How To Look Like A Smack Amateur
Don’t note your sources.
For crying out loud - this is blogging 101. This weekend I did my weekend prowl for cool news and other items, and must have seen at least 40 blogs with items, pictures, and quotes, yet not a source among them.
If you didn’t build it, make it, think it, create it, let me know who did. Nothing is more obnoxious than a blogger showing a house or cool art creation and not sourcing it. None of the blogs I saw tricks like this at were network based, but some were client owned blogs, or blogs for profit. Some of the blog were bigger names in their niche too. Shame on them. I’d list them, but don’t want to give them any link love.
If you are posting images or statistics or quotes with no source it’s not on the up and up where legalities are concerned, and worse, it makes you look lame and uninformed - read this: Blogs and Images.
Ok, rant over; I guess it’s just that few things make me as mad as finding a cool house I can’t mention or link to at Offbeat, simply because the blogger didn’t source it. Back to our regularly scheduled nice friendly tips.
Typical Conversations I Have
This conversation happened with a family member this week; but friends are guilty too, and honestly, this could be any old week of my life.
Family: We’re having this get-together Saturday! You have to come.
Me: I can’t, you know I work weekends.
Family: But why.
Me: Like I’ve said before, if I don’t get enough work done on the weekend, it cuts into homeschool time (for those who don’t know, I homeschool my son).
Family: Well, that’s dumb, you can take a few hours off.
Me: Yeah, on a weekday.
Family: But everyone else works on the weekdays.
Me: Not me. How about we have a get-together on a weekday.
Family: Why would we do that? We work on weekdays.
Me: Well, then you get my issue, because I work on the weekend.
Family: Yeah, but you JUST work at home. You can take time off.
Me: I don’t ask you to take time off from your job.
Family: (again) but you work at home… all you do is write.
Me: Sigh.
Family member then has other family members call me to try and get me to come over, and I get to have the same conversation ad nauseam.
It’s not just stuff like this. Because I JUST work at home, people expect me to take care of everything going on at the house while I work, because I just happen to be at home. People call and want to chat. Folks continually say cool things like, “Man, you’re so lucky you don’t have a real job.”
My least favorite comment is when I mention something cool going on at one of my blogs, and the person responds with, “Hey, are you ever going to get published again? Now that’s neat. I like when you’re in magazines!” I still had people pulling the same stunts when I wrote magazine articles and business copy, but at least then my name was in print, and for whatever reason, my friends and family took that to mean I actually did some work now and again. Since it was my decision to switch over to FT blogging vs. other sorts of writing, this nonsense irks me more than other comments.
It would seem I don’t have a job. Nothing I say can convince 80% of my family and friends otherwise. So, instead I resort to tactics like turning my phone off when I’m working, and ignoring the rest of the comments. Overall, while I like blogging, this is an ongoing issue in my world. Slacker me without a job (or so people think). I’ve come to the conclusion that only other writers and bloggers get it.
Do you get it? Do you get the same slacker grief from family and friends - and is it worse with some forms of writing vs. others - say proposals vs. blogging.
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