I finished a book for White Ladder Press in January, all about problems at school. Snce then I have looked at two different schools for dd, and am probably going to move her  next term. Ok, this is mainly because she is doing less well, and the school don;t seem to be dealing with it, but I can;t help feeling that spending four or five months genning up on how to move schools spurred me on in some way.

Why is it that the papers I am so keen to get a few minutes to read on Saturday and Sunday start lomng at me on Monday and Tuesday? Add Monday’s MediaGuardian to the pile…..

As usual, I am behind with reading the newspaper. I finally caught up with mediaguardian’s law special today. Alexander Ross of Wiggin writes that ‘copyright is under attack’. He draws out, better than I did yesterday, the conflict between the desire of much of the web using population who are happy to upload material for free, and ‘creative businesses’ who want an internet where ‘distribution is controlled and monetised’.  What heartens me about the feature is that, Wiggin’s survey of 1600 consumers shows people rating reading books only second after HDTV as favourite activities in the next 6 months.  

Incidentally, I like the quote in the article from Mark Cranwell of video-on-demand service Babelgum, “A three minute pop song deserves the same protection as a new car. Just because you can hotwire it doean’t mean you have a right to drive it off the lot.”

Wendy Cope is writing about copyright in the current issue of ALCS news (previously printed in the Guardian). I’m usually pretty clear about copyright, and stick strictly to the line that if you want my writing, what do I get in return? Wendy’s piece got me thinking perhaps in the opposite way to that which she intended. One of her bugbears is finding her poems on the net without permission. I just wonder how long writers can carry on being paid in the same way, and whether all those people hoping to make their websites pay will ever achieve their aims. Yesterday’s mediaGuardian highlighted a new media company paying blogers an advice on their writing. Great idea? Well, nope, not if they didn’t get the required number of page views for their scribblings as they they would get the push. The piece wasn’t clear what happened to the advance in that case.

It makes me feel quite pessimistic about the long term possibilities of earning a living from print media, and I’m not sure that writing for the net is ever going to pay well enough to live on. How do you see writers getting paid in the future?

I’ve read a couple of reviews of The Compleat Woman, 20 years after this portrait of woman who ‘had it all’ was written. Valerie Grove selected women with high flying careers, three or more children and who had stayed married for 25 years plus - a pretty tall order. It makes me look at my life, partly in a ‘how do I match up’ kind of way, but also assesssing ‘what do I want from life’? I think one of the questions asked by the book, ‘can she have it all’ is still pretty relevant today. My answer is no: even those women who think they have it all are missing out on some stuff.

I made a choice more than five years ago to work for myself. It means that my income is less reliable, but I’m more in control of my time. I really value the time I can create in my life to watch the waves rolling up into our garden, the time to watch my kids grow. That sort of time has to fit into ‘having it all’ somewhere.

If you want to promote your business, you need to know all about your target media. Magsite is a top site for keeping you updated on new publications and closures, and filling you in on the publishing industry. It is not a beautiful site, but you can’t beat the content. For more of the inside story, read what the media makers read at Press Gazette.

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I’m in the Bexhill Observer this week after the launch of Family Friendly Working, and just did a short interview this morning on BBC Radio Solent. It’s nice to be back on the radio again - hopefully there will be a few more interviews in the next few weeks. The Radio Solent researcher found me on Expert Sources - check it out if you want to be called on as an expert.

I was writing about this for a book, and thought it might be useful to blog too. Would love to know of more good freelance directories, and any views on those listed below: Continue reading ‘Freelance directories’