ptui, ptui, ptui -- things are looking up!

I got two calls this week - from two old clients who need me to work for them again. That ROCKS for many reasons. I need the work. I love these clients. And most importantly, I didn't burn bridges by storming off in a huff when I unhitched from them in the first place! Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

YAY WORK!

If Cee-Lo Green Were A Freelancer

For crap's sake. Here's an article in the Times about a vegan website based here in San Francisco that was using free stock food photos and airbrushing out the meat (#awesome!). At first, the editor was unrepentant: free, bastardized photos were "necessary for budgetary reasons." After a smorgasbord of internet fury, he revised his statement, saying they'd stop using meat pictures, but that he "hoped the magazine’s readership would 'stand up and help us' in providing vegan photography."

Fuck you. Pay photographers. (H/T to Mike Monteiro)

And look! Here's a job listing that lists among its many, many requirements:

• A BA in English
• An MBA or equivalent
• 7 years copywriting experience

The online listing doesn't say this, but the posted rate for this job, according to the Media Alliance JobFile, is $10/hour. Minimum wage. You get paid more at Starbucks.

Fuck you! Pay marketing writers a living wage!

Progressive darling Arianna Huffington is defending her perfect right to get fat off of free content. Huffington and AOL are trying to upend the concept of the citizen journalist, which used to mean "getting information out of areas where journalists are under siege by any means necessary," and now means "undercutting professional journalists by expecting above-the-fold copy from unpaid or barely-paid interns." (News flash: they don't deliver.)

Just ... fuck you.

Over the past ten years I've become a more skilled reporter, a better interviewer, a more careful researcher, an all-around better writer. And my per-word and per-hour rates have dropped because the market could not bear what I was making. Which was the same per-word rate freelancers have been making since the seventies. What the heck is going on?!

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I have to go finish a piece for one of the few clients that pays me what I deserve for articles they can be proud to publish. I'm missing no deadlines, and making no fuss: this is a relationship that must work out, or I'll perish along with the cattle featured in the ribs on the front page of VegNews.

(yeah, I know, that was a stretch. Hey, I'm writing for free here!)

I need a new yoga ball

Man. Starting during my second pregnancy, I started sitting on a yoga ball while working. Not too long ago, the damn thing popped. (I know. They're supposed to be able to withstand... I mean, I was pregnant! ugh.) Anyway I've been sitting on a crappy kitchen chair since then and ow. When I stand up after working for a few hours, I walk like Marlon Brando when he was chasing that kid around with an orange peel in his mouth right before keeling over from a coronary. In The Godfather, obvie. You knew that. Anyway, this is apropos of nothing except that I'm sitting here working and my butt hurts. Do with that what you will.

When do I call it?

Man. I pitched a story that an editor was kinda meh about, and I was all "oh no you will LOVE this great story!" and now I am so bored with it I want to gouge my eyes out. I should have listened to my editor! That's why she's an editor! Duh! Winning!

(Will it ever be possible to say "duh" without "winning" again? I hope not.)

Anyway, to save face I keep thinking I must produce this sparkly great story, and I've done interviews and whatnot.

On the other hand, maybe I'm blocked because it's a crappy idea.

On another hand (maybe I'm a octopus, you don't know, YOU DON'T KNOW ME!!), maybe I'm just blocked in general and incapable of ever writing again. It could happen.

Ha ha ha, just kidding, I don't really think that every five minutes of every work day and every ten minutes on the weekends.

Do you ever do that thing?

Do you ever do that thing where you go to the Word file you're supposed to be working on, and then you stare at it, and then you go to Mail and hit "Get Mail" just to make sure nothing came in, and when you hear the "clunk" noise, you hit it five more times just in case?

No?

Oh.

Never mind, then.