Things I do when the Husband is out of town:

1. Watch bad made-for-TV disaster movies
2. Eat radishes for lunch
3. Spoil the dog with too many treats
4. Sleep with a light on
5. Spoon his pillow
6. Talk to the cats
7. Organize random stuff
8. Write boring software reviews
9. Simultaneously use facial masks and deep hair conditioning treatments
10. Lush bubble baths
11. Drink Bailey's in the tub
12. Stay up reading til 3 a.m.
13. Sleep late
14. Eat the last of the strawberries
15. Take the dog for ridiculously long walks while engrossed in audiobooks
16. Go fantasy yarn shopping on the internet
17. Go fantasy Lush shopping on the internet
18. Check the caller ID obsessively in case he called while I was out walking the dog
19. Worry
20. Miss him like crazy.  Come home soon.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's off to work I go....

Mahalo version 4 (M4) came online late today.  It's been about a week since I've been able to work, and I'd just started to enjoy the idleness.  I was really very excited to start work again tonight when I got the email about the new software, and a new how-to page for guides being up and ready for perusal.

The first thing I did was go and claim titles.  Most of the new titles are video how-tos, which I've talked about before in the how-much-do-I-hate-thee theme.  I found five that weren't and snapped them up.

Then I went on to read the guide on how to build pages.  It's somewhat more comprehensive than the last one, and definitely easier to understand and written more clearly.  I'm unhappy with some of the changes and happy with others.

Creating in-links within pages has always been a bit of a chore.  You have to open up a site specific google search, find stuff that exists on Mahalo, go to that page to check if it's a valid page or just a stub, then inlink it.  It took a lot of time and was kind of tedious and boring.  Now, once you highlight a term and click the inlink button on the new software, it will tell you by coming up blue if it's valid, red if the page doesn't exist, or yellow if it exists but is just a stub.  Fast, clean, nice.  I like it.

Entering references is now something you do within the system as well.  You click a button, enter the reference url, and it puts in your link.  This, on the other hand, I don't like.  I write in word, and the previous html tags we used were just fine with me; I could type them directly into my text as I went, and after spell checking the document, I could copy and paste the whole thing into the Mahlo page.  Now I'll have to either type directly into the Mahalo page, trusting my brain to spell check for me (never ever a good option) or will have to write in a word document, keep a list of references in notepad and try and remember where to stick them in.  Both options seem awkward.  If they could implement tools for bold, italic, numbers and bulleted lists and inlinking, why not add a spell check??  This seems to be a major oversight.  I don't like it.


One of my complaints about Mahalo in the past was that your work was out there while it was in progress.  Now, you can work on the page on the site, but it isn't published until you hit the handy-dandy "publish" button at the bottom of the page. Fantastic!  Your in-progress nonsense isn't out there all naked and exposed.  You don't have pages that are only quotations sections with weird videos languishing on the net (as happened with my Anita Blake character page that was in-progress while the system was offline being upgraded). This I really like.

Someone at Mahalo must have been reading about my experience with DMS, because now you have one chance to edit a page, and if it isn't up to standards, that's it.  I have a BIG problem with this and you know I'm gonna tell you why.  I have had several experiences at Mahalo with inconsistent copy editing.  One person wants one thing and one person another.  And sometimes, your work is copy edited by one person first and then a second will do the final check, particularly if your work straddles a week.  In this case, you are very likely to have something thrown back at you.  Secondly, I've had instances where the same person has sent me back for more edits after a first go-over because they missed something they wanted changed the first time.  This is usually something I wouldn't have known about, because it isn't itemized on the gold standard pages.  Unless they are stepping up their clarity on standards for pages and their consistency, this is bad, bad, bad.  I do not like it.  I do not like it in a boat, I do not like it with a goat.  Frankly, it kind of ticks me off that they'd do this without a serious uptick in resources for writers.

The biggest changes seem to be cosmetic, and while I think that the new layout is cleaner than the old one, it takes forever to load and is constantly refreshing in my browser.  I often have three or four Mahalo pages open at a time if I'm working on multiples of something similar.  For example, the Fast Facts sections for books in a series will have the same sources.  So, I'll have five open at once, and flip between them with the library of congress site open so I can put in one ISBN in each, and the author site open to tuck in publication details in each.  Because of the constant reloading of ads, this is making my FireFox perform extremely slowly and making switching between tabs take those extra few seconds that add up to something lengthy at the end of a day.  Additionally, the tabs at the top of the pages seem useless as the information also appears on the main page, and I'm not sure of their purpose.  So, mixed feelings about this one.

The new how-to page includes a list of recommended resource pages.  This is a lot less helpful than having a list of banned sources, or having it the way DMS does (as I've mentioned before, if you attempt to enter a banned site, it automatically notifies you).  The list seems short to me, and doesn't seem to cover a lot, but they did note that it's not a be-all, end-all list, which is okay.  I suppose it's somewhat helpful, probably to new people who aren't used to finding sources.  I may create a custom google search for those sites, as I have for DMS.  Or just continue to use the DMS one for both sites (More likely, though Mahalo doesn't like some of the DMS recommended sites).  So, mixed feelings about this as well.

Of course, since I haven't written anything specific with the new system yet, this is all theoretical as of now.  We'll see what happens this week as I go to work. Hi ho, hi ho.... I'll let ya'll know what happens.

When you can't work...

In an unexpected twist, I actually didn't work much the end of last week.  I did manage to produce about double my Q & A requirements, and spent a bunch of time staring at the screen and trying to think of more questions.  While travelling with Richard on Thursday, I spent a nice chunk of time trying to research stuff in a library where the internet flitted on and off about every five to seven minutes.  I got so enraged that I gave up on it and read instead.  It was stormy in the mountains, so I don't blame the library per se.  I did give Richard lots of dirty looks while he worked though.  "Why is the network more important than MY internet?? Fix my internet!" were the topics of secret brain waves I was sending him as I glared over the top edge of my laptop screen.  It didn't seem to affect him, though, which is probably a good thing.  If he'd stuck around to fix the internet we might have been stuck there overnight in the storm, instead of going home to internets and hungry kitty cats.

We were given notice that the software was being upgraded on Mahalo, and that no further pages could be updated or created until Monday.  Huh.  We were never told if that meant we wouldn't get in trouble for not meeting our minimums, but since they carved four days out of our work week, I'm guessing we weren't.  I was initially asked if I'd be interested in beta testing the new software, which I was actually kind of excited about.  You see, I've told my husband now and again that I think being a beta tester would be fun.  "No," he repeatedly assures me, "It's nothing but an annoying headache.  You have to do repetitive behaviour until stuff breaks."  I of course, light up at the idea of getting to break stuff.  Not my stuff, of course, but someone elses stuff!  This must be the sort of thing that annoys programmers like him, people like me who can't make it but delight in the idea of destroying his work.

Alas, I was never called on to test, and am spending the morning waiting to be told when I'll be able to start work for this week.  The one problem in a situation like this is that you don't get paid when you're off doing fun stuff instead of being productive.  I did get in a bunch of fun stuff though, like making half of a bright turquoise summer tank sweater out of sport weight yarn that I'm looking forward to wearing this summer.  If I finish it by then.

I never understood how people could get bored if they didn't work.  When I wasn't working I was never, ever bored.  I have so many interests and hobbies and things I want to learn and books I want to read and ideas and theories I want to test out that I'll never be able to get it all done in my lifetime.  It's just impossible.  Even if I never worked again I couldn't do it.  I'd need at least three or four lifetimes.  Maybe five if I throw in all the languages I want to learn.  And of course there are new books I want to read coming out all the time, so maybe it'd be impossible for me ever to "finish" everything I want to do.  I'm resigned to it, have accepted it, but it doesn't mean I can't try. 

I have so much on the go that sometimes I fear one thing won't be finished before I start another.  I'm one of those annoying scrapbooking people, but I'm perpetually around a year behind.  Right now, due to a burst of productivity sometime in October or so, I'm only about 9 months behind, but it's starting to catch up on me again.  I have an altered book about love on the go as well.  It hasn't been worked on much since summer.  Then there's the cross stitch, I'm currently working on two huge projects - a dragonfly scroll for the bedroom and a Theresa Wentzler mermaid.  Not sure where that will go, but probably in the bedroom.  I'm resolved to frame it immediately though.  I used to let stuff languish unframed and unadmired in drawers, before I learned that was a ticket to losing them and ever appreciating them.

I have finished a couple of things lately though.  One is a bag for my laptop, to make traveling with Richard easier.  I bought this bulky, pink yarn over a year ago intending it for a tote that never happened.  The problem with buying yarn on the internet is that sometimes it's just not what you thought it was.  I thought this was a soft pinky-orange blend.  When it arrived, neon and with bits of green, I was appalled, but I kinda like it as a quirky laptop bag.  I worked it up in one day, just kind of going with the flow and designing as I went. It works well enough - the strap is stretchy so I can sling it crosswise across my body (and if I don't, I can deal with the laptop banging my knees!).  It's just so bright.  I worry taking it into libraries that librarians will start shushing it.

My Year of Reading Dangerously

I've decided to post these 111 in '11 updates in five-book chunks, because that seems sensible.  Plus, it's how many books I had read before posting my introduction to the topic, it's a nice round number, and it'll mean just one book goes in the last blog post for the completion of the project at the end, kind of a celebratory thing, which also makes sense to me.  I like order (I suppose this goes with being a "rules" girl as I've previously discussed) and things being all neat and tidy.  When I still had CDs (I had a big collection before the fire, not as big as our books, but pretty significant, about 300 or so) I kept them not only separated by genre, not only alphabetized within their genres, but with the genres alphabetized.  You know, Jazz comes before Musical Theatre and all that.  So this works for me.

Yeah, yeah, you're saying - so what were the next five books?  Jeeeeze, alright!  Here you go:

6. Joyride Ketchum, Jack
7. Mr. Shivers Bennett, Robert
8. Dragon bones : a novel See, Lisa
9. Mockingjay Collins, Suzanne
10. House of reckoning : a novel Saul, John

Now, I know I said I wasn't going to do reviews, but Dragon Bones was such a disappointment to me I had to say something.  I recommend Lisa See as an author all the time.  My favourite of her books - Snow Flower and the Secret Fan was my book club pick last time I got to choose because I love her so much, and I pushed through this one because I kept thinking it'd get better.  Only, it didn't.  Usually her books are driven by characters that are so compelling you can't help but keep turning pages because you care about them so much.  This time, I just didn't care.  Not about the main character, or her husband, or her dead daughter.  Not about the anthropologists, or the dead anthropologists, or anyone.  It was so incredibly dry, I was left almost angry at the author for disappointing me.



And Mockingjay made me cry. Lots. That is all.

Valentine's Day came early this year...

Last night, as we struggled in the door late from a tiring day on partially-awful roads visiting libraries tucked into cute little mountainside villages, we discovered a package that had been delivered, and was almost hidden on our little front porch.  "Why is there a diaper on the stairs?" my husband asked.  "Not a diaper.." I muttered, though he was right, the small plastic wrapped package did kind of resemble one, in the dark.. half buried in the snow.

Once inside, I gave him the package, since it was addressed to him, and it was promptly turned over to me.  My husband, he is very sweet, and excellent at shopping, but once a package comes in the mail, he absolutely cannot hold himself back from giving it to me immediately.  It's kind of funny; if he shops in the store, he's just fine about tucking something away until the holiday or birthday, but something about a package in the mail sparks the little kid in him.  And that's just fine with me.

I tore in, of course.  And yay!  It was a cover for my little square 3rd gen nano iPod that I love so much.

A little background on this: I lost my first iPod in our fire, along with my collection of cds and it was really tough on me.  Music has always meant a lot to me, and I wasn't sure how I'd get along without a soundtrack to my life.  One of the first things - in fact *the* first thing after clothing and basic toiletries - that I bought after the fire was a new iPod.  I'm a nano girl for several reasons, not the least of which is that since the thing is attached to me nearly all the time, I prefer small and lightweight to cumbersome and dragging my clothes down.  Never wanted a shuffle though - not enough control over what's playing for me.

Anyway, it happened that at the time, the square nano was on the market, a shape that was soon replaced with the original skinny rectangle.  It never really occurred to me that this would be a problem, until the clip broke on my iPod cover about six months ago.  I started looking for a new cover everywhere we went.  Best Buy.  Future Shop.  Various department and discount and gaming stores.  Nowhere could I find a single cover that would fit my iPod.  There were covers for the new nano touch, and those were square, but not right for my little Rosie.  (Oh yes, she's pink, and named Rosie.  The pink nano I lost in the fire was Rizzo, may she rest in peace).  There were tons of skinny rectangular models that seemed to mock my short, wide little iPod with their runway proportions and designer labels.  I wanted to complain that the stores were sizist but thought they might get the wrong idea.

I gave up, and resigned myself to finding inventive ways of carrying around my iPod.  This usually involved it being tucked somehow into my cleavage or bra.  We got very close over the last few months, Rosie and I. Then, it just became too much trouble.  She started getting ignored.  I started having actual ambient music in the house from the digital music channels.  Then, of course, I would yell at them for not playing enough of whatever it was I wanted to hear that day.  Yeah, those control issues again.

Now though, Rosie has armor again, with a clip *and* a lanyard, which is even better than her previous set of protective gear.  And she's around my neck right now, looking spiffy in her metallic purple gear.  I do have a great husband, and the music is back on.

The Angry, Angry Author

Today has been a major "angry author" day.  I'm not kidding, from the time I woke up this morning, all I've had is interaction after interaction that makes me incredibly angry.  Maybe it's the planets in the wrong alignment that have me reacting this way, because I feel like I'm overreacting by being angry (and my poor husband seems to be very very sure I'm overreacting).  Then I realized - hey!  I have a blog!  I can go vent about it!

First thing I woke up to this morning was a note that if I want to be paid for my blog entries, I need to have three more in today for the current month.  Buh?  It's only the 17th, how can that be?  Well, see when Mahalo says "month" they mean "four random weeks that have nothing to do with a calendar month".  Only, they don't actually TELL you that.  Yesterday ended week 28 of the Mahalo "year", and apparently was the last day of a Mahalo "month" as well.  It makes me kind of feel like I'm living in an alternate universe with a different way of spinning around the sun. This probably wouldn't have bothered me if someone had maybe told me ahead of time.  But then again, maybe that's asking for a little too much.  I mean really, I'm sure "psychic" is a requirement of all writing jobs, no?

So okay, whatever, I can deal with randomly numbered months.  But then I learn that the work that I did during the hourly paid IRC shifts has to be finished on our own time.  For free.  Going in, I was told to get three done an hour, which was pretty much impossible because they were all a wreck, but I was told time was the most important factor.  So, okay, I did what I could to update the pages in twenty minutes each.

Turns out, the goal is actually to bring the page up to current Mahalo gold standards.  It would have been really helpful to be told this beforehand.  It also would have been helpful to be told that any further edits would have to be done for free, which I'm pretty sure is illegal.  The parts I'm told that I have to edit are the parts that the original author of the page completed rather than my own work, so it's not as though my updates are a problem, it's that they want me to work as an editor.  Without getting paid.  All told, it's going to take me a minimum of four hours (probably more like six) to do these edits.  And I have to make all my other minimums this week, but I cannot take any more IRC shifts until I finish all the edits on my previous shift work.  I'm not sure how I'm going to manage this without becoming bitter and resentful.  Oh, wait!  I'm already bitter and resentful so I guess it doesn't matter.

Third, someone with access to my spreadsheet deleted one of the pages I did this week.  Why?  I have no clue.  But today was the deadline for payday.  When I alerted the management to the issue, I was told to replace it, and since my page scores were high, I'd be paid through for it as it would surely be fine as it was.  That I appreciated, and it definitely made me feel (slightly) better, but I'm curious as to why someone would delete the page.  It seems really weird.  It made me wonder if they do that regularly and writers don't catch it, and then just don't get paid for all their pages.  Suspicions, I have them.

Next, two of my DMS articles came back for rewrites today.  One, I was pretty sure would come back.  So why did I submit it?  Cause I got too close to the deadline and didn't have a choice - it was submit it, and get it sent back, or let it expire and waste the work I put into it.  So, I'm not upset about that one.  I'm upset about the one that was rejected by someone who obviously shouldn't have chosen the article to copy edit.

The article title was "How to make a Beaded Choker Necklace" and that's what I wrote.  I got back edit requests, including asking me to explain what a choker necklace was and what made it different from long necklaces (really?  REALLY?), what memory wire is (okay, maybe not everyone knows that), to put in every step that it was a choker necklace I was making (uh, really NO WAY, I'm not going to say "Open the jump ring with your flat nose pliers.  To make your choker necklace. Slide the pendant onto the jump ring, and close the ring with the pliers.  To make your choker necklace.  NO WAY).  Lastly, they asked me not to use references that led to commercial, bead selling websites.  BUH?  My resources were three books.  No websites.  I don't know if the copy editor was just having a bad day or is just not very bright, but they peppered their notes to me with their own grammatical errors which made that inner editor in me snicker madly.

I may finally have my first article to sell on Constant Content!  I don't think there is any way to write an article that satisfies what this copy editor wants without writing an article I'd be severely embarrassed to have my name associated with.

What's an angry writer to do?

111 Books in '11

In 2008, I began a project to read 100 books that year.  At the time, I lived in Grande Prairie, where the library was awful and cost far too much for a membership (I'm told it's better now, but then it was abysmal) so I'd been buying books through discount online booksellers, and had a huge book stash.  I wanted to push through it, and by the spring of that year I was well on track to reach my goal, and then some.  I was excited, I was reading tons of fantastic books, and I was having a great time doing it.

Of course, at that point, our house burned down and my entire library went with it.  Between the two of us, my husband and I, we lost hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books.  Probably around two thousand.  We had walls of books in our living room and bedroom, boxes of books hiding under tables and in closets, and stashes of books hidden away in the oddest places, like the breakfront and the bathroom cabinets. It was heartbreaking, and like many things that stopped after the fire, I stopped reading.  By the end of 2008, I had read perhaps a half dozen additional books and barely would have hit the halfway mark on my goal.

Over the last couple of years though, I have started reading again voraciously.  I devour books.  Some only take me a day.  I wish I had more time to read, and I'm wary that taking too much time writing will distract me from my reading.  Reading keeps your brain growing, and it's not something I ever want to stop, so I've set a goal for myself - 111 books finished in 2011.

The rules of my little quest:
-Every book counts if it's finished, no matter how light or silly or fun.
-If you hate a book in the first chapter, stop reading so you don't waste time on books you aren't loving.
-Re-reading counts too.  So do audiobooks, if they're unabridged (the only way I roll with audio).  I'm re-reading The Gunslinger series by Stephen King with my husband as he travels for work (and I travel with him).  I've read the whole series in book form before the fire, then listened in unabridged audio once since, so this is number three for me, but it'll still count.  We're just starting book three.

I'll keep track here, though don't expect reviews.  Feel free to ask questions though.  I'm not using GoodReads like I did the first time, because then I'd have to look at the books I'd already entered into my library there that I don't have any more.  It's like seeing pictures of old friends you've lost, and it makes me too sad.

So, away we go!

Books Finished in 2011

1. Spider bones Reichs, Kathy
2. Blood games Laymon, Richard
3. The next big thing Edwards, Johanna
4. The opposite of me : a novel Pekkanen, Sarah
5. One rainy night Laymon, Richard 

In other news, I finished my first IRC shifts at Mahalo this weekend.  I'd been putting it off all week because it made me incredibly nervous.  I'm not sure why - no, I take that back.  I know exactly why!  It's the time pressure.  When I'm working on a per-piece basis, I can take my time and make sure something is right.  The goal during an IRC shift is to update three pages per hour.  There was just no way to do that and bring the page up to the correct current standards.  I was totally overwhelmed by the process.  When I was in my first shift, though, I was reminded that the real goal is to get through them in 20 minutes, not make them perfect, so that was my focus.  It was apparently the wrong focus, but I'll get back to that.

Even with working fast, using google news, and fitting as much current information in as I could, I still only managed to average three updates per two-hour shift instead of three per hour.  I suppose in time it may get better, but for now this will definitely continue to be the most stressful part of my time at Mahalo.  I would show you some pages, but they're all awful.  I just couldn't get enough done on any of them to share! 

My A is way bigger than my Q most days...

 One of the things that I do as a guide for Mahalo is answer and ask questions.  There is a Q&A section on the Mahalo site proper, but as a guide your questions and answers take place on other client sites, who use the Mahalo software for Q&A, and bring us in to populate it and make it look interesting.

The unfortunate thing for me is, the more interesting the site, the less likely we are to have to write a lot of questions and answers for it.  The more complicated the subject matter, of course the higher our weekly minimum is on that site.

I prefer the Mahalo Q&A personally, and even though I'm not getting paid to ask and answer questions there, I'm still doing it - for the tips.  People can tip you for your answers, and if your answer is the best, you get paid by the asker (anything from a penny to a few bucks, you can see how much they're offering for an answer up top, and others can add to the pot by voting a question as interesting).  The questions there are much more interesting, and I'm racking up "best answer" awards to the tune of about $10 a week, not bad for the little time I spend on it and the fun I have.  It's taken over the time I might have once spent on the Lush forum, only now I get paid for all my sage advice (No, he's not going to ask you to marry him if you've been living together three years and neither of you have ever discussed marriage), historical accuracy (No! Actually the Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in states that had seceded from the Union, the 13th Amendment is what really ended slavery...) and witty rejoinders (dude, you have to go find those yourself on the site, I'm sure they're there)!

The problem is, you get paid in Mahalo bucks, which aren't real currency.  They used to pay them out on paypal, but not any more; now you can only use them to ask questions on the site, buy stuff in their store, or donate to charity. I'm thinking I'll be saving up for an iPad myself, or mayyyybe a Kindle, if I can stand to save up for long enough.  It's more likely that I'll blow it on an Amazon.com gift card.  I would buy some Mahalo swag just for fun, but I'm holding on to this hope that eventually all my witty (ahem) answers will win me the Q&A person of the week award, in which case you win a whole swag package - mug, hat, beach towel, iPod cover.  I don't know what I'd do with the iPod cover.  I have a nano, of the little square variety that no one makes covers for any more, but that's a different story altogether.

So, as a guide, you get paid $0.75 for each question or answer.  That isn't too bad, considering that I can knock off ten in an hour and still have time left over.  Although I'll admit that that is because until now, I've only asked or answered things I could manage without researching.  Unfortunately for me, I've pretty much run out of ideas for one of the business sites.  I don't know much about entrepreneurship.  I'm going to have to start listening to Dragon's Den episodes and pulling stuff Kevin O'Leary says out of context to make it into a question I think.  As for answers, there's little hope for me.  I'll have to start googling, and lose that extra time left over in the hour.  Of course, if anyone out there has a bunch of questions needing business advice, let me know!

Fear and Loathing in Grammar-land

I have a few spelling and grammar bugs that get to me.  One is when people type "loose" when they mean "lose".  Another is misuse of the term "literally".  Really?  Really friend?  Your ass literally froze off?  What are you sitting on while you type???

Okay Katie, breathe, breathe....

Anyway, we've all run into those forum posters who correct some poor distracted person's misuse of the apostrophe or "teh" typos.  I have never, ever in my life, seen that run as rampant as it does on the Demand Media Studios forum for writers.  I just watched a thread about the rejection appeal process get completely hijacked by an "imply vs. infer" dogfight.  I guess that's what happens when you throw a bunch of writers and copy editors into a pit.

So, speaking of rejection appeals...  Everyone fears the rejected article, especially me.  Especially since at DMS you only have one chance at a rewrite before something is rejected.  For many writers at DMS, rewriting isn't even an option; they would rather let the rewrite expire than risk having a rejection on their record.  (By the way, I'm not so nervous, as I haven't had any rejections, and my rewrite requests have always been really simple.  My last one was "This is twice as long as required, please remove half the content".  Ack!  But an easy fix.)

When I first started at DMS, one of the other writers there gently guided me toward a site called Constant Content.  It is the preferred site, it seems for reselling rejected orphan articles.  I registered immediately in grave fear that I would soon have multiple articles on the market.  I haven't taken a job there or sold an article there yet, but I may soon.

Along with allowing writers to put articles up on the site for purchase, Constant Content allows site owners to put up writer-wanted listings for content articles they need.  These often pay extremely well - I've seen $100+ articles listed on a fairly consistent basis.  The trouble is, you're essentially writing on spec.  You write the article, and so do the other twenty people who saw the ad and want the bucks, and you all submit.  The client chooses the one that suits their needs the best, and pays that person.  The others are left to possibly re-list their articles back on Constant Content, or just suck it up and accept the loss.

If I really needed another source of income, I might try some of the articles.  Some have really sparked my interest, especially those on Photoshop techniques, since Photoshop is one of my favourite "toys" but I have been struggling - since I've been sick off and on since Christmas - to meet my minimums at Mahalo and write the titles I really like over at DMS before they expire (once you claim a title, you have to write it  within the week or it returns to the queue for someone else to claim).  Not to mention that this week, I started a new phase at Mahalo.

I left training four weeks ago.  Once you're done with training, you move into a separate group of spreadsheets which, unfortunately for me, had wayyyy less options in the way of titles.  Most are video How-To, like "How to say tomato in Korean" and things of that ilk.  I thought they would be easy and fun until I did two of them and found myself scratching my head trying to figure out how on earth to meet the minimum word requirements of a page based on a twenty second video of someone repeating a Korean word.  All of the other titles were cities, so I've been learning an awful lot about relatively obscure American cities.  Like that Gainesville, Florida has the largest bat house in North America, or that Duluth was founded by some French fella named du Lhut.  Apparently no one could spell his name.  Too French I guess.  Or hey, didja know that there is a museum devoted entirely to the history of the RV in Elkhart, Indiana?  You can learn more about Elkhart here: http://www.mahalo.com/elkhart-in if you're so inclined.

So now, after four weeks, I start doing updates.  This is hourly paid work, and you're required to do at least three 2-hour shifts per week.  Guides get paid $8.50 an hour and senior guides get $10 an hour, which isn't terrible for work from home shifts.  And you get to write about stuff like what happened on the Bachelor that night or who wore what to the Golden Globes.  It's a little more fun than writing about the downtown revitalization project in Greenville, SC, but if you're so inclined to READ about it... http://www.mahalo.com/greenville-sc

Mahalo Very Much

Mahalo.  It's Hawaiian for "thanks," and is also the second place I went to for freelance writing.

It works a little differently at Mahalo.  You can't just write an article here and there - you apply for a job as a Guide, or a Walk-through Writer, or some other things I don't know that much about because I don't do them.  I know one has to do with writing questions and answers full time and another has to do with forum post writing.

I applied to be a Guide, and once again, acceptance came fairly quickly.  You take a reading comprehension test first, which is very much like the ones on the ACT and SAT, at least back when I took them.  Easy peasy.  100% for me, just like on other standardized test ones I've taken. You're then given a piece to read about writing Mahalo pages and another test to take.  This one, I'm told, I finished in record time, but then I got two answers wrong, so I might have rushed a little too much.  Still, I found it pretty simple.

Next you're tossed into Guide training.  Here, you're paid $7 for every Mahalo page you complete.  There's more work to be done than there is for DMS articles, and the pay is lower.  There are also fewer titles to choose from - if I recall correctly, in the training document there were about a thousand titles.  The plus was, there were lots more I was interested in writing!  Oh sure, the athlete ones I didn't much care about, but bands, authors, plants... there were lots of other things I could get into, which makes the writing much more fun.  For example, here's a page I did in training: http://www.mahalo.com/sum-41

The issue I had with training was the inconsistency.  The How to Build a Page guideline doesn't cover everything, and depending on who edits your work, you may get told to do things differently.  As I mentioned previously, I'm a rules girl who loves to stick by guidelines, so this gave me a minor breakdown.  After freaking out to my training editor, I finally just had to accept a fact:  Redo what you're told to redo and shut up about it.  Yes, one person may prefer it one way and another person a different way, but you're only going to drive yourself crazy if you worry about it.  You have to accept here that your writing isn't just going to go through on the first round, like at DMS.  There are some things, of course, that were consistently expected, and I found that following my gut intuition when expectations conflicted seemed to serve me best.

The things I found less exciting included, of course, the lower pay, though once you're out of training your pay does go up, and there are different things to do at different pay rates at that point as well, just to break things up.  I didn't like that the images on the pages were scraped from Google, though I know lots of websites who do that now, it just gives me the guilties because of the number of friends I have who are photographers that live for those licensing fees.  Or, I should say, ON those licensing fees.  And of course, I'd prefer it if every rule were documented as feeling like I'm flying by the seat of my pants makes me all crazy. Lastly, you don't get a byline for your pages on Mahalo.  I understand that to some extent - they're meant to all look similar, and have a consistent feel, but I do like feeling credited.

What I did like was getting to see what everyone else is working on.  At DMS, you're locked in your own little world to a great extent.  Oh, there are ways to see other people's finished articles (go to the forum, click on their name, which takes you to their profile, which shows the last five articles they've published through DMS), but you can't see works in progress, which I found to be a good teaching tool.  I'd go through work marked "redo" and "done" to see what I thought needed working on, which helped me self-edit a bit more too.  At Mahalo, you claim titles from a common spreadsheet, and so you know who scooped the articles you wanted, too.  But there were always plenty of interesting titles, especially while I was in training, so that wasn't much of a problem.  Also, at Mahalo you know who is copyediting your work, and have the opportunity to ask questions.  This is a huge advantage.  You have unlimited rewrites, another huge advantage.  You're not going to get an outright rejection after one rewrite attempt.  Once you're out of training, you do have minimums you're required to complete, but you can take as long as you need to in the training sessions to get the hang of things.

 While the pay is not as high, it's consistent at Mahalo, and I don't see a big need to have another major agency that I'm working for.  However, I was clued in by another DMS writer about a third company to sign up for just in case I ever have a rejected DMS article, and that's the one I'll write about next.

Writing on Demand

The first freelance company I started with was Demand Media Studios (DMS).  They require a college education in English or Journalism for general writers, or a specific degree to write for sites requiring legal, medical, or parenting expertise.  I applied as a general writer, and was accepted pretty quickly

Once you're accepted, you're given access to a massive amount of style guides, example articles, and a forum full of people willing to help.  You also have access to a library of titles, the size of which will vary depending on what kind of area you're writing for.  My area seems to have, on average, between 8,000 and 9,000 titles available.  You're immediately able to claim up to three titles.  Once you write three that have been approved by the editorial team, you're able to claim up to ten titles at a time, and can claim more as soon as your articles are submitted instead of waiting for editorial approval.

I liked the clear guidelines.  I'm a rules girl, and if you give me nice clear, concise rules I'll follow them for ya.  I did have a little difficulty getting used to using the active voice always, as I'm a big passive voice fan.  I think it's the people-pleaser in me - I hate to sound like I'm giving orders!  Still, with the help they offer it wasn't hard to adjust.  The pay is plenty reasonable - most articles pay around $15, though some are as little as $7.50 and some as much as $35, and at this point they take me between 45 minutes and an hour to write, including research.  At the start it took me upwards of two hours as I got used to the style and voice requirements and the "forbidden words".  It's hard for me not to say "easy" or "fun", but I'm getting there!

The most difficult thing in the start was realizing how little I was getting paid per hour for the work I was doing.  Piece work can be difficult when you're learning, but it just takes a little determination and knowledge that you'll cut down on your time as you learn what sites make great sources for what kinds of articles, and how to construct the article parts in the way you're required to.  I also was disappointed in the types of titles available.  Automotive articles are a huge portion of their work base, and while I suppose I am capable of researching and writing about anything, I really found little inspiration with most offerings.  You only get one chance at a rewrite if a copy editor doesn't like your article, and while they will send you notes on what they want changed, if you have questions about it, there is no way to contact them.  I have had a few articles, particularly at the beginning, returned for rewrites, but usually it was a case of me slipping into passive voice, using words that weren't allowed, or something of my own oversight, such as picture captions that were longer than is allowed (12 words).  It's not common now for me to have a rewrite, and I've never had a rejection after a rewrite, so this hasn't been much of a problem for me. The problem I have had, interestingly enough, is copy editors adding typos to my articles.  This has happened to me twice, and it was on articles that went straight to publication after editing, so I didn't have a chance to change it.

For the positives, DMS makes it easy for you with a very intuitive submission document that checks to be sure you've included everything you need, such as captions for pictures and key words for the article.  It also has an automatic plagiarism checker which, from reading the forums, some people have real issues with, but I've not had an article flagged by it, so it doesn't bother me in the least.  From what I'm told, it's significantly more sensitive than the plagiarism checkers available for free on the Internet, even when those are set to the highest degree of sensitivity, so if you are just reworking phrases from someone else, you're likely to get caught pretty quickly.  There are no minimums, and no maximums, so you can write one article a month or ten a day, as apparently some people do.  You can take time off without notifying anyone, without losing your job, unlike some agencies that require weeks of notice in advance or have a maximum number of weeks off you can take. There is a large library of licensed photos you can choose from, and while all articles need at least one, you can add more to jazz things up. You get a byline, so if you want to refer potential clients to your work, it's clear that it's your own.

Overall, while I really love DMS, I thought I needed a backup in case there was a week where I just couldn't find any titles to write.  It was a smart move, as I have had three to four day lags where I couldn't find a single title out of thousands that I wanted to write.

The Road Here

I started writing content for sites on the Internet about four years ago.  Most of it at that point was stuff I wasn't gonna show a soul.  I had a friend in the adult industry ask me to write some content for her site.  She wanted classy content, stuff to fill up pages that otherwise would be just pictures.  I did a few pages for her, and she recommended me to others.  I worked for them, too.  Some of them paid me, some only promised to, but that's how freelancing can be sometimes.

I discovered Amazon's Mechanical Turk a little while after that.  Lo and behold, there were bunches of writing jobs - ghostwriting blog posts, penning short reviews and articles, and they paid!  I started accepting jobs I found on their site on a near-daily basis, and made a tidy little side income from it.  The nice thing I discovered, was that once I'd done a job for someone that they liked, they'd set up jobs that were just for me on the site.  For a while, I was happy, and my little nest egg for Christmas shopping grew nicely.

I stopped working for them in 2008, after going through a series of traumatic events that left me barely able to function, let alone work.  Unfortunately, when I went back, I discovered that the jobs that once paid me $7 - $10 per piece now paid $2 at most.  Some paid only a quarter.  What had happened?  I never did figure it out, unless non-native English speakers in third world countries could afford to work for only pennies per hour.  I stuck it out for a little while, trying to earn a bit of spending money at least, but only grew more and more frustrated.

I had some friends who had success writing for Squidoo and Associated Press, so they were my next stop.  I figured that a few nicely written articles would start a nice revenue stream.  Unfortunately, I discovered that writing for revenue share is definitely not for me.  I only earned pennies, which discouraged me from writing further articles.  I know the basis is sound;  you build a large portfolio of articles over time, and over time those pennies add up.  The more articles you add, the more pennies per week.  I just couldn't stand it though.  I am pretty much an instant gratification girl.  If I want that new bottle of OPI polish I have my eye on over at Shoppers, I want to write something and go buy it, not wait and count my pennies!


I knew what I needed: consistent work-for-pay writing jobs.  Did such a thing exist?  Oh yes, ladies and gentlemen, it does!