I’ve had this thought about a thousand times already. I love freelancing for what it teaches me on the job. In a given week, I learn about at least 3 new topics. Not to mention the various skills I keep learning!

I’ve started listing the new topics I learn about on a piece of paper. This week alone, I’ve learned about dogs and their various accessories, cloud computing and mobile/facebook applications development.

Needless to say, the diversity of the topics I can learn on a given day is exhilirating!

What topics/subjects have you learned about this week?

As writers, we have a lifelong affair with books. We read more than we write and secretly think anyone who doesn’t read voraciously isn’t worth spending time with.

I’ve read countless books. And along the way, I’ve amassed quite a few ‘reader secrets’. I’ve decided to spill the beans on my mostly normal, idiotic and mildly embarassing reader secrets.

The birth of a reader

1. I wasn’t interested in reading as a child and didn’t start reading my first book till I was 12.

2. It took me 2 years to complete that first book.

Growing pains

3. By the time I’d turned 15, I’d gone from reading Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, assorted kiddie romantic stuff like Sweet Dreams and Love Stories to Barbara Cartland, Jeffery Archer and Sidney Sheldon. 

4. The number of classics I’ve read can be counted on the fingers of one hand. It’s something I’ve never been able to rectify.

5.  Shakespearean English drives me insane. I avoided it in school and picked up my younger sister’s “Shakespeare for kids” to read it in plain, everyday English  just so I knew every play’s story.

6. The only reason I love Pride & Prejudice so much is because I read my sister’s copy which she was using for her English Literature class. All the difficult words had meanings written above them by her. I didn’t have to pick up the dictionary once. 

The blessings of reading

7. I never had to learn vocabulary because of my addiction to Harlequin historicals and Judith McNaught’s novels. The vocabulary used in romance novels is at the SAT and GMAT level. Even if I didn’t know the exact meaning, I knew the context they were to be used it. Piece of cake in a multiple choice question exam.

8. Enid Blyton’s ’St. Claire’s’ and ‘Mallory Towers’ series was the reason I loved school. Moreover, it was the reason I loved my all girl school.

9. I never studied for any of my English Literature exams and always scored high. My secret? The characters in the novel were my best friends. 

The curse of a voracious reader

10. I’ve read pretty much everywhere. Bathrooms, planes, trains, cars, cafes, weddings (mobile books rock!), in class, seminars – you name it.

11. Two months after reading a book, I forget it. It’s a blessing. I can read my favourite books again and again.

12. When Lord of the Rings came out, I read the entire unabridged novel and loved it.  I haven’t been able to bring myself to read it again. 

13. I couldn’t stop reading even during exams. It was standard practice for me to have a fiction book hidden inside my larger course book to fool my mum into thinking I was studying. Mum was of course, rarely fooled. 

The oddities

14. I love Harry Potter and hate the Twilight series.

15. I read romance novels. Trashy romance novels. It’s my choice of bed time reading.

16. I will probably never read Stephen King’s fiction books again.

17. My favourite thing to do at the dentist is to sit beside someone who’s reading and read from their book/magazine. I’ve mastered the art of reading off of other people’s books discretely while listening to music. 

Do you have any reader secrets? Care to share? Or am I the only freak in town?

Admit it. Freelancing hasn’t done any favors to your health.

You’re working more hours than you were working in your 9-5 job. Worse, sometimes you don’t even realize that the weekend is here. There is no ‘off’ mode for you anymore and it’s all just a blur of assignments, pitches, and deadlines. 

Say what? It’s not all that bad? Dude, you’ve so got to read on!

Drinking countless cups of coffee

Let’s see if this sounds like you. The first thing you do is brew coffee and take a sip of it as you sit down to start work. You don’t wake up till your second cup of coffee kicks in, it doesn’t register how many cups you’ve drunk throughout the day and all you know is that lack of coffee makes you cranky. Does that sound like anyone you know? Yourself maybe? Wait, is that @menwithpens I see hiding in the back? 

Sleeping late

Ah, yes. The bane of most freelancers. It certainly is mine! Sleeping late means waking up late. No matter how much you deny it, your body needs certain hours of night time sleep to function properly. Sleeping during the day is just not as effective.

I’m a night owl – always have been. Apart from my bathroom brainstorming trips, I tend to focus best at night. The problem is that I’m also a morning person. I love sunrises- so much so that I sometimes go to bed after it

Eating meals while working

Pick up your keyboard and turn it upside down on a clean surface. Be prepared for an avalanche! All right, so I’m being a drama queen, but you can’t deny the fact that your keyboard is probably dirtier than your kitchen sink.

It’s just so easy to get into the habit of eating at your desk. Munching on your sandwich while you work, check email, tweet or browse. Break the habit and take a break for your meal. Relax and enjoy your food.

While we’re on the topic of meals, another bad habit that’s super easy to pick is of continuous snacking. Ditch the snacking habit and save yourself a few pounds worth of weight gain.

Excessive smoking

Granted, not all of us are smokers. Those who are find themselves smoking more and more while working. The closer their deadline comes, the more they puff. I’m not going to go into the health hazards of smoking because we all know them. The smokers among us also ignore them.

However, I will suggest different ways to not smoke so much while working. 

• Get rid of your ash tray. 
• Every time you feel like smoking, step out.
• Make sure your stash isn’t within your arm’s reach.

If you’re going to have to make an effort to light a smoke, or step out to do it, you might want to wait till you’re done with what you’re working on.

P.S: Just so we’re on the same page, I’m talking about smoking tobacco – not *insert substance of your choice here*.

ADD – Attention Deficit Disorder

Yes, it’s a disorder we can acquire. Constant browsing, emailing, and twittering leaves us with short attention spans. So even if we didn’t have clinically diagnosed attention problems before, we tend to get them after we start freelancing and spend most of our time online.

We need a response to everything. If I don’t get a reply to an email in a couple of hours I start fretting. God forbid if an entire 24 hours pass without a response, I’d worry if the other person was even alive!

Performing under pressure

Freelancing turns us into pressure junkies. It’s a deadly habit if you let it become so. We thrive best under the pressure of an approaching deadline and secretly love how creative we can be when we’re scrambling to meet a deadline. 

I’ve found two ways to deal with my pressure junkie ways.

First, the minute I get a project, I get done with all the research. Then I let it cook in my head for a while before getting started on it. I find writing much easier this way. 

Second, I’ve trained myself to set my personal deadline as 2 days before the actual one. I’m weird that way. My first thought on a deadline is the one I adhere to, no matter how much I try to work with another one.

So let’s have it. Do you agree? Disagree? Or got any more bad habits to confess to?

Warning & Disclosure: This post contains too much information.

I have a special place where no matter how big a mental block I’m facing, my brain just clicks and goes into over drive coming up with amazing ideas and words. I call that place my throne. My pot of ideas. My seat of zen. My… you get the drift. 

It calls itself my toilet.

Warming my zen seat

Every time I face a blogger’s block or say yes to a project that I have no experience of, I grab my notebook and head to my loo. As the seat of my throne (literally) warms so does my brain and within minutes I’m well on my way to coming up with ideas.

Take today for example. I’d spent all morning trying to come up with a post. I wanted to blog, I had the topic but it just wasn’t the right topic for today.

So I picked out my moleskin, went to loo and sat on my seat.

After 30 minutes I came out with 18 new blog post ideas. 18! Almost ten of those ideas were detailed into how I’d write them. I also had the perfect topic to write about today.

Since the seat’s taken, find another place for yourself.

Taking my example, it’s safe to say that you’re not the one who picks out your spot. Your brain does. Mine picked out my toilet and yeah, lets not got there.

Your place of focus could be your garden, the love-seat by your window, the swing in your backyard or even your shower. It’s the place where you find the focus you need. It’s where you come up with some of your best ideas. You can go there everyday or hang out there on weekends. It your spot. You get to decide how to use it to gain maximum benefit from it.

Me? I wait till I have a problem to head to my seat for the sole purpose of brain storming. Don’t want my brain to get too used to it y’know? It would be a little difficult to explain why I set up my office in my loo.

We all have our zen seat. But I bet none of yours is as cool as mine

Do you have a place where your brain starts working without you having to force it to concentrate? Can it challenge mine?

Picture Source: rossbr

My vacation meant that my Google Reader had more than 1000 items collected for my reading, uhh… pleasure. I’m only just beginning to catch up on all my favourite blogs. It doesn’t help of course that they post so regularly!

This week, I’ll be linking to Copyblogger’s posts that I read word for word after coming back.

• Three Steps That Guarantee Every word of Your Copy Gets Read
• The Art of Writing Great Twitter Headlines
• Three Grammar Rules You Can (And Should) Break
• Two Ways to Say More With Fewer Words
• How to Be a Better Writer in the Next 10 Minutes

Those are five posts I’ve read every word of. Now if I can just use the information in them practically to become a better writer and blogger. That’s the toughest part. There’s so much information at the tip of our fingers that we leave the advice we just read in favour of reading some more.

I’ve rarely been able to put what I’ve learned into practice. Is it the same with you guys? Or am I the only failure?