Mastering the Focus

As a teenager, I was heavily involved with A cappella groups and often sang solos. One vocal instructor gave me a tip that, ironically, has affected the way that I write.

When sustaining a note for several measures, to avoid losing your breath or faltering on pitch, imagine a bouncing red ball in front of you. It travels from left to right, on a straight line. In your mind's eye, follow the ball as it bounces and focus -- not on the note you are singing -- but on the ball.

I received that advice at age 16, and it's funny how often I return to it. Lately, I've been practicing a lot of yoga, and I've also applied it there. While bracing myself for a tree pose -- sole of the foot against the other knee -- I focus on one point in the distance, and I envision that bouncing red ball. I never falter on the pose, as long as I keep that bouncing ball in sight.

Now when it comes to writing, this sense of focus is sharpened when applying this approach.

This week, I had some personal circumstances that really threw me emotionally. And as someone who scores as "Feeler" on the Myers Briggs personality test, a week like this hampers my ability to concentrate in a profoundly negative way. I had two stories to finish. Tuesday, my entire day was shot. I didn't write one word.

Then yesterday, as I waited in a pediatrician's office with my child, it occurred to me to recall the bouncing ball. And I realized that if I used my favorite go-to music as backdrop, it would achieve the same result as when I had to sustain those soprano notes.

I plugged in my earbuds on the laptop and pulled up the copy, focusing completely on the rhythm of the music and taking everything else that was bothering me out of my mind. I finished the story within 45 minutes -- one that had me churning for eight hours the previous day.

If you need to focus, try to figure out what will put you in that "hypnotic" state and then employ it as a tool. Even if you just sit quietly for a few minutes and imagine that bouncing red ball with your eyes closed, it has a remarkable effect on clearing your mind so that you can create.

Have any ideas for ways that you break through writer's block? I'd love to hear them! Post a comment.

Writing to the Cadence

One interesting thing I learned during my one and only pregnancy was that children in utero can be stimulated intellectually by music -- specifically Mozart. I used to spend a minimum of an hour a day with headphones plastered on my abdomen while my little boy kicked and moved to the cadence of Mozart's compositions. The theory was that IQ would be raised if a child listened to Mozart before he or she took a breath of oxygen. Even to this day, my child sits up and listens if I pipe Mozart through the car or the home.

The same can be said for your writing. A lot of people say to me, "How can you possibly write to music?" Frankly, I can't imagine writing without it. It's more than creating a mood for my muse -- it's a matter of connecting soul to heart to mind and channeling the energy from flowing scores into the keyboard of my laptop.

If you get stuck writing, at a minimum call up some classical music on Youtube and just soak it in with earbuds. I don't always stay with classical .... sometimes I stray to my favorite jazz artist, the sultry and soulful Diana Krall .... or I allow myself the guilty pleasure of my adolescent fascination with Michael Jackson or Prince. At other times, I need the fueling of a soundtrack from a film like "Prince of Persia," "Gladiator," or "Chronicles of Narnia."

So experiment with it. Try a variety of music via Youtube and see what inspires you to write. My guess is that we retain that innate connection with music that can be traced before birth, and as a result, we can channel it into composing our own lyrical prose.

Below are some of my favorite go-to selections to give you a few ideas:

Two Magic Words to Make $$$ in Freelancing

I just received an email from Writers Digest, promising the secret to making money in freelancing if I pay them $99 for their super information!

Guess what?

You don't need to pay a soul for this secret, because it's just two words.

But before I share ... be aware that I have been contacted by many people in my 12 years of freelancing for information about how I make a living. And you know how many people have taken my advice?

One person.

That's because no one really wants to do this.

Ready?

Here are your two magical words:

Cold calls.

If you're not willing to call editors -- heck, even send them an email introducing yourself if you're too scared to pick up the phone -- then this life is not for you.

Will you be rejected?

Yes.

99 percent of the time, you will be rejected.

Expect a 1 percent return on your cold calls -- that's 1 "yes" for every 100 contacts you make.

Daunted?

Well, that's what it takes, because in this economy, with thousands of news reporters facing layoffs, understand that this competition is not for the faint of heart.

I've had people listen to me and then respond with, "That's too hard. Isn't there any other way to do it?"

No.

There isn't.

And when I tell them that, sometimes they unfollow me on Twitter, or they sever the connection on LinkedIn.

You know what I say to that? Good. Less competition. Because the ONE PERSON who took my advice is now my competitor -- and that's okay. If I really thought that all of you would do what I suggested, I wouldn't even tell you this, because I'd be out of a job.

Cold calls. You don't have to pay Writers Digest $99 for the answer.

Done. The end.

Mining for Sources on Twitter

My soon-to-be-10-year-old son is part of the worldwide craze for the game, "Minecraft." The objective is to survive the "night" against zombies and horrific creatures called, "creepers." But because it requires the players to build their own homes and fortresses, it has a side benefit: My kid now has an interest in gems and mining. In fact, he leap-frogged from his Minecraft adventures into research for a school science report on the world's minerals.

As I watched his block-headed character navigate the imaginary Minecraft landscape, I got to thinking about my own guilty pleasure -- Twitter. And just like Minecraft led my child from zombies to a science project, Twitter has led me from inane chatter to mining for the best sources for my magazine articles.

If you're not on Twitter or don't understand how it works, here's a quick tutorial: You "follow" people with similar interests to yours. In my case, my following list is pretty diverse. I talk to parents about Asperger's Syndrome. I talk to lovers of books and films. I talk to people who are interested in outerspace and NASA. I talk to people who live in the United Kingdom, because I'm fascinated with that particular country and culture. I find fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers and tweet while I watch football games. I talk to fitness experts about my gym workouts. I even practice my French by tweeting Bible verses in French to a Spanish-speaking person who is also practicing his French.

It runs the gamut.

But, I also tweet about magazine stories that are on my plate.

Recently, because I also have an interest in etiquette, I started talking to an etiquette coach. She saw me chatting about my magazine articles and offered her expertise as a story source. This morning, I pitched an editor based on one of our chats ... and now I have an assignment lined up for a November issue, with permission to interview this lady.

I also chat with a boxing coach out of Australia. This week, I'm researching fitness magazine markets and also thinking outside of the box -- finding other niche audiences and trade magazines that would benefit from this boxing coach's advice. I plan on sending about three dozen ideas out by Monday.

When you market your freelance business, realize the potential that social media holds. If you are a journalist, then your nature is to be curious and to be observant. I get ideas when I'm in the grocery store, when I'm at the gym, when I'm taking my dog to the groomer, when I'm picking my kid up from school.

But a lot of GREAT ideas ... are also on Twitter. And so are a lot of great people. Yes, you have to be careful about who you choose as an "expert" source, but nowadays with the Internet, it's easy to check someone's credentials and vet them before you pitch an idea.

If you need help navigating Twitter and have questions, feel free to post them here -- or find me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lovemrthornton and talk to me there in real time. Yes, the user name has nothing to do with my profession -- "Mr. Thornton" is a character in a 19th century British novel. And you'll see on my profile page that I'm not talking a great deal about my work or my stories. But I'm constantly talking to people about ideas.

And with those ideas come a long list of potential sources ... and future income.

 

Writing in the Sauna and Editing During Downward Facing Dog

Yeah.

You read that title correctly.

Would it surprise you that my best writing is not done at a traditional desk on a keyboard?

Case in point, Saturday.

Every Saturday at 11 a.m., I have a Yoga class at my gym, and I move Heaven and Earth to always be there. I work out during other times of the week, but this Yoga instructor has this amazing class at a specific time that kicks my heart into overdrive while leaving me so relaxed that I feel like I've been sitting on a beach for five hours.

The problem was that this Saturday, I was in the middle of a writing marathon. I'd just finished two stories the night before and needed to polish off two others by a Monday morning deadline. I was brain-dead, but I didn't see how I could justify going to Yoga.

And then I decided that my body was more important than sitting at a computer for nine hours straight, machinating over minutia. So I hopped in my car to hit the gym sauna before the class and then spend the following hour stretching my limbs into rubber bands.

As I opened the sauna door, the aroma of cedar wafted over me, and heat bathed me. I sat on the wooden planks and closed my eyes.

And then I started writing.

No, I didn't bring my laptop in with me. But I'd spent enough time with my interview notes that I could envision the words on the screen, and then I pinpointed in my mind which anecdote would be best for the story lead.

Now I need to tell you ... this was no easy story to write. This happened to be on the same weekend that lots of movie-worthy action was taking place north of me in Boston. Other journalists on national news desks were churning copy as fast as SWAT teams could exchange bullets with the bomber of the Boston marathon. What I found during my work for AP was that those types of stories just write themselves. Your adrenaline is SO HIGH, that you just naturally pound out prose.

But these other types of stories .... well, this is where you are tested as a writer.

My two assignments were for a trade magazine, targeting owners of pizza restaurants in the United States and Canada. And the topics?

Dealing with food allergies.

And maintaining a comfortable restaurant climate during the summer months.

In essence, I had the story subject equivalents of watching paint dry. Just thinking about these stories was putting me to sleep in that sauna. But I pressed on.

I had my lead anecdote on the food allergy story from about 15 minutes in the sauna, and as I exited into cooler air and grabbed my Yoga mat, my mind started working on the best ways to frame it.

 So during my first 20 minutes of Yoga, I edited.

I worked the sentences around in my mind, each word a piece of a tapestry or elaborate stained glass window.

And it was during my third Downward Facing Dog pose of the morning that I came up with my approach.

Now this will surprise you -- I didn't race back to my house after Yoga and grab the laptop and start writing. I had one more magazine interview to complete for the second story on climate control. I found my subject, interviewed her .... and then I was sleepy.

So I took a two-hour nap.

Around 4 p.m., with most of the day gone, you'd think I would never be able to pull off the writing of two stories. But by this time, my mind was so rested, clear and focused, that I wrote the climate control story in two hours.

And THEN I pulled up a fresh screen. The words I had crafted during my Downward Facing Dog seven hours earlier came back to me as if I'd just left them on a shelf for a couple of minutes.

Here's the story lead:


"Tucked in the technology enclave of San Jose, CA, Willow Street Wood-Fired Pizza draws a hip, sophisticated and highly-educated clientele. And with all of that education comes a high demand for not only healthy food – but customer knowledge about food allergies and sensitivities." 

I'm no Hemingway, obviously, but it did the trick ... and that story was completed in an hour-and-a-half.

The next time you feel overwhelmed by deadlines and don't feel that you have enough time to make time for yourself .... make time for yourself. Take care of your mind and your body first. The words will wait, and when you finally have given yourself the gift of self-love, the words will come.

Interview Pitfalls: Lessons Learned from Meg Tilly and The Globe & Mail

It's one of those things you hear from your mother and push aside, because she's your mother:

"You don't realize how powerful you are."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah,"  I quip, rolling my eyes and waving my hand at her as if she's an insect that has just flown too near my coffee cup. I've never been comfortable with that statement, but my mother repeats it a lot. A LOT.

Yet it wasn't until very recently that I had to seriously scrutinize these words. A few Twitter friends were batting around discussion about a blog entry by the actress Meg Tilly, which you can read here:


Meg Tilly: "Still Reeling"


Apparently, Tilly is one of those actresses who is excessively media-shy, and with good reason, as she's been burned in the past. But recently, she let down her guard with The Globe and Mail of Canada. She soulfully opened up to an interviewer and was none too happy with the resulting article, which you can read here:

"Meg Tilly as she is, not as you’d imagine"

Both deserve to be read in order for you as a journalist to get both points of view (after all, that's what we're about, isn't it? Getting both sides of the story?).

I walked away from this with a few thoughts: In my opinion, this was a classic case of miscommunication. And both sides are in the right, and both sides are in the wrong. The Globe & Mail's story is well-written and well-reported. But I did some digging and discovered another story in The Daily Mail of the U.K., written in 2011, and it had the same tenor and tone and style:

"The family Colin Firth left behind: How he will always be in debt to the reclusive beauty who bore his first son"

My guess is this was an advancement of that story, even though the two papers are not related. You know how this works if you've worked in daily newspapers: An editor decides they want to match what another paper has done, and the reporter is sent out with a pre-established list of questions or angle to quench that editor's thirst. I'm not sure if this is what exactly happened in this instance, but I found the similarities between the two stories interesting.

Now we get to the interview itself. Tilly describes the interviewer this way:

"I think the thing that hurts the most, is that I really liked this woman. ...We were both middle-aged women in our 50’s with grown kids, laughing over wrinkly necks, changing bodies, desires. She was wearing this unique jacket that was like this funky piece of art.  She was a writer, I was a writer. ...And it was fun. Sipping on peppermint tea with a little bit of honey. Tucked in a warm booth at a retro diner in a hipster hotel."

Tilly does a nice job setting up the scene, and I see exactly what she's describing. I've been that interviewer in the past. Interviewing people for a story is very psychological. To get them to discuss the most important aspects of their lives, you do need to find common ground and the like-ability factor. And as someone who tests consistently as an ENFJ on a Myers Briggs personality test, this is one area in which I am particularly adept.

But this is where I part ways with the interviewer.

See, whether you want to admit it, we as journalists do have power -- the power to build someone up or demoralize them, just because our words are circulated in print for thousands of people to read. And with that power comes great responsibility.

My heart sank when I read these words from Tilly:

"She felt like a friend. Her sharing her life, me sharing mine.  And when I left, I thought, maybe we’ll be friends, wouldn’t that be nice? ...I started to read, and shock set in.  This was an intelligent woman with warm eyes, this woman had a comfortable laugh, a comfortable body.  We were both middle aged women who had gone through a lot.  How could she have written this? An article that barely mentioned the book, which was the whole reason we met. Nothing about the writing process, the reasons why. The title. That’s it.  There was a brief reference,  a sentence, I think, about Bomb Girls."

You might say to me, "Well, Heidi, Meg Tilly knew exactly what she was doing when she sat down with a journalist. She's a grownup. She has responsibility and shouldn't be whining. If she didn't want that stuff in print, why didn't she say it was off the record?"

Yes, she could have and probably should have. But this is how I know that the interviewer went astray and abused the power that had been entrusted to her.

"An article that barely mentioned the book, which was the whole reason we met."

And no more needs to be said. It's obvious that the interviewer landed the sit-down discussion with this reclusive individual because she had written a book. She was there to discuss the book. She thought the interviewer was going to write about the book. She was led to believe the entire purpose ... was about the book.

If you have a personality that immediately sets people at ease and tells them that they can lower their guard, you have a responsibility as a journalist and as a human being to be as up front with them as possible. If the interviewer's editor said, "Listen, you get this interview, and she wants to talk about the book, but see what else she's willing to discuss ...." (And we KNOW that discussion had to have taken place, because I've heard those words more times than I can count) ... it was the reporter's responsibility to tell Tilly.

I always lay my cards out on the table for each interviewee, if it's a puff piece. We're not talking about investigative journalism. Yes, when I've interviewed slippery politicians, I have just let them talk and hang themselves with their words. But this is an instance where you have a fragile and trusting woman who obviously has a gift for writing as well as for screen acting. She was there to discuss her book. To do a complete 180 on her without giving her any warning may not land you in a court of law for a lawsuit ... but it ignores the simple human call to compassion and kindness.

What did the reader gain from this article? Maybe for the interviewer, it was all about satisfying curiosity and gossiping tongues. But was the reader's life edified? Would it have been so if the interviewer had gone with the premise for the article -- a story about an actress-turned-author?

There are losers on all sides of this story: Meg Tilly lost trust in what could have been a very positive experience, both for her and for the interviewer. The interviewer lost respect and a sense of her own humanity in running roughshod over that trust. The readers lost an amazing opportunity to read an enriching piece about an artist and how she spun her creativity into a new web of wonderful writing.

And as journalists, we also are losers if we can't learn a few lessons from Meg Tilly and The Globe & Mail about human compassion, decency, trust and integrity.

"Curiouser and Curiouser!"

Every great journalist I've ever met has one essential but universal quality:

Curiosity.

If this is just part of your DNA makeup, then you're golden to run a freelance writing business.

I had this great teacher at my very first newspaper (I call him a "teacher" rather than an "editor," because he was much more than a snarly bear behind a computer). Dave Lanute. I can name him here, because he's connected to me on Facebook, and he'll get a kick out of it, won't you Dave? :-P

Anyway, Dave told me when I was at the malleable age of 23, "Curiosity is the most important thing about this job. If you can learn to ask questions about everything and everywhere you go, of everyone you encounter, you will succeed in this business."

He was right.

I started actually practicing the art of asking myself questions in every single situation. I forced myself to get into this mindset, and before I knew it, I just started doing it naturally. Now it's just part of who I am ... and it ultimately leads to story ideas, which leads to story assignments, which leads to .... you guessed it!

$$$$$$$!!!!

And that, of course, leads to being able to sustain yourself on a freelance lifestyle.

Let me give you an example from this week. I finished up a huge project on Tuesday -- a straight 10-day writing marathon on an annual story for one particular client. My brain was toast, and so I carved out Wednesday to handle errands and rejuvenate.

I took the dog to the groomer.

Ho hum, you might say.

But while dropping him off, I saw a little counter display next to the cash register for dog licenses. The name of the company was, "Dingo."

"Hey," I said to the groomer. "My child's piano teacher just rescued a puppy from a barn, and it was really smart but badly behaved. It turns out that this thing is one-quarter Dingo. My child gets in this puppy's face every time he has a piano lesson. Should I be concerned about the dog?"

Well this led into a dissertation by the dog groomer about Dingos, their roots in Australia, their rarity in the United States, their ability to be trained as pets, their affability when children are around ... I walked out of the place 30 minutes later fully informed, let me tell you.

Then I got to thinking about the different stories that could spin out of that one root discussion. And I would list them for you here, but I don't want to give them away. :-D  I'm going to pitch them to magazines for pet owners AND to magazines on parenting.

Here's another example:

I hit the salon last Thursday for the first time in three months. While I was waiting for my tresses to be transformed from brunette into Julia-Roberts-auburn tendrils, I looked around for magazines. There was the requisite stack of consumer magazines that most other foil-encased women were perusing. But off on a chair in a corner, there was another stack. I knew what was in it: the trade magazines that the salon owner was reading for his business.

Jackpot.

These were magazines I never knew existed. Normally I see trade magazine listings on writersmarket.com, but these were "off the terrain," as it were. As dye seeped into my hair (and scalp -- see what women have to do to be presentable these days?), I canvassed the publications and made mental notes of the types of articles they were doing, as well as which publications were linked under the same corporate heading. By the time I left the salon, I felt justified in paying the hefty bill, because I had potentially discovered three new clients.

Today I'm cobbling together lists of ideas from those two excursions and will be sending editors my pitches next week.

OK. Let me give you one more.

I went to the grocery and as I was checking out, noticed that the person bagging my food was elderly. The line was rather long, but it was because she was carefully putting each item very slowly into each bag. No one was complaining. All eyes followed this gentle old lady's movements. And all of us were thinking the same thing: Why is this poor soul working at a grocery and bagging food when she should be enjoying a quiet and placid retirement, sipping tea on a comfortable chair with a good book?

Or maybe the other customers weren't thinking it.

Maybe it was just me -- the curious person with a thousand questions -- and the writer who will find the answers and tell a tale.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to put together a story idea list for AARP.