Paleo: Day 2

Hmmm... bacon with no guilt? Check one for "Paleo Pros."

Ate what I was supposed to eat today. Except I snuck some peanuts. Sneaked some peanuts. I stealthily popped some Planters peanuts.

No, I am not drunk. Not hungry, either.

Breakfast: Eggs and Bacon. Uber Original, right?
Lunch: Raw veggies
Dinner: Tilapia with cilantro pesto and sauteed squash. DOUBLE YUM!
Cravings: cooookies.
Energy level: It's 1 in the morning. What do  YOU think?


Talking about bacon is making me feel fat. How late is too late to run a lap?

In other news, television networks should put me in charge of deciding what gets to stay on the air and what gets yanked. Every time I see a Facebook post/Tweet that goes something like this "What? Blankety Blank show got cancelled? Nooo!! That was the best show on television! I hate tv....."

I'm all like... Hey girl, I feel your pain. Let's watch reruns of Minute To Win It and The Sing Off until people start listening to us.

Bazinga.

PaleO Lord, Give Me Strength

I'm going Paleo. And you're gonna hate it.

Disclaimer: Remember when blogs used to be like journals? You made a blog and updated it, just for yourself, to document the mundane happenings of your life and give yourself something to look back on. Remember Xanga? Eesh. My mom still has my Xanga printed out in a folder somewhere.

Well, guess what? TravWise, the famous dormant blog of a struggling writer and SEO ranter, just got reassigned. Because I'm starting what I like to call "Travis's Campaign to Not Kill Himself." You can keep reading this if you want. I'm probably going to start ranking really well with hipsters and vegans, so if you're not interested, I won't be offended.

But seriously. Unless I write about this new campaign every day, I will not survive. I'm taking back my blog. I'm getting selfish. I have to. Please don't judge me.

Disclaimer over.

Did you know that five letter words starting with "P" and ending in "O" are automatically popular? Think about it. Every hip trend, viral movement, awesome travel location, and dangerous communicable disease is a five letter word like this: "P---O" For instance:

Plano, Popular Texas City

Plato, Smart Guy








Parvo, Dangerous Dog Disease (Ranking for dog lovers, check.)









You get the picture. So, when I stumbled across the word "Paleo," my internal P---O awareness meter started pinging.

"Oooh," I said. "A fad diet that must be cool because of its hip, roll-off-the-tongue name. Let me research this." I started reading blogs, like Mark's Daily Apple and The Paleo Diet. I kept reading. I stayed up until 2 in the morning reading. I gasped. I sighed. I rolled my eyes. And I realized one thing.

I'm going to die, like soon, if I don't start doing this immediately. Living in the South, I've become accustomed to a certain cuisine. Breakfast dishes like deep fried pork blitherings in oil-enriched gravy slop are quite common to this area. We're the ones who voted Paula Deen for President. We're the ones who ran Panera Bread out of the area. We're the ones who pick our churches based on the side dishes offered at a monthly fish fry.

We are the fat ones.

So, I'm starting the Paleo Diet. Correction: I'm starting Paleo Lifestyle: the caveman's legacy. The premise is simple: stop eating crap that the cavemen couldn't have eaten. If you keep eating the stuff you've always eaten, you will die. Hydrogenated, enriched, polyunsaturated bubbles of poison will inflate your intestines and melt your brain. It's happening all over the world to people like Lindsay Lohan and Dick Cheney.

I don't want to die. I want to be hot forever. I want artists to sculpt my body out of expensive slabs of marble. Mostly, though, I don't want to die. Yet.

So, Travis's Campaign to Not Kill Himself starts today. The wife, bless her everloving soul, is doing it with me. Score one for "misery loves company." Stay tuned for gobs of research supporting this lifestyle. In the near future, I will convert each and every one of you to my hippie-lifestyle.

That is, unless I grab a Twinkie in the next several hours. Then, all best are off. And I'll probably be dead.

Breakfast: None. Wasn't hungry. (WHAT? You skipped breakfast? You're dead. NOPE. Paleo people eat only when they're hungry. Sticks out tongue.)
Lunch: 4 boiled eggs. Raw broccoli and cherry tomatoes.
Energy level: Too soon to tell.
Craving: Chocolate chip cookies.

Summer Reading Project: Classic Adventure/Horror

So, my self-assigned summer reading project for 2012 was to make it through a list of some of the great classic adventure/horror novels. You know the ones I'm talking about.

Pretty much every book ever featured on Wishbone.

Dracula
Dr.Jekyll/Mr.Hyde
Frankenstein
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Treasure Island

You got the picture, right?

I finished Dracula and Jekyll/Hyde a couple weeks ago. One thing I'm discovering about these books is that the huge, dramatic scenes and story arcs that I've always heard of represent about (.) <-- this much of the entire book.

Also, people lie about these books. I mean, Dracula never even said "I vant to suck your blood!" Disclaimer: this is a joke. I absolutely loved Dracula. Seriously. You have to read it.

Now, I just finished 20,000 Leagues last night. What's the one thing that everyone remembers about this book? Giant squid, right? Or, if you want to get technical, architeuthis. Oooo. This guy:

I read through the whole novel, waiting like a girl at a Bieber concert for the arrival of the giant squid.

SPOILER ALERT:

The giant squid is featured for about 2.3 pages. One guy dies. And, the word "squid" isn't even mentioned in the entire book. No, no, no. The main character refers to them as "cuttlefish."

Cuttlefish. CUDDLE FISH?

::throws hands up and goes to find something really scary. Like pictures of Mitt Romney in the morning::

Query Woes, Crit Partner, @#$& Xmas In July

Oh, Michelle Krys, you wielder of uber-query-power, you! You and your deviant partner in crime, Ruth Lauren Steven have caused me infinite woe for the past 24 FREAKING hours! Twitter sent me a candy-gram today. It said, "Stop refreshing the site so often. It's pathetic."

For those of you who don't know, these two authors have been hosting a XmasInJuly contest for writers this week. On Monday, an e-mail address opened up for writers to send their query letters and the first 500 pages of their completed manuscript. If Michelle and Ruth chose your query, they would post it on the website. Then, 10 agents (whose names had been paraded around on the site like a Snickers bar on a string) would--gasp--REQUEST YOUR WORK! Translation: all your dreams can come true.

I submitted my query at 8:30 Monday morning. It took me all of five minutes (not counting the hours of line-by-line editing). I didn't realize, though, that Michelle and Ruth would spend all day tweeting the most TANTALIZING and CRYPTIC messages about all the queries they were receiving.

I was glued. To the computer. All day long. All night. All the next morning. You get the picture. And now, you're easing slowly away from the computer screen. You're clicking the back button.

What? Have I freaked you out? FINE GO! *sigh.

In other news, I'm searching for a crit partner, now. Someone with whom I can start a mutually profitable trade'n'grade cyberworkshop with.

Any takers?

No, not you, 14-year-old girl writing Twilight fan fiction.

P.S. Results for XmasinJuly go up on Friday. So, you should check out the winners there because I guarantee you the results will be educational. Not to be self-deprecating (defecating?), but I don't think mine made it. Got to work on raising the stakes in my letter, right? Right.

Word Vomit: Bad SEO

I'm so sick and tired of bad SEO writing. Do you know what I'm talking about? Ok, maybe you don't. Here's an example. Say you're searching for outdoor living furniture. You want to examine your options. You want to read some articles that will help you choose. You want--gasp--information. What a shock.  So, you search.

click. clack. click. click. clack. "Outdoor Living Furniture." (Apparently I'm Googling on a typewriter)

45 billion results found.

click.

"Outdoor living furniture can be a great thing to have. With Outdoor Living Furniture, you can live outdoors. You can find Outdoor living furniture in a variety of places. Usually, Outdoor living furniture is outside. You can live in it. It is furniture. This is why outdoor living furniture is so important."

Now do you know what I'm talking about? Why in the FREAK are those results coming up on top?  I know, I know... you're going to start dropping big words at me. Algorithm. Keyword Frequency. Antidisestablishmentarianism.

All I'm saying is, "What is with all the bad SEO writing?" Isn't there an argument somewhere for high quality content that keeps people coming back? Aren't you more likely to bookmark or remember a site that does more than just vomit some keywords on your shoes?

Blah. This post came from my attempt to research affiliate marketing. I don't know what it is. After reading about four articles, I still don't know what it is. I'm going to clean my shoes now.

Dear Textbroker, Love Mr. Jefferson

With a completed novel under my belt and a 12 month goal to send it to every freaking literary agent on my list (there's about 200 there so far; s'gonna take awhile), it was time to sit down and figure out how I was going to make money in the meantime.

Now, last year, I was all gung-ho about Elance. I'd bopped my rating up to #128 out of 120,000 writers on that freelance community. Something bad is happening over there, though. The Elance job postings are being FLOODED with people who want to pay peanuts for work. I'm talking less than a penny per word. LESS THAN A PENNY? Are you kidding me? (Pictured, below: Travis trying to balance the budget)

So, I started piddling around on Textbroker again. Any of you who read my past posts know that I was seriously anti-Textbroker about a year ago. This year, though, I realized that at the very least Textbroker is offering a healthy portion of jobs that pay higher than a penny per word. I decided to give it a shot again. Knock knock. Who's there? Travis. Travis who? Yeah, I know, I've been gone awhile Textbroker. Just open the dang door.

So far, so good with the whole Textbroker thing. I'm consistently given a four star rating for my articles, which means that I have access to a bunch of articles that pay over one cent per word. Great, right? Well, yes, it is great. HOWEVER.

I keep glancing at those tantalizing 5-star articles that I can't access. Those 5-star articles pay a whopping five cents per word. Which means I can make more than three times as much writing those as I could writing the 4-star articles. Here's the problem. The only way to get access to those 5-star articles is to write 4-star articles at a 5-star level. Then, Textbroker staff will rate my articles, and after five in a row, I'm bumped up to level 5.

But hold on just a red hot second. How am I supposed to spend the appropriate amount of time and energy to write at a level 5 when I'm still only getting paid at level 4. Let me clarify this. I am fully capable of spending an hour on a 500 word article. I can do the research. I can sew together genius sentences into a high quality creation. But, I'm not going to do that on an article that only pays me $7. No, for a $7 article, I'm going to spend a maximum of 15 minutes. That's the only way I can justify the low cost of the article.

Textbroker, how am I supposed to move up in the world? If you were to give me an article topic and say, "Show us what you can do with this?" I would astound, surprise and gratify. Instead, you're telling me, "Spend valuable time writing at a level for which you won't get paid."

Again I say, "How am I supposed to move up in the world?" Is anybody else feeling this pain? Anybody else wondering how they can get a 5-star rating without spending way too much time on an article that only pays 4 stars' worth? I'm just a man trying to sing The Jeffersons' theme song.

In The Interest of Full Disclosure...

ITIOFD. I kind of wish that were a common abbreviation.  We could call it Idio-Fud.  ITIO-FD

"Hey Spike, tell me about your hot date last night."

"Aw, no, Fred you don't want to know all the details."

"Heck yes I do.  Bruno said she was a stone cold fox!"

"Well, ITIO-FD... it was with your mom."

Well, anyways ITIOFD I'd like to share with you some basic facts about recent experiences.  No editorializing.  No bashing.  No comments.  Just the bare bones facts.

Make of these what you will.

1. On Wednesday, I wrote a scathing review of Textbroker and its services that was intended to be harsh.  Textbroker is a freelance writing community. On Friday, I received an e-mail and a DM tweet from a Textbroker executive.  She asked whether TravWise was, in fact, my blog, and expressed an interest in communicating with me so that "they could get me back."  Friday afternoon I wrote a lengthy (editorializing, dang it) 300 word e-mail explaining the blog post and welcoming further discussion.  Friday afternoon I wrote a semi-apologetic amended blog post about Textbroker.  Friday evening I received another DM tweet from the same executive. "I'll get back to you on Monday."  Monday, nothing.  Tuesday, nothing. 

2.  Today, I filled out the online form for the Publisher's Clearing House $5000/Week For Life giveaway.  I deleted all of my information before sending the form.  Ten minutes later, I filled it out again.  I deleted it.  Again.  The form is still open in a tab on my web browser.  I think maybe it is casting a spell on me.

3.  This morning I missed a writing deadline by thirty minutes.  I did not care show any outwardly measurable signs of distress.  This client receives high quality work for 50% less than my other clients.  (That's not editorializing. Those are facts. FYI. Idio-Fud.)

4.  I seriously debated spent twenty minutes evaluating the pros and cons of taking a nap this afternoon.  I went to lunch with my working wife and my in-laws.  I saw at least thirty people wearing either scrubs, nametags, or business attire.  I returned to my home to continue working.  I did not take a nap this afternoon.  Guilt may or may not have been the reason.

5.  I spend too much time... an exorbitant amount of... I spend approximately 1.5 hours managing social media every day.

6.  We are going to Hard Rock Cafe for dinner tonight to celebrate my brother-in-law's (brother's-in-law?) birthday.  It will rock.  (Editorializing... oh shut up.)

New Orleans in Nashville

This is NOT a recipe blog.  I feel like I have to say that up front.  I don't want you getting confused when you read what I'm about to post below this.  No, it's definitely not a recipe blog.  I'm not going to be working my way through a Julia cookbook.  I'm not going to discuss my favorite Food Network stars.  I'm not going to post a new, delicious ten-step meal every single day.  This is NOT a... ok, you get it.

That being said.

Last night, the wife and I had a houseload of people over.  I needed something delicious and amazing to serve to a large crowd.  Something not too difficult but with a little more pizzazz than a pot of chili.

Enter Gumbo, Stage Left

My mom's family is from Louisiana, and as I was slogging through the dusty corners of my hard drive, I discovered this recipe for authentic Louisiana gumbo.  It was incomplete, and I had to flesh out a few areas, perform a little roux research, and figure out how to fill in a couple of gaps.

The result, however, was incredible.  It was pass-on-worthy.  So, here it is.  Perkins Family Gumbo.

Perkins Gumbo (Version 2011)

• 3 large chicken breasts
• Salt and pepper
• 1/4 cup oil
• 1 pound smoked sausage, sliced
• 1/2 cup flour
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 2 cups chopped onion
• 8 cloves minced garlic
• 1 bell pepper, chopped
• 1.5 cups chopped celery
• 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
• Tobasco (to taste)
• 1 handful of chopped parsley
• 6 cups hot water
• 5 cubes chicken builion
• 1 teaspoon sugar
- 2 regular cans stewed tomatoes
• 1 pound sliced okra (frozen works great)
• ½ cup chopped green onions
• 1 pound raw shrimp, peeled and devained
Here's Whatcha Do:
 
1. Rub the chicken breasts with salt and pepper.  Heat the oil in a Dutch Oven (it HAS to be a Dutch Oven.  Any other pan will be TOO THIN) on Medium heat.  Brown the chicken.  Brown the sausage.  Remove the meat and set it aside.  Sprinkle the flour over the oil and drippings in the pan and add two tablespoons butter.
2. Now, get comfortable.  You're gonna be here awhile.  Turn your heat LOW and keep stirring that flour/oil mixture.  Don't stop.  For twenty minutes.  It will SLOWLY darken.  You want it to be the color of dark chocolate.  This is your roux.  If you burn it, you're done.  Go to McDonald's.
3. When the roux is dark enough, turn the heat up to Medium and add the Holy Trinity (celery, onion, bell pepper), the remaining two tablespoons of butter, and the garlic.  Cook it down for 10 minutes. 
4. Add the Worcestershire sauce.  Practice saying "Worcestershire."  Add the hot sauce, sugar, salt and pepper to taste.  Throw in the parsley.  Cook for another five minutes.
5. Now, if you try to put the meat back into the pot along with six cups of hot water, you are going to make a mess.  I transfer the veggies and roux into a stock pot at this point.  Pour half the water into the dutch oven and swish it around.  Pour that into a stock pot.  Pour the rest of the water into the D.O. and get the rest of the good stuff into that stock pot.
6. Add the meat.  Crush up the bouilion.  Bring this all to a boil then turn the heat down and let it simmer FOR AT LEAST THIRTY MINUTES.  The longer, the better.
7. Add the okra and tomatoes.  Simmer for AN HOUR.  If you skimp on the cooking time, I will find you.  I will know.
8. Ten minutes before you serve the gumbo, toss in the green onions and the shrimp.  Give it a good stir.  If it isn't thick enough, make a paste out of cornstarch and melted butter and add it to the pot.
 
Serve this gumbo over white rice and tuck slices of toasted baguettes into the bowl.  Garnish it with parsley if you are feeling fancy.  Bada Boom.
 
I know, I know.  You love me.  Stop crying and go make it already.

Falcor The Luck Dragon and Textbroker

Well, now I feel bad. 

I'm not really a confrontational person. I don't like to ruffle feathers and stir the pot.  Don't get me wrong, I will speak my mind if I feel that it is necessary.  But when I do, I usually feel like I've gone too far.  So, after I got an e-mail from a Textbroker employee regarding my scathing post about Textbroker, I reread the post in question...

... and immediately felt bad.

I may have been too harsh on Textbroker.  I compared the freelance writing community to Elance which may have been unfair.  I might have unnecessarily stomped Textbroker's good name into the mud.  I may have been comparing puppies to luck dragons.

If you came to me and said you really wanted to get a puppy, my review of Textbroker would be like this response:

"Why would you want a puppy?  They can't fly around and carry you around on their backs!  You should really get a luck dragon, not a puppy.  Falcor is the only pet worth getting."

Well, ok, yes.  A luck dragon would be nice.  But what if you really wanted a puppy?  What if you wanted something simple and easy to understand.  Something that required less maintenance.  A puppy would be great.  Textbroker isn't a luck dragon, but it isn't completely worthless either.

If you want a simple way to make extra money each month, Textbroker is fantastic.  If you don't want to go through the hassle of bidding on projects, creating a profile, advertising your services, keeping up with complicated client deadlines, and taking self-examinations, Textbroker is the perfect choice.  Textbroker has a huge collection of available articles that you can write immediately.  They pay their writers regularly.  They are usually fair with their ratings.  The only reason Textbroker didn't work for ME is because I was looking for a way to grow my freelance writing career.  I needed to be recognized so that I could gain loyal clients.  I needed expansion. 

I needed a luck dragon.

Real Simple Blog Contest

A few days ago I submitted an entry to the First Ever Simply Stated Blogger Contest!!  The contest involves writing a 300 word "blog post" style entry on your strangest or most unique friendship.  I am pretty excited about my entry; it was way fun to write. 

The prize for winning is $1000 smackers and a months worth of blogging on Real Simple's website in October.... woot! woot!  If you are at all interested, hit up the link above and check it out.  Anybody know any other fun writing contests going on right now?

Using Elance to Make Money

Yesterday, I talked about Textbroker and why I think it is a complete waste of a freelancer's time.  Today, I'm goingt to talk about Elance...

...because I think that Elance is exactly the opposite of a waste of time.  In fact, I think it's amazing.  Don't get me wrong, I won't be freelancing on Elance for the rest of my life.  For now, though, I'm going to show you how I can make a living using this incredible freelance community.

If you are a writer, a web designer, a marketing specialist, a social media networking specialist, an SEO writer, or a computer programmer... you can find WORK on ELANCE.  I'm talking about high paying, high quality, legit work, not cheap, ridiculous, five dollars an hour work.  You can actually be COMPENSATED for your time.

What Is Elance?
Elance is a community of freelancers.  You have to register to be a member of the Elance community whether you are looking to work or to hire.  Once you are a member (a process I'll explain later), you can bid on projects, complete work, and get paid.  Here are the benefits of freelancing within a community like Elance:

• Payment is always guaranteed with escrowed funds
• Clients are abundant; you don't have to hunt for hours looking for work
• Work is more substantial, projects come in packages of several articles
• Elance takes a cut of your earnings, not a monthly fee, so a dry spell won't cost you
• Your performance, client ratings, and skills are rated and ranked so that you can easily stand out amongst a crowd
• You can self-test to show potential clients what your skills are
• YOU are in complete control of how much money you want to make per job

If you are looking to jumpstart a brand new freelancing career, get yourself through a dip in client jobs, or do something totally new on the side to make a few hundred dollars extra every month you have got to try out Elance.  It's fun.  It costs nothing.  You can make MONEY. 

Boom bada boom.

Anybody else use Elance?  Any hobby writers out there who have considered trying to freelance but didn't know where to start?

The Help

Alright peeps! It's Book Review Wednesday.  I just made that up.  I probably won't do this every Wednesday.  But for now, let's pretend that this is a regular thing.  Ahem.

BOOK REVIEW WEDNESDAY!!

A couple weeks ago I snatched up The Help by Kathryn Stockett as soon as my wife had finished it.  If you haven't read it, I'm going to try to avoid spoilers at all cost because I really think you should pick this one up.  While I am definitely a Science Fiction and Fantasy geek, I can appreciate a cultural, semi-historical fiction novel with the best of them.  And on a personal note, I love the Civil Rights Era of American History.  Ever since I went to the hotel where Martin Luther King, jr. was assassinated in Memphis, I've been infatuated with that movement in our country's history. 

In spite of that, I was naive enough to be disappointed by this book.  I'll explain that in a minute.

First of all, the characters in this book are so strong.  I love a book with good strong characters: characters whose voices you can hear in your head as if they were standing next to you and shouting.  I love being able to imagine a character's posture, clothing, nonverbal communication, all of it.  Ms. Stockett has her characters DOWN.  I also loved the story.  The humor, the intrigue, the old Southern charm.  It was all great.

The ending, however, left me feeling empty and dejected.  I found myself wanting a more definitive ending.  I wanted the characters to succeed.  I wanted more justice.  I wanted more recognition.

That's when I remembered... Kathryn Stockett couldn't write that ending because it would require a complete change in history.  The Civil Rights movement wasn't over in a week.  It wasn't over in a year.  It didn't wrap up neatly and nicely in a tidy little package where everybody, all of a sudden, got along.  In fact, the ending I found myself wanting would have been ridiculous.

"Now, I know I treated you like trash yesterday because you are black.  But now, I see that was wrong."
"You're right, it was wrong.  Wanna play Gin Rummy?"
"Oh yes."

Yeah. Stupid, I know.  This story ends with a handful of questions because that is what the lives of these characters were full of during this time.  Questions.  Questions about survival.  Questions about society.  Questions about change, about solutions, about unmet needs, about fear, about anger.  Some of us are still asking these questions today.  Some of us throw a huge temper tantrum when an African American man gets elected president.  Some of try to mask our prejudices by hurling stupid accusations about birth location and religion.  Some of us have forgotten the journey that our ancestors traveled. Some of us have forgotten our destination.

It may sound odd, but after reading this book I decided that I am proud of our President.  Not because he is black.  Not because he is the first president elected to this country that isn't as white as the signers of the Declaration.  But because, to me at least, he stands for another step on a journey that I think is well worth traveling.  I know that wasn't the intention of Kathryn Stockett.

Still, we can learn a lot from reading about the past.  We see where we've come from.  We see where we are going.  I see where I am.

Textbroker: Counting Pennies in Hell

I've been putting this post off for far too long.  I really want to discuss the beginning of my personal freelance journey and the important differences I discovered between two of the biggest freelance writing communities: Elance and Textbroker.

When I decided to try my hand at freelance writing, I didn't really know what an important and widespread field I was getting myself into.  A friend of mine told me she had made a few extra hundred dollars a month with a site called Textbroker.  Extra hundred dollars?  Ok, yes I'm trying this out.

Textbroker is a website where clients post their writing needs in different categories and writers can choose to complete these articles for a rate of less than two cents per word.  Categories include jewelry, home, business, computers, family, travel, etc.  Depending on how your writing rates with the Textbroker editors, you have access to different levels of writing jobs that pay different amounts of money.  The highest rating you can get as an "amateur" is a four star rating.  That's where I started. 

Here is the problem with Textbroker.  Er, there's more than one.  First, the jobs are first come, first served which means that there is no bidding process or freedom in deciding how much you are going to make.  If you write a four star article, you get paid 1.7 cents per word.  Every time.  No exceptions.  The second problem is that the a lot of the articles are filled with REALLY COMPLICATED guidelines that you have to complete before the article can be written.  Sometimes, just reading the guidelines for each article would take me fifteen minutes.  Then, the article would only pay about $5-$8.  Not exactly cost effective. 

The last problem I had with Textbroker freelance writing was the process by which they moved you from a four star writer to a five star writer.  Ideally, once you have written ten articles in a row with a four star rating, you can apply to be a five star writer which gives you access to better paying jobs.

Well, I've written about a hundred articles with all four star ratings.  I applied to be a five star writer.  I was rejected.  Why?  Because in ONE of the hundred four star articles, the editor at Textbroker didn't like some of my phrasing.  It wasn't wrong.  It wasn't grammatically incorrecct.  She just didn't like it.

After that, I abandoned Textbroker for Elance.  And I absolutely love Elance.

The Freelance Experience

So, guess what I'm figuring out?  Freelance writing is hard work.  Ok, I see you all seasoned freelancers slapping your foreheads and groaning.  Of course it's hard work, you say!  Nevertheless, I admit I initially subscribed to the "I Can Write Fast So I'll Make A Ton Of Money In No Time" school of thought. 

Thankfully, the rainbow is gone and the dancing leprechaun at my feet revealed himself to be a Reality Gnome.  I've got it now.  This career choice is danged hard.

My Freelance Experience

I've been working as a freelance writer for about a year now.  I started out writing articles (for dirt cheap) on a website called Textbroker.  Textbroker was a great place for me to start because it provided me with simple articles to write and didn't require any sort of bid process.  It's just first come, first served.  Eventually, I graduated to Elance. And that's where I've parked my derriere for the time being.  Elance is great, and for now, it is providing me with most of the work I need.  There is still room for growth, of course, and I've got other plans for developing my own personal brand...  but that's going to take time.

Wanna Know A Secret?

I spend about an hour each day reading some great blogs about writing, freelance writing, marketing, social media, and SEO principles.  One thing I've noticed, there doesn't seem to be a lot of blogs about getting your foot IN THE DOOR of the freelance community.  I'm going to add a few posts for the next few weeks about my experiences with Elance and Textbroker, and offer some tips to those who are considering the industry.

To my readers: if you have been considering pursuing some ventures that will provide you with a little extra income each month, I encourage you to try Elance.  Keep checking back for my insider secrets about how I found jobs, wrote successful bids, and kept my clients coming back for more!

Sign up for ELANCE today: it's easy and free!

First Meetings

No, this post isn't about the Orson Scott Card book.  What?  You don't know who Orson Scott Card is?  SHAME on you!!  Ender's Game, look it up. Buy it, borrow it, check it out.

No, this post (shamelessly overdue) is about my family's new dog.  Tonight via Skype, Jill and I met Frank.  A few weeks ago, my parents were forced to send one of my chocolate labs to join Charlie, Old Dan, Little Ann, and Old Yeller in that strange and wonderful paradise devoted to man's best friend.  Claude was her name.  Her liver basically shut down without warning, and keeping her alive would have been cruel.  So closed one of the most cherished chapters of my life.

Tonight, I met the new dog that was chosen as a companion to Claude's sister, Cleo.  Whoever says dogs are dumb or emotionless obviously hasn't witnessed a puppy who has lost her lifelong friend.  Cleo was depressed, lethargic, and unresponsive.  Was.  Frank, the adorable Rottweiler mix, has completely changed all of that.  I know that this dog will never know me the way Claude did.  I'll only be able to meet him through sporadic visits to St. Louis.  He will never stare at me adoringly as I make a turkey sandwich (hmmm... maybe it was the turkey sandwich that was getting stared at), he'll never curl up at my feet and breathe that sigh of contentment that only dogs have perfected, and he'll never pull his ears back and wag his tail when I come for a visit as if the world is once again complete. 

He may never do that, I know.  But he's there.  In my old home.  Comforting my lonely dog Cleo.  Bringing joy to my parents who I miss.  Watching over things while I am two hundred miles away.  And for that, I already love him.

Too bad his name is Frank, short for Franklin.  That was going to be the name of my first son.  Whoops.

Hannah, Haggadah, and Hard Rock

Went to The Hard Rock cafe for the first time in my life (I think) this weekend.  All in all, I'd say I was impressed up to but not exceeding my expectations.  This is probably due to my thoroughly miserable knowledge of rock musicians.  I can name the top three highest-selling rock artists of all time: The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson (did you know that), but my rock knowledge comes to a screeching halt immediately after that particular morsel. 

So, Hard Rock.  There I stood, surrounded by guitars and records signed by people I'm sure were famous, but nevertheless clueless about my surroundings.  That's what I get for marrying into a family of musical prodigies.  It's a good thing the man doesn't have to take the woman's name when he gets married... I never would have passed the Shackelford Entrance Examination for World Domination Through Musical Trivia Knowledge.

All in all, I prefer Planet Hollywood.  I can appreciate the slab of meat that Rocky worked out with, Leia's gold bikini, and the E.T. bicycle a lot more than a Les Paul signed by Billy Gibbons.

I had to look up that guy's name and what guitar he plays.  Sigh.

Monday night, the Thurch gang recreated the traditional Passover feast.  We wanted to go with all the traditional elements of Passover.  If you didn't know, each part of the Passover meal represents a specific topic or idea that is supposed to be meditated on as you eat or drink it.  Naturally, I went to a Passover website to look up Passover recipes.  How exactly do they prepare the lamb these days?

Apparently, any gosh darn way you want.  I saw a recipe for a Kosher beer battered lamb steak.  I'm not even kidding.  I decided to throw together a quick dry rub because, hey, we're not Jewish and there's no since wasting good lamb by not seasoning it properly.

So, we all sat down on the floor on some cushions, Cullen read the Haggadah, and after three glasses of Kosher wine (translation: liquid skittles), some bitter herbs (translation: parsley), some charoset (translation: apples, raisins and honey), and a platter full of lamb (translation: awesome), we had ourselves a traditional Passover celebration.  Mazeltov!


One more thing. I just remembered (after watching The Biggest Loser tonight. No spoilers Tori, I promise!) that Jill and I saw a special somebody jogging down Old Hickory Blvd on Sunday morning.  Yeah, it was Hannah from the Biggest Loser.  We are 85% positive.  If I'd had enough time to react I would've stuck my head out the sun roof and screamed at the top of my lungs.  Go Hannah, Olivia, and Irene!!

Tori, dahling, break a leg in Spring Sing this weekend.  You blow my mind up with helium and then suck my brains out and talk in a funny high-pitched voice.  Er... I mean.  You blow my mind.  I should have probably just stopped there.

Awkward.

Thurch

It's a beautiful day... don't let it get away.  What you don't have you don't need it now...

Wow I love that U2 song.  And today WAS beautiful.  Perfect weather; it even smelled pretty outside according to Jillian. 

Today, Jill and I FINALLY put some stuff up on our poor, lonely apartment walls.  We hung a mirror and two sconces in the dining room, and put a makeshift mantel over our fireplace in the form of a shelf with some pictures and vases on it.

Side note: did you know that M-A-N-T-L-E refers to a cape-like garment or the layer above the earth's core and M-A-N-T-E-L refers to the decorative portion around a fireplace?  Yeah neither did I until I just looked it up.

So after Jill and I wrestled with tape measures, nails, screws, a drill and a hammer, we had our weekly get-together with some of our greatest Nashvillian friends.  Thursday nights are bible study nights (actually, I think we've decided to call it Thurch), and I absolutely love them.

Next week we are starting Rob Bell's new book Love Wins, and we are all really excited about it.  Tonight we decided to share one thing we were all dealing with and pray for each other daily.  I can't wait to see what's going to happen with everyone's unique situation. 

We had a small problem after Thurch where Brett decided to insult Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock in the same sentence, but Linzi lit his hair on fire and the party broke up soon after that.

All in all, great day.  Excited to see my in-laws this weekend.  Hope everyone has a great Friday and beyond!

60 Degrees and Sunny...check

A wise man once said "to feed the body's compulsions is to starve the soul."

Actually, no one ever said that.  I just made that up.  Impressed?  I thought you would be.  So since no wise person (except TravWise) ever said that about feeding the body's compulsions, I'm just going to go ahead and feed one of mine:

List making.  Oh yes, you know how it goes.  That inescapable feeling that your life is a chaotic jumble that can only be relieved by filling pads of paper with lists of to-dos and neatly checking them off one by one.  You know you want to make one, now.  But wait.  Read mine first.  Then when you make your own, you can write "Slake my thirst for the incredibly stimulating written word by reading a delightfully creative blog."

Check.

Travis's Tuesday To-Dos:

Wake up and shower immediately: check.
Sit on the porch and note the cloudless sky: check.
Revel in the fact that it is too chilly for the wasps to be out: check.
Finish a huge project with a much-needed payout: check.
Read some literary agent blogs: check.
Watch elementary school kids get into fight outside my apartment: check.
Note that there is still hope in the world when angry fighting elementary school child spells A-S-S instead of saying it: check.
Watch Jill take a nap: check.
Make a barbecue meatloaf, cheesy garlic mashed potatoes and coleslaw for dinner: check +2 points for the yum factor.
Watch The Biggest Loser: check.
Tear up when Courtney went home: (Private)
Watch Cupcake Wars with Jill: check.
Vocally berate Asian girl who wins Cupcake Wars: check.
Blog: check.

Ahhhh... slaked.

It's a bird... It's a plane...

Jennifer Gresham posted another great article at Copyblogger this morning:

Heretics, Superheroes, and Fighting the Lonely War of the Writer.

Wait, did she just compare writers to Superheroes?  Yes.  Does she know what comparing me to Batman will likely do to my ego?  Probably not.  Is she, regardless, now my most favorite person on the face of this planet?  Yes.

Of course, she also said that writers are sometimes considered heretics... not nearly as glorious a concept.  But hey, if that's what it takes to get my name out there and to get people reading the stuff I come up with, I'll take it.  After all, Batman was misunderstood, yes sir.  So, to boost my confidence (and to feed an incessant desire I have to blur the distinction between myself and The Dark Knight), I've compiled a list of the top 10 reasons why Batman's real identity is probably... me.

1.  Neither of us likes cats.
2.  We both prefer to stay up late and sleep in mornings.
3.  We both wear Batman underwear (hey, if Batman wears underwear, then they are automatically considered "Batman underwear."  Logic, people)
4.  We both use our intellect before our muscles (or in lieu of)
5.  We both prefer brunettes.
6.  We both do most of our day-job work on the top floor (Wayne Enterprises/ My Apartment)
7.  Neither of us wants to live strictly by the rule book.
8.  Batman has Alfred.  My vacuum cleaner is named Alfred.
9.  Both our heart rates accelerate when we see the Bat Symbol.
10. We both want to change the world.

So, yes, I can see her point.  Writers are like superheroes.  We are isolated, moody, often considered heretics, misunderstood, and we walk among you, donning our secret identities because if you knew that we were actually "writers," you'd probably ask to read our work.

And then, you'd hate all over it.

Werewolf Bar Mitzvah...

I've had that stupid/hilarious song from 30 Rock in my head all morning.  You know, the one Tracy Jordan recorded and won an award with:

Werewolf Bar Mitzvah, Spooky, Scary
Boys becoming men, men becoming wolves...

Haha.  My friends Andrea and Caleb gave us the first three seasons of 30 Rock.  They're 30 Rock evangelists, I guess you could say.  And I'm proud to report that I'm a born-again convert.

I resisted watching that blasted show for years because I was determined to hate Alec Baldwin.  I'm not sure why.  I think it was a noble attempt to bring a little balance to my typical obsession with celebrity.  I am far too fascinated with the lives of the A-Listers, and I thought if I could passionately hate one, just one, celebrity, that would balance my life out.

Well, dang you, Alec for making me love you.  Now I have to find another celebrity to loathe so that my life can once again be balanced.  I've been throwing out names all day, but am unable to let go of my admiration for stars such as Bruce Willis, Harrison Ford, Leo D, and Johnny Depp...

Wait, I've got it.  George Clooney.  He ruined Batman, he's shmarmy, his skin is too tan.  Perfect.

I hate you, George Clooney.  Please don't be in a sitcom that I'll love.