Tag Archives: writing

Work: Feast or Famine

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An empty summer packs up quickly.

Less than a week ago, on the morning of Friday, February 8, I was looking at a pretty empty summer season. I had one book contract lined up — an annual revision I usually work in in June and July — and no idea where or even if I’d be flying for someone else during the April through September timeframe I’d set aside for Alaska.

Two other books had been dangled in front of me on and off for the past two months. If I got them, they’d keep me busy from now until the summer time. But it didn’t look as if I’d get them.

And while I was hoping to spend the entire summer flying for someone else in Alaska, the recent demise of Silver State Helicopters dumped all of their CFIs (certified flight instructors) on the job market. If any of them had 1,000 hours (or said they had 1,000 hours), they’d be lined up for the few entry level jobs at the Grand Canyon, Gulf of Mexico, and Alaska. My experience level is a bit higher than entry level for those jobs, so employers would have to pay me more. Why pay for steak when hamburger will do? Despite four resumes out there in the land of the midnight sun, my phone remained silent. So it didn’t look as if I’d be going to Alaska after all.

And that was the state of things last Friday morning.

A Telephone Call Changes the Scene

I did have one other resume out in the wild: I’d sent it about a month before to an Illinois-based Part 135 operator. They were looking for a full time pilot to help them with a special contract and then do odd flying jobs as needed in the midwest. (And yes, I’m being purposely vague. Last week’s fiasco has put me into high caution mode.) I exchanged a few e-mails with the owner, who said that a contract pilot — which is what I’d prefer — might work out better for him. He told me to call him. I did, but never seemed to get him on the phone. I waited for him to call. He didn’t. I sent him an e-mail, asking if the job had been filled; if it had, I’d stop bothering him. He wrote back to say the job wasn’t filled, he was definitely interested in me, but he was swamped with work. He’d call. He didn’t. All this happened during the course of a month.

On Friday, I decided to call again. I wanted to either cross off this opportunity or bring it into the realm of possibility. I got the owner on the phone. We hit it off right away. I got the feeling he’d spoken to a few other people about the job and they weren’t interested in some of the more unusual aspects. (Again, I’m being vague on purpose; I don’t want anyone to screw this up for me.) I also got the feeling he was being inundated with resumes from Silver State casualties of Chapter 7 — guys who have earned their 1,000 hours in a simulator or as an active passenger during dual instruction flights. He wanted someone with experience flying passengers for hire, which I’ve been doing since 2001. We joked around a little. He told me that mid-month, he would fly me up to his base for a face-to-face meeting and a chance for me to see their equipment. I assume a flight would also be part of the interview process.

I hung up the phone feeling good. This opportunity had gone from a long shot to a 75% or more chance of getting the job. And without going into details, I can assure you that the job will be very interesting, with plenty to blog about — if I’m allowed to.

Two More Calls, Three More Books?

Product ImageMy phone rang on Monday morning. It was one of my editors. He’s been swamped since the holidays and has just dug out of the pile of work on his desk. He pulled one of the dangling books out of the air and slapped it on the negotiation table. We talked terms, we agreed. (My co-author on the book agreed yesterday.) I’m looking for a contract in the mail any day now. Time frame? Well, the book is already listed on Amazon.com, so I guess I’d better get to work on it soon.

He also dangled that other book around some more, but no decision was made. We didn’t even talk terms. So although I can’t count on it yet, it’s definitely still in the picture.

Yesterday, I got another call from another editor I work with regularly. She flat-out offered me a book deal with terms that would be tough to turn down. So I said yes. The contract should come within the next week or so. Timeframe: late summer. Sorry; no details will be forthcoming anytime soon.

What’s good about all this is that I have enough writing work lined up to support me through the summer, when Flying M Air continues to incur expenses but does not incur much (if any) revenue.

Another Call with another Flying Possibility

Between the two editor calls, I got a call from a California-based Part 135 helicopter operator. They’d seen my helicopter forum post that had a subject line like “Single Pilot Part 135 Operator with Helicopter Available for Summer Months.” This guy is interested in expanding his business to offer a major city’s commuters with helicopter transportation into that city from the suburbs. (Yes, I’m being vague again; jeez, I hate this.) Rather than invest in a lot of equipment and train pilots, he thinks we might work together with me and my helicopter subcontracted by his organization to provide the flights. If things work out, he’ll expand; if they don’t, no serious money lost.

While this is very interesting to me, I’m worried that there won’t be enough revenue in it to support me and my aircraft. After all, I’d have to relocate for the entire summer and the city in question ain’t exactly cheap to live in. But it is a really nice city, one I wouldn’t mind living in at all. I told him about my other opportunity and how I wanted to pursue that first. He said that if that job didn’t work out and I was still available, I should call him in a month or so to talk about flying for him.

I’m calling that “Summer Job Plan C.”

Plan D, I should mention, is cherry drying in Washington State, which, as usual, is always dangling out there but never quite attainable.

Today

My helicopter calendar has a few — but not many — things on it. I’ll be doing rides at the Buckeye Air Fair again on Saturday. I picked up a Sky Harbor Charter for March with some folks who already told me they want another day trip when they come to Wickenburg. And I have a Wickenburg area tour prebooked through a tour company for March 1.

The Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure simply is not selling. It could be my limited marketing budget. But I can’t see paying $10-$15K for a magazine advertisement if it’ll take the sale of more than 10 excursions just to pay for the ad. (The trip really is a smoking deal and I don’t make much money on it.)

But I do have some possibilities on desert racing aerial photography gigs lined up for March and April. We’ll see how that goes. The ferry cost is hard for most of those companies to swallow. I’d do a lot better with race photography gigs if I’d relocate to Lake Havasu or Bullhead City. (And believe me, I’m thinking about it.)

Today, I’m finishing up an article I started on Monday for FileMaker Advisor magazine. Then I’m going to work on my outline for my half of our WordPress book revision. If I finish that before the end of the day, I’ll finish up my series of articles about using Viddler with WordPress. And maybe — just maybe — I’ll record another video blog entry.

But only if I can do something with my hair.

Article Length

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My biggest challenge.

Yesterday, I began writing an article for a travel magazine. The magazine is relatively well-known and it pays pretty darn well. I’ve never written about travel — beyond what you’ll find in this blog — but I think I’m up to the task.

But I am facing a challenge: word count. The article cannot be more than 1,500 words.

I’m not accustomed to working with length constraints. On my blog, I can make an article as long or as short as I want to. The same goes for the articles I write for InformIt and other Web-based publishers. (That’s one of the benefits of publishing on the Web — it costs the same to publish no matter how long it is.) Even my book publishers don’t usually limit my page count.

But this is a print publication and the limits are real. And I seriously doubt that the editors there will love my words enough to make an exception for me.

Keeping It Short

The way I see it, there are two ways to keep an article short:

  • Write it short. I’m using Word 2004 (old habits really do die hard) to write the piece. Word includes a live word count feature, so I can monitor word count as I type. This is how I’m trying to write the piece. What I’m finding is that I’m about 1/4 finished writing, but have used up more than half my alloted words. As a result, I keep going back and shortening up earlier paragraphs and sentences to make room for the rest of the story. I don’t think this is the best approach.
  • Write it without worrying about page count, then go back and edit the hell out of it. This is how I usually tackle length problems — especially when I have to shorten up text that appears on a page I’m laying out. In those instances, I’m cutting out 10 to 30 words. But at the rate I’m going with this article, I’ll have to cut more than 1,000 words. This can’t possibly be productive. After all, I’m writing material that I’m just discarding.

Another Way?

It occurs to me that there probably is another way to keep it short: rethink the entire article and reduce the amount of information I want to provide.

This is probably a more professional way to go about it. It requires me to come up with an outline of what I want to discuss and budget a certain amount of words for each part. If there are too many parts, I need to cut out the parts that don’t really communicate the theme of the piece. Once I have a handle on how to approach the article, I should be able to write it close to the proper length. I can then edit it down as needed.

The key, of course, it to stay within budget for each part of the article.

And I think this is a good example of how blogging and writing for the Web can hurt a writer. When I blog, I have no editor — it’s just me. I can write whatever I want, whatever way I want to write it. Sentence fragments? No problem. Slang? Go for it! Extensive use of parenthetical commentary? Why not (since I always have more than just one thing to say)? Bloggers who are also professional writers can lose the discipline they need to produce high-quality work for publisher with very specific needs.

But I think I’ll tackle blogging and how it affects writing skills in another post.

Any Thoughts?

Do any writers out there have some advice for me? Speak up! Use the Comments link or form.

[Mostly] Unmissed Words

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Weekend Assignment #197: Missing Words

The question:

Now that the WGA strike has had lots of time to affect the prime time television schedules, how is it affecting you as a viewer? What show do you miss most, aside from reruns?

The writer’s strike isn’t affecting me much at all. I’m not a big TV viewer. In fact, there are only three shows I watch with any regularity:

  • The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
  • The Colbert Report
  • Boston Legal

Of these, the only one I sorely miss is The Daily Show. Jon Stewart’s take on the news is a real wake-up call. Only he can make it clear how absurd things are getting in this country and the world.

Although I enjoy Colbert, I can take him or leave him.

Boston Legal didn’t start going into reruns until recently — at least I don’t think so. For all I know, it might still be running new episodes.

I watch all television on DVR (Dish Network’s version of TiVo). I absolutely cannot tolerate commercial breaks. We have our DVR set up to record the programs we watch, then, when we have time to watch them, we do. I’d gotten into the habit of watching Stewart and Colbert each night, the day after the show was “taped.” When the writer’s strike hit, we just turned off the DVR timers so the reruns wouldn’t fill the hard drives.

Last night, I asked my husband to turn on the timers for David Letterman. He’s back at work now with his writers and would probably make a good substitute for Jon Stewart.

I occasionally watch science, technology, and history shows in PBS, Discovery, History, etc. But I don’t think any of those are new and have no idea if any of that kind of programming is affected by the strike.

I should mention that my husband watches a lot of television — at least 2 to 3 hours an evening. He’s perfectly happy with reruns (apparently) but also watches sports and movies. He also has a much higher tolerance for commercials and can even watch live television.

Extra Credit: how are you spending the time instead?

I’m definitely spending more time reading. I’m preparing for my helicopter Instrument rating, which requires me to read and understand a lot of very unintuitive material — things like tracking VORs, making procedure turns, and doing other things I still don’t quite get. So each evening, I settle down with one of my study guides and read a chapter or two. Sometimes I take notes.

Yesterday, we bought an easy chair for the bedroom so I wouldn’t have to read in bed. Reading this stuff in bed puts me to sleep.

As a writer, I’m siding with the writers. I believe that writers should get royalties or residuals (or whatever they’re called in this instance) on anything they write that’s sold. While some people argue that it might only be pennies per episode of a show that’s sold on iTunes (for example), a lot of pennies do add up to dollars. If a writer is involved in a hit television show that sells millions in the digital markets, why shouldn’t they benefit?

For the record, I’d love to write for television. One of my dreams is to be part of a research and writing team for an educational show on Discovery or PBS. I could do that. And I’d love to go on the road to some of those exotic places while they filmed scenes and talked to experts and locals. Great stuff.

Ah! Something to Write About!

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I find a Web site that offers weekly suggestions for blogging topics.

A little over a month ago, a Twitter friend (@desertlibrarian) tweeted about an hysterically funny blog post she’d read on John Scalzi‘s blog, Whatever. This led me to subscribing to the RSS feed for Whatever. Scalzi’s apparently a hardcore SciFi author and although I enjoy some SciFi now and then, I’ve never read any of his books. (He’s probably never read any of my books, either.) His blog posts about SciFi don’t interest me very much (sorry!), but his thoughtful and well-written commentaries about other things — such as the Creation Museum — make it well worth keeping the feed subscription.

It seems that Mr. Scalzi had been keeping another blog or site that featured a “Weekend Assignment.” Here’s his summary of that feature from a recent post on Whatever:

For those of you who used to read By The Way, you’ll know that every Thursday I wrote up a “Weekend Assignment” to give folks something to do with their blogs over the weekend (Friday – Sunday, for AOL Journals, was typically the time period in which the members posted the least). I’m not doing the Weekend Assignments anymore, but I’ve bequeathed the activity to Karen Funk Blocher (aka Mavarin), and she’s doing them on her blog now. The first of her Weekend Assignments is up, and it’s asking what people are doing with their time in the wake of the WGA strike.

It seems like just yesterday that I wrote an almost pointless blog post about how much trouble I sometimes had finding something to write about. And then I find this.

So, if you’ll pardon me, I’ve got something to write.

Three Things

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A calendar-based journal.

Product ImageToday is the day I start the 2008 edition of my handwritten journal. Why today? It’s the first day on my Arizona Highways 2008 Engagement Calendar.

Back in the old days, before I started blogging, I used to use a week-at-a-glance calendar like this one to record a few notes about things going on in my life. I usually started off the project in earnest. Sometime during the year, I’d forget to make entries or lose the book or just get plain old lazy. But I still have copies of some of the books. Paging through them is a fascinating look at my life. Well, fascinating for me, anyway.

Two years ago, I abandoned the project after only two weeks. How embarrassing. Last year, I didn’t try at all.

But this year, I’ll do it — with a new approach. Each day, I’ll write down three things I did or thought or saw that day. Easy enough, right? Let’s see how I do.