Skip to content

Apparently, Finishing Things a New Online “Trend” (or, Singletasking??)

Amusingly, it’s now apparently OK to turn off the swirling tornado of notifications, alerts, bings and (bleeping) beeps that seem to define the working day for so many of us.

We can now move on to actually doing things until complete – one thing at a time – clear in the knowledge that its OK because it’s a trend:

via Singletasking: The Next Trend in Web Working?.

We freelance web workers multitask like it was going out of style. Question is, is it actually going out of style? Some people think so, and they look to singletasking as the next trend in how we work.

Singletasking is just what it sounds like: approaching and tackling one task at a time, sequentially, instead of trying to do a whole bunch of things at once, as has become de rigeur in our modern multitasking age. If you’re like me, the thought is probably at least a little refreshing, and maybe more than a little appealing right off the bat.

The principle is sound. Take on one task at a time, and don’t begin another until the one you’ve already started is complete. It sounds simple, but you know as well as I do that actually implementing that kind of thing in real life will take a lot more effort than you might first think. For one, it means ignoring any urge to procrastinate, and making sure that you prioritize very carefully in advance, lest you realize too late that what you thought was most urgent actually could’ve taken a back seat to something else.

I’ve got nothing against multitasking, except, of course, that it tends to get in the way of doing good work.

That’s why I tend to post here in spurts (when I’m busy, I’m busy), and why I find myself writing more and more using “clean screen” writing tools.

It’s also why the racy new notification system in Unbuntu Linux is mostly turned off.

I’ve got words to write and thinking to do, and if it’s one thing I’ve learned about twitter, Facebook, chat and email, it’s that the person on the other end isn’t doing to do that thinking for me.

Keep writing (with as few distractions as possible), Tom Chandler.

Posted 30 June 2009 † Tom Chandler § Writer tools ‡ Comments (4) ° Tagged: , ,

When Real-World Marketing Goes Astray (or, What’s He Selling??)

I’d love to offer a moral to go along with the picture, but more than anything, it’s a good illustration of just how badly things can go wrong when the real world intrudes on our neatly laid marketing plans:

(Found via Jalopnik, where you can see the “before” to go with the “after” above)

Posted 16 June 2009 † Tom Chandler § Underground Entertainment ‡ Comments (3) ° Tagged: ,

An Underground Replay: “Pay The Damned Writer”

I first published this video in November, 2007, and because it’s more timely than ever, thought I’d run the video again.

Sure, Harlan Ellison is an abrasive pain in the ass, but he’s repeatedly put his money where his sizable mouth is when it came to protecting the rights of writers and content creators.

In a time when the concept of “paying creators for content” is conspicuously absent from most Internet business plans, this video’s worth another visit:

Tell ‘em Harlan.

Next time you’re about give away your work, remember: Pay the Damned Writer.

Posted 12 June 2009 † Tom Chandler § Business of Freelancing § Underground Entertainment ‡ Comments (7) ° Tagged: ,

Today’s “Can’t Miss” Marketing Tip: You Need A Corporate Anthem/Drinking Song

Exactly how has the corporate marketing world so clearly overlooked this surefire marketing/branding tactic? Ladies, gentlemen and Undergrounders, we bring you The Corporate Drinking Song:

Yes, let’s all drink to Russian Gas giant Gazprom, which leverages powerful alcohol-related branding lyrics like:

Let’s drink to you, let’s drink to us, Let’s drink to all the Russian gas

Well said Gazprom!

Once again, the Underground takes the lead in bringing you the latest, cutting-edge marketing news. (And all for free!)

Let’s drink to you, let’s drink to me, let’s drink to the Underground in all her copywriting glory!

Keep drinking, Tom Chandler.

Posted 10 June 2009 † Tom Chandler § Underground Entertainment ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged: , ,

Post Launch Blues Getting You Down?

Any writer/copywriter who’s ever published a book, sold an article, or launched an ad/direct response campaign understands the post-campaign letdown.

You wait for the world to shower you with praise – proof that the universe finally “gets” your genius – and then… nothing happens.

No reviews. No letters to the editor. Or an “average” response rate.

You might as well be dead.

In that vein, Underground Fave Writer Elizabeth Royte pointed me at a hilarious video, and mentioned her New York Times Book Review article comparing the post-publication blues to Kubler’s Stages of Grief. Don’t miss either.

Posted 10 June 2009 † Tom Chandler § Underground Entertainment ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

Wordnik Provides Social Meaning of Words (or, Research for the Terminally Unhip Writer)

I admit it. I’m terminally unhip – at least when it comes to the latest, hottest, hippest, social media-esque uses of the language. In fact, I still think “sick” and “phat” are sorta bad things, which suggests somebody should take my blogging keys away from me.

Fortunately, Web 2.0 offers help even to the sad wordsmiths like myself: introducing Wordnik (found via Lifehacker, which had this to say about it):

Its value service, however, is the extra context provided by highlighted Twitter posts, Flickr photos, related tags, and other multimedia on the results page. It’s all spread out on a single multi-column page, but you can hit the sub-menus near the top to get a full page of any of them. Statistic geeks can also see how often words are being used online and the number of look-ups on Wordnik for a word. The site could be helpful for when you’ve got to get up to speed on something quickly and get a bit deeper than just a brief explainer.

There you have it Undergrounders: Words, served up Twitter/Flickr/Social Media style.

But before you type a word in the box, ask yourself this: Will it really help to know how a 13 year-old girl mangles a word? Just asking.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

,

Posted 09 June 2009 † Tom Chandler § Underground Entertainment § Writer tools ‡ Comments (6) ° Tagged: ,

What if God Texted? (or, OMG the Ten Commandments)

The always-interesting McSweeney site (and publication) posted a doozie.

What if God had texted the Ten Commandments?

(Click here to visit the site and see all ten)

Posted 08 June 2009 † Tom Chandler § Underground Entertainment ‡ Comments (4) ° Tagged: , , ,

The Numbers Aren’t Pretty – But Is There An Emotional Toll to Freelancing in a Recession?

Freelancers are suffering a recession-linked double-whammy – not only are clients and customers cutting budgets, but the newly unemployed are swelling the ranks of the self-employed, and driving fees downward.

This New York Time article (found via the Copywriter Maven) looks at the recession’s effect on the self-employed (and under-employed), and touches on an often-overlooked emotional side-effect (we’ll get to that later). First, the numbers:

Recession Takes a Toll on Freelance Livelihoods – NYTimes.com

The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks the number of self-employed workers who say they are working “part time for economic reasons,” which means that they work fewer than 35 hours a week because they can’t line up more employment. In March 2008, 622,000 self-employed workers across the country put themselves in this category. A year later, the number had almost doubled, to nearly 1.1 million. “What you can see in this data spells real trouble for these people,” says Susan Houseman, a senior economist for the Upjohn Institute, a nonprofit research center.

OK, the numbers are terrible, but they only tell a piece of the story. There’s an emotional toll that doesn’t get a column in the unemployment statistics:

That trouble is about not paying bills. It’s also about the vertigo of falling out of the middle class. “We talk about it as middle-class poverty,” said Sara Horowitz, founder and executive director of the Freelancers Union, which has 70,000 members in New York City. “Your frame of reference, when you think of yourself as middle class, doesn’t include being scared about making ends meet, realizing that welfare and food stamps are your only option. Psychologically, that shift is devastating.”

Interestingly, the researcher also noted the different responses between those who lost jobs and freelancers who lost clients – an observation which will resonate with many freelancers:

Venkatesh sees a difference in how freelancers talk about the recession compared with workers who have been laid off. “They’re more alone, and they can’t help but feel like they did something wrong because they’re losing relationships with individual clients,” he says. “They think of themselves as ministering to their clients, so they also feel guilty about no longer helping them.”

It’s natural to develop relationships with regular clients – especially if you’re working hard, getting good feedback, and functioning as part of the team.

It’s easy to forget it’s a business relationship.

And when the client stops calling, it’s just as easy to blame yourself.

Don’t do it.

Sure – take a hard look at your business with an eye to making yourself more relevant. Are you offering the right services in a fast-changing marketing landscape?

But never forget this is business – and even the best agencies lose accounts, often for reasons far outside their control.

Add free-falling, recessionary marketing budgets into the mix, and suddenly, a certain amount of client loss can only be expected.

Do what you can to contain the damage. Beef up your service offerings. But don’t personalize the loss. Things happen, and getting depressed about it simply limits your ability to dust yourself off and find a new client – or develop a new offering.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

, , , ,

Posted 07 June 2009 † Tom Chandler § Business of Freelancing ‡ Comments (7) ° Tagged: , , , ,

The Harmonic Convergence of Overwork (or, Overload in the Age of Overload)

As self-employed gurus (everybody’s a guru nowadays), we’re supposed to embrace the concept of overwork like we do the idea of 24-hour connection.

“At least you’re not starving” is the uncharitable response from friends and colleagues when I mention it’s been busy, but these are the same people I taunt when taking a weekday off to go fly fishing or hiking, so it’s likely I’m simply getting what I deserve.

Still, this is more than a few late nights. I’m facing the Harmonic Convergence of Overwork (Harmonicconvergenceofoverwork.com is available for anyone who wants to start a whine blog). Pretty much every major project I pitched the past couple months sat right on the knife edge of “almost ready.”

Then all started simultaneously.

And yes, I’ve been piteous as of late – until I read this Writer’s Almanac passage about Underground Fave short story writer John Cheever, who struggled with far bigger demons than overwork:

Bailey said: “Cheever’s comfort zone was his imagination, this alternative universe where his fiction came from. When the morning was over, when he had finished his writing, he had to enter the real world. And that was frightening to him. He lived with the terror that he thought his children would discover his sexual life. He felt like an impostor. He despised himself. And it was assuaged only by the next drink.”

In the context of choosing between overwork or abject self-loathing, a little too much work suddenly seems OK (thanks John Cheever, for more than just the words).

The Dangers of Too Much

The danger of a Harmonic Convergence of Overwork is simple; you’ll do an obvious rush job on an important project, or worse, disappoint the hell out of a client.

And while this isn’t meant to be a “how to” post, I will offer this nugget; there are times when you have to suck it up and tell a client their project has to wait three weeks.

If you start their project now, it’s going to finish badly. And besides, projects being what they are, it won’t get done any sooner anyway.

Clients are never happy – and you may lose the project – but I’d rather somebody else did it right for them than have me do it wrong.

Keep writing (as whining won’t help anyway), Tom Chandler.

Posted 27 May 2009 † Tom Chandler § Underground Entertainment ‡ Comments (6) ° Tagged: , ,

Distraction-Free Writing (or, How Even Old Writing Dogs Can Learn New Tricks)

My working day hasn’t grown less complicated over the decades. I used to openly mock techniques invoked in the service of productivity, but because of the temptations and interruptions of our connected lives, I now embrace them.

That includes my writing tools – a subject that remains at the core of writer geekhood.

One of the losses I experienced in my switch from Windows to Linux was the Q10 “clean screen” text editor (Windows only). It offered not only the dark, “no distractions” screen, but also a target word count and yes, a typewriter noise on every key click.

After testing the Linux-ready jdarkroom editor (which I didn’t like), I found Pyroom, which lacks the panache of Q10, but not its basic usability.

The Clean Screen editor: Not many choices, but zero distractions.

The Pyroom Clean Screen editor: Not many choices, but zero distractions.

Once I customized the colors to reflect an orange-on-black “Halloween” color palette that I found very easy on my eyes, I was off and running.

Even Old Writers Can Learn New Tricks

In my less tolerant moments, I’d tell you real writers don’t need gimmicks to put words on paper.

Today – in my more realistic moments – you’ll find me writing with distraction-free writing tools. (Hypocrisy, it seems, isn’t wholly the province of politicians and Wall Street.)

It wasn’t that many years ago that I wrote everything in MS Word, switching to OpenOffice after yet another expensive MS Office upgrade disappointed.

Today, 80% of my copy is written in a programmer’s editor or something equally simple (like Pyroom, which sadly lacks a spell checker).

I could go on and on about the reasons for using distraction-free writing tools, but the best is the simplest; I get more words written in Pyroom than in a word processor.

Words are the writer’s equivalent of a home builder’s pine two-by-four, and the more you get nailed together in worthwhile fashion, the happier you’ll be.

Those who haven’t headed off into the unknown with Linux benefit from a lot of choices surrounding distraction-free editors, some of which you’ll find profiled at the Bad Language blog, here at the Linux & Friends blog, or this at the Loose Wires blog.

Keep writing (any way you can), Tom Chandler.

UPDATE: For the hardcore among my readers, there now exists a computerized typewriter analog – with no ability to backspace or edit what  you’ve written. Thanks, but no thanks.

Posted 18 May 2009 † Tom Chandler § Writer tools ‡ Comments (16) ° Tagged: , , , , , ,