Pastures new

I'm leaving home. No, not *that* kind of leaving home - the other half will be relieved to know I've absolutely no intention of moving out - but I am going to be leaving for work again.

After nearly 5 years of being at home, I'm going to rent some desk space, and escape the corner of my bedroom that doubles as an office. Hopefully, there'll be fewer distractions (there's no way I can put the washing on, or empty the dishwasher), and some new folk to interact with (I'm taking a desk in a shared workspace).

I'm sure there's going to be some drawbacks (I can't exactly turn up in my pyjamas, for example) and the cat will no doubt take advantage of my absence and take up residence on my chair. But the other half will get some peace and quiet (if nothing else, the running battle with the cat over his office chair might stop) and hopefully I'll get a glimpse of the outside working world.

I'm rather looking forward to it.

Work, motherhood and a balancing act

A fantastic post on having it all, working for yourself, and balancing work and motherhood over at Superhero Journal:

"I have been living with the belief that I can probably have everything I want, just not everything at the same time. Right now, I am choosing my creative work with Mondo Beyondo and time with family over most anything else. This means that we eat a lot of macaroni, takeout thai food and drink a lot of coffee around here. Our house isn't grand or exactly how we want it, but we live next door to a park and we spend a lot of time outside. In the end, I want to know that I didn't miss this time with Ben. I also want a rich creative life, to do work I love, and to enjoy how things are right now."

Me too.

Point Hotel, Edinburgh

Fluorescent lights at the Point Hotel, where I stayed this week (I was blogging at the JISC Conference 2009). The place is looking a little shabby these days, but the lighting is still fun.

Links to more work stuff

Here's a couple more things I've found while on my travels (Twitter is turning me into a dangerous procrastinator at times).

• a very funny blog post about writing number-based headlines
• an excellent piece in January's Wired (yes, I know it's March and I'm slightly behind...) about self-help time management books and freelancing. Sounds dull, is anything but, because author Chris Hardwick is also a stand-up comedian (and procrastinator).

In other news, M is still covered in spots, but we are no longer a plague house. Hurrah! We can now go out to enclosed places, which is rather a bonus considering it snowed this afternoon.

Work-related stuff: networking

In a bid to make things even more confusing, I've installed Blog Link on my Linked In profile, which in theory will automatically post updates from here to Linked In. I'm not sure quite what the people there are going to make of the adventures of Captain Jack and the random musings that usually ensue, but it's an interesting experiment in social networking/marketing (insert any current buzzword except 'credit crunch' here).

It might actually force me to focus on posting more work-related stuff to the blog, rather than pictures of a small, rather scruffy cat. Then again, perhaps not.

Work-related stuff - survival

There's an interesting post here from Getting Ink on how journalists can survive the recession. (As a complete aside, isn't the phrase 'credit-crunch' the most hideous thing anyone's dreamed up this year?)

I particularly like point 1 - write about something boring. I quite agree. I never bother pitching for anything remotely 'sexy' like travel or arts-related material, as it's (a) appallingly paid and (b) overwhelmingly oversubscribed. I suspect I've probably wittered on about this before, but you can't go far wrong with government departments or higher education, in my opinion.

I also like point 6 - diversification. It's important - and also avoids you being pigeonholed. I write/research/edit/proofread/create web content/nitpick with the best of them. Preferably all at once.

Plain English

I found a really interesting article today, all about local government and its use of English, plain or otherwise. I spend quite a lot of my time making government-ish stuff more readable on the web, so it was quite interesting to see how Derby City Council is dealing with the issue.

I find there's just no getting away from some usages of jargon - in some cases it's hard to see what you would use instead of phrases like ‘place shaping’, ‘community cohesion’, ‘sustainable communities’ and ‘engagement’ that the author rails against. In the right setting, they're very useful. Yes, they're ugly, but they're concise - and my other task is usually turning long, meandering sentences into something shorter and snappier.

In a web context, a long-winded description of 'sustainable communities' is probably going to turn more readers off - especially if they're scanning the page. What's nice about the web, though, is that you can direct reader to an FAQ or a glossary if they're unsure of the terminology (there's a nice example on this climate change website, where the definitions pop up on mouseover).

It probably doesn't look quite as good in print, however, if you have to issue a glossary with every letter that you send out...

Liveblogging (as opposed to dead blogging?)

The huge mountain of work continues, it's pouring with rain, and I'm wearing two jumpers. I guess that's my summer over and done with, then.

I shouldn't grumble, really. I've spent the last two weeks in 30 degree plus temperatures, been swimming every day, drunk a bathful of nice French wine (and discovered the delights of rum and coke - what can I say, I was virtually teetotal as a teenager so I missed out on this one), and eaten my entire body weight in cheese and croissants. It was pretty good while it lasted.

And while I might whinge about work, I shall actually be out and about next week, meeting real, live professional people. Woo! When you work at home (and have days where you get to 6pm and realise you've only talked to (a) the cat and (b) the two-year-old), you get quite excited about this sort of thing, you know.

Anyway, I'm off to a conference, to try my hand at liveblogging. While I might have been around on the interweb since March 2002, this will be the first time I've had to blog on the fly, and I have to confess to being a little nervous (some of the content will undoubtedly get quite technical in an area that I don't know a huge amount about).

I had a bit of a dig about on Google, and came up with some top tips on liveblogging from the great and the good. But does anyone have any other suggestions? All hints and tips gratefully received...

Yet another work-related thing

On a completely different note, and following on from all the tagging malarkey, Badger Madge has some excellent advice for folks thinking of taking up this writing business.

It's all work, work, work, you know

I've got a bit of a love-hate relationship with work at the moment. On the one hand, I start panicking if there's no work to do. On the other, I like to whinge when I've spent every evening for the last two weeks working on stuff for clients.

Boo hiss. There's no happy medium. It's probably a control thing, somewhere along the line. It usually is with me.

Anyway, aside from the work (which has to be finished by Saturday, when I hop off to sunny France for a week), I have

• sat in the Free Trade's beer garden on Saturday, with an old school lemonade and lime
  
• eaten a picnic in the sunshine at Aydon Castle on Sunday
• shivered around Jesmond Dene and pets corner on Monday (only being revived by tea and a ridiculously large scone in the cafe)
• scaled huge walls on Monday evening (I climbed three 5bs! Hurrah for knackered fingers!)
  
• spent the afternoon reading terrible, terrible children's books in Gateshead library yesterday (moral of this tale, never let the two-year-old pick)
• collected an ice-cream maker from a lovely Freecycle member today
  

I can see that the last one is going to be ideal procrastination fodder over the next few weeks, surpassing even the making of cakes. Let the ice-cream battle commence...

Work-related stuff: the end of puns

I know, I know, more work-related stuff rather than my adventures in suburbia...but there's a really interesting article in Monday's Guardian on the search for a perfect headline, and how the ancient art of subediting is being affected by keywording for search engines.

It's particularly important because lots of papers are integrating their newsrooms - so the same article might appear in print or online or as a broadcast. And if its headline is a clever pun or comment on popular culture that doesn't immediately give you the key words from the story, then it's less likely to be found online. So no more Gotcha! But Freddy Starr Ate My Hamster will still survive...

It's a shame, because although I don't read it on a regular basis, I always marvel at the headlines in The Sun et al. They're consistently funny, annoying, attention-grabbing delights, that make you want to read further. As someone who struggled to come up with 39-character headlines for Ceefax (trust me, there's a limit to how exciting you can make news from Cumbria), I really admire the subs' art.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to listen to JRT read the Book at Bedtime. Normal service will resume shortly.

Work-related stuff: the Beeb innovates

I went to a BBC Innovation Labs launch day on Friday, which was very interesting. It's all aimed at R&D for interactive tv, mobile, online, radio/audio, but was surprisingly non-techie friendly. Nice people, lots of short whizzy video presentations, and a chance to do some workshops and networking.

It was good to meet some real people for a change - when you're a freelancer you do tend to just talk to and bounce ideas off the cat, so some professional input was a bonus. And I was pleasantly surprised not to be the only woman in the room (there were at least 15 in the audience - hurrah!).

(However, I wasn't surprised to discover that my pay-as-you-go Sagem phone came bottom of the heap of technology sat in the conference room (what is it about graphic designers and fancy phones?). At least the Green Wing theme tune ringtone is better than the endless 24/CTU-calling rip-offs.)

Anyway, interesting stuff. Go if you get the chance - it's fascinating to see what the Beeb's planning on doing with their website architecture (about time), categorisation and personalisation.

Things wot I did this evening

1. Made (and ate) stew and dumplings (considering the dumplings received an impromptu bath in a bowlful of water when I turned my back on my two-year-old to get a pan out of the oven, they were surprisingly good).

2. Washed up.

3. Hung up the almost-dry washing and put another load on.

4. Made bread (ok, I just stuck the ingredients in the bread machine, but it sounds good).

5. Arranged professional indemnity insurance.

Spot the interloper?

I've decided working freelance from home is much like being a student - you drink far too much coffee, and there's always something work-related niggling away in the back of your mind that needs to be done. It's quite hard switching off - there's always the tendency in an evening to go and do a bit of work.

There are some advantages, however - proper coffee and cake on tap being two of them!

At last!

Yes, it's finally arrived (with only a little swearing at the computer screen...). A proper website showcase thingy for the stuff wot I do. You know, being terribly elegant and sophisticated with words and that.

www.rachcolling.co.uk

Go see. Report back.