A question for tech/online journos

As more and more of my writing goes up online, that means more and more of it attracts comments – and because I’m a paid-up member of the “journalism is the start of the conversation” club, I’d like to know when somebody adds something substantial to, or spots a glaring error in, something I’ve scribbled.

Does anybody know of a good, one-stop solution to tracking comments on multiple articles? For example, on Techradar.com I can use the “most commented” thing to see the most recent/busiest comment threads, but ideally I’d like something web-based or RSS-based that would ensure I don’t miss anything.

Does such a thing exist?

iPhone 3GS: everything you need to know about buying, upgrading or deciding not to bother

Techradar, of course:

So what’s so great about the 3G S?

It’s the latest version of Apple’s much-hyped iPhone, with a faster processor, more storage, a better camera and the ability to bring your ancestors back from the dead.

Blabbing on about journalism, writing for free and, er, Britney Spears

The other week, designer/developer Jamie Rumbelow interviewed me for his podcast. It’s online now, and provides a startling insight into just how many times a Scotsman can say “um” during an interview. I was on to talk about journalism – how to get into online journalism, what scams to watch out for, why books don’t usually make money and how to motivate yourself to write when the creative juices aren’t flowing. So it’s basically me blabbing on about bugger-all through a heavy head cold.

In my head, I’m Ian Rankin

The rather sarcastic Stuff Journalists Like website (which, incidentally, would be an awful lot better if the writing was better) sometimes gets a little bit too close for comfort:

Stuff journalists like: writing a book

Buried under nearly every journalist’s notebooks, papers and clips is an idea for a book.

…Unfortunately, a good percentage of these ideas for books will stay just that as journalists are usually burnt out on writing after a full day day of writing for their newspaper, blog, Tumblr and Twitter.

I was looking for something this morning and stumbled across my Book Ideas folder, where I’ve written outlines and in some cases several chapters of four or five different novels. They’re pretty good, I think, largely because only one of them is about a journalist – and he’s only a journalist because it gives me a chance to have him mutilated by gangsters, which is always good. Unless you’re writing a children’s book. But every single one of them has run out of steam, sometimes at the outline stage, sometimes after five or six chapters. The enthusiasm flags and they become Great Big Scary Things That You’ll Never Finish.

Stuff Journalists Like nails the problem: you get brain-dead when you’ve spent all day working, and when you’ve been stuck in front of a screen all day the last thing you want to do after dinner is sit back down in front of a computer again. There are episodes of The Wire to watch! Partners to talk to! Videogames you still haven’t got round to playing! Exercising to do! Magazines to read!

You’d think that the natural ebb and flow of freelancing would be ideal for fiction writing, but it isn’t. That’s partly because work expands to fill the time available, so if you’ve got a spare day then the job you’re doing will magically expand to fill that time, and it’s partly because the time you don’t spend working is spent doing admin, hiding from the taxman, pitching for new work or dicking about on the internet and pretending it’s research.

Which makes me wonder, how do other people do it? Not necessarily writing, but doing anything creative when you’ve got a full time job, a family to feed and a very short block of time before you fall asleep on the sofa? Is it just about determination and willpower, or do you need to manage your “spare” time as ruthlessly as you do your work time? I’d love to hear other people’s experiences.

Screenwipe: writers on writing

This week’s episode of Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe was fascinating. Instead of pouring bile on the usual deserving targets, Brooker sat down with the writers of Doctor Who, Peep Show, Hustle, Shameless and the IT Crowd and asked them to talk about writing. Which they did. Russell T Davies was a particular delight, but I found the whole thing fascinating.

In particular, I was surprised just how universal some things are: impostor syndrome, the feeling that writing is the easy bit (it’s the thinking that’s difficult), the importance of editing, editing, editing and then doing a bit more editing, the problems of drinking too much (booze at night, coffee by day) and writers’ complete inability to even start writing until the voices in their head tell them to get working.

If you’re interested in writing, not just for the telly but in general, it’s well worth your time. The clip I’ve embedded is the first part; the whole thing’s currently on iPlayer.

Freelancing, fatherhood and (not really) working from home

I’ve been meaning to write this for a while, but for reasons that will soon be apparent it’s taken a lot longer than I expected.

As regular readers will know, I became a dad for the first time in October 2007, and since then I’ve had the joy of watching Baby Bigmouth’s first thirteen months. To say it’s been a learning experience would be an understatement, so I thought I’d share what I’ve learnt for the benefit of any other homeworkers who are about to become proud fathers.

Most of this, incidentally, is stuff you already know. But you don’t really appreciate what any of it actually means until it happens.

Oh, and: I’m writing this for homeworking dads, so let’s take it as read that what we think is difficult is approximately a millionth of a per cent of what our partners had and have to go through.

The good stuff

In many respects, being a freelance is the best possible job to have when you become a father. You’re still working, sort of, but you’re not leaving the house at 6am and returning at 7pm or later. You’re there for the first smile, the first words, the first steps – and because you’re freelance, you can sleep when the baby does. That’s a luxury fathers with proper jobs don’t have, although it’s countered by the fact that you can’t pretend to work late and go to the pub when you really should be going home to help your wife.

All things considered, I’ve been exceptionally lucky to have a job that means I haven’t missed all the cool stuff. And that more than compensates for all the gnarly stuff. But there is a lot of gnarly stuff, and it’s worth thinking about while your beautiful baby is still a twinkle in your eye.

Don’t stop work until you absolutely have to

Baby Bigmouth was due on the 6th of October, so I took that month off in anticipation and told everybody I’d be back at work on the 1st of November. She didn’t turn up until the 23rd of October, and didn’t come home until a few days after that. Oops.

Money, money, money

Your partner’s income will dwindle and then eventually become nothing until/unless she goes back to work. And so will yours. You can pretty much forget doing anything for the first month, and unless you’re exceptionally lucky the next couple of months will be difficult too. It’s particularly bad if you have a creative job, because you will be tired all the time. If you do work, you’ll find even the simplest thing takes forever. I spent two days trying and failing to write a 20-word photo caption when Baby Bigmouth was a couple of months old.

Despite what you might have heard, though, babies aren’t that expensive and child benefit is pretty generous. What is expensive, though, is wine. During the first few months you’ll get through a lot of it.

If you’re the kind of freelance who only gets paid after (usually, long after) you invoice, the money will start drying up a couple of months after you become a parent. Let’s say your baby arrives in January; you’ll probably get paid for the work you did in January 30 to 60 days after that. So expect the money to dwindle from March or so. This is why sensible people save huge wads of cash before the baby arrives. As you know, I’m not very sensible.

Writer’s (or Web Designer’s) block

The combination of lack of sleep and being broke – plus, quite possibly, the constant noise of a yelling baby and/or friends’ yelling babies, and/or children’s CDs, which are only marginally better than Nickelback; moving your office to a fall-out shelter buried deep in the garden becomes very, very appealing – causes a vicious circle of writer’s block. It’s like having the world’s worst cold, a head so stuffed with cotton wool that while you know there’s a brain in there somewhere, you’ve no idea how to contact it, let alone get it to do anything. This can quickly become self-perpetuating, so if you have the opportunity to get out of the house (to work, to get a break, or to have a sneaky nap in a car park) then you really should take it.

Pitching for new work

You won’t. With two-day jobs taking two weeks, you won’t have the energy – and in the unlikely event of you finding any spare time whatsoever, you’ll be having a sneaky nap in a car park. This stage, thankfully, is relatively short.

Things do get better

With babies, everything is just a stage. Eventually things calm down, they sleep through the night, they become wee people rather than screaming balls of fury and sick, and you’ll recover your mojo. You’ll pitch for and win new contracts, you’ll create things you’re happy with, and clients will stop shouting at you. And then you’ll contract the Black Death.

The Black Death

You thought you had an iron constitution, didn’t you? After all, you haven’t been sick for a decade. You have good genes!

Good genes my arse. You haven’t been sick because you haven’t been exposed to anything – and the bad news is that every form of entertainment for toddlers, whether it’s a creche or a musical group or anything else, is a front operation for the chemical warfare labs at Porton Down. Within seconds of arrival, your child will be surrounded by – and infected by – children with diseases we thought we’d got rid of in the dark ages. And then your child will come home, and you will get it ten times worse.

It’s a very good idea to build in some Black Death Time when you’re taking on work. That way, when you get infected – and it’s definitely a case of when, not if – you’ll still be able to hit your deadlines.

But even the Black Death passes, and you’ll find a rhythm. You’ll have fun with your child, and fun doing your job, and you’ll only have to deal with the odd banging on the door when you’re interviewing a CEO. So when older, wiser parents talk about teething, the terrible twos, having more children, fitting in the school run and all the other things just around the corner, you’ll do what any sensible freelancer does. You’ll put your fingers in your ears, wait until they’ve gone, and pour yourself another very large glass of red wine.

(Any other freelancing parents with useful advice? I’m all ears…)

You too can maik money bye writing artickles

This brilliant website appeared via an ad on a journalism forum, which promised a sure-fire way to make money from freelance journalism:

as more and more companies and entrepreneurs have turned their attention to the Internet, the competition has made finding fresh, original content more difficult than ever before. 

This situation has created a dire need for writers who can create content for various websites all over the Internet – and it doesn’t have to be great content, or even good content for that matter

If you sign up now, you’ll get other valuable tips:

I will explain what I do and show you exactly what you must also do to make more money than you probably ever dreamed possible taking pictures and uploading them onto the internet!

And:

Did you know that their are companies (large and small) out there that are willing to pay you to take surveys, participate in online focus groups, watch movie trailers, go shopping for products (you get to keep the products too), and even to drive your car! That’s right, there are even companies out there that are even willing to pay you to drive your own car with their advertisements on them!

If you order today you will get access to our comprehensive list of over 300 online companies that are all literately “begging” you to take surveys online for cash, drive your car for cash, participate in online focus groups for cash, and to complete simple offers for cash!

But that’s not all!

I’ll also tell you how you can make a very profitable living through the Internet’s hottest “new thing” – blogging!

As one delighted customer puts it:

The first 15 pages is worth the money!

Should blogs link to the leaked BNP membership list? Probably not

Linking to defamatory material isn’t a good idea, and as Matt Wardman writes:

this scenario exists in the case of the BNP Membership List if a single person is on there by mistake: links will be to a post alleging that x, y or z is a member of the BNP. Bearing in mind that BNP Activists are posting that the list is out of date, and that the current membership is of the order of 6,000, linking to a posting suggesting that 10,000 people or so are BNP members looks a touch perilous.

Anybody else searched for namesakes in the list? Just me, then?

Writers blocked

A while back I mentioned the “So You Want To Be a Writer?” ads, whose claims were a tad misleading. Rob Spence took ‘em to the Advertising Standards Authority and won.

Biffovision: a review

Jonathan Deamer’s reviewed the pilot of Biffovision, a warped parody of kids’ TV from the mind of Mr Biffo.

I watched it in the wee small hours after one beer too many, which I suspect is the perfect viewing environment…