Stuck Writer Seeks Escape from Deadline
However, there are other benefits (besides money) earned by my writing this piece for the magazine: doing it 1) leads to more work, both writing jobs and editing jobs for them (and my hourly editing rate is quite good), 2) provides me with more writing clips and more exposure, 3) keeps my skills up, 4) allows me to meet and talk with lots of interesting people that I would not meet otherwise, 5) allows me to learn new things, and 6) makes my grandmother happy to see my name on articles when she gets her magazine in the mail. Writing articles is about the only thing that most of my family members can understand about my business and skills. It’s a tangible thing they can see and it makes them proud. You can bet your boopy that they’re not going to seek out one of the more obscure and intellectual monographs that I’ve edited. Besides, generally speaking, my name doesn’t get in those: I’m sort of a “behind-the-scenes” editor on most of those projects.
The other good news is that the process required to research and write this piece on exercise has really motivated me to get my ass into gear again. I recently realized that it was a year ago that I kind of fell out of the exercise habit—ironically, it was during the writing of another piece about weekend warriors. My life got crazy-busy, and stressful, and depressing about this time last year. I lost steam and stopped running and working out, and basically spiraled down the drain for a couple of months. I’m very happy to report that the opposite is true this year, with this exercise article. I’m inspired by the people I’ve interviewed and I’m building up momentum at the gym. So, yay!
