Good news and bad news

It’s been one of those up and down days. On the minus side, I heard that I’d been turned down for a media related job I was going for. I’m fairly philosophical about it, though the money would have been nice. On the plus side, I got a cheque in the post for some writing I haven’t even delivered yet – how’s that for efficiency? Better get that off my desk and into my outbox ASAP. I’ve done a draft, so I’m not particularly worried about the deadline, which is close of business tomorrow. If given the option to set a deadline, I always try to leave lots of leeway so I can deliver early. Meanwhile I’ve been putting the finishing touches to the UK legal services ebook I’ve been working on, as well as the associated products, sales letter and website. I’ve submitted a product approval request to Clickbank and I’m waiting to see what happens next. All I have to do now is the press release and I’ll be ready to go as soon as they approve the product. Then it’s full speed ahead to the next one, using what I’ve learned this time round to streamline the process as much as possible. I’ll keep you posted.

WritingUp Roundup

As you know, I also blog over on WritingUp. Most of my posts are about making a success of freelance writing. Here are the posts that have attracted the most attention while I’ve been blogging there.

1. How I Put My Site On Steroids
2. Read Em And Weep
3. Keeping Track Of Your Writing
4. Freelance writers: Four reasons to get on the net
5. Writing Tools Online

As a result of things I’ve learned there, I’ve also branched out and am now writing for Constant Content and others. I’ll be sharing some of what I’ve learned in the weeks to come.

blogging WritingUp writing

Doublehdesign site update

Well, the first phase is done. The main site has been switched to a new template, based on this one from Open Source Web Design. More changes to come soon.

No Way Back

We?’d been in Venezuela for a month and had coped with living in a red light district, the disappearance of our course, and being ushered off a bus at gunpoint. Now it was time to go home.

We?’d been told we had to reconfirm our flights 48 hours before departure. We made the phone call, expecting this to be a formality. But of course it wasn?’t. To our dismay, ? perhaps even horror, ? they had no record that the eight of us were due to fly out. Stunned, we called in reinforcements, getting our friends in the samba band to phone the next day and establish exactly what the issue was. The issue was simple as far as the aviation company was concerned: ? we weren’?t on the flight. We got our friends to explain that we were sitting there with tickets in our hands, and after much to-ing and fro-ing they agreed that there might have been a mistake and that we should go to the airport after all.

Relieved by the narrowness of our escape, we went out to the market square to pick up a few souvenirs. On the way back, we ordered and demolished our final half chicken, and packed our bags. We headed for the airport, checked in and then waited – and waited – and waited. Some one announced a two hour delay on our 40 minute flight. Some of us had no money left (we’d not yet learned the wisdom of planning for the unexpected) and we needed to eat like teenagers. We were hungry. We pooled our resources and managed to get some soft drinks and a few sandwiches. Then we sat down to wait. The allotted time came and went, then another hour, then another. It was four hours after our scheduled departure time when we boarded the plane and headed back to the relative sanity of Barbados.

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Note: This is the final instalment in the Travel Tales in Venezuela series

travel writing venezuela

Guns by Night

Snow is not common in the Caribbean and apart from me, none of us had ever seen it. And although I had the photo to prove it, I couldn’?t really remember what it was like. So when we heard there was a cable car that went high into the Andean mountain chain, we couldn’?t resist and set about making the arrangements to travel to Meriden in Venezuela. This involved a night bus, something we were able to arrange with little trouble. We boarded the bus in a state of high anticipation and we were the only foreigners on board. It set off, rolling smoothly through countless little villages.

Suddenly, we felt the bus start to slow and looked at each other in alarm. The bus rolled to a stop and two soldiers got on the bus. It was passport control. When we saw the soldiers we felt very afraid. We normally think of soldiers as big and bad, but these soldiers weren?t. Instead, they were very, very young, looking 16 to 18 at best ? and they had guns. As they moved through the bus, our worst fears were confirmed. They picked out the foreigners (us) and motioned us off the bus with their guns. Was this the time we were going to be ?disappeared?? I had a particular problem ? two British passports ? one expired, one current. The reason was simple. The expired passport had the stamp that showed I was a resident of Barbados; the other one allowed me to travel. I couldn’t go anywhere without both of them. You try explaining that situation at midnight in a strange country to a teenager with a gun. It wasn’?t looking good, especially as they claimed not to understand our Spanish and didn?t speak English. After a while, we persuaded him to call his boss and managed to explain the situation. It had taken an hour, but finally we were allowed to re-board the bus, to the disapproving looks of all the locals who had been forced to wait for us.

We were glad to leave the bus when it finally arrived in Meriden the next morning. However, it turned out that the trip had been in vain. The cable car was being repaired and would not be fixed before our departure from Venezuela. As there was nothing much else to do, it was back to Caracas by the next bus. What an anticlimax!

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This is part of my Travel Tales in Venezuela series. In the final instalment, more travel troubles.

travel writing venezuela

How rude

I do apologize. How very rude of me. We’?ve been speaking for nearly two months and we haven’?t been properly introduced. If you have a moment, I propose to remedy that social solecism right away.

You already know that my name is Sharon. I?’ve worked in writing-related industries for 18 years. Although one doesn’?t like to blow one?’s own trumpet, my resume includes the Financial Times, Metal Bulletin (an industry leader), as well as work in educational institutions such as the Design and Technology Association and the National Youth Agency in the UK.

Five years ago, I was offered the chance to pass on my writing skills to the next generation. One doesn’?t get that kind of opportunity every day, so I trundled over to one of the oldest communication studies courses in the UK at Coventry University. I have to confess, though, that I missed the old writing game. That?’s why I?m now a freelance writer and teacher. Best of both worlds, don’?t you know?

Hobbies? Well, I dabble in racquetball, play a spot of Scrabble (what writer doesn’?t?) and am a founder member of a local reading group. There’?s blogging as well, though that’?s more of an addiction, wouldn?’t you say, especially at WritingUp. . Well, I don?’t want to take up too much of your time, so we’?ll leave it there, shall we? There?’s more about me on my main site. Anyway, nice to have met you. Do drop in for another chat. Pint? Don’?t mind if I do. Mine’?s a Heineken.

humor

Lost in Venezuela

So there we were, miles from home, having narrowly escaped a month in a red light district. Now it was time to do what we had come to the country for. That decided, we set off in search of the course venue. But how to get there? The most hazardous part of the journey was crossing the road near our hotel to get to the pedestrian area. What we didn’t know is that Venezuelan drivers are no respecters of other road users. I had never seen so many people crammed together (cars three abreast in two lanes) trying to move an inch, while shouting insults at the tops of their voices and banging furiously on their horns. And that was just the way they treated other drivers. Pedestrians might as well have been invisible at best and at worst moving targets heading straight for the licensed kill zone of the zebra crossing. The first time we approached the crossing, we must have stood for ten minutes, wondering how we were going to get through. Then we saw how the locals did it. As soon as there was even the slightest gap, they would hold up a hand like an invisible shield and start to cross. Most of the time they got away with it, if the traffic was snarled up enough, but even the locals had to leap for the safety of the pavement a few times.

The hazardous crossing accomplished, we headed for the hills, or at least out of the busy downtown area. We’d made all the arrangements from Barbados, with the help of our guides, a local salsa band whom we’d met through one of our younger, hipper teachers. So we had a name, an address and an immersion course in Spanish – or so we thought. When we arrrived at the venue, it looked a typical school building, with high ceilings, wide corridors and lots of desks. When we said who we were and who we had come to see, we were shown to a room and asked to wait. After a few moments, our teacher came through the door. But all was not as it seemed. Apparently there’d been a mixup – and they suggested we come back in a few days by which time they’d be ready for us. When we returned, they had laid on a class for us – at least that’s what they called it. But we weren’t impressed. We had been studying Spanish since we were 13 and from the age of 15, all our language lessons had been in Spanish – no English allowed. So we needed a bit more than ‘what’s your name’ and the Spanish equivalent of ‘la plume de ma tante’. (For those not in the know, that’s a phrase used in the UK to indicate a basic level of French competence.) We gave them one more chance to get it right, then we parted company by mutual consent. We’d learn far more by talking to people out on the street – as long as we could manage to cross the road!

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This is part of my Travel Tales in Venezuela series. In the next instalment, we go on a midnight trip to meriden and have an encounter with a gun.

Technorati: travel spanish

Red Lights

There were 8 of us and we were all 19 when we organised our first major trip away from home. We were all at university, but still living at home, and some of us had never been kissed, so we were a very young 19. All of us were studying Spanish at the University of the West Indies and we decided to organise a cultural trip to immerse ourselves in the language. Since Venezuela was only a 40 minute plane ride away, it seemed the obvious choice. That decided, we set about raising the funds through cake and bake sales, car washes and hitting up our parents for as much money as we could get. Finally we had a date, a contact in the country, some classes booked and flights and hotels organised. We left Grantley Adams International Airport one July evening and emerged into a strange country a couple of hours later.

By the time we arrived it was dark, so we got a taxi to our hotel, checked in without diffculty and distributed ourselves (four girls to a room), then fell asleep, to tired even to think of exploring. The next morning, we rushed outside, then rushed straight back in to get cardigans, unprepared for the chill of the morning air coming off the mountains in this supposedly warm South American country. We looked up and down the street, flipped a coin and decided to head left in search of breakfast. We were in luck. We found a cafe and shop where we could get freshly baked bread, empanadas (meat pies), and all sorts of ice cold exotic juices. Not just orange and pineapple, but guava, papaya, soursop and some I’d never heard of and couldn’t translate into English.

Feeling better, we headed back in the direction we had come. That end of the street looked very different. There were tall, but rather desolate looking buildings and there was an air of deprivation. I saw several people poking into bins to get scraps out and even the dogs looked desperate. A call to our friends confirmed our feeling that this was not a good place to stay for a month. It seems we had ended up slap bang in the middle of the red light district in Caracas. Horrified, we jumped on a tram and set off in search of a new place to stay. This was a challenge, as we didn’t really know the area. However, we got off at the end of the line and decided to look around. The place we were in was called Sabana Grande and it looked much nicer. There was a big plaza, lots of shops and the area looked prosperous instead of run down. While exploring we happened upon a hotel down a side street and soon found out they had two rooms available. It would be four to a room again. Two more trips on the tram got us and our belongings moved to our new hotel and we began the process of settling in to what would be our new home for a month.

travel writing venezuela

Blogger rhythms

There?s a lot of discussion going on over at WritingUp about blogging: when should you write, how should you, what should you ? and so on. So I?’ve been giving this some thought. Many people say that in order to make the most of your blog and keep your readership, you need to post every day, maybe even twice a day. But I’?m not so sure. Unlike this blog, stuff at WritingUp disappears off the home page quickly. Maybe multiple postings keep your name where people can see it; on the other hand maybe you?re wasting your time as they never get to see it anyway. The new friends I?ve met at WritingUp seem to fall into two camps: those that post every day and those that don?’t. Increasingly, I?’m finding myself in the latter group. There are several reasons for this. As a part time writer/part time mother, I just don?t have the time to post daily on my three blogs. Even if I did, I like to think about things before posting them, and thinking time is even rarer. This is just my personal opinion, but I don’?t necessarily want to bare my soul in a blog (not yet, anyway). Instead, I?’d rather put something of use to someone. My theory is that if I do, people will read and perhaps subscribe. I prefer to let good content sit at the top of my blog for a while, so that people have the chance to view and appreciate any merit it may have. Instead of posting daily, I visit blogs and comment, leaving a signature so that people will come to my blog and comment. This is probably not the end of this thinking process for me. After all, I?’m relatively new to blogging (eight weeks here and four weeks at WritingUp. I’?ll keep you posted as my thoughts evolve. How do you blog? Thanks for reading.

Technorati: blogging

Confessions of a blogaholic

My name is Sharon and I am a blogaholic. It’s been just over three weeks since I joined WritingUp. I can’t seem to get the site off my mind. My life has been enriched by the mysteries of Feedburner. I’ve learned a lot of new blogging skills, including how to keep it simple. There’s been lots of advice on blogging. I lie awake at night thinking of ideas for new freelance writing posts and am lost in the Vertical Blog Tunnel. Every morning, I rush to my computer so I can see what’s new on the home page. I may never recover.

Technorati: blogging feeds