this woman’s work

Came home to 109 blog posts in my reader. Yikes. Luckily my inbox wasn’t as bad because I checked in all day in my iPod. God bless the iPod Touch.

Got to talk to Julia tonight after a long, long time. Way too long. Life is better with Julia in it!!!

Tomorrow isn’t as busy. I’m getting started on a client project that’s been waiting on some info and I need to prepare for a workshop I’m giving Thursday morning and a training I’m leading Thursday afternoon. Also I have an interview thingie in the morning. Then Thursday potluck!!! Then Friday will be quieter ’til late afternoon when I’ve got a phone conference then Madison has her first soccer practice and I think there’s dinner with friends (not sure about that part). But! Still quieter because at least tomorrow I don’t have to leave the house at all on Wednesday and not until late on Friday.

I got a great pep talk from my dad this afternoon after my meeting. He helped me focus on how to do some things I wanted to do but wasn’t sure how.

Sometimes there are lights at the end of tunnels!

I’d love to hit that drupal one but that’s my dad’s 70th birthday so we’ll be busy that day. Courtesy of the Fuse Factory!

Workshop 1: Introduction to Marketing Yourself on the Web
Instructor: Alison Colman
Date: Wed., Sept. 10
Time: 11:30am - 1:00pm
Location: GCAC conference room
Fee: Free

Workshop 2: Intro to Web 2.0: Building a Better Blog
Instructor: Dawn Friedman
Date: Saturday, Sept. 13
Time: 1:00pm - 4:00pm
Location: Junctionview Studios
Fee: $15

Workshop 3: Intro to Drupal
Instructor: Jennifer Deafenbaugh
Date: Saturday, Sept. 20
Time: 1:00 - 4:00pm
Location: The Vault (this will be part of the Independent’s Day festivities - visit http://independentsday.nu/ for more details!)
Fee: $15

Workshop 4: Intro to Flash
Instructor: Phong Nguyen
Date: Saturday, October 4 (Phong, plz let me know ASAP if you think this workshop warrants two sessions! This can be scheduled for both the 4th and the 11th)
Time: 1:00pm - 4:00pm
Location: Junctionview Studios
Fee: $25

Just temporarily, mind you. My old mouse was busted so Brett got me a new one and I did the whole switch-out before I realized that the new one needs to charage. I use my laptop as a monitor though so I have a mouse — just not a convenient one. Basically my entry title is a big lie. Nevermind.

So yesterday my presentation went (I think) well! At least I had fun and people laughed and afterwards some people stood around to ask some advice and some emailed me to say thanks. Mostly it was FUN even though I sweating bullets up there, lemme tell you. There are some things I would do/say differently next time but this is the first time I’ve given a talk like this and not one that was writing-specific. I’m thinking of maybe putting together a longer workshop where there’d be assignments and stuff.

I’ve been having some career remorse lately because I was wishing that I had gone for that MSW or PsyD or something that would let me work with people and get paid. Although who am I kidding? It’d be awfully hard to make enough as an MSW to pay off my MSW loans.

My friend Alicia, who put together yesterday’s workshop, said that maybe I should be a coach but those coaches — some of them are downright cheesy and when I see a coach-type I always think they don’t know what they’re talking about. I’m judgmental like that.

I’m at a career impasse as far as my money-making career goes. But I think it’s that I’m struggling with a particular problem and I need to just trudge my way through it. (I’ve got some things set up re., trudging but haven’t had the meetings they require yet.) Sorry to be so vague — suffice to say that at every new level of this here full-time freelance gig, I have to revisit said full-time freelance gig. I never really want to give it all up but sometimes I wander around complaining that I do. You really can’t believe me when I do that and you need to hear the cry for help (and chocolate) beneath the whining. You can imagine how fun it is to be married to me.

Anyway! Today is Thursday but for me it’s not quite Thursday because I have work to do and can’t go play with friends. So I’m sending my stand-in (Brett) and then meeting up with everyone afterwards. I’m a little jealous of my stand-in but he deserves joy, too, I suppose. (sigh)

My GCAC workshop is full so that means there are a lot of people who are hoping I have something useful to say. I’m hoping I have something useful to say, too. It so happens that the workshop is coinciding with a small crisis of confidence I’m having in my own career, which makes me a tough sell on my own talk. Ha!

I’m using some of my writer quotes for the powerpoint presentation. I want to have something for people to look at both to keep me focused and because I know some folks in the audience will be visual. (It’s for all types of artists.) I don’t know anything about the practicalities of careers in other practices so I’m keeping things very loose and basic and not planning what I’m going to say too much. Instead I’m going to be pulling from the audience, particularly two friends of mine who will be there and who are very talented visual artists. (Sharon and Melissa) Originally I was going to try to get Sharon to teach this with me because she is doing AMAZING things but I could never get my stuff together enough to organize that so I’m just going to use her a whole heckuva lot.

I’m nervous/excited about it. It’s both better and worse that people I know will be there (Pennie’s Nate’s sister will be there, too — she’s also a visual artist).

Ok, back to work!!

Get this. I’m supposed to deliver this talk in June for the Greater Columbus Arts Council:

Becoming a Working Artist: What it Takes to Make a Living (Workshop)
June 25, 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
GCAC Large Conference Room, 100 East Broad Street, Ste. 2250
Writer Dawn Friedman will talk about her switch from part-time writer to full-time freelancer and family breadwinner.  She will discuss the challenges of balancing artistic and financial needs and share the way she learned to market her job skills through marketing her creative self.  Space is limited to 25 attendees, so pre-registration is required by June 13 to attend this informative event.

And of course that came into my email and my addled insecure little brain shouted, “Fraud!” at itself because I was invited to do this during a particularly high point of my life last year and today happens to be a rather low point of my life this year. (That sounds overly dramatic — I mean I’m having a week where I spend a lot of time worrying.)

See, I made sure my work calendar would be clear while I was in Portland (for the most part) and kinda forgot to line up work for the weeks after, which means down the line there the mailbox will be woefully empty of checks. Oops. That reminds me — any of y’all got any writing you need written? Because I’ve got a keyboard right here and I’m not afraid to use it!

As you can see, I’m hustling. And the meetings are revving back up and soon (one hopes) the email box will be filling up with assignments again.

I know one thing I’ll talk about at the workshop is branding because I absolutely absolutely absolutely think that branding is vital to consider in a creative career although it might not seem quite like it on the surface. Branding is such a shallow word for such an important thing, which is that you (I) need to understand how people see you (me). The difference between a working (as in trying to make a living) artist and a corporation is that the corporation is something of a slave to its brand and an artist isn’t but an artist still needs to understand the message her work is sending in order to understand how to get more work.

I mean, this is as simple as saying if you’ve built a reputation as a sculptor and now you’re working in pastels, you have to understand that some folks will have a hard time visualizing your work outside of the sculpture box they’ve set you in and this may play into how they feel about giving you a grant or a show or a commission. It doesn’t mean that once you sculpt you must always sculpt; it means that understanding what you’re up against in other people’s minds will help you get around those barriers.

What I’ve realized recently is that I’ve built a pretty good platform within the adoption community and now I face the danger of limiting myself (i.e., only speaking to the adoption community) and that I need to concentrate on my brand as Writer. Because I’m not an adoption writer — I’m a writer who writes about adoption an awful lot. But I want to have room to write about other things and (importantly because of the message I want to send) I want to write about adoption for more than just an adoption audience.

Is this making sense?

These are two things that I think confuse other writers: branding and marketing. And these are huge things. Once you’ve understood your brand, you have to understand how to market yourself (I am confused by this myself and am working hard to get clear on it, which means sifting through a whole bucket of neuroses. So fun, this artist stuff). Some of it — the marketing — is obvious like knowing which clips to mention in a pitch to this market or that. But some of it is hard like knowing how to hammer down the doors when I have huge emotional roadblocks to pitching. (What is up with that??? I’ve been pitching for, what, 8 years now? And still — the horror!)

Oh and if you want to come to my talk even though I’m outing myself as a person afraid to give it, hit up the good folks at the GCAC. I’ll be awfully glad to have you.