number of people don’t. The more action there is involved in a video game, the harder it becomes for me to keep up with how my brain processes it. This is why I play games on easy mode, usually alone. If I play with company, I’m trusting that person not to become fed up as a ‘more experienced player’ and ‘help get past this one part.’ I’m also trusting they know when to kindly shut the Hell up so I can concentrate.

I’ve played very few games to the end because friends, upset about my extreme level of distress at being unable to get past a given challenge, wouldn’t suggest I take a break. They’d cajole me into letting them take the control and finish it for me so I could return to tasks I could do.

I stopped playing video games with people in the same building because of that.

The next time you run into someone who hits a brick wall when solving a puzzle, playing a game, cresting past that crucial piece of homework, the stutter stop of what-next in their writing: don’t take the controller. Don’t force them to sit there while you walk them through solving for X. If someone is making an effort to do something incredibly difficult for them, help facilitate that. Just because someone does the same task you can, but their pace is slower, or their route circuitous, doesn’t make them wrong.

If I can get to the end of a video game, even if I took an extra week to beat it, I still got to the same final credits you did. I made an effort, to partake in something that comes easily to others.  I don’t want that accomplishment cheapened by people taking the controller from me. If I want help, I really will ask for it.

If someone can make the effort to get to the end of a hard task, you can make the effort to help them get there. And sometimes, all you need to do is walk along the sidelines and cheer them on to help them get to the finish.

 

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FAQ: Freelance Edition

4 May

I field a lot of information requests. For my convenience, I’m throwing some of the links I send out the most frequently into one post, so I don’t spend inordinate amounts of time pointing them out in the future.

I have spent…a lot of time as the Freelance Answer box, lately. Tip before the following Q&A: if you can ask someone a question,  consider if you should Google it first. And you might want to consider making sure you ask the right person your question.  Jaym Gates, a brilliant publicist, talks about that at her blog.

 

 

I need an editorial contract. Is there one you use?

My current go-to favorite is from the Association canadienne des réviseurs, who offers their editing contract template in multiple formats, and in both English and French. Using the template is by no means legal advice or somehow a guaranteed protection against not getting paid. You can find the template here.

 

What’s a good Editing/Writing Rate?

There are countless rate sheets out there. The one I usually throw out to people when they’re trying to set their own rates is from the Editorial Freelancers Association, and you can find that here. My own rates are consistent with the rate sheet.

 

Personal Assistant Contracts?

I’ve been using a Retainer Agreement from the Administrative Consultants Association for a few years. Their web store is here.

 

Personal Assistant Rates

Mileage may vary. Seriously. Not even kidding. A full time assistant can make $2500 a month without most of her fellow PAs batting an eye, and that’s considered a low rate in some PA circles. PA rates are incredibly variable and vary greatly depending on hours, duties, qualifications, needs, you name it.

 

I Want To Become A Personal Assistant

  1. If you drink, put something nice in the filing cabinet for yourself. You’ll need it.
  2. Your significant other is going to complain you’re always on call. There’s a 50% chance this is going to break you up.
  3. When working bad assistant jobs (and I have in the past) I could rely on Save the Assistants  website for a good laugh. Or cry.
  4. One of my bibles for freelancing, and PA work in specific, is the book Save the Assistants from the writer behind StA, Lilit Marcus. You may want to post-it note the parts on…well, everything. I had post-it notes all over my copy, including some chapters I marked for fun and actually needed later on.

 

How Can I Find An Editor?

Did a post on that over at InkPunks.

 

How Do You Get Freelance Work?

I’ve actually done that post already. You can find it here.

 

How Did You Get Into Games? How Can I/My Relative/Neighbor/Friend/Acquaintance Get Into Games?

I got into editing games by accident, which I talked about in this interview. That initial tumble has led to a current hitch with a games journalism column.

If you want some very brass tacks advice on how to get into game writing, I can suggest the book Industry Talk by Jennifer Brozek, which comes out on May 15th, from Apocalypse Ink Productions. If you’re desperate to wet your whistle before then, you can look up Jennifer at her blog or on twitter, which is a daily dose of life as a freelancer owned by her cats. Watch out for the machete.

I don’t know jack about getting into video or social games, but no matter the game format, I suggest reading books, write, play games, write games, deconstruct games, and read blogs. There are worse ways to spend your time.

 

Should I Do An Unpaid Internship?

I am by and large, now that my own internships are behind me, inclined to scream something like run, the killer is already in the house! when people ask me about unpaid internships.

I got great skills and portfolio clips off my internships. They were also incredibly stressful, I had a stroke on one of my weekend’s off, and I flunked out of college because I couldn’t function at the capacity needed to complete my schoolwork.

You’re the only person who knows for sure if it’s a good idea. So examine your finances, your social life, the duties of the internship, every little wiggly detail. Will you wreck your grades working this internship? Will you nuke personal relationships? Will you get anything out of it? Do you have the money saved up to cope with working an unpaid internship?

Are you willing to put pros and cons next to each other and be honest about possible outcomes?

Approach it just like you would a paid job, because these days, your internship is a job. It’s also unpaid labor with no bennies or protections. So don’t make a snap decision.

 

What Blogs Should I Read/What Books Should I Read?

No. No, not going to half-ass this. You can wait for a separate fucking post.

Now get off my lawn.

 

 

 

 

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The Almighty Image

3 May

 

I love graphics. I really do. I’m going to preface what I’m about to say with that statement.

Going back the past five years or so, I’ve seen an increase in blogs and publications (not just ones I’ve worked with) make the inclusion of an image in every post, announcement or article a style guide rule. And it drives me absolutely crazy. I could use more profane language, but there isn’t enough profanity in my vocabulary to apply to my dislike of this rule.

Why the hate? Because people execute this style rule badly. Constantly. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a wee blog or a national, everyone can suck at it equally.

 

1. Wrong photo.

It’s happened to me. An editor at an outlet dropped a picture into the article last second, and it didn’t have the right cast members for a TV show. Of the three people pictured, only one was actually on the show I was writing about.

2. Corporate logos.

This feeds more into the people using press releases verbatim as news items phenomena, but a corporate logo alone isn’t an image to ride along with an article. It’s shilling. If the only image you’re running is the logo, I better be seeing a paid advertisement advisory.

3. Wildly inappropriate photos.

Laurie Penny did an article recently on male sexuality. It was, as one is used to from Ms. Penny, an articulate and well-written one. Someone decided to run a photo of a muscular,  naked man as the graphic to be paired with it. Some people might say it’s ‘fair’ with the imagery of women plastered across the news. I feel the need to point out that objectifying men  is still sexist. The ability to use stock photography is not a license to make ill-thought choices. I’m looking at you, whoever pulled that in the The Independent graphics department.

4. Obsessive use of stock photos.

Stock photos are not inherently evil. Stock is in fact, pretty awesome when used mindfully. But there are plenty of photographers, photojournalists, and journalists who also know how to compose a decent picture. Instead of an over reliance on stock, the use of staff/freelancers/contributors  to take photos should be done whenever possible. Even (in the right cases) pulling in the help of people you’re interviewing can do incredible things when it comes to images to run alongside articles. I don’t have an outlet paying me enough to fly to Canada and photograph someone’s office. But they can take a photo for me, I can properly credit them, and my editors still get their damn image.

I could probably come up with a painfully exhaustive list of what pisses me off and why about images, but it really boils down to some essentials for me.

There is an over-reliance on stock photos, a serious disconnect between written content and images, and an overall lack of mindfulness behind choosing/designing images that run with content. An editorial fiat that all content must have imagery is something I see as easily suffocating journalism. Because that fiat leads too often to bullshit choices born of a lack of mindfulness or accountability. The Ethics Code (SPJ, in case you were wondering) goes into a lot of detail about not using doctored photos, misleading headlines, and minimizing harm when one is reporting. If you fuck up your image choices with sexist, misleading, harmful, invasive or off-topic graphics to run along with an article, you’re betraying your readers. Images and their use are as part of ethical conduct as the use of our words.

Think about the images you’re using and what the say in context with the writing they run beside. It doesn’t matter if the source is stock, clip-art, crowd-sourced, freelance or staff. If you run an image that does not reinforce facts, that does not somehow inform your reader, that does not minimize harm, then you have fucked up.

Keep that in mind the next time you go to hit upload.

 

 

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It’s a Fiasco!

2 May

The May Playset, Salem: 1692, was something I had the exciting and horrifying time co-writing with Logan Bonner. Historic research on executions, you are not for the faint of heart.

 

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Little Red Riding Hood

2 May

It was one of the first stories I learned to read. Little Red Riding Hood is an ugly, violent little fairy tale that has stood out to me since I was very young. There’s a plethora of versions, but it struck me as a child as much, much worse than grown-ups would admit. Sure, in the version they liked to tell, a Huntsman rescues Little Red and her Grandma and chops up the wolf. It seemed too pat. In most of the versions found in my fairy tale books, Little Red, her Grandmother, or both, are horribly devoured. This isn’t always altered in some versions. Devoured. The End.

No matter what version I read, or at what age, the messages seemed both primal and conflicting. Is Red blamed for her fate because she stopped to talk to a stranger? Is the moral that there are some seriously nasty people out in the world, and one must simply do their best to be careful? Is it about sexual awakening or vanity or death or what the academic-paper-of-the-week says?

Recently, I ran into two piece son LRRH that made me rethink my attachment to it and its relation to modern things like cinema and the study of horror. My own personal definition of LRRH is fairly rigid. It’s a fairy tale. It’s German. There are lots of version. It is a 333 on the Aarne-Thompson classification scale of fairy tales.

Sidebar: Check out the Aarne-Thompson sometime. Whether or not you decide it’s flawed, it’s still fascinating.

Then I read Finn Ballard’s piece No Trespassing: The Post-Millennial Road-Horror Movie in the Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies.

WARNING: Ballard’s piece does not for a moment shy away from the graphic and violent nature of horror films, particularly road horror.  There’s some very blunt discussion of sexuality, violence, torture and general despair. If you have issues with violent content, I recommend caution in regards to the essay. You can find it online here.

Sidebar the second: If you want to bring up Ballard’s more graphic quotes in comments, please tag a warning on it. Not everyone takes discussions of violence in stride, and that includes myself.

Overall, I found Ballard’s paper a very squirm-inducing, but intelligent take on what’s going on in road horror, where the genre comes from, and what’s going on in those movies. For those not initiated, road horror as a genre would cover movies such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes; it’s a specific set of horror movies that combine traveling and violent insanity. I personally find them great encouragement not to go on road trips.

So, road horror. Aside from it being a good paper, Ballard brings up something I’d never thought of: Ballard posits that Little Red Riding Hood is a road horror piece. Little Red Riding Hood is a Warnmärchen, a ‘warning tale’ (märchen is often described as ‘fairy tale.’)

Ballard says:  The genesis of this narrative form is the folklore of the European Middle Ages, and specifically the tale type known as the Warnmärchen, which encompasses those stories that involve an act of transgression followed by a delineation of consequences. The progenitor of the road-horror is the central Warnmärchen described by folklorist Jack Zipes; that of a child threatened by an ogre, man-eater, or wild animal in the forest or wilderness.(25)  Much like the road-horror, the Warnmärchen is characterised by revision and imitation; Zipes counts thirty-five different versions of Little Red Riding Hood (26), and traces the geneses of these to locations spanning the globe.

Mind. Blown. Mind, in fact, continued to be blown as Ballard points out that like in fairy tales, the survival of horror protagonists is deeply linked to their morality (or lack therof, and we all know what happens to characters in horror perceived as immoral.)

Really, the entire section of the piece that quote is taken from, Woodlands and wolves: the folkloric prehistory of the road-horror is just absolutely bloody genius to me. I have, once or twice in my life compared horror movies to fairy tales, and then moved on with my day.  I hadn’t sat down and actively contemplated that genres like road-horror have without shame made the narratives of the Warnmärchen their own. I see a lot of writers saying we should look to cinema for a better grasp of pacing and narrative arc, but hot damn do I suddenly feel better about my voracious, globe-spanning, lifelong addiction to fairy tales.

Then the Final Girl mind freak: ever thought of Little Red Riding Hood as a Final Girl?

There’s a lot of page-time devoted to the signature look or items of a Final Girl in the Ballard piece—again, brilliant for me in terms of my reading experience.

Then, the same night I read Ballard’s paper, I run across a very horrifying/intriguing/horrifying/cute education on some Little Red Riding Hood depictions in cinema.

WARNING: touches on sexual violence to female protagonists, and detailed spoilers of the plot of each film.

So, Beth Wilson’s piece Film Interpretations of Little Red Riding Hood is a very nice sum-up of a variety of films across genres with strong LRRH themes/narrative. It also reminded me that the subtext of LRRH is also violent, and sexuality is certainly present in the narrative—in Perrault’s, the spectre of sexual violence or even consensual sexual encounters that could lead to negative consequences is deliberately called out by him, especially in his sum-up of the moral of the story.

It might not surprise you that our modern cinematic horror has without shame pillaged the fairy tales of the past, but consciously recognizing it sure as Hell unnerved me.

 

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Invisible Paychecks

1 May

I’ve had dozens. They’re for things I do without receiving a paycheck, and I’ve been doing jobs with invisible paychecks my whole life.

Recent examples:

I’ve edited a three times yearly magazine for a non-profit, and I applied because I knew I was going to pick up skills on the job. Skills I’ve learned include: using Joomla, negotiating contracts, managing a staff, recruiting contributors, coordinating contributors from different countries, formatting for online publication, marketing, working with contributors on revisions, revamping the writer’s guidelines, getting editorial costs approved, writing publication budgets, using contacts to find contributors, rewriting contracts, balancing the needs of writer-contributors and artist-contributors. Spoiler: their needs are not the same.

That’s the highlights reel of that job.

I  joined a blog purely on the basis of who I’d be working with/for, and the platform. I’m surrounded by talented, intelligent, fiercely opinionated people there. Their signal boosting abilities are phenomenal, they balance metrics and quality without detriment to either, and think very, very big. I perceive my time commitment there as very small. It’s true—when compared to other projects, I don’t spend as much time on it. The time is still noticeable, but it doesn’t feel draining. It’s hard work spinning all the plates we have going there, but I enjoy the challenges we have there, and we all take care of different parts of the overall whole.

I coach, edit, pep-talk and talk to peers in writing and news. They do the same for me. Every day, actually.  As a cohort, we often gravitate to co-working/co-writing with each other because of that natural routine of turning to each other for advice, support, and skills.

I will say it until I die: always, always always get paid.

Get paid what you’re worth, get paid on time, and do not walk away from getting your paychecks.

When it comes to invisible paychecks, pick them wisely—and not just because of the lack of mometary compensation.

Learning new skills in a (in theory) low pressure environment, working with new people, joining  a recognizable site or blog, getting to co-create with people who have vastly different skill sets, these are good qualities in an invisible paycheck. These are things make you smarter, make you refine your talent, and ideally, you make a lot of new friends.

A bad invisible paycheck is one where you get none of this, or not enough of any of those aforementioned good things in no-pay gigs. You can hit up anyone you work with, and a few bad invisible paychecks stories will flow. Be aware of these freelance Märchen, they’re the cautionary tales of our time.

One last thing thing in the bad column: staying with an invisible paycheck for too long. You’re the one who has to make the decision of when to leave one, and there are ones you’ll want to leave.

You

  • outgrow them
  • burn out
  • can no longer make the time
  • need the time spent on them to hustle for work
  • need to get back time for yourself

When we get emotionally invested in things, we don’t want to part with them. They’re part of the routine. They are the things we know. We fear people mocking our decisions to end that gig.

Check in with yourself. Weekly, monthly, quarterly. Whatever works for you. Write it out, or talk to your friends. Do you still get things out of what you do for an invisible paycheck, or is it time to politely end that chapter of your life? Do not be The Person Who Overstayed,nukesingheir career for a few months by public rage quitting or suddenly moving to the mountains to escape.

Rember: only you can make sure you escape the job attached to an invisible paycheck alive.

 

 

 

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Horizontal Loyalty

30 Apr

Maybe you never heard of Horizontal Loyalty. Or you have, but it’s been a year, so a refresher would be rad. Or you’ve been carrying it on your lips like a mantra for nearly 365 days and you just need somebody else out there to say I want to live by this too. I’ve got a few personal remarks to share, but they won’t make a lot of sense till you read the transcript.

2011. UC Berkley. Commencement speech by Robert Krulwich from RadioLab.

This is a link to the text of the speech, and at the bottom is the video.

One of the parts that hit home for me?

So for this age, for your time, I want you to just think about this: Think about NOT waiting your turn.

Instead, think about getting together with friends that you admire, or envy.  Think about entrepeneuring. Think about NOT waiting for a company to call you up. Think about not giving your heart to a bunch of adults you don’t know. Think about horizontal loyalty. Think about turning to people you already know, who are your friends, or friends of their friends and making something that makes sense to you together, that is as beautiful or as true as you can make it.

And when it comes to security, to protection, your friends may take better care of you than CBS took care of Charles Kuralt in the end. In every career, your job is to make and tell stories, of course. You will build a body of work, but you will also build a body of affection, with the people you’ve helped who’ve helped you back.

And maybe that’s your way into Troy.

There you are, on the beach, with the other newbies, looking up. Maybe somebody inside will throw you a key and let you in… But more likely, most of you will have to find your own Trojan Horse.

 

I’m overworked, underemployed, and couch surfing. Everything from my medication, money and health insurance is about tapped. In a few months going to have to prioritize one thing over all others. My cell phone, my student loan payments, my medications. Connectivity, improving credit, or health. Pick one. I could (and have) totally lost my shit and cried a lot in response to this.

Horizontal Loyalty doesn’t make all of that go away.

But it helps my face it all. The  thing keeping me going right now, feeling like I can make progress and maybe not be Screwed Central in another 6-8 months? It’s my peers. It’s my friends. Most of us are barely getting paid at the paychecks we’ve scraped together. But we’re sharing a playing field and doing this together. We’re not giving up our agency. We have acknowledged that the world we have doesn’t have the illusions of security that it held for our parents at our ages. We’re writing, making movies, taking pictures, making games, becoming journalists, or continuing to practice journalism.  We’re web devs, writers, copy editors, podcasters, creative professionals and newsies. We are getting through because of each other. We’re moral support,  ethics guides, last minute proofers, cheerleaders, a feedback gallery, and co-creators.  We’re honing our skills and learning every damn day.

People aren’t paying us to sit in a bullpen or an office right now. We’re getting through as a group. We promote each other and help each other and egg each other on. That’s how Horizontal Loyalty works in my life right now.

We’re not waiting for somebody to pick us out and say “I want you.”

Stop thinking that somebody has to give you permission, or that you have to achieve in a specific pattern to succeed and be respected.

Get out there with  friends, with people you can weather this with, and do shit. The friends you surround yourself with will back you up and take care of you like no one else will.

 

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