You may think I mean hiring someone overseas to handle your customer service. I don’t. While I have used virtual assistants in the past, most of the work I do these days doesn’t lend itself to that approach. Pitching an editor, writing a novel, posting regularly on my blog – none of this is something…
Month: April 2010
Developing habits that protect the work
“True originality eschews its trappings.” That’s about the only thing Freud ever said that I agree with. Being a creative person — writing books, painting pictures, developing the theory of evolution — is incredibly time-consuming. It’s hard. It’s an awful lot of work. If you’re spending all of your time on appearances, on the trappings, you simply don’t…
Dealing with rejection
An online writers’ group I belong to recently had a discussion about saying no — how to do it, how to mean it, how to deal with people who try to negotiate after you’ve already said no, and so on. That got me thinking about the other side of the coin — when people say no…
On the pleasures of hobbies
My friend Marilyn, at Simmer Till Done, told me a story from her culinary school days that has stuck with me for months. Her instructor used to say to those who didn’t work quickly and efficiently, “you scrape the bowl like a housewife.” That line made me laugh when I first heard it and it…