You know what’s super great about this particular Thursday?

It’s also a Friday, in essence if not in name. And that makes it a great day for a TiLT list. This week I am loving …

• Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress, who I learned about through the current issue of Bust. Kamala Lopez made a film about Rankin, which I have not yet had the chance to see (since I only read about it yesterday). The film is available at ASingleWomanMovie.com.
• BUST Magazine. I picked up another a copy yesterday and read a couple articles while waiting in line to pay for it. Then I read the rest of it while sprawled out on our temporary bed after work. BUST is probably becoming my favorite magazine. I’ve been frustrated with feminism before, and I feel like the girls at Bust really get my type of feminism — like, it’s cool to have a lady on the front cover wearing a fluffy dress, but it’s also pretty fab that she makes her living telling crass jokes and being generally foul mouthed.
• This conversation I overheard in the bookstore yesterday:

Person 1: His name is Yuri.

Person 2: Yuri?

Person 1: Yeah, like … like, like Russian, like, ballet dancers and stuff.

• Alice and Kev, a blog about two homeless Sims. I started reading this blog a week or so ago, and it’s really clever. Obviously, there are some major differences between the way Sims act and the way real people act, but Alice and Kev is a rather eye-opening experiment.
• Sarah Von’s list of what to do on Independence Day.
• The new “pet” at Sea of Shoes, Nao.
• The fact that Southwest Airlines doesn’t gradually inch up their prices by the day or the hour, and that until the tickets sell out, I can still put employees on the same flight at the same price today that I got on Monday. This is so handy when, say, an employee backs out of a business trip at the last minute and you spend all week looking for his replacement. Southwest also gives full refunds if you have to cancel a flight, and they offer more direct flights and lower fares than most other airlines, which is why I’ve abandoned Expedia and started using Southwest almost exclusively when booking travel for people in my office.

www.marriedtothesea.com

Yesterday, I was obsessing about my cat. I still am, but today, I’ll write about something different. After all, this is a writing blog, not a missing cat blog.

So, let’s talk about blogging and writing. And lets talk about the cat.

The pros of having a writing blog start simple. First, blogging is a natural extension of a habit I started in junior high — scribbling stream-of-consciousness prose in my notebooks as a way to tune out everything else happening around me. I disliked most of my classmates and teachers and felt generally awkward in all social situations, so I sat there and wrote. I observed people. I wrote down what they did and what I thought of it. I wrote things I could not say out loud. I played with language, with rhyme and rhythm. I tested out new words. My notebook was an ongoing experiment, as is the blog.

www.toothpastefordinner.com

The blog is a slightly more mature version of the same experiment, or at least that’s what I hope for it. On the blog, I can have the same experiments, but I know that I’m putting them out there for people to read and (if they choose) respond to. Knowing you have an audience is a kind of filter on its own. I’ve written many things that will never see the light of day, and they only got written because I didn’t have my audience filter on. On the blog, I practice using the audience filter effectively. I think about how what I write will affect my audience. I think about whether they will want to read it at all. I get half way through a lot of blog posts and abandon them because they don’t pass the audience filter test: If I were reading this on someone else’s blog, would I be interested?

The cons of having a writing blog mostly revolve around revision. Writers have a saying that’s horrifying to non-writers: Kill your babies. That’s right. Writers are baby killers … in a way. Or at least the good ones are. (Actually, the saying is “kill your darlings,” but I find “babies” more effective … and deliciously crass.)

www.nataliedee.com

But the thing is, most writers do it because we love it. We can’t live without writing. It’s a compulsion. And we get attached to the things we write. The turns of phrase. The clever metaphors. The way we feel after we’ve finally put into words a concept we’ve been struggling with. These are our babies. But the thing is, just because you love something you’ve written doesn’t mean it’s good. Or relevant. Or interesting. Or even intelligible. Thus, sometimes, you have to kill your babies.

A blog is not the the best place for this kind of baby killing. After all, the immediacy is part of what makes the blog so great. You write what you’re thinking, hit “publish,” and instantly, your thoughts, your words and your babies have gone out to the world. And your babies might be very poorly behaved. Your thoughts might be poorly fleshed out. Your words might be poorly spelled. I always find myself correcting my spelling on a post several hours after it goes live. In other words, sometimes your babies turn into monsters and run rampant before you have a chance to erm… edit them. Shall we say edit? Yes, that’s a good word.

In most cases, blog posts and children both require some editing before being let loose on the world.

So lets talk about the cat now. I love the cat. She’s my baby. And I love my writing. I’m not one of those writers who are so fond of their own work that they brag about it everywhere, but I do have a bit of an illicit love affair with my own blog. I do compulsively read my old posts under the guise of learning from my mistakes when I am really just thinking of how much I love the words. And of course, the cat.

So, as I was writing my Monday Night Nonfiction last night, I was employing that old technique I picked up in middle school — coping with difficult emotions by trying to make them beautiful, by imposing patterns on them, and by surrounding myself with the words I love. I tried to use repetition as a way to reel the whole thing in. I find repetition to be so useful, the way it can impose its rythm on otherwise unweildy thoughts. But honestly, I have no idea if it worked. Because that post is still my baby. And so is that cat.

So is it a good thing or a bad thing to post the mostly unrevised, still-raw thoughts of any given Monday night for the world to read? Well, I don’t know. I think it’s just an exercise and one that I am willing to share with the world. What do you think?

My cat is missing. We’re buying a house. The lease on our apartment is up. We’ve moved into the inlaws’ house, and the cat is missing. I have a lot to be happy about, like the house, and the inlaws letting us live here rent free till we close on the house, and the fact that we are out of our over-stuffed apartment. And I have freelance work to do, and meetings ahead, and a great idea for a  new writing project. But I’m not thinking much about those things right now because the cat is missing.

I won’t call her lost, although of course that’s what I fear. We put her in the car, like we’ve done before, and drove across town with her making angry noises. The seats were folded down to accomodate the boxes we’d been moving, and she got underneat them, hiding in the back driver’s side footwell. It didn’t worry me because that’s what she’d done before. And when I opened the car to get her out in this strange new place she’s never seen, I planned to pick her up and snuggle her like I’ve done before, and cradle her close to me until I could deposite her in our temporary bedroom, along with her litter box, food, scratching post and toys. But while I was unfolding the seats to get her out from the crevisce she’d stuffed herself into, she took advantage of my ill-timed glance in the wrong direction. She bolted. She went into the woods, and long story short, the cat is missing.

Of course, we tried to catch her. Of course, we knew she’d keep getting further away. We tried herding her, and she got right back out to the edge where the woods meet the more civilized back yard, but she bolted again, going further and faster each time. She kept on meowing to let us know she was furious, and as long as we could hear her, we kept following. But when she got into the thorny brush on the up-side of the hill on the other side of the neighbor’s yard, we gave up. Turned around, went inside. Put her food on the back deck just in case, and resigned ourselves to the knowledge that the cat’s gone missing.

Poor cat. Poor stupid cat. Come back, goddamnit. If she doesn’t come back, I might never get another pet. Not because I love her that much. I do love her. Not because I’m that heartbroken. I am heartbroken. But really because I think I’m bad at having pets. This isn’t the first one I’ve lost. And truthfully, I did everything wrong. I didn’t have her in a carrier. I didn’t keep my eye on her. I chased her when I should’ve just let her come to me. But at least I had her spayed.

So this is my Monday Night Nonfiction. This is my truth right now: I am beating myself up for letting a poor, dumb, beloved animal get lost because I scared the hell out of her by putting her in a car in the first place, and now the cat is missing.

Yes, I'm posting a 2nd Monday Night Nonfiction. This one is for everyone who's not my husband.

Dear Iran,
I love you guys. I really do. I don’t know how the world should respond to your situation right now. I don’t know what control we have or what right we have to make demands. I don’t know who is the best leader for Iran or what policies your country should enact or anything.

I believe you are good people. I believe you deserve the right to govern yourselves. I believe you deserve every last right that I have. I am so sorry for the losses you’re facing, and the chaos and frustration.

I want the very best for you all.

Peace,
dirt

I have not yet found the words to properly express it. I’m not sure they exist.

Thank you for letting me experience something for which I have no words.

Photo by Porcelaingirl° {feelslikeaceleb}

• The Nervous Breakdown! Guys, this site is chock full of fun, creative, thoughtful writers. I’ve recently started contributing to the site, but I am humbled by the quality of the other writers there. Please, go check these people out.
• Target Women, a Youtube series my friend Ktree just showed me. I love Ktree, and I especially love how Sarah Haskins looks and thinks like Ktree. Here’s one of my favorite episodes.

• Caffe Pronto in Annapolis. I can’t even begin to describe how awesome it is, but my new friend @CoffeeCulinaria gave me quite a lesson in coffee Tuesday afternoon. The cappuccino was exquisite, and the iced coffee was like nothing I’d ever had before. The down side was that I barely slept after that, but it was so worth it. Only thing that would’ve made it better would be a cupcake.
• Advice from Cary Tennis. I’ve been reading his column more and more lately, not just for the advice he gives but for the quality of his writing. He empathizes with his querrants, and he rephrases their troubles in a way that helps readers get a grip on what’s really going on, and then he just writes his opinion on the matter in the softest, most satiny language I’ve ever seen from an advice columnist.
• Running! Ok, well it’s more like jogging … or a run/walk situation. But back in December, I made up my mind to start getting in better shape. I stopped doing the “Fit Friday” posts because I felt like posting every slight change in my weight was becoming counter productive and stressful, but I’ve been trying to keep up my routine. I exercise several times a week. I’ve gradually worked up from Wii Fit to actually going to the gym, and now I’m starting jogging. It’s hard work, but it’s so rewarding. I’m in a much better mood in general when I excercise now, and lets just say my baithingsuit this year looks good.
• I also adore our Realtor. Guys, if you live in the Baltimore/Annapolis/DC area and need a good Realtor, I would be happy to put you in touch with ours. She is a fantastic young woman who really helped us understand the whole process. She was very patient with us as we looked at one house after another, realized our budget was lower than we thought at one point, started the search over, finally made an offer on a house and then waited nearly a year for the sale to go through. She’s knowledgable, friendly, and able to answer all our questions, so I highly recommend her. And on that note, it’s time for me to go pack up some more stuff to get moved.

Who are your critics? Your mom and dad? Your high school English teacher or favorite professor? Who is it inside your head? Whose face do you picture when telling yourself why you can’t or shouldn’t do something?

For me, it’s the people I love most. I ask myself: How would this affect my husband if his coworkers were to read it? How would my parents feel if I wrote about our family in this way? What would my in-laws think if I wrote really risque scenes? By the time I get to the end of my list, I usually have a lot of reasons not to start on any meaningful writing, and what’s worse is that my inner critics have gone online and multiplied. Now, I also think: What are the trolls going to say, and how can I defend myself against their attacks preemptively? What will my childhood friends who grew up to become conservatives think when I write post on Facebook about my support for gay marriage? What will Twitter think? (No kidding.)

It seems like all the warm and fuzzy writing manuals I’ve read (you know, the ones that are 90% inspiration/motivation and 10% technique) suggest that one of the first steps in becoming a writer (or artist of any kind) is to shut your inner critics up. But of course, like most things, that’s easier said than done.

They suggest techniques like putting your inner critics in a box (in your head) and telling them they can come out when you’re done writing. Personally, this just makes me picture caricatures of my close friends and family being picked up by big, animated fingers and dropped in a box. It’s all rather weird and doesn’t actually accomplish anything except making me visualize in detail how my loved ones would be portrayed by political cartoonists.

I don’t want to engage in any cheesy psychological exercises, but I do need the mental freedom to put words on a page without obsessing, “What will so-and-so think?” Here are a few techniques I’ve used to shut up the inner critic and get some writing done.

Keep it to yourself: Keep a notebook that’s for your eyes only. I was lucky enough to have parents who respected their children’s need for mental space, so I was able to trust my notebooks and say whatever I needed to say. Keeping your notebook 100% private means you don’t need to think about your critics when you’re working in a notebook because you know they’ll never see it. You can always edit later if you want to share.

Drown them out: They aren’t real, you know. You can’t hurt them. So, do what you must to shut them up. If the silly visualization works for you, fine. But if you’re like me, it might take some actual force. I love to write with headphones on because when I’m listening to music I love, it helps me tune out the nonsense and tune in to what I’m working on.

Sweat them out: In my experience, the inner critic’s noisiness is often in direct proportion to the amount of stress I’m under, and I find that a good work out can go a long way toward soothing my nerves and quieting my inner critic. Turns out a lot of the criticism has nothing to do with my writing and everything to do with basic anxiety or insecurity, so just learning to tame the anxiety can really help.

Listen to them later: I guess the point of the box exercise was to allow your critics to withhold their comments until you’re prepared to hear them. The thing is, not everything they say is worthwhile, and anything really important will come back to you, but a lot of it is just anxious chatter. Just know that when you’re revising your work to print or post on your blog or whatever, you can apply the necessary filters then. And it is necessary to filter sometimes if you care about your audience, but that’s why we have a process called revision. If you put on all the filters right from the start, barely anything will get through, but if you pour it all out the first time around, you can sift through and pick out the good stuff later.

Cultivate your inner badass: I think it’s not fair that we all have these inner critics who are big nervous nellies and we’re supposed to just be stuck with them. So, I’m working on cultivating an inner badass. I need a little person inside me who can look those whiney, hyper critical little bastards in the eye and say, “Yeah, so?” I’m working on it. So far, she looks a bit like Tank Girl (couldn’t you guess?) and has a pretty foul mouth.

So what do you do to get past that nonsense?

There is definitely a risk of getting lost here.

Remember the time he sat you down and made you write. Remember how you’d spent most of the day crying in front of strangers. Remember how you read those books on witchcraft and thought you could take it, how they raised the specter of yourself and told you that you’d have to face your demons.

Have you found your demons? They’re not the ones you thought they were. They’re not the dark scary ones but the sweet baby girl who is dying to please. The Catholic girl still on her knees. They aren’t the mean things you expected to find.

Gently lay your fingertips over your eyes. Feel your lashes flutter beneath the weight of your daily moisturized skin and primly polished nails. Turn it up. Have another beer. Philosophize about narrative and come face to face with something new, a realization: your greatest fear is being ordinary.

But you play your same song over and over until it is about you. You want to be the girl who wrote it, the girl who sings it. And you hum that song on your way to work, and you sing it on your way home, and in between you are silent for eight hours at a time. You just let them know with sideways glances that you are not ordinary.

Maybe the people you love most are ordinary as day — little ladies who’ve worked at the same desk since you were a kid. But there is nothing romantic about them, nothing about their kids, nothing about their paperwork and files, nothing about their old white hair to show for the life you want.

Hey guys, I just want to let y’all know that we got some great news recently: We’re finally getting our house!

Ok, well, there’s still a bit to do, like the inspection and all, but it took forever to get the seller’s bank to accept our offer. Just to clarify, when they tell you a house is a “short sale,” they’re talking “short” in terms of funds, not in terms of time. But we kept holding out, and I think it’s finally going to pay off.

The reason I’m telling you this on the blog is that it may interrupt my regular blogging. I’m going to try hard to keep posting regularly, but we have to move quickly at this point. Our apartment lease ends in 2 weeks and we can’t push back the move date again (we’ve been doing this a while, and I think the leasing office is tired of us). That means in two weeks, whether we’ve closed on the house or not, we have to move out. So, we’re scrambling to make progress on the house, find a place to stay, and pack up all our stuff for storage.

Of course, I’ll keep posting here, but if there are a few days when you don’t hear from me, don’t be alarmed. In the mean while, you’re invited to read the archives and my shared items on Google Reader. You can also follow me on Twitter and subscribe to the RSS feed so you don’t miss it when I do post something new and exciting (or silly, whatever the case may be). I’ve also begun contributing to The Nervous Breakdown, which is a really fantastic site populated by funny and thought provoking writers. You can see my first contribution to the site here, and please read what everyone else is doing there, too.

Oh, and to all our friends who have offered help with the move, thank you! We are super excited, and we’re so lucky to have great friends to share this with. We might take you up on your offer, and we’ll have a good part to break the new place in when we’re done.

The other day, I got this most lovely e-mail that I have to share with you all.

@laureninspace says:

Lately I’ve been stalking, I mean reading, your blog, and I realized that you are doing exactly what I’d like to be doing a couple years from now, mainly, writing and gaming.

I’m a journalism graduate student and I’ve had experience interning for both newspapers and magazines. However, what I’d like to be doing after school is freelancing, being my own brand, and not sticking with one magazine or paper which, in this economy, has a fair chance of going down and bringing me with it. Furthermore, I love writing creative nonfiction as well as articles and I don’t want to be stuck doing just one thing.

Do you have any advice for a beginning journalist and aspiring freelancer?

Disclaimer: I am not necessarily the person to tell you how to make it as a freelancer. I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I will tell you what my strategy is at the moment, and I hope it helps.

Lets start with an essential fact: There is no right way to do it. I have given myself one hell of a time trying to figure out how to fix all the dumb mistakes I’ve made, and only recently have I learned that they weren’t mistakes to begin with.

I didn’t get an internship in college when everyone else was doing them. I also worked on copy desk at my college newspaper and actively avoided reporting because I was afraid of interviewing people. I was willing to make a phone call and ask a single, specific question, but I wasn’t willing to do an interview because I was too intimidated. But, I got over it.

As for freelancing, you may know already that most people who call themselves writers do not make all their money from writing. I’m a freelance writer, but I’m also an office manager for a small tech company. That’s what pays my bills. Now, there are writers who make their living by words alone, but I don’t know very many of them, and the few I do know have been at it a lot longer than I have. And as you noted, traditional journalists are going through a very hard time right now because while you used to be able to make a reasonable living as a reporter, it’s getting harder and harder. Even senior writers and editors for highly respected publications are being treated like workhorses, and my heart just goes out to them, but I definitely don’t see following in their footsteps as the best plan of action for someone my age.

If you want strictly practical advice, here are my tips:

1. Get a day job you don’t hate. This might sound like a downer, but it’s a practical first step. This is just your home base — a stable place to work from. It’s not forever. You are not giving up just because you have a day job. This is called being practical. It works for some people. If you have a major fear of becoming homeless or not being able to afford sushi, you will need this. Personally, I’ve always loved writing, and I don’t want to risk my love of the art. Keeping a day job allows me to be pretty picky about the freelance jobs I pick up. I only take gigs that I think will be interesting, fun to write, a good challenge or a positive career move.
2. Apply for anything and everything writing related if you think you’re qualified. I’ve gotten a couple of writing gigs by applying for editorial positions. Someone else got the full-time editing position, but I let the interviewer know I was open to freelancing, and that has lead to some good experiences. But also be open to opportunities that don’t look like your dream job. If you’re getting experience, it’s all good, and you never know who you’ll connect with.
3. Work for free once in a while. I’m not saying you should go on Craigslist and do one of these “write 20 articles and we’ll pay you 5 bucks” deals, and you don’t need to go around giving your services out to no-name publications. But look at web sites you like that accept contributors, and consider how many people will see your work if you contribute to those sites. Sometimes getting exposure for your work is worth an awful lot. If you’re contributing to high quality sites, other writers or editors may see your work and contact you with new opportunities.
4. Do things you’re not sure you can do. For me, that’s what my first reporting gig was all about. I didn’t do wonderful work that time around. The first time I interviewed someone, I stumbled over the name of my publication and hemmed and hawed a lot. I was at this very cool art event in Baltimore, and I felt SO uncool. I got through it, though, and I learned from the experience. So, whatever it is you think you can’t do, just know that the longer you tell yourself you can’t do it, the longer you’re putting off your success.
5. Talk to people about what you do. Introduce yourself as a writer, not an office manager or a waitress or whatever else. If you want people to see you as a writer, just tell them you are. Because you ARE, right? When you want a plumber, you think about plumbers you know, not people you know who might have a side interest in plumbing. Writing is not your hobby or something you do on the side. Writing is what you do, even if it’s not how you make your living (yet).
6. Set your own priorities. Pick the things that matter most to you in the world, and stick to them. Writing is obviously up there on your list, but what else? Is traveling the world important to you? Being with your family? Living in a big house? Reading the classics? Finding the love of your life? You have to be in touch with the things you care about, and every now and then (about every five years in my experience), have what I like to call a GTFO Party. That is, anything in your life that isn’t helping you becoming the person you want to be can GTFO. Old boyfriends, ill-fitting clothes, and yes, maybe even your day job — if it’s not supporting your goals, you don’t need it. If you feel like you have to keep some of these things in your life even when you’re not thrilled with them, fine. Just keep in mind that these things aren’t forever and you can cut them out when they get in the way too much.
7. Remember: There is more than one way to do everything. There are bloggers out there like SarahVon, traveling the world and having all kinds of adventures, and Gala Darling, rocking the pink hair and the tattoos and living the hot life, and the way they do it is their way. It’s awesome. I admire it. I study it. But it’s not my way. And my way might not be your way, but I hope this helps.

Lauren, thanks so much for your question, and I wish you all the luck in the world. That reminds me of one more thing you should remember: There is enough success to go around. There is room in the world for all of us to be awesome. So, be happy for your friends when they have success, and share your joy with them when you have your own. Having people to share it with makes success that much sweeter.