Writing for a Living - Reality Check.

I haven't updated this blog in so long I'd almost forgotten about it. A friend reminded me when I guest posted on her blog. When I started this blog, it was to be about making my way in the world as a freelance writer. I should keep it up to date because I have learned so much. I really would like to share what I do...and tell you how to do it, too.

Don't hate me because I work in bunny slippers. Join me!

Yes, I really do work in jammies and slippers. Some people find it more productive to stick to a working schedule complete with a morning ritual that includes showering and dressing for work. I'm a messy person in general. I get up in the morning with ideas in my head and the most energy I'll have all day. So I put on a pot of coffee and get right to work. When I start to flag, I shower and change...but the slippers go back on, along with clothing I could sleep in, most often tee shirts and knit shorts or pants. Why should I wear restrictive clothing if I don't have to?


There are other perks to working at home. My hours are completely flexible. I can run errands, do my laundry, take a nap or watch reruns whenever I want to. I am also free to work at midnight if I can't sleep and am obligated at times to work through the weekend to meet a deadline. It's the nature of the beast. I will not miss a deadline if I can help it. The only thing that generally stands in my way is my health. When my blood sugar is high it's difficult to concentrate, and when I can't write, I can't write. Fortunately, I can more often than I can't, and I have the tools and knowledge to bring my blood sugar down when it gets out of hand.


The hardest thing about being a freelance writer working from home is finding your rhythm. You have to learn to focus and finish, on your own, without someone looking over your shoulder. You cannot procrastinate if you have deadlines. Last minute articles are rarely your best work...although I do find that I work much better under a hard deadline. When I am contracted to write a number of articles within a narrow subject, I fall into an easy rhythm that allows me to keep writing smooth and fast to get it all done. It's more challenging to do random articles, but the reality is that the bread and butter of my work is usually just that. Every article a different subject than the last.


Another difficult thing to deal with is perception; how others see you. Far too many people perceive this as lazy, easy work, and they resent it. Your family does not understand why the dishes are unwashed, since you were, in fact, home all day. Expect to be treated like some sort of freeloader in your own home unless your spouse is a fellow creative. I find this to be a common thread, especially among women writers. 


Can you write for a living? The answer to that is complicated. It takes a certain kind of person. If your teachers commended your writing in school and you have confidence in your writing, then you have the skills. The only real requirements are good language skills, excellent grammar, and perseverance. It can be discouraging to get started. I was lucky. I had a friend in the business who recruited me. As I learned the ropes, I met other writers, found other resources, and built a reputation. Right now, I have hundreds, possibly thousands of articles on the web to use as references. I rarely have to find work. Projects generally come to me through friends and acquaintances. Likewise, when I have more work than I know what to do with, I share it with my friends. And that brings us to...


Competition. Your natural instinct is to compete....to hide your resources so another writer can't come along and steal your work. It sounds counterintuitive to cooperate with people who are, essentially, your competition. But the truth is that writers who cooperate make more money and have steadier income. That's why I will always share links to prospective jobs with my networking circle. If you bite off more than you can chew - and you will, we all do - it's good to know that you have friends you can count on to help you meet your deadlines. In the freelance business, your network is your business.


If you want to know more about writing from home, leave a comment or tweet me. I'll be glad to share what I've learned with you.

NaNoWriMo: Damaged --Post 3

Curtis instructed Leslie to hold all his calls, including the detective. "Tell him I'm out for the afternoon and can't be reached, and ask him to call tomorrow morning, he said in a voice she knew better than to argue with. He had some dark moods, and after 3 years as his assistant, she knew them all too well.

Curtis locked his door and opened the desk drawer he always kept locked. Inside were newspaper clippings, police reports, and forensic reports almost a decade old. He didn't have to ask why a police detective wanted to speak to him. He remembered the name of the young cop who'd interrupted his football practice with the news. He just didn't know why the detective would be calling after all this time, but he feared the news would be upsetting. Had they found the weapon? That seemed the most likely answer. As his eyes drifted over the pile of clippings with their lurid headlines scattered over his desk, his attention caught on a grainy picture of his mother with wild vacant eyes, her shirt covered in what was probably blood…his father's blood. The black and white newsprint made the details slightly less gory, but no less disturbing. Curtis wondered what they would discover if they recovered the knife. Shivering, he swept the papers back into the desk drawer and slammed it shut. He didn't think he wanted to find out.

Curtis glanced out into the street, reliving the events that followed his father's murder. For a few seconds he didn't realize that his mother stood on the sidewalk across the street, munching an apple as she stared intently at the building. Grabbing his coat, he rushed out of the office and took the stairs two at a time to the street, leaving a startled Leslie to gather the papers he'd knocked off her desk in his flight.

Curtis stopped short before he hit the front doors. Bursting out might cause her to panic. Instead, he shrugged into his coat and opened the door slowly, to allow her time to adjust to someone walking out of the building. When the door was fully open, he took a deep breath and walked out, allowing it to close behind him before starting cautiously across the street. His mother watched him come with wary eyes, but she did not run or scream. Her face resolved into a warm, welcoming smile and she held out her arms to envelop him in a hug. Curtis held her tightly, breathing in the scent of her favorite perfume, often included in the packages he left for her to find, over the nauseating stench of long-unwashed skin and some unknown putrefaction. He wanted to gag, but he was so happy that she recognized him he fought the impulse, blinking back tears. Finally, she pulled back, taking his face in her hands in a familiar gesture from his childhood. "Look at you," she sighed happily, "such a handsome man. I remembered that this is your building, but I was not sure which office, so I'm so glad you happened to come out just now. I look so raggedy that I thought it might embarrass you if I came in and knocked on doors".

Curtis shook his head, tears running down his face and over her filthy hands. "You look beautiful mom. I'm so happy to see you. Please, would you come with me to see Jilly? She misses you so much. I have a van big enough to hold all your stuff so we can take it with us. And guess what? I saved your clothes, mom, all your things. They are at Jilly's place, in a spare bedroom. You can shower and change and put on something bright and pretty. You always said that wearing bright colors made you happy. Remember the wraparound dress with the purple flowers you loved so much?"

Eileen beamed at her son. "That sounds just lovely. I can't wait to see Jilly. Lead the way." Curtis pushed the cart into the parking garage attached to his office building and hefted it into the back of his Suburban. He didn't need such a huge vehicle, and usually drove the tiny Miata parked in the next spot, but he'd kept it on the hope that something exactly like this might happen. He had rehearsed over and over what he would say if his mother ever resurfaced from her private hell.

He helped her into the car and buckled her in, the got into the driver's side and started the engine, praying she wouldn't start screaming before they got to Jilly's. The doctor had told them that her mental condition would allow her times of lucidity, but in the last few years she'd degenerated so badly that every attempt to contact her directly had ended in disaster. He debated calling Jilly to warn her, but was afraid that anything unusual might set his mother off. He watched her surreptitiously out of the corner of his eye. She sat comfortably in her seat without the slouch she'd picked up in the street, looking bright and alert. He didn't realize how tense he was until she patted his arm and pointed to the church they used to attend. "Oh, I wonder how Pastor Mike is doing…remember him? Such a nice man."

"He's great, Mom, Jilly and I saw him just last Sunday. We still go every week and have lunch after, like we used to, back when…" he let his voice trail off and searched for a less dangerous subject. "How about coming with us this Sunday? Pastor Mike asks about you all the time. He'd love to see you again."

She laughed then, a silvery young giggle that tore his heart out of his chest with its familiarity. "I'll check my social calendar". She winked. "I'm pretty sure I can make it." Her tone turned serious. "About Jilly, how's she doing? Is she being taken care of?"

"No worries there, Mom. Between the insurance settlement and social security, she's got a round-the-clock companion trained to take care of all her needs, plus a nurse that visits every other day. She's actually becoming quite the web celebrity chef. She built a website and uploads cooking videos almost every day, and she's got thousands of subscribers. She's making a pretty good living off the ad revenue from her sponsors. She hopes to actually get on TV with her show one day, and it wouldn't surprise me a bit if she did." Eileen didn't answer and Curtis could see that she was fighting emotion. "Mom? Are you ok?" He prepared himself for a sudden outburst that would end this idyllic visit. But Eileen only choked a bit as she answered softly "I gave her that. I taught her to cook after the…after the accident. I never dreamed it would become her passion." She reached over and gripped his hand. "Maybe I didn't completely screw you both up after all."

Curtis turned into Jilly's apartment complex. "No, Mom", he answered gently. "Stuff happens. You couldn't control what happened, none of it. But we are strong because of you. We are ok." He handed her a tissue. "Enough of that. Wipe your tears, your daughter's waiting."

NaNoWriMo: Damaged --Post 2

Detective Anthony McCaffrey paced impatiently, listening to his partner argue on the phone with his girlfriend. Finally, Gavin covered the receiver with one meaty hand and pointed at the door with the other. "Go wait somewhere else, Tony," he hissed menacingly, "you're buggin me". Throwing up his hands, Tony retreated to the break room to wait. After grabbing a coke from the machine, he crossed to the window and stared out over the little lake behind the station. Something about this case really nagged his subconscious and he couldn’t put his finger on it. They were missing something. In fact, he figured they'd missed it nine years before when Calvin Walsh died, and it had bothered him since.

They could hear keening coming from inside the house when they got out of the car. Tony's detective shield was shiny and new; he'd been promoted just a few months before. His partner, Jim Sachs, had been on the force for 25 years and was contemplating a nice desk job to finish out his career. Recurring bouts with sciatica were making the physical activity of field work more difficult by the day. If he could stick it out five more years, he could afford to retire. He was ready to take a desk and watch the clock tick as he filed paperwork.

They knocked on the door and no one answered. The keening never broke, it just went on and on like a recording on a loop. Guns unholstered and ready, they turned the knob and quietly entered the house. The noise was coming from a room ahead and to the right. Light spilled into the short hall from the open door, and shadows moved in rhythm with the sound. Jim gestured to spread out and check the rest of the house, while he checked the other rooms off the hall and kept an eye on the unseen keener. Tony crept first to the left, though the living and dining room, the kitchen and laundry room, and tried the back door. It was locked from the inside, with the deadbolt firmly in place. Passing the hall where his partner was flattened against the wall next to the room where the keener waited, Tony pointed upstairs.

Cautiously, he made his way up, back to the wall, leading with his gun. At the top of the stairs, he found himself in a darkened hallway with several doors leading off. Door one was a boy's bedroom with a jumble of clothes on the floor and poster on the wall. The second door was another bedroom, decorated in white and lavender with a wheelchair parked next to the bed. In the bed, a small girl in braided pigtails looked at him with wide, terrified eyes. Tony crossed swiftly to reassure her in low tones. "Don't worry, I'm a policeman. Do you know who's crying?" he whispered. She nodded. "I think it's my mom." "Is anyone else in the house?" She shook her head. "What's your name?" Her lower lip trembled as she tried to look brave. "Jillian. Everyone calls me Jilly." He patted her cheek gently and told her he'd be back in a minute. After making a cursory check of the last room in the hall, a bathroom, he went back down to join his partner. Silently, they entered the scene of the crime.

Blood was everywhere. The bed where the man lay was saturated. The walls, the ceiling, pooled on the floor under the spot where the man's head was thrown back over the edge. He'd nearly been decapitated. The keening woman knelt in the blood with her hands covering her face. The front of her retro "Cheerios" tee shirt and denim shorts were covered with it. She rocked back and forth on her knees, making that awful sound.

Gavin burst into the breakroom with his characteristic energy, shaking Tony back to the present. "Hey, partner, I thought you were hungry. Let's roll."

--
Jilly flipped languidly through the channels until she found a rerun of Hell's Kitchen. Chef Ramsey was screaming at a motley collection of people who thought they were chefs but couldn't get an appetizer on a plate given 30 minutes…as usual. She chuckled to herself. Where do they find these people? Being a chef would be so awesome. She flexed her hands. She was a good cook, but tended to drop things. She just didn't have enough strength in her fingers. Maybe one day they'll have cooking shows for handicapped people, she thought. I could do definitely do that. Jilly had already won a certain amount of fame with her youtube cooking channel. She had a lot of followers. At first she figured it was freak factor – hey look at wheelchair girl cooking – but the retention factor had to come down to the fact that she was really a good cook. At least she hoped so. She didn't want a pity audience.

She started at the sound of a key in the lock. Even after all these years, an unknown presence on the other side of the door always made her heart pound and her blood pressure rise. Her doctors had warned about her blood pressure repeatedly. Just another factor in the joy of paralysis.

The door swung inward and Jilly's helper came in, awkwardly carrying two armloads of grocery bags with a bunch of flowers tucked under one arm. "Sorry, Jilly. I know you want me to tap out the code before I use the key, but my hands were full. You ok?" Jilly nodded, unable to speak. It would be a few minutes before the terror subsided, and she'd have to take pills to get any kind of sleep for the next few nights. But at least she hadn't screamed or turned over her chair trying to get away this time. It was always so embarrassing.


--

Over thick, greasy cheeseburgers at Hobie's Famous Burger, they discussed the case. Tony described the scene in lurid detail as the tables around them slowly emptied. Eventually Hobie wandered over and told them to pipe down before they scared away all his customers. Tony invited him to join the conversation. Hobie had once been a cop, then a private investigator, and finally had bought a restaurant next to the station. The puckered scar on his right shoulder from the bullet that ended his police career was hidden under the pink flamingos of a screaming Hawaiian style shirt. For a short order cook, he had one of the finest analytical minds in the city.

"Ok. So as I understand it, you found this guy Walsh dead in his ex-wife's house. The ex-wife is covered in the guy's blood, screaming her head off. One kid is at football practice a couple of blocks away and the other is in bed upstairs. She's 12 and paralyzed. Sounds like the ex-wife did it, most likely in self-defense. What's the problem?" Hobie had a way of getting right to the heart of the matter.

Tony thought for a moment before answering. "First, there's a matter of the weapon. We never found it, and it wasn't one of the knives from the house. Those were all accounted for. The coroner said it had to be something like a hunting knife, with a curved blade and a sharp tip. Second, there's the timing. Eileen had arrived home with Jilly about twenty-five minutes before we got there. They'd both been at a physical therapy session two miles away. Nobody was exactly watching Eileen, so technically she could have slipped away, but given her later reaction it doesn't seem likely. Nobody's that good an actor. She would have had to carry Jilly upstairs, help her change clothes, locate the remote control and turn the TV on, chat for a minute about dinner, and then go downstairs, cover herself with blood and scream for more than 10 minutes. What's more, she was wearing the same clothes she wore to therapy, and Jilly swore that there wasn't a speck of blood on them when they got home. Nobody could have done that much damage and walked away clean. Jilly said the screaming started about 5 minutes or so after her mother left her room."

"Who called the cops?" Gavin took another enormous bite and talked around it. "Neighbors?" He washed the cheeseburger down with a swig of milk. Hobie kept the milk at a temperature just above freezing and delivered it to the tables in graceful pewter jugs that had been kept in the freezer along with matching pewter mugs. He said it kept the customers happy and the heartburn complaints to a minimum.

"Jilly called the 911. The tape of the call is chilling. Her shaky little voice, whispering into the phone that she's paralyzed from the chest down and her mother is screaming downstairs. She was terrified that something was happening right then…and she was completely helpless. She might have been able to get into her chair, but there was no way she could get down the steps…and was afraid to in any case. She thought her mother was being killed and she might be next." Tony swirled a couple of steak fries in a puddle of barbecue sauce, but didn't put them in his mouth. His gaze was distant, as if he was seeing it all over again for the first time. "All that blood. You don't see that often. Walsh was stabbed 26 times. The first one, in the neck, would have been fatal in minutes, maybe seconds. Blood pumped out like a hydrant. But the killer kept stabbing until the guy was drained. Whoever it was hated him real bad. When we got there, he'd been dead just over an hour."

NaNoWriMo: Damaged --Post 1

Ok, since I totally stink at keeping this blog updated and it's just sitting here, I thought I'd hijack it temporarily for my writing project. NaNoWriMo is an event that takes place every November and frankly, I've never been sufficiently insane to enter. The idea is to write a complete novel - 50,000 words - in one month. Editing is verboten. There just isn't time. Most of the novels written will be drivel, and I imagine mine will fall right into the drivel/pedestrian category. But if you'd like to read along and chuckle at my mistakes, welcome :) and feel free to comment, especially if you unravel the mystery early. I HATE that. I won't be posting in chapters, exactly, more like day by day...I've completed 4 days (yes. I am WAY behind) So here it is:

Damaged --post 1

Curtis slouched casually against the rough brick of the building, hat pulled low over his eyes, one leg bent so his foot was against the wall. It would not do if she saw him, not at all. The last time had not been pleasant. The bag dangled from his left hand, waiting for the drop as she ambled slowly up the walk pushing the cart, eyes on nothing and everything.

When she crossed the spot he'd decided would be the demarcation line, He pushed off from the building, crossed the sidewalk and dropped the bag in the trash container directly in front of him, then continued across as if he'd just been waiting to cross all along. He didn't look back to see if she'd stopped and picked it up until he was safely across and had entered a coffee shop on the other side.

Inside, confident she could not see past the reflections on the window glass, he watched his mother investigate the trashcan and find the bag of treasures he'd dropped. He saw her eyes dart around, wary that a mistake had been made and someone would be running back, making a scene. She had always hated scenes. She relaxed a little when she saw no one coming purposefully towards her, but dropped the bag into her cart and pulled a newspaper over it, and then shuffled quickly around the corner.

Curtis saw the glee on her face and the movement on her lips that meant she was talking to herself. It was so familiar that it unsettled him with an unexpected memory of happier times when she sang to herself as she dusted…not loud enough for anyone to hear, but watching her, he would often catch her lips moving and that same self-satisfied smile.

When she was out of sight, Curtis ordered a cup of coffee (grande half-caf latte with a float of whipped cream and a sprinkle of pumpkin pie spice) and took a table near the window. He wiped a tired hand over his eyes and yawned as he dialed his sister's number. She answered on the third ring without a hello. "Did you find her? Is she ok?" Curtis chuckled "Hi Jilly, nice to hear your voice too. I'm fine, thanks for asking. And yes, I saw her and she looks ok. I dropped her a care package and watched; she found it. She looked happy."

Jilly expelled the breath she'd been holding. "Thank goodness. After we didn't find her the last few days, I was afraid…." She let her voice trail off, but Curtis knew. He was afraid as well. He'd been afraid for years. She cleared her throat and he knew she was fighting sudden tears. "She didn't see you?". "No", he answered, "I blended in pretty good. Used the crowd disguise, jeans, nondescript jacket, baseball cap, sunglasses, slouch. She'd have to get pretty close to know it was me, and I ducked into a coffee shop before that happened."

Jilly's voice turned warm. "You're drinking that vile concoction with pumpkin spice right now, aren't you? Don't know how you can stand it." He slurped loudly in response. "You just don't know what you're missing. Hey, Jilly…about the other day..?"

Jilly sighed. "Forget it. It was nothing. Just me being dramatic. Gotta run. See you Sunday. Let me know if you see her tomorrow, ok?" Curtis snapped his phone shut and put it on the table where he could spin it around as he thought. Jilly's not the dramatic type, he thought dourly, and it was hardly nothing.

Leslie looked up from her desk when he got back to the office a few blocks away. "Messages on your desk, boss. Brad Guardino from Cytec wants to know when his billing program will be completed, Darcy Frank from HRMIC says everything she uploads to her documents database disappears, Ken Harris wants to know if we received his check and a Detective McCaffrey called. Said he'd call you back, wouldn't say what it is about."

Curtis thumbed through the mail while listening to the usual array of customer issues, but his head jerked up at the mention of the call from the detective. "Sorry, Leslie…what did you say about a detective? What did he say exactly?" Leslie stammered apologetically "he said…oh dear…he said he needs to talk to you about something, but he would not tell me what. He asked when you'd be in and said he'd call back. I told him about 1:15. Is that ok?" Curtis' office door was already closing.

What I do

You know I freelance, but I thought it was time I actually said what it is I do. It's a little complicated. I never fully switched from web developing to writing, and I tend to oscillate between the two. I'll be honest, for those of you looking to start an online career. I spend part of every day looking for new work, but most of my work comes to me unsolicited, through recommendations from people I've worked for. Which is why it's so hard to get started from scratch. I've got contacts that go back years. I'm just sorry I didn't have a blog going the entire time, and I'm also sorry I never put much stock in social connection sites. I was dumb enough to think I'd retire with my job still intact . I won't actually retire until I cannot physically work anymore, because not working makes me so antsy I can't sleep. literally. I went a little crazy last week at Mom's. She's on dialup and between the slow connection and the desire to spend as much time as possible with my family, work was impractical. But I didn't sleep much. Too many ideas pounding the inside of my skull, I guess.

Anyway, as I've stated before, I primarily write for Phemomenal Content, and what I turn in for them is distributed to various projects and remains uncredited. That's usually true of a content service. When I have a few minutes to spare, I also seed articles at unpaid article databases like ehow.com (note: they claim to pay a revenue share, and I'll let you know if that adds up to anything) and ezinearticles.com, and the purpose of these articles are simply to publicize both myself and Phenomenal Content. Not that I really have much time to do so.

I also write for Brighthub. Can't say it pays all that well, so in order to compensate, I write faster, shorter articles with less detail. There's something wrong with that concept, but many content and article services use it. They wish to sell articles, but putting out a truly saleable article takes me much longer to craft than the pay allows. So I just crank out something readable and accurate without much thought to saleability. I suspect this business model will fail, but I hope not, because it's a steady source of income.

Recently, I've been guest blogging at uptake.com. I've done half a dozen or so hotel-related blog posts, and I hope that they will hire me as a full time blogger, but there's no point in applying until my personal blog is earning some traffic.

Lastly (at the moment), I blog for GrowingBolder.com. My blog there is personal and opinionated. Because it's a site aimed at people finding a new lease on life as they grow older, I write about life in general. Memories, history, politics, work, family, media, you name it.

I also put up web sites, both independently and for the company that used to be my full time job, do graphics work, and contract out for flash, notably a viral marketing video that came out pretty well, for a web site that never got off the ground. My most current projects are developing a web site to answer the needs of affiliate marketers through the company, and doing a series of static web sites to sell to builders...a builder approached me about this product after recommendation from a friend whom I built a web site for a few months ago. Basically, I'm going to build a template and he's going to sell it, and we'll work together to put up the sites. Could be very lucrative. Could go nowhere. We'll see.

No matter how many projects I have on my plate, I spend a part of my day trolling for new work. I just put in an application for about.com to be their web hosting and development guide. I'd love to work for about.com, because the visibility and traffic is tremendous. I applied previously to be the humor guide, but they turned me down. I'm guessing a million people applied for that one. Personable geeks are more rare, though, so maybe I'll have a better shot at web hosting and development. One of my friends called about.com the holy grail of blogging :D It's a good description. Steady pay, high visibility, natural attraction for search engines, and it's credited. Pays very well, too. If they hire me, I'll cut down on some of the random stuff, because they pay is potentially high enough to command my very best work and the promotion that goes with it. Keep your fingers crossed.

I get a few random gigs here and there off sources like craigslist and freelance boards, but there are so many people out there looking for slave labor that it's discouraging. To people who want to pay $4.00 for a 500 word article, I say: you get what you pay for, and you deserve it. Surf the web sometime. Read some articles. Some of them are barely coherent. The ideas are confused, the information is sketchy at best, and the grammar and spelling is atrocious. That's what you get when you pay peanuts (and sometimes when you try to do it yourself).

So that's what I do, best described as a little of this, a little of that. Generally speaking, I work 7 days a week, but I work at my own pace. Some days I'm hugely productive and turn out article after article, other days my imagination flags and I spend more time looking for new work or building my social network. I really don't spend enough time doing that, but I should. I should also push my blog harder, but I don't. At least not yet. I want to build it up a bit first. All I really want is to be interesting.

What Users Can Learn From the Attack on Twitter

After reading this article, The Anatomy Of The Twitter Attack today, it occurred to me that the measures I use to protect my passwords might prove helpful to others. In a nutshell, the article outlines how the security of the Twitter server was attacked by a hacker who first compromised a single employee. Set aside for a moment the potential implications for the security breech of a big company, and consider what this might mean to you personally.

The first step of this attack was to gather personal information about Twitter employees. Using nothing more sophisticated than web search, any determined hacker can track down a ton of information on any person who posts on the web. We tend to put a lot of information out there in casual conversation. I often talk about where I live, where I work, my kids, where my husband works, Mom's home town (she's from Roatan, Honduras). I've mentioned where my daughter works, and on thursday had a discussion about my dog that included pictures, name and breed. Everybody knows how old I am, and on my birthday, I twittered "it's my birthday". So if anyone is collecting information about me, my dog's name or my birthday would be piss-poor passwords, now wouldn't they?

That's why using personal information as a password is a bad idea, and that's my first level of security. For most of the websites, I'm not really worried about security. Let's face it, what would really happen if someone compromised my Twitter account or my Photobucket? The inherent danger there is for people who use the same passwords on every account. Trust me, you might guess my password for photobucket, but you'll need FBI equipment to figure out the passoword to my bank account. And if the FBI is looking into my bank account, I've got bigger problems than a security breach.

Another level of security is in how I store my passwords. My memory is sketchy at best. Mom calls it CRS (can't remember shit) syndrome. I have to write them down. Most people keep a file on their desktop called "Passwords". I keep a file in a folder calld "Recipes" called "Holiday Fruitcake"...because nobody is ever going to open that.

Inside the fruitcake file, I use two levels of security. For accounts that need low-level security (just to stop people from insulting my friends, no financial information online), I use a simple word/number combination and vary the case. I use the same hard-to-guess word but a different number.

In the file, it looks like this:

heLiotroPe

Twitter123gmail

Yahoo456yahoo

Facebook789gmail

This documents the web site, the password (for Twitter, it would be heLiotroPe123) and the username (my gmail email address). Needless to say, these are not my actual passwords, it's just the system I use. Note the odd placement of uppercase letters. That, too, makes your password harder to guess.

For banking information or any account where I use my credit card, I use a completely different method. I make up a random string of numbers and letters (plus special characters if allowed) and encrypt them within a longer string. It looks like this:

ss872WCHz7&45ku7djT1v8967Gls5xP

Given that string, how long would it take you to figure out that it's the login info for a Wachovia bank account, and the password is ku7djT1v89? Here's the anatomy:

ss872WCHz7&45ku7djT1v8967Gls5xP

username - ss refers to my usual username, sherisaid

website - the minimum combination of letters it will take me to recognize what it is, in this example, Wachovia.

parameters - the password itself goes between a recognizable string, usually numerical, like 45 and 67. It might also be symbols !@ and #$ or a word, like cO and rE.

When I travel, this information is stored in a password protected file on a flash drive. A password protected flash drive would be better, but I haven't invested in one yet. I use one of my impossible passwords and write it down on a card that I keep in the glove box of my car, because I might lose the flash drive, but the chances of losing both my car AND my flash drive are pretty darn high.

Another thing I would never do is store my passwords for easy login. Unless, again, it is very low risk. One high risk account that very few people think about is email, because once someone has access to your email, they can send password requests to all your accounts. Think about it...you get updates and mail from the websites you belong to, and they are often stored online. That tells a hacker where to look, and if he's in your email, chances are he already has your password to everything. My solution to this issue is to register financial accounts with an account I use only for that purpose. I don't send mail from this account, and I download the mail I received and remove a copy from the server. That narrows possible email spies to the people inside my house, unless someone actually steals my computer.

Here's a list of the 500 most common passwords. None of mine are on this list. I'll bet half the people who will read this are using a password in the top ten. If so, you're hacker-meat.

Freelance work is terrifying! Why I do it anyway.

In life, stuff happens, and about a year ago some big stuff happened in mine. I'd been happily working as a web developer for a small company for about 8 years, and without warning, the business ran out of money. I'm sure it wasn't "just like that", however, finances weren't my department and I wasn't forewarned.

Functionally jobless in a rapidly tanking economy with unemployment rising at lightning speed, I knew it wasn't going to take long for us to get in financial trouble. It was time to reinvent myself.

My choices were to look for a traditional job, a proposal that had a number of issues, not the least of which was wardrobe - since I have been working from home for years, if I can't sleep in it, I don't own it - or finding a way to make money online. There are a lot of scammy, bogus offers out there and the competition is fierce for legit online jobs. One blogging job offered on craiglist asked for my credit card and social security number so they could "do a background check". What? I also found out pretty quickly that there are people in other countries who will work for 13 cents an hour, and some of them claim to have more skills than I have. I maintain that you get what you pay for, and the number of amateurish websites loaded with horrific grammar and poor word usage pretty much bears that out.

Two inches from desperation, I got a suggestion from a friend whom I've known and loved for about ten years, Christina Gleason. Christina was the head editor for an SEO content business and needed a writer. The pay was only so-so, but there was a LOT of work. Writing has been my passion since childhood, I just didn't have any idea that I could get paid to write outside traditional avenues. My 25 year old college education and work history largely unrelated to writing did not exactly lead me to believe that becoming a writer was in the cards.

Today, most of my income is from writing. Christina started her own business, PhenomenalContent.com and I freelance for her and write articles and such to help build her business. Recently, the Phenomenal staff had a little fun blogging sex week. Traffic really picked up ;) A lot of other freelance work comes my way as well, this guest blogging post about finding a romantic vacation hotel, for example.

I've recently been looking into affiliate marketing, which I blogged about at GrowingBolder.com. I'm still learning about making money online, and wrote about what I've learned so far. I love the site, and some good friends run it. I think it was their influence and attitude that inspired me to take my fate in my own hands and jump off the freelance cliff.

So that's how I got to this point, and the next step is a personal blog (this one) designed to build my personal brand. I plan to write about whatever interests me...making a living online, politics, diabetes concerns, healthy living, humor, why TV pisses me off on a regular basis, and anything else that might occur to me. I might even indulge in a little creative fiction...I've been known to do that from time to time.

Photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/micahmacallen/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Sherry Gray is a professional writer. Contact me directly for projects or check out PhenomenalContent.com for large-scale content creation.