I recently went out dancing with my two sisters. We went to a bar right on the edge of campus. I thought it would be an interesting experience for my sisters since neither of them had gone to a four-year university and they were not familiar with the particular area. It turned out to be one of the more awkward experiences I’ve had. Looking around the dance floor and the pool tables and the bar, any and many of the individuals there could have been students who pass through my area of work. I didn’t recognize anyone, but I didn’t know if any of them would recognize me.

I immediately felt uncomfortable because even though I was not on the clock, I felt as if I had breached the personal/professional boundary by entering a space primarily intended for university students. Soon thereafter my sisters and I moved on to a different location with a greater array of individuals from the community, not just the university.

The experience was a bit of an eye opener. The following Monday I relayed the story to one of the student workers in my office and during the conversation she said, “When I turn 21 we should go hang out.” I laughed and shook my head and tried to explain that I couldn’t because she was one of my student workers and I needed to maintain some separation between personal and professional. She looked at me and said, “You think you’re going to be able to do that by going to (the bar near campus)?” Touche.

And then I realized that if I truly wanted to keep my personal life and professional life separate, I wouldn’t have told her this story to begin with. This story was my personal experience on personal time.

So where do you draw the line between personal and professional? On the one hand, you want to be somewhat personal with others so that you have some character – a way to distinguish yourself from others. On the other hand, some of your personal traits may not be acceptable or appealing in your professional setting, and you don’t want to blemish your reputation.

I’m still working on finding that delicate balance, which is very difficult considering my situation. I’m sure with time it will get easier because I will continue to age and the students will cycle through and the age gap will become more distinguished, less awkward. It will be interested to see how this changes and progresses.

I try not to make my blog posts too personal. And I try to make sure that there’s a point. Something that people will care about. Because of that, I have been stuck, and the words elusive. The only reason for this that I can think of is that if it’s not personal to me, I don’t really care.

So I’m breaking my own rule and I’m going to share more than I normally would on this blog. This blog is about communications, yes, because that is where my professional interest lies. But this blog is also about transitions and that is something I’m all too familiar with – for better or for worse.

I’m back in Oregon and working on the campus where I graduated from almost two years ago. The professional transition was not that tough. I’m working in a position that I love. I’m doing something that will help people live productive and successful lives. I’m proud of that.

And after being gone for a year and returning to the community that I grew up in, I’ve discovered that nearly all of my friends have moved on. Moved away. And I have to start over again building a life for myself without the help of new classes every three months with new faces and new groups and friends of friends… I see people making these connections every day in my current job. And though these people are my peers from an age standard, I am still on the fringe and it would be unprofessional to blur that line.

At the same time, I want to warn college students about what is to come. I want to tell them that their coworkers after college won’t necessarily (and shouldn’t necessarily) be their peers – their friends. A separation of personal and professional, to a certain degree, is important. I want to tell them that the social transition is difficult, especially if close, personal friendships are as important to them as they are to me. It was easy to make friends on a campus with more than 20,000 students. I haven’t lost touch with these people (thanks to Facebook), but we all have separate lives in various cities and states.

As a result, I am pushing my comfort level to the limit and trying to find ways to make new friends and involve myself in my community. I have always been an advocate for volunteering – it’s good for the soul (and good karma), and I want my volunteering efforts to involve me in activities that I enjoy and allow me to be around others who enjoy similar things. My first attempt is to join a trail work party where I will spend a few hours taking care of hiking trails. Social time, outside, caring for something that others will enjoy. I consider this to be one of my better life choices. Considering the number of poor decisions I’ve made over the past year or so, I feel better already.

Once again, I have rambled without getting to the point. So what is the point? The point is that I am constantly having to adapt my behavior and my attitude in order to overcome change. The more change that I have to adapt to in my life, the less familiar I am with consistency. Consequently, I don’t know how to deal with consistency and instead of letting my life settle into place I am constantly looking for things to change. Maybe it’s to make my life more interesting – because consistency can be boring.

But maybe it’s because I’m afraid of getting stuck in a rut where I’m no longer learning and growing as a person.

This post is not a woe-is-me, what happened to my life pity party. It’s the opposite actually. This is the realization that my life is full of change not only because change is inevitable, but because it keeps life interesting and constantly challenges me to do something more and something different with my life. To push myself. To be a better person. To learn new things all the time. To embrace challenges and learn from failures. And there are a lot of failures…but they build character. Every day there is fear to overcome, and the only way I will ever really fail is if I let that fear rule me.

In my last post I shared advice that my publisher gave me that could help me overcome this issue, which is great. It’s still solid advice that I appreciate. But what if this attitude of not taking younger, lower-level individuals seriously, or not hearing them at all, is actually a much bigger problem?

Erika Fry wrote an article for the Columbia Journalism Review that examines who is writing op-ed articles. What she discovered is that there is very little diversity in the op-ed pages. She writes:

“From my analysis of the past month’s bylines, New York Times readers were treated to the views of forty-one academics (ten at Ivy League institutions), forty writers and journalists, nine presidents and one vice president of an organization or think tank, four current and former political office holders.”

Fry goes on to mention who we are not hearing from in these articles. When discussing the Wall Street Journal, she says: “The Wall Street Journal may be a paper primarily for the business minded, but the business-minded could also benefit from perspective outside its bandwidth, to get a sense of how policies affect people, and perspectives—those of workers and consumers —they should ultimately be interested in.”

I don’t normally post such extensive quotations, but Fry makes valid, thought-provoking arguments that should be considered. Throughout the political nightmare over the past few months, I’ve often spoken with family members and friends about how it’s like political leaders have little common sense, especially in regard to what the situation is really like – they’re seeing numbers, not people. And again, I have found myself thinking that there is something that I just don’t understand, or I’m too young, or too low on the professional ladder, because if I can come up with an idea that could help solve some of our problems – and I know little about politics, mind you – then why are politicians making things so complicated?

The point of all of this is that no matter the situation, everyone has an opinion. The problem is that unless you are of a certain status, it is very difficult to be heard. Some of this may be because those with less education and less power are not as skilled at voicing their opinions in constructive ways. Saying, “This sucks,” without offering any support is not going to get anyone’s attention. At that point, it’s seen as more of a complaint than an opinion.

So how do the individuals who are in the trenches, so to speak, get their voices heard? Politicians are elected to be the voice of the people, so in that sense it’s a little different. But how do politicians know what the people really want if they only listen to opinions from other politicians, the well educated, and business leaders? Because, let’s be honest, politicians make the decisions that earn them the most financial support for their election campaigns and plumbers can’t typically donate thousands of dollars at election time – they’re trying to figure out how to pay for their kid’s braces, winter coats, sports fees and all that.

Fry suggests that maybe more should be done to reach out to these individuals to encourage them to speak out (or write), and I agree. With all of the media resources, print and electronic, there’s no reason for such a lack of diversity in the op-ed pages and beyond. Sure, these people can blog or write letters to newspaper editors, but do decision makers actually read any of them? If those who currently have a voice start treating these groups like they matter – like their opinions matter – maybe we’ll start to see some societal improvement. But we have to start by giving them the opportunity to speak for themselves and listen.

A piece of broccoli on the end of my fork stalled in the air, halfway to my mouth. My publisher gave me these words of advice over lunch, where we met to discuss my resignation and the office environment. Since then, this advice has been rolling over in my mind, along with the next step in my career.

This advice is not entirely new to me. While in college, I took a course on feature writing. It was an advanced magazine writing class that taught me not only how to write feature articles, but also how to make a living as a freelance writer. There was a great deal of useful information that I received from this course, but one of the topics we covered was creating a platform for yourself and being able to market yourself as a writer and market your work. Though I understood the concept of marketing yourself in the context of freelance writing, it didn’t occur to me that the same idea could (and should) carry into other professional career avenues.

With that in mind, my publisher’s advice was a little different, though still focused on self-promotion. In a way, she was telling me to “toot my own horn” and find a way to share my successes with managers. Otherwise, who is to know how successful my interaction with stakeholders is, or how well I’m representing the company? Her suggestion was to copy immediate supervisors or managers on email responses when someone has openly expressed gratitude or complimented my work ethic.

She also advises being outspoken and confident. When you think about it, this seems like a common sense idea if you want to advance professionally because these are leadership qualities. However, when you’re the lowest rung on the company ladder and you’re in a meeting with people who have 10-25 years of experience in the business, it’s easy to be intimidated and keep quiet. I discussed this issue with my publisher, explaining that even when I have ideas, I’m sure others have had them before and there’s a reason why they wouldn’t work to solve x, y, and z. Her response was to phrase ideas as questions: “Have you thought about…” or “Has the company tried…” This way I’m not coming across as threatening or pretentious, but I’m illustrating innovative behavior and showing others that I care about the company’s progress and contributing to the team. The positive effects that come from taking this kind of initiative does lead to recognition in one form or another.

While having this conversation with my publisher, I discovered that my supervisors noticed a lot more about my work than I anticipated. Both my editor and publisher are off-site in other states, so it was easy to believe that much of my work went unnoticed. I was greatly surprised to learn that this wasn’t the case.

I’m at another crossroad in my life. I’m leaving my job in textbook publishing and moving back to my hometown – or close proximity. At this point, my next career move is still a bit of a mystery, though I am excited about current possibilities. And, freelancing is back on my career radar. As a result of this career transition, it is time to take what I learned years ago in school, and the words of my publisher, and be my own advocate.

This is important for me to write about because I feel that this advice is good for everyone. So many people are struggling to find work and nothing about living in our economy is easy right now. Even if the advice I received doesn’t help me land that next job, or the one after, it has served as a powerful motivator and encouraged me to think beyond my current situation.

And, in a terrible economy where people have control over very little anymore, I have control over this aspect of my career. That’s an empowering feeling. I’d be willing to bet that there are a lot of people out there who would benefit greatly from feeling like they have a little bit of control over some part of their professional lives. When no one else will stand for you, (or, even if they do), you can at least stand up for yourself.

Keattikorn / freedigitalphotos.net

I’ve blogged recently about the boom in self-publishing. I’m hesitant to jump on this wagon, but I think after enough time – and once my mom, sisters, and I have exhausted our blogging ideas – I’d like to publish the blog into a book. I’m hesitant, of course, because many of these ideas flop. I’m prepared for that. At the same time, what could make a better family keepsake? With the growing popularity of self-publishing and ebooks, people don’t have to print hundreds or thousands of copies of their books anymore.

Though it’s been a while since this concept of blogs to books has really been mentioned, there are some success stories. Oddly enough, my introduction to this idea, nearly two years ago, involved a couple of books that I’ve heard very little about when looking up information about the blogs-to-books concept: Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq and Baghdad Burning II: More Girl Blog from Iraq. These are very powerful books written by a young woman with an important perspective that is rarely heard.

i can has cheezburger: LOLcats, the Book

Some people are lucky enough to be offered contracts for turning their blogs into books. That’s fantastic and goes to show that the media world is becoming more and more dynamic all the time. But with self-publishing becoming such a big thing, it’s no longer necessary to hold out for the elusive contract. To each their own.

From about 2007-09, when this concept was getting a little more attention, Gawker brought the success of these books into question – a valid concern. The first sentence says it all: “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”

This is particularly interesting to me. Why bother buying a book if you can read the blog for free online? After reading Baghdad Burning, I did go and find the blog online and, sure enough, the site was still live and accessible, even though the blog was no longer active.

My argument for this is that even though the Internet makes accessing free content all too easy, sometimes it’s nice to settle in with an actual book and turn pages instead of click links. Even with ebooks, you’re not being bombarded with flashing ads, comments from people in search of their own soapbox, strange fonts, weird backgrounds – you get my point.

I don’t think that the blog-to-book idea will work for all blogs. For that matter, it’s possible that eventually turning The House on Maple Street blog into a book could be a complete bust. That’s not the point to me. Even if my family members are the only ones who would want it, I would still consider that a success.

When I was completing my journalism studies, this was kind of a hot-button topic among some long-term journalists. But an article I read about how Twitter has made a media reporter a better writer was a different, intriguing perspective. The writer makes a few valid points, the first – and strongest – of which is: “Twitter teaches me to write succinctly.”

This is a plausible statement. Writing succinctly is a challenge for many journalists. If you only have 140 characters to work with, you have to be succinct. I can see how the practice of tweeting can feed into succinct writing.

The problem I had with this particular argument is at the end of the article where she states, “After writing my first draft of this story, I went through it and removed all the words I didn’t need. Every sentence in this story — except for one excerpt — is now 140 characters or less.”

renjith krishnan / freedigitalphotos.net

The thing is, subjecting my work to the Twitter standards seems unprofessional to me. Even though a lot of professionals use Twitter responsibly, and it can be a productive tool, there are so many people who abuse this tool. I don’t want someone evaluating my work by the same standards as people tweeting about what they had for breakfast in a convoluted, abbreviated language that barely makes sense. I may not be a professional writer, but I take my work seriously and I want others to as well.

Obviously, I’m a little conflicted on this issue. Write more succinctly? Sure, of course. Practice writing succinctly by breaking sentences down into individual tweets? No problem. Use the 140-character-limit as a standard for your writing? I’ll pass – just not ready to drink the Kool-Aid yet.

Maggie Smith / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Here is where a lot of library advocates are troubled. If people no longer need to go to a library to check out books, because they can check out eBooks from home, won’t that be harmful to the library system overall?

Not really. If a library offers a title to check out via eBook, the library can only check out as many as they purchase, it’s not a free for all. If a library has only one eBook copy of The Help and one person checks it out, the next person has to wait until it is “returned” before they can check it out. It’s the same system that has been in place for printed books all along. You can’t check it out if someone else has it. The plus side to checking out eBooks is that they are returned automatically at the end of the checkout period.

However, the eBook checkout still has people concerned and some publishers won’t allow their books to be available in this system. Others have stipulations in place that say an eBook can only be checked out so many times and then the library has to renew the eBook license if they want to continue to make that eBook available to patrons.

Intrigued by the eBook from the library concept, I decided to give it a shot. I have a card for my county libraries, so I figured it would be a fun thing to try.

Well, fun was probably the wrong adjective in this case. Frustrating is more appropriate. I started by doing the “advanced search” as instructed on my library system’s website, and search after search I got “There were no results for your search.” I searched by title, by author, by subject and all I would get were random books I’d never heard of and wasn’t interested in, or nothing at all.

Then, somehow, I managed to get from my county library system’s website to the Peninsula library website. It turns out that when I can actually find a book I want to check out, the county site takes me to the Peninsula site. And there, along the left-side column, was a handy little list of browsing options with drop down lists. I picked specifically from eBook Fiction and finally made some progress.

Problem number two: nearly everything I wanted was already checked out. Crud. Eventually, I found The Tiger’s Wife and it was available for checkout. Success!

Problem number three: download bonanza. Updates, programs (which required login access, which I had to sign up for…) and endless nonsense, just to open my book.

I eventually got it to work and was able to open my checked-out eBook. I can only hope that I am not inundated by such hassles with the next book I decide to check out. And, this was all to open the book on my computer. I haven’t yet attempted to set up my nook so that it has access to my eBook library. Honestly, I’m not looking forward to it.

Then, because I hadn’t thought I put myself through enough technological torment, I decided to check out an audio book as well. The hassle wasn’t nearly so bad as the eBook, but there was almost nothing available. Everything I wanted had been checked out. I finally settled on one and got it started, only to remember that narrator’s voices are often why I don’t typically bother with audio books in the first place. But that’s another story.

So, yes, the ability to check out eBooks from my library is pretty cool. However, it’s definitely not my preference and I doubt the eLibrary will ever replace a real library. Also, library eBooks are not yet available for Kindle. Amazon anticipates changing this later this year, though there’s no definitive date set. If you’re interested in how the process itself is made possible, OverDrive seems to be the main provider of eBooks for libraries and more information can be found on the OverDrive website.

photo by graur codrin

I also stumbled across an article titled “Why I don’t want to quit my day job” by Jacob M. Appel on The Writer Magazine website. This article describes the benefits of working a regular job or pursuing a career unrelated to writing, and then writing as more of a part-time job. Appel discusses how so many people are turned away from writing by peers and advisers because it’s not deemed as terribly “realistic” to be a full-time writer, and yet, so few are encouraged to do both – work a day job and write. After all, why not?

This concept is very near and dear to my heart. I studied magazine journalism because I wanted to write – about everything and anything. As I was wrapping up my studies, I decided that even though I still love to write, I didn’t want to make a career out of just that. I feared that it would take the fun out of something that I loved if I was depending on it for an income. So, for a variety of reasons, I reevaluated my career goals and decided that once I was settled in my career, I would start writing again.

I went a long time without writing. I still don’t write the way I thought I would while I was in college. I don’t submit query or cover letters or solicit my work – yet. However, this blog has been great to clear my cobwebs and explore different topics to write about. Also, my new pet project, Stories Discovered, allows me to engage in different types and styles of writing – it’s been many a year since I’ve written fiction and I’m a bit rusty, but it’s been wonderful and refreshing for me.

In his article, Appel talks about some of his students in his writing workshop, and asking them about what they do when they’re not writing. He describes how one of his students said, proudly, that all she did was write. He then goes on to make an important point: if the only thing you do is write, eventually “the creative well must run dry.”

There was an exercise I did in a magazine writing course where my classmates and I each started with one topic that was of interest to us and then come up with five different types of articles that we could write based on this one topic, and then spin that topic so that we had even more story ideas. I’m a bowler, and I’ve been on leagues for many years, until recently. This one hobby gave me half a dozen story ideas. My “day job” involves working on an editorial team for Precalculus textbooks (thank goodness, I don’t write them). I’ve volunteered at a center for adolescent girls and currently volunteer at the county history museum. I like to go for long walks and hikes and climb trees, and see what crazy things I can find. I’ve cut up plastic bags and crocheted them into a handbag and bracelets. All of these things that I’ve done and continue to do outside of writing inspire me to write personal essays and make up fun stories.

Writers write because they love it. The volunteer work, the hobbies, the personal interests – all of those things are what feed creativity and spark new and exciting ideas. And the “day job”? Well, that just allows writers to do what they love and still have a regular paycheck.

www.wordle.net

And thus, another topic to add to my list of publishing issues I’m conflicted about: self-publishing. Jim Sturdivant wrote an article for Book Business that explores this growing trend, including perspectives worth considering.

There are two perspectives I found most noteworthy: the response from some book publishers to integrate self-publishing imprints in their businesses, and the community self publishing is building between readers and writers.

Traditional publishing offers writers the support and guidance of an experienced team of people to help make a book a success, using tools that might not be available to writers choosing to self publish. But, what if a writer can have a little bit of both worlds?

Penguin‘s Book Country and Hay House‘s Balboa Press have taken the plunge by offering self-publishing tools. Though these tools still don’t offer the same support that a traditional publishing contract would promise, they do offer support in the forms such as reader feedback, advice, and signing events.

Balboa Press offers a broad range of editorial, marketing, and printing services. One of the things that I found interesting was that Balboa offers marketing services, including setting up and hosting author websites. However, this service comes at a pretty hefty price: $399 for setup and another $129 per year if you want Balboa Press to host your site. For all I know, this could be reasonable. However, there’s no way I would drop that much money for something that I could do myself. I use webs.com for my portfolio website – which is a free service – and pay about $20 a year for my domain name. If you don’t want to pay for a domain name, webs allows you to use a free name that includes “webs” (or “freewebs,” as the case used to be) in the domain name. It’s not as professional, but it’s free. Granted, the limitation is that the templates are not as easily customizable, but I’ve been quite satisfied with mine. WordPress.org, I believe, is always a good option as well.

So, Balboa Press certainly could be a good resource for writers choosing to self-publish, but I am hesitant about the cost (though I imagine that self publishing is not a cheap endeavor). That said, Hay House does offer some signing events that could really help bolster a self-published writer’s reputation. Might be worth checking out.

Book Country, though not yet offering self-publishing, states on its website that later this year it will offer affordable options for ebook and print self-publishing options. In the meantime, the website allows writers and readers to review, discuss, and interact. It also has a small section where writers can learn a little bit more about the publishing industry, which I think is also a useful resource for those who are serious about being authors and just need some help getting their foot in the door.

One of the things that I love about sites like Book Country is the sense of community it creates for writers and readers. This is where I’m an advocate for self-publishing. It’s kind of like the ultimate book club. And, people have surprisingly good ideas and feedback sometimes. I could do without the people who are more critical than helpful, but that’s the inevitable reality of the industry it seems.

Technology has given us the ability (for better or for worse) to interact with media in some interesting new ways, such as Esquire‘s augmented reality. Book publishing (and book enthusiasts) are now embracing this idea of interactivity. I am all for communities that productively help writers refine their craft and help readers get more enjoyment out of what they’re reading. And, let’s be honest, there are some really terrible books being published. Or, maybe not even terrible, but cookie-cutter books that can’t be distinguished from other titles on the shelves. Maybe this interaction between writers and readers will help prevent some of that. And, maybe that’s wishful thinking, but I’ll embrace that hope just the same.

Another strong reader-writer community is WEbook. It’s another site where readers offer writers feedback on their work, rate the samples, and the writer is moved through progressing stages and could potentially get agents and publishing deals. It’s a different approach to feedback, and not really self-publishing, but I can see this as being very useful to authors.

Overall, I’m still not sure how I feel about self-publishing. I worry about the people who will inevitably abuse self-publishing resources for the sake of simply publishing a book. But, more and more, I find myself in favor of it. There are just too many manuscripts floating around for editors to be able to publish everything that’s publication-worthy. And, there are many, many more self-publishing websites that would be worth checking out that I haven’t listed above. I plan to investigate this more and will post my findings. It’ll be interesting how these emerging self-publishing tools help writers find a place in the market.

It was an ad/link about Amazon offering textbook rentals to students with Kindle e-readers.

Screen shot from Amazon.com

I’m completely torn about this. On the one hand, if I were still a student, this would be fantastic news and I’d probably buy a Kindle (for now, I’m quite happy with my nook). Ereaders seem to be cheaper by the day, so the expense of a Kindle would be worth it if it meant saving 80% on my textbooks. Don’t want to buy a Kindle? Like all other Amazon ebooks, students can access the textbooks by downloading the free Kindle reading app on a variety of devices. Pretty good deal.

On the other hand, I work in textbook publishing. This could potentially be horrifying for textbook publishers. So much of the cost of textbooks relates to the behind-the-scenes work required, not just the cost of printing a book. So even though it seems like ebooks should be cheaper for publishers, producing ebooks isn’t much cheaper than producing bound books. With this in mind, if the “textbook rental” plan takes off, what will happen to textbook publishing?

This is, of course, assuming all textbook publishers jump on board. The news blurb mentions that a couple of publishers are already on board with this scheme, but what about those who aren’t? I’m assuming this means that students will have to buy their textbooks the good-ol’-fashioned way for the sometimes crazy high prices and then go donate plasma so that they have enough money to live on Top-Ramen for another week.

If I were still a student, I don’t think I’d care for etextbooks – I did too much flipping back-and-forth across sections and pages and I think doing that and taking notes with an ereader would have slowed me down significantly. However, it might have been worth it if it would’ve saved me a lot of money.

It’ll be interesting to see how the future of electronically renting textbooks unfolds. In the meantime, here are some other articles to check out regarding Amazon’s latest scheme:
TIME: How Much Will Students Really Save Using Amazon’s E-Textbooks?
MSNBC:Amazon offering e-textbook rentals
Macworld: Amazon unveils Kindle Textbook Rental
The Washington Post: Amazon to rent Kindle textbooks